He told himself that the slow, sly smile she threw him over her shoulder had no heat in it. None whatsoever.

“I believe you,” she said. “Can you get me contact info for the Hemmertex landowners?”

He’d have to dig out his computer from storage. “Yeah, I think so. Why?”

As she turned back around, her appearance—the shoulders-back confidence, the stunning, mature beauty—sent a blast of such powerful desire through him, he actually took a step back.

“Because I want to move the games over there,” she said.

Leith hissed through his teeth and shook his head. “Gleann doesn’t do so well with change.”

She shrugged in a manner that said she was used to getting her way. “They’re going to have to, if they don’t want to lose this.”

“You sure about that?”

“Positive. Change is good. Change is the answer.”

A hundred different confrontations sprouted in his mind. He pictured Jen holding one of those fake swords DeeDee loved so much and standing in the center of Gleann fighting off angry townspeople, Mayor Sue wielding a pitchfork.

She advanced toward him predatorily. “Are you expensive?”

He coughed. “Excuse me?”

“Landscaping. Maintenance.”

He ran a palm down his scruff and eyed the land in the distance, where his carefully selected shrubs and native grasses now resembled an old trailer park off I-93. “I used to charge a pretty penny. Back when I could.”

“Give me a ballpark figure. For cleaning all that up back there.”

He lowered his chin, trapped her eyes with his. “You want to hire me?”

There it was again. That glint of something more on her face. That hint that beneath her professional facade, there was an actual woman who remembered what had happened between them, and who, quite possibly, was still affected by it.

“Maybe.” Her eyebrow twitched. “If the price is right.”

He rattled off a number. She haggled it down, of course. He’d already started low and he didn’t care. Chris could do most of the work while he was running around scouting new locations, and he could pitch in when he felt the need to get on top of a mower or wave around a Weedwacker. It was income. Then he could pay Chris, who needed it far more than Leith did.

Jen gave him a blazing smile that had him picturing her in her underwear and glasses again. That made him back away, because what she was getting out of this situation was entirely different from what he was, and he hated how uneven it felt. Again. He was never balanced around her.

He ambled back to the barn. “So we done here?”

“I wasn’t aware there was a ‘we,’” she said, “but yes.”

Of course there wasn’t a “we.” He did not look over at the center of the field.

Tapping on her computer, she went right back to work, her fingers blurry, her delicious bottom lip caught between her teeth. The sight of her drew him forward until he looked over her shoulder at the screen.

The open document was titled “Changes.” Other programs made a patchwork of the screen—spreadsheets and graphs and a website or two. She moved between them with lightning speed. Then, suddenly, she snapped the laptop shut, shoved it into her purse, and straightened. She jumped when she finally realized how close Leith had gotten. She swallowed, glanced down his body and back up to find his eyes again. Selfishly, he was more than a little happy he’d managed to disarm her. Or maybe it was he who was unarmed and defenseless, because the urge to push her against the crates and kiss her suddenly overtook him.

“Um.” She held her purse strap in a death grip. “I have to head over to Town Hall now.”

“Meeting with Mayor Sue?” He still didn’t move, even though he blocked the door.

“I refuse to call her that. That woman made my life miserable five summers running. It’s bad enough she’s my boss again.”

“Miserable? Really?” He didn’t remember that, didn’t remember Jen ever being affected by criticism or bad air. It was strange for him to hear, when he thought he’d known her so well.

Jen blew a piece of hair off her forehead. “She’s predisposed to hate anything I do. I’m always running uphill with her. I’m surprised she let me do this.”

“Let you? They’re not paying you?”

“No. I took vacation.”

Dumbfounded, Leith cocked his head and planted his hands on his hips. The girl had worked at least two jobs every summer she’d been here. She’d checked her bank balance nearly every day. All she’d ever talked about was being someone, being a success. Work, work, work. What else didn’t he know about her? What else had he gotten wrong?

“So why are you doing this?” he asked, voice soft. “Really. This doesn’t . . . seem like you.”

Her facial features tensed. “You can’t say that.”

He had to look away because the urge to want to know her was building and building, and he wasn’t sure if he should let it. “You’re absolutely right.”

She cleared her throat but said nothing.

“So.” He stepped closer, even though there was scant space left for him to erase. A little cloud of dust rose between them where he’d scuffed the dirt with his boot. She had to tilt her head back to look at him, and he tried not to remember that this was exactly how she’d looked with her back against the Stone Pub wall the night of their first kiss. “Is this who you are now? Is this what you do? Save small town festivals?”

“No.” She licked her lips, and the way she stared into his eyes had him feeling eighteen all over again. “Just this one.”

Chapter

5

“Leith MacDougall, what a surprise!” Evidently Sue McCurdy did know how to smile, and it was when the town’s celebrity was in touching distance. Today’s Syracuse T-shirt was navy blue, and the age-inappropriate hairstyle was pigtails sticking out from just behind her ears. The mayor stood in the open door of Town Hall, beaming right over Jen’s head at the big man at her back. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

Leith moved to Jen’s side, crowding her on the small front stoop, their arms touching briefly. “Just dropping off Jen,” he said.

Sue blinked at Leith, then shifted a confused glance to Jen, as though seeing her for the first time. Jen understood. Leith somehow managed to consume the atmosphere and draw eyes wherever he went. If he were a true celebrity, his pockets would be full of women’s underwear. Dimly, Jen wondered if he’d ever found the pair of hers they’d lost in the dark woods one night a long time ago.

Jen wished Leith would leave. Not because she wanted to be rid of him, but because she needed to exhale. From the second he’d turned his giant truck into the fairgrounds and the sun had hit that quiet spot in the center of the field where he’d told her he loved her, she’d been holding her breath. There was a great pain in her chest because of it.

Appropriately, the picnic blanket that night had been red plaid, not his family tartan or anything, but appropriately Scottish looking. The evening had started sad, with the two of them knowing she was leaving, and ended in catastrophe.

Only a few minutes earlier, as she’d stood outside the barn, she’d been relieved Leith couldn’t see her face, because she was sure there was no color in it. She’d wanted to clamp her hands over her ears. That stupid spot on the grass had beat like a diseased heart: loud, erratic, deadly. She’d turned back around, and the sight of him—older, bigger, longer hair—had nearly brought up ten-year-old tears from where she’d shoved them deep inside.

He was so nonchalant, so frustratingly cool. Maybe he’d buried his memories of that night the way she’d buried her tears. Nothing ever fazed him, Aimee had said, but how could even he not be affected by the fact that they were standing in almost the exact place they’d said good-bye?