LITMIR.BIZ

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Rhiannon noticed that Edie wasn’t peevish, she didn’t remark on it. But then she rarely seemed to pick up on other peoples’ reactions. Now she just began explaining her most recently changed decision, which was to go meet Andrew in Miami next weekend instead of following up on meeting with a director about a film set in Turkey.

      “So you can change it, right?” Ree demanded.

      “I can change it,” Edie assured her. It just meant starting over from scratch, canceling the reservation she’d made an hour ago. But at least she’d have something to occupy her mind that she could handle—unlike the man upstairs.

      No, she told herself firmly. She could handle him, too. She just needed a little space and a little time to regroup.

      She was just surprised, that’s all. She hadn’t expected to see him again. She might have hoped, yes—just a little—but she hadn’t really considered it. And then when he did turn up, she’d dared to believe he had come to find her, to explore the connection she had sensed between them.

      And then she’d discovered he’d come because her mother had asked him to—on the flimsiest of pretexts!

      “Edie! Are you there?” Rhiannon’s voice broke into her mental conundrum.

      “Of course I’m here. Did you think I’d hung up on you?”

      “You’re not talking.” It sounded like an accusation.

      “I’m writing down the information you just gave me,” Edie said. It wasn’t totally a lie. She’d made a couple of notes. “I’ll make the reservations now. I’ll send you an email and forward them.”

      “Great. Thanks. You’re the best. Don’t tell Andrew,” Rhiannon added quickly. “I want to surprise him.”

      “Are you sure?” Surprises were sometimes not the best idea.

      “I need to make a gesture. To show up when he’s not expecting me, when he’s given up all hope!”

      Ah, the drama of it.

      “Whatever,” Edie said vaguely.

      “Thanks, Ede. Love you!” Rhiannon trilled and rang off, leaving Edie to muster her wits and check her watch. It was the middle of the night in Thailand or Mona would be getting an earful.

      The phone rang again, distracting her. And two more calls after that forced her mind back to her work so that she actually jumped when a voice behind her said, “So this is where you work.”

      She spun around to see Nick standing in the doorway, hands braced on the uprights as he looked around and then let his gaze come to rest on her. There was a smile on his face.

      Business, Edie reminded herself sharply. Just business.

      “This is my office,” she agreed with a sweep of her hand taking in the room. Mona called it “command central” but it really looked more like a comfortable den than anything else. There was a wall of bookshelves on either side of the fireplace, wide planked floors with a deep burgundy and navy blue Turkish rug, a pair of upholstered armchairs, a comfortably saggy sofa, a double-length heavy Spanish style oak desk with Edie’s computer, printer, scanner and a stack of in-and-out boxes without which she would not be able to survive.

      But most impressive of all was the view.

      One wall was mostly glass, comprised of floor-to-ceiling windows around the Spanish-style equivalent of French doors, which opened onto a terrazzo-tiled ramada overhung with bougainvillea. It looked out onto a broad rolling expanse of lawn with an inset naturally landscaped nearly Olympic-size swimming pool. Below the sweep of lawn and the pool, the land fell away steeply so that a grove of eucalyptus treetops were at eye level. Beyond them you could see the rooftops of Santa Barbara and, in the distance, the bulky shape of the Channel Islands in the sea.

      “Not bad,” Nick murmured, taking it all in. He slanted her an amused glance. “I’m surprised you get any work done.”

      “You get used to it,” Edie confessed as she stood up. “It seems a sacrilege to say so, but unless I consciously stop and look—and sometimes I do—most days I don’t see it. I see work.”

      Nick nodded. “Understandable. It’s the same when I’m working on a building. It’s usually some massively impressive place in all the guide books, and all I see is rising damp and rotting timbers.”

      “Were there rotting timbers in the stave church?” she asked him. When he’d given her his “tour” in Mont Chamion he had mentioned that his next project was to be a Norwegian stave church restoration. Edie hadn’t been familiar with stave churches then, but as soon as she got home, she’d looked them up online. Now she knew they were medieval wooden churches, and she could well imagine they’d have a few rotten timbers after all these years.

      “There were.” Nick nodded. And then he did what she hoped he would do—he began talking about the project.

      As long as he kept talking about the church, she could focus on that. She could remind herself that he was here on business, and that it had nothing to do with her.

      But then, on the way out of the house, she grabbed a baseball cap and yanked it on. In the summer Santa Barbara, particularly away from the ocean’s edge, could be hot in midafternoon. Once the sun broke through the fog that usually blanketed the coastline until late morning, it beat down relentlessly. And while inside fans were enough to keep things cool, outside Edie regularly wore dark glasses and an old baseball cap of Ronan’s to shade her eyes.

      “Very fetching,” Nick drawled, a corner of his mouth tipping in a grin as he studied her. Then he reached out and tugged the bill of the cap.

      And suddenly remembering this was just business wasn’t so easy.

      “I sunburn,” she said, trying to sound matter-of-fact. Then she headed out the door. “This way.”

      She headed across the driveway and up the path past the carriage house. The groomed lawns didn’t extend to this side of the property. It was brush and chaparral and eucalyptus, with a sort of vague path through it that led up the hill. Roy ambled on ahead, nosing in the under brush.

      “No road?” Nick said, striding alongside her, easily keeping pace.

      “There’s a rough one,” Edie told him. “But it doesn’t come past the house. It goes around the side of the hill and winds a bit. So it’s generally faster to walk—unless you’d rather not.”

      His hair was ruffled and damp on his tanned forehead and she thought he did look a bit tired. But he just laughed. “Is that a challenge, Miz Daley?”

      Something in his drawl made Edie’s skin prickle with awareness. It was perverse, really. For two and a half years after Ben died, she felt no interest, no awareness of the opposite sex at all. Then, that night in Mont Chamion, the very sight of Nick Savas across the ballroom with her sister, had jolted her awake. His appeal as the night went on hadn’t lessened, and it had certainly taken her mind off thoughts of Kyle Robbins. Still, she’d expected that, not seeing him again, her reawakened hormones would have noticed another man in the meantime.

      But they’d gone right back to sleep—until now.

      Now she tried to ignore them as best she could. “Just asking. We can drive if you want.”

      He shook his head. “I’m good,” he told her and started walking again. “I was just wondering how I’d get materials to the house.”

      Right. Business.

      So Edie pointed out where the road went as they climbed the hill. Once there had been a path through the woods that led from the new big house back to the old adobe. But in the past fifteen years or so, it had overgrown as the family had gone back there less and less.

      It meant something to Ronan and Edie. But the rest of Mona’s children had been raised in the new one, so they had no memories and little interest in a derelict run-down ranch.

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