TOML SW 2015-04-09 (3 page)

That didn’t bode well, so Jed decided not to mention he was coming in early. He’d made arrangements to rent a cottage on the lake, though he was paying through the nose for the last-minute privilege and he couldn’t pick up the keys for another hour and a half.

“What can I get you?” A young redheaded waitress gave him a friendly smile. He placed his order but she lingered, her eyes full of feminine appreciation. “Are you staying for a while or just passing through?”

“Just passing through.” He ordered a burger and fries, deliberately ignoring her hopeful stare. A woman would be one complication too many in his already over-complicated life.

He sipped his beer.

A few stools down, a chubby woman with dirty blonde hair was talking loudly to her friend. “I would hide a body for you, and you won’t tell me where you put a stupid little box.”

“Darn skippy, I won’t tell you.”

“Why not?” She turned, giving Jed his first view of the other woman, a pretty brunette chewing on a straw.

“Because you’ve got a mouth bigger than the Grand Canyon,” she said.

“I most certainly do not.”

“Oh yeah? Who told half the eighth grade I had a crush on Bobby Gentry?”

“When are you going to let that go?”

“Never.”

“Apparently not.”

“I wonder whatever happened to Bobby.”

“He moved to Appalachia and married a goat farmer.”

Jed turned his head and met the brunette’s eyes, who raised an eyebrow. “She’s making that up. This is what she does.”

The blonde turned around to face him. “You’re a man. Let me ask you a question.”

The brunette grumbled and rolled her eyes, but the blonde continued. “Let’s say you had a crush on someone when you were a teenager, and you still think about that person all the time…”

“All the time, like every day or all the time like once or twice a year?” he asked.

The brunette shrugged. “Once or twice a month.”

Ah, so they were talking about her. He wondered who it was she couldn’t seem to get out of her system. “For how many years?”

“Ten.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Ten?”

“Yep.”

The blonde went on. “Do you think that person just might still think of you, too? Or do you think it was probably just puppy love and it would be silly to think you two might actually have the spark?”

“That depends.” He looked at the brunette and waited for her to meet his stare. She had hazel eyes, green and golden brown, and his stomach clenched. Any guy with half a brain would remember her. “You cared about anybody else since then?”

Her cheeks began to color, and his eyes lingered on her rosy cheeks.

She shook her head. “No.”

“But you’ve dated other men.”

“Sure.”

He wanted more details, inappropriate questions hanging on his tongue. He took a sip of his beer. “He might remember you.”

And if he doesn’t, sweetie, you be sure to let me know.

She smiled, a knowing look in her eye. “He might?”

He let his eyes wander down her slender throat to her chest, her small waist and the shapely legs that dangled toward the floor. “Honestly? I think you would be hard to forget.”

She raised her drink. “Let’s hope Gabe feels the same way you do.”

Gabe?

He turned his head to the side. No way she was talking about his brother. That was crazy, but still he heard himself ask, “How do you know this guy?”

“His family rented a cabin here one summer.”

Oh, crap.

The blonde laughed. “Would you believe her mother is getting married to his father?”

He took a bigger sip of his beer. “You don’t say.”

“Yep, which gives Tori here the perfect opportunity to get him back.”

This cute little woman with the wide hazel eyes—Tori—was going to pursue his idiot half-brother, and Jed was pretty sure she’d have no problem getting his attention.

But if it was love she was after, she was in for some serious disappointment. Gabe didn’t love anyone or anything but himself.

For a moment Jed considered telling the women who he was, but he hesitated. Tori was sure to be embarrassed. “What if this guy’s a jerk?”

“He’s not.”

“They say love is blind,” he said. “Maybe you were blinded years ago, and now the guy’s a jackass who chases every woman who crosses his path.”

She tilted her head, her lips forming a perfect pout. “Why would you say that to me?”

Because I’m looking out for you.

Because I don’t want you to get your heart broken.

Because I want you for myself.

“I’m sorry. Don’t listen to me.” He finished his drink just as the bartender brought out his food, and he turned his attention away from the women. He would finish his dinner, pick up the keys to the cabin, and hideout until the ceremony, without his father or Gabe even knowing he was in town.

The perfect plan in place, he sighed as he bit into his hot juicy burger.

“They’re here!” said Tori excitedly.

He turned around like a man facing a firing squad. There stood Edward and a beautiful woman who could only be Tori’s mother. He stood shock still in the beat it took Edward to spot him.

When he did, his father’s face lit up with happiness. “Jed, you’re here! You made it.”

His father hugged him, an awkward display of affection that made Jed want to squirm. Edward released him and turned to the group, Jed’s eyes glued on Tori.

“Let me introduce you. This is my older son, Jed. He’s going to be my best man.”

Jed watched as the expression on her face changed from shock to embarrassment to anger, all in the space of a moment.

~~~

Tori’s Treasures, a jewelry and gift boutique in nearby Moon Lake, is holding a real live treasure hunt for more than ten thousand dollars’ worth of one-of-a-kind jewelry.

Clues to the treasure will be released every day between now and the Grape Festival the second week of September. Each clue refers to a local point of interest. In the exact center of all the points, the treasure is buried.

You can download a copy of a board game, which includes a map with key points of interest around Moon Lake highlighted, at the website for Tori’s Treasures.

Whoever finds the hidden chest of jewelry gets to keep everything inside. And if they bring the chest to the Grape Festival, they’ll also receive a real diamond pendant. Finders keepers. Good luck, everyone!

Here’s your first clue, treasure seekers:

~~~

Rubies are red of all different hues

Like passion and flowers and lovers brand new

For this is the place where we shout for the world

Put forth our best effort and sing, flag unfurled

One kind of treasure is brassy and bold

The other is found in places untold

Deep in the heart, not deep in the ground

Is where the best treasures on Earth can be found

~~~

Tori threw open the sliding glass door with a little too much force and stepped into the warm night air. “How could you not tell me you’re Gabe’s brother?”

Jed closed the door gently, irritating her. Since the moment she found out he was Edward’s son, everything about this man annoyed her. That was two days ago, though she hadn’t had a chance to talk to him privately until tonight, when her mother invited everyone over for the most awkward dinner of the year.

Tori had worked hard not to bite Jed’s head off all the way through the shrimp scampi and spinach salad. Several glasses of Crescent Moon’s chardonnay had helped in that regard, though now that she was face-to-face with him, her anger had returned full-force.

Jed had his hands in his pockets as he walked toward her, and she fought to ignore the sexy way he swaggered. Swaggered, for goodness sake! How many men actually swaggered?

Surely Gabe had swaggered, too. She simply didn’t remember it.

Jed stood closer than she would have liked. “By the time I realized who you were, it was already too late,” he said. “You would have been embarrassed if I said something, just as you were embarrassed when our parents arrived.”

The smell of him reached her nostrils, spicy and clean. “But at least you would have demonstrated you were a decent human being, not some lecherous schlep who gets off on watching other people look like morons.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Lecherous schlep?”

“That’s right.” She was breathing heavily, her anger laced with a certain excitement she refused to examine too closely. He was big and imposing and she didn’t like him one bit. He was staring at her, and she wanted to slap that expression off his too-cool, obnoxious son-of-a-gun face.

His speech was slow, his voice impossibly deep. “You still planning on making my brother fall madly in love with you?”

Humiliation swept over her in a rush. Why, oh why, had she opened her mouth about something so personal to a complete stranger? A complete stranger who just happened to be the brother of the man of her dreams, and a jackass to boot. “That’s none of your business.”

He sucked in his cheeks. “Gabe will be here in a few days. Maybe I could put in a good word for you. Mention the beautiful woman I met at the bar who hasn’t been able to get him out of her mind for the last ten years.”

“Stop it.”

“What, you don’t want my help?”

“You’re teasing me, and I don’t like it.”

He leaned into her personal space, making the hair on the back of her neck stand up. “You think I’m teasing? Because I’m not kidding. I’d be happy to help you, Tori.”

She cursed her body for responding to his nearness. “Back up, mister.” She pointed her finger at his retreating chest. “I am not a mouse you can bat around with your claws. I’m sorry I said those things in front of you at the bar. If you had any decency you would apologize to me, but there’s no use wishing on stars, is there?”

He chuckled. “I guess not.”

“I only have one request.”

“Name it.”

She took a shaking breath in. “Don’t tell your brother what I said.”

“What, that you love him?”

“I didn’t say I loved him. I said I thought about him.”

“But you do, don’t you? Love him?”

“Stop it. Why do you keep harassing me? Do you like hurting my feelings?”

The stress was really getting to her the last few days. Between the calls from creditors, the pressure of the treasure hunt, the plans for her mother’s wedding reception that Tori hadn’t even begun to work on, and Gabe’s impending arrival, she was stretched thin and beginning to snap, her nerves frazzled and her emotions running high.

Jed moved toward her and tipped her chin up with his hand, surprising her with his intimate touch. She should pull away, something. Instead, her focus trained on him, his ruggedly handsome face, so different from his brother’s. Her mouth went dry.

He dropped his hand, putting it back in his pocket. “I didn’t mean to hurt you. And I certainly don’t want you to cry.”

She was physically shaken from his touch, unsettled. She needed to get out of here. She turned to head back inside.

“Tori, what if he’s not as wonderful as you remember?”

She frowned, his words hitting on one of her biggest fears.

She was twenty-seven years old, and her feelings for Gabe were as close as she’d ever come to being in love. She wanted to believe that meant he was the man for her, but deep down, she was afraid of an idea she couldn’t even give voice to.

That maybe there wasn’t a man for her.

Several of her friends were already married, and those who weren’t were either in serious relationships or had been in them. But Tori was different. There had been other men, but there hadn’t been anyone who mattered since Gabe.

The boy she remembered had been sweet and kind, a fun-loving adventurer who enjoyed life more than anyone she knew before or since. Now Jed was suggesting Gabe wasn’t really the knight in shining armor of her memories, which was a very real possibility that scared her to death.

She lifted her chin. “I never said he was perfect.”

He laughed. “Not even close.”

He was so smug. She gritted her teeth. “Do me a favor and stay out of it. Don’t get involved. I’m a big girl and I can take care of myself. Do you understand?”

For the longest moment he said nothing at all, just stood there in the moonlight. “You want me to leave you alone?” he said quietly.

“Yes.”

He walked back to her.

Damn that sexy walk.

“No.”

Her heart beat quickly in her chest and she wondered if he would touch her again.

He smiled a devil’s grin. “I have a better idea.”

~~~

This was asinine.