Chapter 4

4

TRACE

M y first impression of Presley had been right. Before I'd known she was here to round up business, I'd assumed she was a good person. A beautiful woman with a big heart. That was exactly what she'd proven to be.

And I was dangerously close to falling for her.

It was something I'd realized midway through helping her make lunch for everyone, and it'd only grown stronger as we'd worked side by side all afternoon, helping clear away debris and salvaging important items. So, when she agreed to meet me for drinks at the retreat center bar after our workday was finished, I was about as happy as a pig in mud.

When I walked in to find we had the whole place to ourselves, though, I wasn't sure what to make of it. Presley sat at the bar, a drink in front of her. She was looking down at her phone as I strode confidently toward her. Only when I pulled out the stool next to her did she notice she was no longer alone.

"Oh, hi," she said. "I think they're short-staffed, but there are no other customers. I went to the lobby to ask if anyone was working, and they sent someone from the back to take my drink order. Apparently, the regular bartender?—"

"Bryce," I said, cringing. "He's my buddy's nephew, the one whose belongings we spent part of the afternoon going through."

Her eyes widened. "Oh, no. I had no idea."

I took a deep breath and shrugged. "I can handle this."

Wanting to impress her, I went around the back of the bar and snatched up a tall glass. I scooped some ice into it and made my favorite drink—whiskey and soda.

"Can't you get in trouble for doing that?" she asked.

I shrugged. "Perks of living in a small town."

"Apparently, they tried to get someone to help out behind the bar, but people keep disappearing on them." Presley looked behind her. "Maybe they got bored."

"I'm guessing they weren't paying whoever it was. It's kind of hard to get good help when you don't pay."

"My point exactly," she said.

I stopped what I was doing and looked up at the woman seated across from me. Was she really going to launch into another sales pitch for her boss's business?

She shrugged. "Just saying that my boss isn't a total jerk. He paid for lunch for everyone."

"Was that before or after you gave him my message?"

"I didn't give him your message."

That didn't surprise me one bit. I originally hadn't expected Presley to say a word to her boss about our conversation, but when I heard he was buying us lunch, I assumed she'd prettied up the message and delivered it, anyway. Why else would he have spent all that money feeding strangers?

"If he gets even one job out of this, he'll come to town and assess the situation and do what he needs to do to help," she said.

"So you still plan to try to round up clients?"

The disappointment was clear in my voice, I was sure. I'd hoped after an afternoon of seeing what the victims were going through, she'd change her mind. But I couldn't expect a visitor to have the same love for Rosewood Ridge that I did.

"I told my boss I'm staying for a week," she said. "I called it networking."

She smiled at me and the wall I'd tried to build up in front of my heart began crumbling. Yeah, I had a soft spot for this woman.

"So you're here for the week." I took a sip of my drink and snatched my phone out of my pocket. "What are you drinking?"

"A margarita," she said.

I figured that was what it was, but I'd asked the question for a reason. "You want me to make you another?"

I'd already tapped the word "margarita" into a search engine and was reading over the directions. It seemed easy enough.

"I think I'll switch to water," she said. "I don't need a hangover tomorrow morning when we're helping out at Sugarplum Farms."

I tried to keep a straight face as I grabbed my drink and settled onto the stool next to her. She was sticking around for a week. Maybe by the end of that week, I could talk her into ditching that boss of hers and coming to work under me.

It would be strictly on a volunteer basis, of course. But the work I had in mind would be just as enjoyable for her as it was for me.