actually. They’d still be running the place if Gramps hadn’t hurt his back changing one of the light fixtures.” Erik had told him he’d change the tube himself. Just as he’d helped with other repairs they’d needed over the years. But the Irish in John Sullivan tended to make him a tad impatient at times. “He can be a little stubborn.”
“Did he fall?”
“He just twisted wrong,” he told her, conscious of the quick concern in her eyes, “but it took a couple of months for him to be able to lift anything. Grandma picked up as much slack as she could, but those two months made them decide it was time to tackle the other half of their bucket list while they could both still get around.”
Her uncertainty about her surroundings had yet to ease. Despite her faint smile, that hesitation marked her every step as she moved farther in, checking out the plank-board floor, the single checkout counter, the old, yellowing acoustic tiles on the ceiling. Watching her, he couldn’t help but wonder how she would do on a ladder, changing four-foot-long fluorescent tubes in a fixture fourteen feet off the floor. Or how she’d wrestle the heavy wood ladder up from the basement in the first place.
Since Cornelia had specifically asked if the business was one a woman could handle on her own, he’d also thought his prospective buyer would be a little sturdier.
Rather than indulge the temptation to reassess what he could of her frame, hidden as it was by her coat, anyway, he focused on just selling the place.
“The original building was single story,” he told her, since the structure itself appeared to have her attention. “When they decided to add sporting goods, they incorporated the living area into the store, built on in back and added the upstairs.
“The business is seasonal,” he continued when no questions were forthcoming. “Since summer and fall recreation provided most of their profit, they always opened in April and closed the first of October. That gave them the winter for vacations and time to work on their projects.”
It was a good, solid business. One that had allowed his grandparents to support their family—his dad, his aunts. He told her that, too, because he figured that would be important to a woman who apparently needed to support a child on her own. What he didn’t mention was that after the first sale fell through, the only other offers made had been too ridiculously low for his grandparents to even consider.
Because there were no other reasonable offers in sight, he wasn’t about to let them pass up Cornelia’s offer to buy it—if this particular woman was interested in owning it. He hadn’t even balked at the terms of the sale that required his agreement to help get the business back up and running.
Selling the place would rid him of the obligation to keep it up. Even more important than ending the time drain of weekly trips from Seattle to make sure nothing was leaking, broken or keeping the place from showing well was that his grandparents had been the last of his relatives in this part of the sound. Once the place was sold, he had no reason to ever come back.
Considering all the plans he’d once had for his own life there, nearly all of which had failed rather spectacularly, that suited him just fine.
His potential project had yet to ask a single question. He, however, had a few of his own.
“Have you owned a business before?”
He thought the query perfectly reasonable.
She simply seemed to find it odd.
“Never,” she replied, sounding as if she’d never considered running one, either. Still holding her little boy’s hand, she set her sights on the open door behind the L-shaped checkout counter. “Is that the way to the living area?”
He told her it was, that it led into a foyer.
Wanting a whole lot more information than she’d just given, he followed her with the child looking back at him over the shoulder of his puffy blue jacket.
The instant he met the child’s hazel eyes, the boy ducked his head and turned away.
With a mental shrug, Erik focused on the mom. She looked very much like the spa-and-Pilates type married to some of his high-end clients. Yet the car she drove was a total contrast—economical, practical. “Are you into outdoor sports?”
“We have bicycles,” came her distracted reply.
“Mountain or street?”
“Street.”
“For racing or touring?”
“Just for regular riding.”
“Do you know anything about mountain bikes?”
“Is there a difference?”
That she’d had to ask had him moving on. “What about hiking or camping?”
“Not so much.”
“Water sports? Do you windsurf, paddleboard, water ski?”
“Not really.”
He took that as a no. “Do you know anything about sporting goods?”
Clearly on a mission of her own, she answered his last query with a puzzled glance and moved past the stairs, one set leading up, the other down, and into a spacious living room.
The empty downstairs space was interrupted only by the kitchen’s long island near one end and anchored by a ceiling-high stone fireplace at the other. The bare walls all bore a pristine coat of latte-colored paint.
It was toward the kitchen that she motioned. “Mind if I look back there?”
Not at all pleased with her responses, he told her he didn’t and watched her head for the glass-faced cupboards.
Her sandy-haired son darted straight to one of the large picture windows lining the opposite wall.
“Have you ever worked retail?” he asked her.
“Never,” she replied once more.
“Wow, Mom. Look! It has a park!”
Rory’s glance cut to where her little boy pressed his nose to the wide window near the fireplace. A large meadow stretched to a forest of pines. Between the dawning potential in the place and the feel of the tall, decidedly distracting male frowning at her back, she hadn’t noticed the expansive and beautiful view until just then.
What she noticed now was her son’s grin.
That guileless smile added another plus to her escalating but decidedly cautious interest in what surrounded her. “It sure does, sweetie. But stay with me. Okay?”
Yanking his unzipped jacket back over the shoulder of his Spider-Man sweatshirt, he hurried to her, his little voice dropping as he glanced to the man who remained on the other side of the white oak island.
“Does he live here?” he asked, pointing behind him.
She curled her hand over his fingers. “It’s not polite to point,” she murmured. “And no. He lives somewhere else.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know, honey.”
“But it’s a long way, huh?”
“Why do you say that?”
“’Cause he said he came in a plane. It floated here.”
From the corner of her eye, she noticed the big man’s brow lower in confusion.
“He came by floatplane,” she clarified, easing confusion for them both. “It’s a plane that can land on water. It flies just like any other.”
“Oh.” Tyler screwed up his nose, little wheels spinning. “Why didn’t he make him a boat?”
He remembered what Erik had said he did for a living.
There wasn’t much Tyler heard that he