SARAH’S INTERNAL ALARM BELLS went off when she found a message on her home voice mail on Saturday afternoon, but it turned out to be Tyler Prentiss asking if they could talk about renovation ideas, rather than the anonymous caller.
Sarah rarely left the shop early, but she’d decided to let the shift supervisor take over for the afternoon. It would have been pleasant to have the time for herself, but she had to admit Tyler might come up with ideas that another architect wouldn’t consider.
He answered on the first ring. “Hello.”
“It’s Sarah. Your message said you wanted to get together. Where would you like to meet?”
“I’m sure the bakery is too busy, and there are people all over here at Poppy Gold. I’d rather not talk at the suite, so how about your place?”
She let out a breath, wishing she hadn’t given him the choice. On the other hand, summer was one of the most hectic periods in Glimmer Creek; visitors were everywhere, which meant her house was best.
“Uh, okay,” she agreed, petting Theo, who was ecstatic to have her home earlier than usual. She gave Tyler concise directions to the house.
“Sounds easy enough. I’ve got GPS on my phone if I get stuck. Is half an hour all right?”
“Sure.”
Sarah got up, quickly dusting the surfaces in her living room. She spent so little time at home that there was rarely much housekeeping required except when Theo got bored and made a mess.
The doorbell rang exactly a half hour later. It wasn’t a surprise; by all accounts, Tyler was a type A personality.
He has an amazing dream for his career, her conscience reminded her. When Tyler had talked about creating something that made eyes widen and hearts beat faster, she’d actually held her breath. People didn’t talk like that much any longer. It was as if idealism belonged to preachers and poets.
With that thought she opened the door, only to suppress a gasp. While she’d seen Tyler’s bruised face a few days earlier, it was still a shock.
“You...uh...”
“I know, I look like I’ve been brawling.”
“I don’t know about brawling, but you look like one of my cousins when he got whacked by a rake.”
“Who was on the other end of the rake?”
Sarah chuckled. “His foot. He stepped on the tines to swing it upward, thinking he wouldn’t have to lean over to pick it up. Russ could be lazy when he was a kid. Anyway, it popped up faster than he expected and nailed his face. Almost identical injuries, come to think of it.”
“You must have a family story for every situation.”
“Pretty much. My cousin Tessa is an only child like me, but most of my aunts and uncles have three or more kids. I saw it all growing up, good and bad. Do you want ice tea or coffee?” she asked.
“Coffee, if it isn’t too much trouble.”
“Not a problem.”
Tyler followed her to the back of the house and sat at the table in the breakfast nook. “Where does Zach fit? You said he was your uncle Milt’s grandson, but surely that wouldn’t make him a cousin.”
“Uncle Milt is actually Great-Uncle Milt. Zach is Grandpa George’s great-nephew, which means Zach is technically a second cousin.” She put water in a kettle and flipped on the heat.
“I would have expected you to have a bigger kitchen,” Tyler commented, looking around. “But maybe you avoid cooking outside of the shop.”
“Absolutely not,” Sarah retorted. “This is where I prefer developing new recipes and cooking for family gatherings.”
* * *
TYLER NODDED. SARAH continually astonished him. Even her kitchen astonished him. It was fairly small and didn’t seem to be overloaded. He would have expected her to have every culinary invention on the planet.
The kettle whistled, and she made the coffee in a French press, pouring it into a mug printed with “World’s Best Kid.” It was the sort of down-home gift his family didn’t exchange. What would it have been like, growing up with parents who displayed their kids’ A-plus school papers on the refrigerator? Or a father who used the clay pen holder his son had made in kindergarten instead of throwing it out?
Tyler pushed the thought away.
He didn’t believe his father had intended to be hurtful; he just hadn’t understood children. Nathan had been crushed to find the pen holder in the trash, so Tyler had said he’d like to have it. He still had the hideous thing; it was on his home office desk in Alexandria.
“Okay,” Sarah said, sitting down with a glass of ice tea for herself. “What did you want to discuss?”
Tyler pushed less pleasant thoughts away and unrolled the blueprints he’d drawn, trying to ignore how desirable she looked. Her blond hair was like spun gold slipping from its thick braid, her eyes were a luminous green, and she was dressed in a snug T-shirt and faded shorts that showcased her figure.
It didn’t make sense.
His preference was sophisticated brunettes, not slender blondes who ran around their house in bare feet. Of course, he had to admit that Sarah had very attractive feet. They were delicate, nicely proportioned, with slender toes and high arches. He’d never had a thing about a woman’s feet or legs—feet were feet—but she had a particularly nice pair.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a locked door here. Where does it go?” he asked, pointing to a spot on the diagram.
“That’s a staircase to the second floor, which covers around half of the building. It’s an apartment that hasn’t been updated since the 1940s, though the plumbing is usable.”
“I’d like to evaluate the floor plan. Moving the office upstairs would give you more space.”
Sarah scrunched her nose. “You can check, but the steps are horribly steep. Definitely not to code. I lived up there for a few months, and it’s hairy navigating the stairs.”
“I still want to take a look sometime, if that’s all right,” he said. “Oh, I just remembered—this was on your front step.” Tyler handed her the envelope he’d found tucked beneath the edge of her welcome mat.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, noticing a subtle shift in Sarah’s expression as she checked the contents.
“It’s just a coupon. One of my relatives probably thought I could use it. I’ll have to remind everyone I come in through the garage.” All at once Sarah frowned. “Is that the same bandage I put on you a few days ago?”
“Yeah, it’s stayed on well. Even in the shower.”
“You’ll be lucky if it isn’t infected” she said in an exasperated voice. “I’ll get a fresh one.”
With some women, Tyler might have wondered if she had ulterior motives, but not with Sarah. Anyhow, romance seemed to be the last thing on her mind. It wasn’t that he’d object to a night together, but she didn’t seem the type for recreational sex.
Sarah reappeared with a handful of supplies and removed the bandage she’d applied earlier in the week.
“This still looks nasty,” she commented. “Getting it stitched might have meant a smaller scar.”
“Scars don’t worry me. Do you think it’s infected?”
“I’m not a doctor, but I don’t see anything suspicious and the swelling has gone down.”
She carefully cleaned around the wound, giving Tyler a close-up view of her sweetly curved breasts and slim waist. His jeans grew tight and he restrained a groan.
For a woman who wasn’t trying to entice him, she was doing an excellent job of it. As for her perfume? It was vanilla, cinnamon and chocolate, spiced with a dash of fresh-baked bread. He’d never imagined something so homey could be so alluring—maybe because he didn’t associate fragrances like that with his childhood.
Almost as if Nathan was in the room with them, Tyler could his voice, you’re analyzing. Stop or your head will explode.
“Did I hurt you?” Sarah asked out of the blue, startling him. “You’re scowling.”
“Just thinking. My brother claims I analyze too much. He could be right. An ex-girlfriend called me an ice man and said she felt sorry for any woman I got involved with.”
“That’s harsh.”
“But accurate. I’m better with math and drafting tools than emotions. I didn’t mean to shut Wendy out, it just happened. That’s who I am.”
Sarah gave him a long appraisal. “I don’t know, you were pretty open with your emotions that day at the bakery.”
Tyler doubted he’d ever live that afternoon down. “It wasn’t my finest moment,” he admitted.
Sarah shrugged and carefully applied a new bandage. “You’re forgiven. By the way, did you get a concussion along with this?” She gestured to the scar at his hairline.
“Yeah. They weren’t happy when I checked out of the hospital and flew back to Italy. Well, after I met with a lawyer and hired him.”
Sarah began laughing. “Omigod, it must be genetic.”
“What?” Tyler demanded.
“Didn’t you hear yourself? You checked out against medical advice...just like Nathan.”
Damn. She was right.
A reluctant smile curved his lips. “You aren’t going to tell my mother, are you?”
Sarah sat down and shook her head. “First I’d have to tell her about Illinois, so the answer is no, however tempting it might be.”
“I appreciate that.” Tyler tapped the blueprints he’d brought. “Back to your building... I’m guessing it isn’t on the historic register.”
“Actually, it’s funny you mentioned that. Several weeks ago someone nominated Sarah’s Sweet Treats for the state register. The application was inaccurate from beginning to end and recounted all sorts of lurid, bloodcurdling events that never happened anywhere in Glimmer Creek. The wildest story was that Joaquin Murrieta was killed by law officials there, rather than what really happened.”
“Isn’t Joaquin Murrieta just a legend?”
“I think he was real,” Sarah asserted, “but some believe he’s an amalgamation of several bandits, or that he didn’t exist at all.”
Tyler lifted an eyebrow. “You’re intrigued by outlaws, huh? Is it the ‘bad boy’ appeal?”
“Wrong on both counts. While Murrieta is romanticized, in reality he was a vicious killer. Anyway, the application was incomplete. The state sent it back to me, because whoever filled it out put my address and name down as the applicant.”
“Don’t you think that’s strange? Why would anyone both falsify the information and make sure you saw it?”
“At the time I...” Sarah’s voice trailed off. “Yeah, it’s strange. A lot of things are strange lately.”
The back of Tyler’s neck prickled. “Like what?”
“Nothing. That is, I shouldn’t have said anything.”
“It isn’t nothing if it makes you look this scared.”
* * *
SARAH DIDN’T WANT to look scared, she wanted to look strong and confident. But she’d forgotten about the historic register application. It hadn’t seemed important at the time, and she’d dismissed it as a prank.
Now it was something else to question.
“What’s going on?” Tyler prodded.
“You have your own problems, you don’t need to hear mine.”
“Wrong, it would be a relief to hear someone else’s problems,” he retorted. “This has been a lousy year for my family.”
Sarah wavered. Tyler was a disinterested third party, unlike her father and half of Glimmer Creek. He might look at the situation with a fresh perspective.
“It’ll sound ridiculous and a total overreaction, which is exactly what I’m always warning my father about.”
Tyler made a sound of disgust. “Hey, I just confessed to checking out of the hospital early, which makes me an unparalleled hypocrite for jumping on my brother for the same thing. Talk.”
Sheesh.
“Well, you know about the complaint called into the city.”
“And the hit-and-run motorcyclist. What else has happened?”
Sarah didn’t try to argue the motorcycle incident. “A week ago, I started getting flyers, catalogs and credit offers from stores all over the San Joaquin valley and San Francisco. Piles of them, with both my name and address spelled several different ways, so they couldn’t have come from a single list. Basically it means somebody has been putting my name and address on sign-up lists. And they must have done it over a short period of time for everything to start coming at once.”
“Is that why you tensed over the coupon I found on your step?”
She nodded. “I don’t know anybody who’d leave me a coupon for a toy store in Sacramento. I haven’t been north of Stockton in two years.”
A hint of humor crept into Tyler’s eyes. “Not even to shop at an adults-only toy store?”
Sarah nearly choked on her ice tea. A suggestive comment was the last thing she’d expected to hear from him. Maybe that starchy, uptight facade was hiding a wild side. Still...she grabbed his coffee cup and sniffed the contents.
His uninjured eyebrow shot up. “What’s that about?”
“Just making sure you didn’t add something stronger when I wasn’t looking. It’s hard to imagine the words adults-only toy store coming out of your mouth while sober. You have a persona that’s very prim and proper.”
The corners of his eyes crinkled. “I take exception to that description. Besides, you’re deflecting. What else is going on?”
“I was getting strange calls on my home phone. Nothing obscene, just silence. They weren’t a problem until they started coming in the middle of the night. The calls stopped for a few days, then on Thursday I got two, this time on my cell phone. One was around 10:00 p.m., and the other after midnight.”
“It’s hardly funny, so why are you grinning all of sudden?” Tyler asked.
“I...um, warned them not to try again when the first call woke me up. When the second one came, I blew a police whistle into the speaker. It may not stop them from harassing me, but it felt good to do something.”
Tyler chuckled. “I’m sure.”
Sarah nonchalantly waved her hand. “The calls should be over now, anyhow. I contacted the phone company yesterday, and they’re going to stop calls when the number is unavailable, so I don’t need to worry.”
* * *
TYLER DOUBTED SARAH was as calm as she sounded, but he admired the effort.
He’d seen a fellow student being stalked when he was studying architecture. It turned out the perpetrator had conceived a bizarre grudge against the student, believing she’d cut him off in traffic one day. It had started with a few odd events and slowly escalated. He wondered if that was happening here, too.
“Have you talked to the police?” he asked. “They can help catch a stalker.”
Sarah went white. “No. And I didn’t say I was being stalked, just that some strange things have happened.”
Denial, he decided, though admittedly it would be difficult for law enforcement to connect the events. And they might be a coincidence. As if rebutting the possibility, a motorcycle suddenly gunned down Sarah’s street, so loud it made the doors rattle.
In silent accord they rushed outside, but the bike was gone.
“I haven’t seen many motorcycles in Glimmer Creek,” Tyler said, turning to Sarah. She was still pale.
“They...um, aren’t popular here, though a cousin’s boyfriend has one that he rebuilt when he lived in Sacramento. He doesn’t use it very much.”
“Any chance his bike is the one that hit you?”
Her strained expression eased. “None. Lance’s bike is several different colors and quite battered. He pieced the thing together out of junkyards and it’s unmistakable. I’m sure the motorcycle that veered at me was black and practically new. Do you want more coffee?” she asked with excessive cheeriness.
“I can’t. Mom and Nathan are expecting me. We’re eating at the GC Steakhouse. It’s the first time we’ve been able to convince Nathan to go to a restaurant instead of getting takeout. Maybe I could come over again later this evening.”
Sarah gave him a quizzical look. “Do you have anything else to discuss about the remodeling?”
“Er, no.” Tyler was thrown, realizing he just wanted to see Sarah and be sure she was all right. Perhaps he was more like his brother than he’d thought—when Nathan was himself, he had a penchant for taking down pirates and tilting at windmills. “That is, there’s always something to discuss with this kind of thing.”
“Mmm, I’m not convinced. You wouldn’t be concerned about me, would you?”
Heat crept up his throat. “Is there something wrong with that? Anything that affects you could also affect my mother.”
“I know, but I’m fine. I’ve got an evening of cooking and baking planned and don’t need a babysitter.”
Tyler gave her a slight nod. His white knight instincts might be rusty, but he was concerned...and not just about his mom.
* * *
SARAH WENT INSIDE and briefly sagged against the door after closing it, feeling tired to her bones. Scared, too, though she kept telling herself that a bunch of weird little events didn’t necessarily mean anything. Of course, if the attempted theft by the hit-and-run motorcyclist was connected, that changed everything.
She looked around for Theo, hoping to cuddle him, but he’d gone into hiding the minute Tyler had arrived. He wasn’t fond of strangers.
Distractedly, Sarah returned to the kitchen and began taking out various pans and bowls. She’d volunteered to bring desserts to a baked potato feed after church and also needed to cook for a meal with her grandparents. They’d been hosting Sunday dinner with the Fullerton clan for over sixty years, but last year Grandma Margaret had finally let the meal become potluck, instead of making it all herself.
Before long, Sarah had apricot cobbler, corn bread and pans of lasagna baking in her two ovens, along with chili in the Crock-Pot. The peace and quiet was wonderful, and she hummed as she prepared a large pasta salad. Cooking was the best stress relief for her, and after dealing with Tyler, she needed a lot of stress relief.
Ice man?
She considered the description again. While he cared about his mom and brother and was struggling with what had happened in Illinois, he did come across as cool and unemotional most of the time. But how about the adage, “still waters run deep”?
Maybe.
Mostly Sarah knew facts about Tyler, though she’d gotten a brief glimpse of his professional vision. She even sensed depths in him, but it felt as if she was peeking around corners and looking through a rain-streaked window, trying to catch a glimpse of something he wanted to keep hidden.
All the same, calling him an ice man had been cruel, even though she understood how frustrating it would be to fall for a guy who couldn’t share himself. Heck, Tyler hadn’t even told his family about the events in Illinois.
Her pulse jumped when the phone rang, then she saw her father’s ID information on the screen and answered the call. “Hi, Dad.”
“Hey, sweetheart. Your grandmother asked me to tell you not to go overboard cooking. You aren’t, are you?”
Sarah glanced around the kitchen and squirmed. Maybe she could take the chili to the baked potato feed instead. “I’m fixing a few things. Not a big deal. You can take the leftovers home to eat this week. I don’t get to Sunday dinner often enough and want to contribute.”
Kurt chuckled. “That’s means you’re cooking for twenty. Okay, I’ll run interference with your grandmother. See you tomorrow.”
“Thanks. Love you, Dad.”
Sarah disconnected, feeling unaccountably sad. Her father could make her crazy, and she had to find a way to get him to back off some of the time, but it wasn’t a big deal compared to what Tyler and his family were going through.
She should remember that her issues were comparatively minor.