But she’d met her match in the stubborn department when it came to Harlan Jones. He wasn’t starting a furniture business, not today, not tomorrow, not ever.
“I’m rightly sorry to say this, again,” he said, wondering why she seemed so damned determined to rid him of a bunch of chairs that he’d built solely as a hobby, “but they are not for sale. Particularly to you.”
A gust of protest left her. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“I’m not in the practice of doing business with people who don’t like my dogs. And who clearly don’t like me.” Mortise glanced up at him, and wagged. The dog, apparently, had forgotten Sophie Watson’s twenty-minute rant last week when she’d discovered her transplanted rosebushes. Harlan hadn’t.
She sputtered again, clearly ready to argue back. Then she paused, and that crafty smile returned. “Then are they available for rent?”
“Rent?”
“You have no more room on your porch, Mr. Jones. And if you intend to make more furniture—or have any more clandestine furniture reproduction—here, then you are going to need more space. And I happen to need something exactly like this for in front of my shop. So, I would like to rent some of your chairs and give you the space you need.”
“No.”
She pursed her lips. “Give me one good reason why.”
“Because.”
“That’s not a reason at all.” She shook her head. “You can’t be serious. I’ve just made you a business offer here. What kind of businessman doesn’t at least negotiate?”
“I’m not in the furniture business.”
She quirked a brow at that.
“And I’m not negotiating.” Or explaining himself.
Mortise stood, his tail wagging, all friendly-like. Harlan snapped his fingers to call the dog back, but it was too late—Mortise had already crossed to Sophie and pressed his body against her leg, his tail slapping against her legs, sending loose fur flying around them like dandelion fluff. Then Harlan realized why Mortise was being so friendly—
The small white bag still dangled from Sophie Watson’s fingers. A temptation that had the dog sniffing the air and pressing closer.
“Are they for rent?” she asked again, trying to sidestep the dog, but Mortise moved with her.
“Mortise—” Harlan warned, but it was too late. Before the warning left his throat, the retriever had reached up, snatched the bag out of Sophie’s hands and dashed off the porch.
“What the heck?” Sophie wheeled around. “Your dog just stole my lunch!”
Harlan glanced at Mortise lying under the shade of a palm tree and happily tearing into the paper wrapper. “That he did.”
“Aren’t you going to stop him?”
Mortise raised his snout and chugged back a bite of the sandwich he’d unwrapped. At the same time, Tenon dropped to the ground beside him and began chomping on an unwrapped cookie. “I, uh, think it’s a little late for that.”
Sophie Watson sputtered. She cursed. She sputtered some more. “Well, then you leave me no choice,” she said. She stripped off her sweater and tossed it to him. He caught it and stared at her. By removing the pale yellow sweater, she’d reduced herself to a clingy tank top in a matching fabric. He blinked and for a minute, lost his focus.
It took him a full five seconds to realize she had stacked up two of his chairs and hoisted them over her head, the muscles in her biceps flexing with the effort. “I’m taking these chairs, as repayment for my missing lunch,” she said.
“Hey, you can’t—”
“I can and I will. Just watch me.” Then she swung around, his chairs on her head, and strode off down his stairs.
Harlan glanced at his dogs. “Why didn’t you stop her?”
Mortise and Tenon looked up at him, then, Harlan swore, the dogs shrugged before going back to devouring Sophie Watson’s lunch between their paws.
Well, hell. Harlan was definitely going to have to do something about that woman before she drove him completely over the edge.
CHAPTER TWO
“NICE chairs.” Lulu Saunders shot Sophie a grin, then plopped into one of the two Adirondack-style oak chairs that now sat on either side of a small brightly tiled table in front of the Cuppa Java Café. The handmade chairs were the perfect complement to the homey atmosphere of the coffee shop. She’d been looking for outdoor furniture for months, and when she spied these on Harlan Jones’s porch one afternoon, she’d stopped looking at any other types. They were perfect, and even better, made by a local resident.
In a small town like Edgerton Shores, the more local the better. Sophie bought her coffee beans from a local vendor who roasted them on site, made her muffins with local ingredients, and catered to her clientele with drinks named after local celebrities. She’d hired Lulu, who came from a family that had lived in this town for as long as there’d been an Edgerton Shores, and who, with her outgoing, boisterous personality, was nearly a local legend. Sophie herself had lived here all her life, and wanted the coffee shop to feel as if it had been here forever, too.
Which was why she’d tangled with that annoying Harlan Jones this morning. That man got on her nerves in the worst way. On top of that, he had the most incorrigible dogs in the world. And it seemed he was determined to make her a laughingstock in her own town. But he made some seriously nice chairs.
Sophie dropped into the opposite chair and turned her face up to greet the sun. She had a rare temporary break, with no customers in the shop. She spent most of her days here, dispensing lattes and fresh-baked biscotti, and though she loved her job, she also loved the occasional opportunity to enjoy the fruits of her labor. “Thanks,” she told Lulu. “I stole them from Harlan Jones’s front porch.”
“Stole them?”
“Yep. That man is too stubborn for his own good.”
“And sexy,” Lulu said with a sigh. She pushed her dark brown hair off her brow, and then took a sip of one of the two iced coffees she’d brought out earlier. “Not to mention that Southern drawl. He’s yummy all around.”
Sophie laughed. “Yummy? I wouldn’t describe Harlan Jones with that word or anything close to it.”
“Then you are blind, girlfriend, because that man is the sexiest thing to come to this town in a long time.” Lulu pressed a hand to her chest. “And since I’m the one who rented that house to him, you should be thanking me for improving the neighborhood view.”
Mildred Meyers came striding down the sidewalk, saving Sophie from replying about Harlan Jones’s sexiness quotient. Probably a good thing, because Sophie had no time for a man in her life. She’d learned her lesson about trying to mix a relationship and a business that consumed most of her hours, a lesson that had ended her engagement and left her wondering how anyone managed to combine entrepreneurship with a personal life. On top of that, the messy and very public ending of her relationship with Jim had been the talk of the town for months.
Reminder to self: Never run out on your own wedding on a slow news day. The reporters had bugged her for weeks, disrupting her life and her business. Thank goodness the furor had finally died down. Sophie was inordinately relieved when Gertrude Maxwell took up a Winchester shotgun and chased her cheating husband out of the house, thus becoming the new topic du jour.
Either way, Sophie loved her cozy little coffee shop. It wasn’t just her business, it was her refuge, even if building the business into something strong and viable was a continual, energy draining effort. She worked hard, but at a job she loved. When she reached the end of her week and realized she hadn’t so much as flirted with a man, never mind go out on a date, she told