“Why did you come over here anyway?” Ria asked, realizing the purpose of Belinda’s visit had never been revealed.
“Oh. Yeah. I got distracted by mannerless jerks. Apparently Mr. Worth is leaving everything to Jacob in his will.”
“Oh. I guess that’s to be expected. He doesn’t have any other relatives.”
“Yes. But Jacob is going around this afternoon checking out all the property on Main Street.”
“Checking it out? Why?”
“I don’t know. Sizing up his inheritance or something?” Belinda shrugged.
“Maybe he’s going to fix some of the buildings up,” Skye suggested. She’d been surprisingly quiet for a while now.
“Oh. Maybe.” Ria felt a little flicker of interest. That would mean Jacob was planning to stick around. “Huh.”
“Anyway,” Belinda went on. “I thought I’d warn you so you could take off if you need to. I can cover the shop while he’s here.”
Ria smiled at her sister, surprised by the thoughtfulness of her offer. “Thanks. But I’ll be okay. I’d just decided I was going to talk to him, so this will be my chance to go through with my plan.”
“Okay. I do think that makes more sense than constantly running away from him.”
“I haven’t been running away!” Ria insisted. Then her innate honesty caused her to add, “I’ve just walked away once or twice.”
“Three times,” Skye corrected.
“Shut up.” Ria couldn’t help but laugh at herself, and she felt better as she did.
It was a good thing because the bell on the door chimed just then.
“I’ll check,” Skye whispered. “You two pretend to be busy!”
Skye might have been teasing, but Ria figured it was good advice. She grabbed the flowers she’d sorted out earlier for an arrangement she needed to design that afternoon and laid them out on the table.
“Ria,” Skye called from the front of the shop. Without waiting for a response, she pushed the door open and said with gracious poise, as if this were new information and not something they’d just been discussing. “Jacob is here. He’s checking out the buildings on this block. Can he look around?”
“Of course.” Ria was grateful to her friend for laying the groundwork and grateful to her sister for giving her warning. She was able to smile with casual ease as Jacob appeared, towering over Skye in the doorway. “You can look around all you want. We’re not very busy this afternoon.”
Jacob wasn’t smiling. His eyes rested on her face with an observant gravity that was very unnerving. “Thank you. I’m going to check out the front first, and then I’ll be back here.”
When he disappeared again, Ria and Belinda shrugged at each other.
Belinda was clearly planning to stay until this unexpected visit was over. She’d propped herself against a table and pulled out her phone.
Jacob spent about five minutes in the front of the store. Then he tapped on the door and came in when she called out an invitation.
He looked at her again. Didn’t say anything. Then he turned to scan the room and snapped a few pictures.
She watched him. He wore old jeans, work boots, and a heather-gray T-shirt. He’d filled out a lot since he’d been a teenager. His shoulders were impressive. So were his arms. The contours of his ass and thighs were set off by his jeans.
He’d always been in good shape. He’d been great at soccer and baseball. But he’d never looked like this before. He’d been doing a lot of manual labor. Commercial fishing up in Alaska. She knew this from local gossip, and the proof of it was right in front of her eyes.
She could see it in his tanned skin. The strength of his stance. The scars on his hands and forearms. And one scary-looking one from his ear to his neck.
Who was this man? He was big and hard and tough and kind of dangerous.
He wasn’t the sweet boy she remembered.
He was the kind of man who might screw a woman hard and fast in a dark corner of a bar.
This wasn’t a good line of thought for her, so she pushed it out of her mind. “What exactly are you looking for, if you don’t mind my asking?” Ria was relieved that her voice was easy and natural.
“Mostly just checking the condition. Seeing what shape these old places are in.”
“Well, this store is pretty good, since my dad fixed it up for a long time, and Fitz has been doing it lately. But some of the other places on this block are pretty run-down.”
“Yeah. Grandpa couldn’t really keep them up, I guess.”
“So are you going to fix them up?” Ria was genuinely interested in this topic, so she forgot to be nervous about the fact that she was talking to Jacob Worth.
He shrugged, glancing at his phone and then snapping one more picture. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well, if you want to sell, I think we could probably afford to buy this building now. We’re doing pretty well.”
“I know. I’ve heard. What y’all have done is damn impressive.”
His face was still serious, so she had to assume he was being sincere. “Thanks. So if you want to sell...”
“I’ll probably have to. Even if I fix these buildings up, I’d still be hard-pressed to find anyone to rent the empty ones. But I can’t sell this one unless I can sell the rest of them.”
Ria frowned. She started to ask why, but then she figured it out for herself.
Of course he wouldn’t want to sell one building—right in the middle of the block. He’d never get buyers for all the individual buildings. If he was going to sell, he’d need to sell all of them.
“You’re not going to hand them off to a developer or something, are you?” she asked, the chill she was feeling reflecting in her voice.
“I don’t know.” He wasn’t meeting her eyes, and that gave her the answer she needed.
“You can’t!”
He turned his head. “What?”
“You can’t, Jacob. You can’t come strolling home and sell out this town. A developer would tear down this whole block and put up a Walmart or something! All the local businesses would die. You can’t do that to us.”
“I’m not going to do it on purpose.” The quiet, controlled demeanor he’d displayed since he’d arrived was fading into visible impatience. “But what exactly do you expect from me? This place is a money pit. My grandpa hasn’t made anything on these properties for years. I can’t hold on to it to indulge your nostalgia.”
“Nostalgia!” She was so angry now her cheeks had flushed. She could barely take a full breath. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she’d gone from nervous and shaky to full-blown rage in no time flat. “Nostalgia?”
“Well, whatever it is.” He still looked more sober than anything else, but there was an edge of bitterness in his tone that wasn’t at all like the boy she used to know. “I can’t pour money I don’t have into a lost cause just for sentimental value. What the fuck do you want from me?”
“I want you to think through all your choices and not take the easy way out because you’re too scared to face something hard.” She hadn’t intended the words to mean more than the current situation, but she suddenly heard the resonance underlying the words.