Fool's Gold Collection Part 1: Chasing Perfect / Almost Perfect / Sister of the Bride / Finding Perfect
damn day. I miss being who I was. Not the fame, but the competition. Winning. The training. I ride here, but it’s not the same. I miss my teammates, the anticipation of the race.”
She suspected he missed the fame, as well. Who wouldn’t?
“You’ve tried riding with other people?” she asked.
He stiffened. “More than once.” He glanced at his watch in obvious dismissal. “We should see the upstairs.”
Without thinking, she crossed to him, then lightly touched his arm. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up. The past, I mean. It’s not my business.”
One corner of his mouth twisted into a smile. “I’m not delicate, Charity. You can say what you want.”
She seemed unable to look away from his mouth. The shape of his upper lip, the unexpected fullness of the bottom one. She remembered the feel of his kiss, how she’d wanted to surrender. He was a man with way too much power.
“I’m seeing someone.”
The words fell out of her without warning.
Josh looked more amused than put off. “Robert?”
“Uh-huh. We’ve been out to dinner.”
“I remember hearing something about that. He’s a good guy.”
Now she felt stupid. What had she expected? That Josh would get jealous and tell her to stop seeing Robert? That he would make a move on her?
“Yes, he is,” she said primly. “A very nice man.”
“I hope the two of you will be very happy together. The upstairs is that way.”
She moved toward the stairs, when in truth she felt like both crying and stomping her foot. She did neither. Instead she followed him to the second floor and tried to tell herself it was for the best. Wanting Josh was a one-way ticket to disasterville. A place where she’d already spent way too much time.
CHAPTER EIGHT
CHARITY WAS LOOKING forward to her meeting with Ethan Hendrix. He was a tall, good-looking guy. He and Josh used to be best friends and ride together. Then Ethan had gotten hurt ten or twelve years ago. The details on the whole thing were vague at best and she hadn’t been able to figure out a way to ask without appearing too interested in either man.
Ethan owned a construction company in town and a wind turbine manufacturing facility about ten miles out. As they were meeting at the latter location, it gave her a chance to actually drive her car for once. At least she wasn’t spending a lot on gas these days. Or wasting time sitting in traffic.
She followed the directions Ethan had given her, turning off at the big driveway leading to Hendrix Turbine. The site was massive, with large warehouse-like buildings and huge towers being loaded onto long trucks.
She followed arrows pointing to the office, then parked and walked inside. A small foyer led into a reception area. Beyond that were offices, desks and computers, with lots of pictures of wind turbines.
She’d done some research in anticipation of the meeting and knew that Hendrix Turbine was a fast-growing company. Wind power was popular, as were windmills. After the initial start-up costs, ongoing expenses were minimal. While wind turbine “farms” hadn’t become the norm, wind power was a great potential source of green power, especially in rural communities.
An attractive woman in her twenties looked up. She was wearing jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt, and had short blond hair.
“Hi,” she said with a smile. “You must be Charity Jones. You’re Ethan’s eleven o’clock. He’ll be back any second. There was a delivery issue.” She wrinkled her nose as she walked toward Charity. “There’s always a delivery issue.”
When Charity shook hands with her, the woman continued, “I’m Nevada Hendrix, Ethan’s sister. I’m one of the engineers here.”
“Nice to meet you. A female engineer. The mayor will be so disappointed.”
Nevada laughed. “When I graduated from college Marsha told me to bring as many of my male classmates as I could to town. So far none of them have followed me, but I keep asking.”
“I’m sure we all appreciate the effort.”
A door slammed in the back. “That’s Ethan.” Nevada lowered her voice. “He’s single, by the way. One of the few in town, if you’re interested.”
“Ah, thank you,” she said, not sure of the correct and polite response. Fool’s Gold might not be swimming in men, but Charity had had more single guys tossed her way in the past month than in the past three years. Okay—only three, but still.
Ethan strode around the corner. “Am I late?” he asked.
“Right on time,” Charity told him.
Ethan was tall, with dark hair and eyes, and very nice looking. Not up there with Josh, but few mortals were.
Nevada introduced them, then went back to her computer. When she was behind Ethan, she gave Charity a thumb’s up.
“You have your sister working for you,” she said. “So this is a family business?”
“Three out of six,” he told her, motioning for her to lead the way out of the office. “My brother handles the sales end of things. I oversee manufacturing. Nevada is our resident engineer. I tell her she’s not all that, just because she’s in on the technical end of things, but she doesn’t believe me.”
“There are six of you?” she asked, thinking it would have been great to have a brother or sister. And a whole lot less lonely when she’d been growing up.
“Sometimes it felt like twenty, but it was good. We’re a close family.”
“Everyone still in Fool’s Gold?”
“One of my brothers moved away, but the girls are here.” He pointed to one of the big warehouses. “That’s where we store the components. They’re not here long. We have a whole lot more demand than we can fill. Wind turbines are popular.”
“That’s what I hear,” Charity told him. “As I said in my call, I’m the new city planner. I’m coming around and meeting all the business owners in the area.” She was also interested in his relationship with Josh, but doubted she would figure out a way to bring that up.
“What do you know about wind turbines?”
She thought for a second. “They’re really tall?”
He grinned. “Good start. Come on. I’ll take you to the sales office and give you a quick course in what we do here.”
The sales office was another building. Inside there was a model of a wind farm, with working wind turbines, pictures of different kinds of wind turbines, cutaways of the machinery and several blank TV screens.
“I won’t show you the entire DVD collection. Not until you have a few million you’d like to invest.”
“Not this week. I’m thinking of buying a house.”
“Maybe when the budget’s not so tight?”
She laughed. “You’ll be first on my list.”
He pointed to the models of turbines. “This is what we build. They come in various sizes, the largest of which produces six megawatts of power. Assume it’s going at full speed twenty-four-seven, we’re talking about enough electricity generated to power fifteen hundred households a year.”
“You’re kidding? From one of those? We all should have one in our yard.”
“Don’t get too excited, that’s under extremely optimal conditions. Reality is a little less easy to calculate. The wind doesn’t always blow, and the turbines are fairly loud.”
He