Jaded (Walkers Ford #2)

“Deal,” Lucas said as he shook Nate’s hand.

They loaded up the truck and headed back into town. When they pulled into Darla’s driveway, Alana gave the older woman a hug, then climbed back into the truck. She’d forgotten to turn her phone back on at the airfield, so she did now and waited for the infuriatingly slow network to download the influx of messages, mostly from Freddie, and texts, again, mostly from Freddie. She had a voicemail, too, which surprised her. Very few people in her life actually called her, let alone left a message. She tapped on the message and waited for the playback.

“Ms. Wentworth, it’s Mayor Turner. Good news. The council approved the proposal you put together for us. We’ve got some citizens concerned about the police department funding, not Lucas, mind you, but never mind that. I’m asking you to stay a couple of weeks and get the ball rolling.”

“What?” she gasped.

“Mrs. Battle has agreed to help you with everything. Just give her a call when you get this message. Okay. Bye now.”

She stared at the phone for a second, trying to sort through her emotions. She always left unfinished business behind her. That was her job, to do research and put together proposals. She almost never pitched the proposal, let alone implemented it. But underneath the shock lay something more primitive she couldn’t deny.

She didn’t want to leave Walkers Ford with this project unfinished. This was her baby, her library, her renovation, for people who loved their library and appreciated her work.

“Everything okay?” Lucas asked when he got back in the truck.

Freddie would kill her. Kill her stone dead, and leave her body for her equally furious mother to dismember and pick over. The Senator likely wouldn’t notice. No surprise there.

“Mayor Turner just sandbagged me,” she said, fighting to keep her voice even. “The council voted to go ahead with the renovation.”

“That’s good,” he said.

“They want me to stay for a couple of weeks and help draft the request for bids.”

? ? ?

SHE’D BE AROUND for a couple more weeks? Lucas’s heart leaped in his chest, but he kept his face even. “Okay.”

“I can’t, of course,” she said.

His stomach dropped six inches. “Right.”

“Freddie will kill me. We’ve got New Delhi and London and the Senator’s banquet coming up, plus her wedding, which promises to be either an epic battle between her and Mother or the single biggest social event of the decade on two continents, or maybe both. Oh my God. There’s seven hours difference between Chicago and London. I’m going to be making calls at three in the morning for weeks. I can’t stay.”

He gave himself the duration of time it took to back out of Darla Collins’s driveway to feel disappointed. That was all he could handle. Five seconds. He gave himself another two seconds to shift into drive and to call himself an idiot. Which he was, for thinking Alana Wentworth, the Freddie Wentworth’s sister and closest confidant, the younger daughter of those Wentworths, would choose to stick around for the renovation of the Walkers Ford Public Library.

Seven seconds to feel something was the longest he’d felt anything in years. San Diego was an exception. He’d felt furious, jealous, happy, and relaxed, when he wasn’t perpetually aroused. Alana in tight jeans and a tight leather jacket, or Alana in a pretty blue sheath, barefoot on the beach, Alana in a thin cotton nightgown a thousand times sexier than satin and lace because he loved the feel of a body under cotton.

She wasn’t going to stay for the library, and she wasn’t going to stay for him. She’d wanted to go home different. He was sending her home different.

“I want to stay.”

He cut her a glance as they turned onto his street. “You do.”

“I do,” she said. “God. I can’t, but I do. I mean, anyone else can put together a request for bids. It’s not what I do. And someone has to talk Cody into doing that mural. Now, before he loses interest, or worse. Whatever happens with the renovation, the mural is the key to the library. Mrs. Battle might be able to convince him to do it.”

Lucas couldn’t help himself. He laughed.

“Okay, probably not. I’m not sure I can talk Cody into doing the mural, but he’s going to do it. He’s good with the kids, too, so maybe he could draw something and let them paint it, or guide them through something. And the furniture, someone has to—”

She visibly stopped herself. “I can’t stay.”

“But you want to.” He wasn’t pleading, or so he told himself. He was just playing devil’s advocate, a role that came easily to him.

“Someone else is better suited for this,” she said.

“How do you know you’re not good at implementing things?”

“I’m just not. I do research, outline proposals. Freddie or someone else polishes them and presents them, then someone else implements them.”

“That’s enough for you?”