they hadn’t seen him before didn’t mean he wouldn’t show up. The crew had been working for only two weeks, doing basic demolition. She’d known he would be on site eventually. She’d been prepared for it. Eventually.
“It’s not like I don’t ever see him around town,” she said, reassuring herself as much as Lys. “A woman can get lost pretty easily among twenty-thousand people, but there’s always that chance.”
“Yeah, but you don’t drool over him if you catch a glimpse of him at the grocery store, do you?”
“Of course not,” Jamie said. Truth was, she did. She couldn’t remember a single time in her life when she hadn’t felt at least a faint stirring of lust for Russ. Not when he’d broken up with her, not when he’d broken her heart, not when he’d sat in the conference room with her and his soon-to-be ex looking as if he despised them both.
It was his loss, Robbie had told her the one time she’d cried on his shoulder. Russ was being an ass—and Robbie knew, being the undisputed official ass of the Calloway family.
If it was his loss, why did it hurt her?
“Stop it!” Lys admonished. “I can tell by the look in your eyes, you’re still thinking about him.”
“Actually, I was thinking about that contract I have to negotiate with Robbie in ten minutes,” she lied, forcing herself to really think about it. “He’s such a phony—makes everyone think he’s lazy and shallow and doesn’t care about anything but fun, when he’s a damn good lawyer.”
“Which doesn’t negate the fact that he really is lazy and shallow.” Lys separated the Andersen folder from the stack on Jamie’s desk and handed it to her. “He’s a classic Calloway. They’re all worthless with the exception of Sara, and she wasn’t born into the family. She only married into it and had the sense to stick around and enjoy the benefits after her scum husband died.”
Jamie slid the folder into her bag, easily mistaken for an attaché. What could she say? She loved big purses. She was prepared for anything.
Except finding out that the man she was lusting over was Russ.
“Your meeting with Robbie is at the country club at eleven,” Lys said, “and then you’re supposed to see the shrink in Augusta about Laurie Stinson. He’s expecting you at two. And since he charges by the hour, he’ll probably be quite wordy, so you should go on home when you get back. I’ll close up here.”
“Robbie switched lunch to that new little place on the river—Chantal’s. Says he’s had all the country-club food he can stomach for a while.” Jamie slipped off her sweater and folded it over her arm. The restaurant would probably be cold, but the four-block walk over wouldn’t. “And I’ll be back. I’ll want to make notes on this afternoon’s interview. But don’t you wait around. I may have dinner in Augusta first.”
Halfway to the door, she turned back. “Thanks a bunch, Lys. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”
“You’d probably still be sharing office space with Robbie and getting nothing done.” Lys went into the outer office and settled in at her desk. “Have fun, boss.”
Jamie went out the door and into the foyer. She was not, was not going to look across the street when she stepped out. She would turn left, walk the fifty feet to the corner, then turn left again. That was all.
She opened the door, stepped outside into the muggy May heat and her gaze zinged in on the construction site so fast that her vision went blurry. Lys’s hunk was still there, and so was Russ. He leaned against the lowered tailgate of the truck, legs stretched out, ankles crossed, and they were talking. If she tried, she could hear his voice. The street wasn’t that wide, the midday noises not that loud.
But she didn’t try. She put on a pair of oversized sunglasses that hid half her face, turned left, bypassed her car and reached the corner without really being aware of the journey. Once she’d turned and solid limestone blocked the site from view, she sighed, her shoulders relaxing.
She’d known it wouldn’t be easy living in the town Russ’s family had founded and still pretty much owned two hundred years later. She hadn’t expected easy. She just hadn’t known it could be this hard.
Copper Lake was a lovely town, designed with aesthetics in mind. The entire downtown was on the historic register, where codes were rigid, and even new construction in town was closely monitored. The newest neighborhoods were almost as charming as the oldest, and even the shopping mall fit into the town planners’ view for it.
She passed the square, site of war monuments, political rallies and summer-evening concerts. After crossing River Road, she took a few steps down into Calloway Construction’s recently completed riverside retail complex. It was beautiful, looked as if it had been there a hundred years, and was already at full occupancy only a month after opening. Idly she wondered how much was Russ’s vision and how much had come from his architects and designers. It was hard to think of him and charming in the same thought. Even before he’d hated her, he hadn’t been exactly charming. Blunt, forthright, not charming.
She located Chantal’s in the corner, and the hostess showed her to a covered deck with paddle fans cooling the air. Robbie was seated at a table near the river, gazing out as if he’d rather be out there fishing in his john boat than working.
She nudged his shoulder before setting her sweater and bag in the seat across from him. He wore jeans, honest-to-God pressed and creased, deck shoes and a polo shirt in bright lemon-yellow. Every other lawyer in town wore suits to work, but not him. He didn’t even wear them to court unless he was feeling generous. Clothes didn’t make a bad case good or turn a good one bad, he said. It didn’t hurt that he was a Calloway, and a good lawyer.
“Hey, babe.” He stood and kissed her cheek, then held the chair for her. “You walked over here, didn’t you? If you’d called, I would have picked you up.”
“If I’d wanted a ride, I would have driven. How are you?”
“Anticipating my vacation. Tomorrow morning, six-fifteen, I’m on a plane to Miami.”
She’d heard all about the trip. A leisurely drive halfway through the Keys, then seven days on one of the charter fishing boats owned by a law school classmate. A fishing pole, beer and sun—all a Calloway needed to be happy. “Have fun.”
“It’s not too late for you to join me.”
He’d made the offer before; she declined again. “Fishing isn’t my idea of a vacation.”
“Your loss. Anything new on—?” He shrugged.
She smiled politely at the waitress who set a glass of ice water in front of her, then made a face at Robbie. “I managed to forget it all morning, and now you bring it up.”
His scowl reminded her of his brothers, any and all of them. Gerald Calloway had had four sons, three with his wife and one with a girlfriend. Rick, Russ and Robbie, along with Mitch Lassiter, second in the lineup, all bore a very strong resemblance. Dark hair, dark skin, startlingly blue eyes, voices that sounded similar and matching scowls. Rick was the handsomest, Jamie had long ago decided, Mitch the most mysterious, Robbie the most charming and Russ the sexiest.
“You’ve got a freakin’ stalker, Jamie. You shouldn’t be forgetting it.”
His words chased away what little ease she’d recovered after seeing Russ. Stalker—it sounded so ugly that she avoided using the word to describe the mystery man who’d come into her life a few weeks earlier. Secret admirer sounded so much more harmless. Less deadly.
Less likely, logic forced her to admit. But she’d lived through a nightmare before. She preferred the state of denial at this point.
“The flowers were the last thing.” A dozen apricot roses—her favorite—waiting in a vase on her steps when she’d gotten home Monday evening.
“What the hell kind of guy