Chapter 13

Declan's such a strange mixture of things. He can be funny and kind of brash; quiet, for sure; but there's always this banked intensity in him…a fire that's ready to burn, for good or for evil.

But he couldn't possibly have hurt Dick Ricci. I'm sure of it. And I'm mostly sure that I don't just feel that way because I have never, ever been this desperate for a man. Still, I have to admit that he was right, yesterday. It would be disastrously stupid for me to get mixed up with him when he lives next door to me for who knows how long—a month, at least, if I decide I need the money and the half-a-house badly enough to fulfill the terms of the will.

If that's even what the will stipulates. Declan was right—I'd be a fool to take Nicole's word for it. She's manipulative and unpredictable, a loose cannon of a person.

Still…I can't deny I'm a little excited about going to talk to Mrs. Rosings with her. Maybe it's my desire to see Mrs. Rosings, who is also a bit of an oddity. Maybe it's just the thrill of doing something that feels so completely different from what I've been doing for the last seven years. It's like I was a Barbie in a hermetically sealed box, and someone is finally playing with me.

Actually, that sounds a bit dirty.

I glance at Declan, walking beside me—all of the humor washed from his face and his stoic, stony expression back in full force.

I don't know why he decided to walk with me. I'm pretty sure he doesn't know why he did it either, other than what he said about his mother.

"What's your favorite place in Marshall?" I ask. "And don't say the bluegrass bar."

He gives me a half smile before looking away. His dark hair's a little long on top, and it nearly dips into his eyes. It's unspeakably sexy. "Wasn't going to. My favorite place is out at my property. I could never get sick of the view."

"That's a little dismissive of Marshall and its two blocks of fun."

He smiles, looking down, then says, "Spoken like a true New Yorker."

"Are you one too?"

"Nah," he says, but he doesn't offer up more information. Of course he doesn't. This man treats information like it's currency, and he'll go broke if he gives too much away. He glances up and then nods at a coffee shop. "Look in the window, see if you spot her."

"Are we taking turns playing Peeping Tom? Because I'd prefer not to look like a weirdo alone."

"You want me to play Peeping Tom with you?" he asks, his tone wry, but there's a glimmer in his eyes. A remembrance of how things were yesterday.

"You seemed to like it well enough yesterday."

He shakes his head, his mouth turning up at the corners. "Look through the window, Claire."

I'm smiling as I do. No Nicole, although one of the elderly guests has bright pink hair.

"On to the next place," he says.

"It's your turn to look like a weirdo," I insist.

He doesn't comment, just leads the way down the sidewalk to what looks like is either a coffee shop or a gas station, there's no telling. "Most of the seating's around back," he tells me.

I tap my bare wrist and raise my eyebrows. "Well, what are you waiting for?"

He shakes his head again, but I can see the humor on his face as he rounds the building to check. It's like something has lifted inside of him, and I'd like to think I provided some of the scaffolding.

We check another few places, talking easily in between, before Declan pulls out his phone, swears, and glances at me.

"You've got to make your delivery," I comment.

"Yeah. Why don't you come with me, and we'll track them down afterward?"

"Man, you really don't have much faith in the mean streets of Marshall," I say. I'm pleased, even though I know this can lead nowhere good. Hell, if he found out Nicole thinks he's a potential murderer, he'd brick himself off so thoroughly, he'd probably never speak to anyone again.

Which is precisely why I shouldn't be wandering around with him, looking for her. She doesn't strike me as someone who takes care in what she says to other people. I wouldn't put it past her to accuse him of murder to his face in one breath and offer him a swig from a flask the next.

Still, I can't seem to say no to him, and not just in the way I struggle to say no to anyone. The problem with Declan is that I don't want to say no to him.

He watches me and shifts his weight on his feet. I'm struck again by what a powerful man he is—so much so he crushed the armrest on that plane. If I reminded him of it, he'd probably say something about it being cheap plastic, and he'd be right. But Icouldn't have crushed it. I probably couldn't have even gotten it to crack if I'd put my whole weight into the effort.

Maybe that should make me worry, given what Nicole said about him, but it doesn't. My gut tells me he's trustworthy—to an extent—and he'd use that strength to protect but never harm me. I want it to be true.

"Maybe I need help carrying the starters," he says, "and this is my way of asking."

Laughter bursts from me. He could probably carry ten of them without breaking a sweat.

"There are kinder ways of saying no," he says flatly, and I find myself touching his arm again, like I can't help it—like his skin is magnetized instead of very warm and hard, the muscles underneath the surface a bit hypnotizing.

He glances at my hand and then brushes his fingers softly against it. I drop the hold. "I'll help you," I say. "I'm terrible at gardening, though, and I wouldn't be surprised if the plants spontaneously die after I pick them up."

"I'll take my chances."

We walk companionably back to the truck, and he responds to my questions about gardening. Neither of us mention pot. Or Richard Ricci. Or Nicole.

When we get to the truck, he lowers the tailgate and hands me an enormous flat rectangular box filled with little plant starters. I'm embarrassed by how much it delights me, looking down at those little green leaves, imagining the plants stretching up and growing fruit or vegetables. I've never had a garden before. There's never been room for one. The closest I've ever come is my dad's little herb garden, stationed by the window that gets the most light in his brownstone.

"What are they?" I ask as he picks up a second box.

"Melon and squash," he says, closing the back of the truck with his foot.

"Who bought them?"

"A restaurant. They like to grow some of their own produce round back, but mostly they like to look like they grown their own produce when the guests go back there to sit in the garden. They can point to the melons and tell themselves that's what they got in their dessert, but it's really just for show. Still, the pay's decent. Not very hard to get a melon to sprout."

"Huh," I say, thinking this over, "that's brilliant. Still. It is better to cook with fresh ingredients when you can."

This gets me a sidelong look as he leads the way down the sidewalk. "You like to cook too?"

"Sometimes, but I'm more of a baker. Is there a bakery here in town?"

"One just closed down last week," he says as he passes a couple of the businesses we've already peeked into. "It was only open a couple of months. A lot of people drive the fifteen minutes to Asheville if they want something special."

My first thought is that this is bad news for someone with a mind to open a bakery—clearly the people of Marshall don't know how to appreciate the glory of a perfectly baked Cronut or Bronut, as it were—but then my mind turns the seemingly plain piece of paper over and finds a golden ticket. There'll be room for a new bakery, and maybe the old building is up for rental. If it was already a bakery once, then it's still set up to be one. The kitchen would be established, which would lower the cost of renovations, and…

And I'm being ridiculous, but I still hear myself saying, "Can you show me the storefront?" There's a little flutter of excitement in my belly even though I'm still pretty sure that I won't be staying here. I just like to dream. To think about what could be if I were more daring or adventurous or different.

Declan pauses in his walking, studying me like I'm someone interesting. A gorgeous red-headed woman walks past us and waves to him, but his eyes are on me and he doesn't seem to notice. I feel myself blushing. It feels good to be the one he notices, probably too good.

"Sure. We can go there next," he says. "But I'm guessing you don't just have a thing for empty buildings with crap all over the floor."

"I hope you don't mean that literally," I tell him, adjusting my hold on the box.

"You're not just someone who enjoys baking. That was you downplaying it. It's what you want to do for a job."

"When you put it that way, it sounds like a pipe dream. Embarrassing." I sigh and nod toward the sidewalk, but he doesn't take the hint. "That's why I worked for Agnes so long. She has this reputation of helping her assistants launch their own businesses. But it never happened for me."

He gives me a sidelong look. "I think you're reading the situation wrong. Sounds to me like she valued you too much to let you go."

"That's an optimistic way of looking at it," I say with a sigh. "I think she only kept me there for so long because she knew she could boss me around."

He seeks out my gaze, and when I give it to him, he says, "She took advantage of your assumption that she'd uphold her end of the bargain because you were upholding yours. But you shouldn't feel sorry for being a good person, and it sure as hell doesn't make you any less capable. If you want to do it, I expect you will." Then he grins at me, his eyes lighting up. "Still, I'm glad you got her drunk on public television."

I smile at him, warmed by the assurance even if I'm not convinced I believe him. At the same time, I'm conscious of having said too much. He knows so much more about me than I do him.

"Yeah, guess so. Shall we?"

We start walking companionably, and he must sense my need to talk about anything else, because he shifts the conversation to Marshall. A couple of minutes later, he comes to a stop and nod nods to a storefront next to me. A restaurant—Vincenzo's—with large plate glass windows looking onto Main Street. Currently the red velvet drapes are drawn. "We're here. They're closed, but Mark's expecting the delivery."

He shifts the starters in his arm and knocks on the door—and five seconds later, it's opened from the other side.

But I don't need a photo of Mark to know it's not him standing there. Because it's a woman who's shorter than me but has a much more forceful personality. My big sister.