Picking up her pace, she trudged quickly through the lightly falling snow on the sidewalk. It wasn’t that she didn’t believe that supernatural talents could exist, but she didn’t take the elderly woman’s words too seriously. She’d known Beatrice since she’d moved to Amesport as a teen. Some of her predictions were eerily accurate, some of them weren’t. Randi’s rational mind was telling her that the accurate predictions Beatrice made could simply be coincidence. They had to be flukes. Randi was open-minded, but she had to draw the line at somebody knowing her future. She believed in people deciding their own fate or destiny. Anything else was just . . . chance.
She waited for traffic to clear before she sprinted across the street, her boots sliding in the snow as she stopped breathlessly in front of Brew Magic. She ignored the sensation that the crystal in her pocket appeared to warm beneath her fingers, before she jerked her hands from the warmth of the fleece compartments to hastily attempt to right her damp, wind-tossed hair.
“Beatrice’s stone is not magic, and her prediction is nothing more than nonsense,” she told herself forcefully as she brushed the snow from her head and tried to make herself presentable to go chat with Liam. “Things like that don’t happen to women like me. I make my own luck and my own future.”
Considering her past, Randi was happy with her life, even though she was still grieving for Joan. She had a good education, a good job, and friends who meant everything to her. If she was lonely sometimes now that her foster mother was gone, she’d get through it. Her earlier childhood had taught her that life was tough, and wishes didn’t often become reality. Dennis and Joan coming into her life had been her miracle, if there was any such thing. She didn’t need any more than what they’d given her: a home for a homeless girl with no hope for the future.
Randi tried not to remember that Beatrice had predicted that Dennis and Joan would still have a child, even after all hope of Joan getting pregnant was long gone. Before her foster parents had left on vacation to California, Beatrice had reminded them of her prediction, saying her spirit guides had told her that they’d find their daughter while they were on their Southern California sightseeing tour.
Joan had been a firm believer in Beatrice’s gift of premonitions. Being a realist, Randi had always been on the fence.
“Beatrice runs about fifty-fifty on her predictions,” Randi whispered to herself. “She was right about Jared and Mara, so she’s due to be wrong about mine.”
Chastising herself for standing in the brutal weather contemplating a silly rock, Randi hurried into Brew Magic, determined not to regret the fact that she’d had to cut her conversation short with her pen pal because of her prior engagement.
She tried not to think about what S. was doing right at the moment as she searched the crowded coffee shop for Liam.
CHAPTER 3
Evan waited impatiently for his turn at the coffee shop in Amesport, having stood in line for almost ten minutes before arriving at the front of the queue. He wasn’t used to standing in line, and his turn was usually immediate. He was wasting time, and that annoyed him. He didn’t squander time that he could be using for work, and he didn’t spend any evenings so distracted that he stopped the dictation he’d been doing on an important financial report to find a diversion.
He’d ended up driving himself to Brew Magic for a nonfat mocha coffee with no whipped cream, a beverage he’d come to tolerate after Jared kept dragging him into the coffee shop to get his fix. If Jared was here, he wouldn’t be sparing the whipped cream or the fat. Evan’s younger brother liked his coffee with every available evil known to man, usually accompanied by several of the calorie-, sugar-, and fat-laden pastries that Evan could now see gracing the shelves of the racks behind the glass.
“Can I help you, sir?” A friendly teenager stepped up to assist him as Evan became the next person to place his order.
He quickly told the smiling girl what he wanted, feeling uncomfortable in the cramped, busy space. People were vying for tables to sit and sip coffee, probably to get out of the frigid temperatures outside. People milled around him as he waited for his coffee to be blended.
What am I doing here?
Unfortunately, Evan knew exactly why he was there. After finding out that even his pen pal had a date, he’d been restless. For some unknown reason, he’d been annoyed that she was actually going out on a date. He hadn’t been teasing when he’d told her he was jealous. He was envious of the man she was out with tonight. Somehow, he’d become addicted to her words on the screen, and he wanted to know what she was doing. Was she having a good time? Was the guy she was seeing a decent sort of man?
Christ! This is ridiculous. I don’t even know her, and I’m worrying about her.
The problem was, she’d become a friend to him, and Evan Sinclair didn’t have very many friends. He had people who catered to him, told him what he wanted to hear. But those people didn’t like him; they liked his money and power. He had acquaintances with the same status he had, but all of them were too busy to actually strike up a real friendship. They were connected by business, and business was a priority for all of them.
I like her. And she likes me as a person. She has no idea who I really am.
Just the fact that his mystery writer liked him as a person without knowing his identity was a novelty, and it made him covet her attention. Okay. Yes. He was greedy and selfish, but it was the first time he’d wanted something just for himself.
I should have told her that I wanted to meet her.
He’d had the chance when he’d admitted he was in Maine, but then he’d have to tell her that he was in the same town she lived in, thus having to reveal his identity. If he didn’t, she’d think he was some kind of crazy stalker. Why would an employee of the Sinclair Fund be in Amesport? It would be way too much of a coincidence that he just happened to have family in this town. She might be alarmed, afraid of him.
Grimacing at the thought of his email friend being fearful of him, he picked up his coffee at the pickup window and carefully made his way through the crowd and out of the shop. He was going to get into his black BMW, which he’d bought to keep at his Amesport house, and he was going to get back to work. He could have called Stokes to drive him into town, but the elderly man had already gotten himself settled into Evan’s guesthouse. He didn’t want to disturb his driver after he’d probably already gone to bed. Stokes might seem invincible and unflappable, but he wasn’t a young man anymore. Evan had found the keys to the vehicle he’d never used before and had driven himself.
Every Sinclair home on the Peninsula had a guest home, but some were bigger than others. Evan’s was relatively small. Maybe Jared had rightly guessed that Evan would never have friends visiting here. That was a depressing thought.
“Dammit!” The curse was followed by a collision with Evan’s back that nearly took him to the ground on the slick sidewalk. He quickly regained his footing, and then swung around to see a guilty-looking Randi Tyler right in front of him.
Evan’s cock hardened instantly, and his entire body tensed, a reaction he had anytime he saw Randi—an automatic, carnal response that completely annoyed him at the moment.