Leith grabbed a cab outside of Grand Central and had a harrowing ride south to the corner in SoHo where Jen had told him to meet her. Even if he hadn’t recognized her dark hair or the way her black-and-white dress wrapped itself around that body, he’d know her by her posture—by the way she paced back and forth on a small section of sidewalk outside the little bistro with the wicker outdoor furniture, her phone plastered to her ear. He slid the driver money and unfolded himself from the cab. Just then, Jen pivoted and saw him.

He liked the way she met his eyes and smiled. And he really liked how his appearance caused her to stutter midsentence. She didn’t seem to like that so much, however, and turned her back on him to keep talking.

She wasn’t yelling at whoever was on the other line, but her shoulders hunched with tension and she made curt gestures with her free hand. That’s when he realized she wasn’t carrying her gigantic purse. He had no idea what she was discussing in such strained terms—something to do with minimum guarantees and hard-balled negotiations with regard to tables and chairs—but when she hung up, he was a little scared of her.

It turned him on in a crazy, weird way.

“Ouch,” he said as she came up to him. “Hate to be that person. Everything okay?”

She blinked and then looked in confusion down at her phone. “Oh, that? That was nothing.” She flashed him a smile that was pure sunlight. “Hi. You’re here. In my city.”

Her city. Of course that’s how she’d see it. The odd part was, just a week ago he might have felt uncomfortable hearing that and might have assumed she was deliberately putting space between them. But now that he was, indeed, standing here on a SoHo street with her consuming his vision, there was nothing uncomfortable about her words. It was her city, and he’d wanted to see her here, in her element. He wanted to know what her life had become after she’d left him. And before he’d found her again.

“I am,” he said, then asked, only half jokingly, “So is this a pretty typical Sunday for you?”

She pursed her lips and nodded. “Yeah, a little quieter than during the week.”

Wow, all right. “Well, I’m really glad you—”

Her phone went off again. She gave him an apologetic glance and looked at the screen. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

Of course she did. She turned away, finger pressed against the ear without the phone.

“Hi! Yes, thanks so much for calling me back on a weekend. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” She listened for a long time, then spun back with a whirl and locked excited eyes with him. Looking the complete opposite of the business tiger he’d just witnessed, she bounced up and down on the balls of her high-heeled feet. “Okay, great. Thank you. That’s such wonderful news. Email me the paperwork, I’ll discuss it with my client, and then I’ll see if we have a deal.”

When she tapped off the phone she looked ready to burst.

“What was that all about?” he asked.

“I”—she took a deep breath and looked incredibly pleased with herself—“am setting up a craft convention for Bobbie, to bring her fans and followers together. That was the real estate company that owns the Hemmertex building. They are willing to rent it to Bobbie next winter.”

“So . . . did Bobbie ask you to do this?” He knew her answer before she gave it.

“Not exactly. But! The option will be there if she wants it—and she will once I sell it to her. She wants to do more with her business since her store failed, and I know she wants to support Gleann. So I had this idea about turning Gleann into a destination convention area for small groups. You know, opening the valley up to a new kind of tourism. We could start with Bobbie’s craft convention, really give it a fantastic kickoff.”

He blinked slowly, shocked at himself for being so shocked by her initiative. “We?”

“Yeah. Maybe we could convince the Hemmertex landowners to convert the building into something that could host events all year-round. It would bring businesses back to the downtown. Open up more B&Bs and inns, maybe some motels out on Route 6. Increase usage of the lake. That kind of thing.”

There was an odd sensation in his heart, pride and frustration duking it out. “You’re talking like you’d handle it all. You called Bobbie your client before she even knows what you’re doing.” He opened his arms. “You live here. In New York. You have a job that can’t even leave you alone on a Sunday. Remember?”

The shine of her excitement faded, but just a tinge. “Of course I do. But this is the sort of push that Gleann needs, only they didn’t know they needed it. Bobbie will be ecstatic. Hell, I bet even Sue might crack a smile over the potential.”

Of course, Leith thought. Set off a bomb and then walk away while the shrapnel rained down. Jen was really, really good at that.

Except that he felt in his heart that she was right. This could be a wonderful thing for Gleann, perhaps exactly the spark it needed. Maybe not to set off a bomb, but brilliant fireworks that would umbrella the whole valley and make it come back to life. And that had come from Jen Haverhurst, who didn’t even live there.

Still, he was a realist. He had Da to thank for that. “But what if all that doesn’t work? What if Bobbie goes through with her thing and it fails, or no other events come? What if—”

She looked honestly perplexed as she laid her hand on his bare forearm, just below where he’d rolled up the sleeve of his button-down shirt. No green plaid this time.

“I never thought you to be the kind of person to worry,” she said in a quiet, calm voice that didn’t seem like her at all. Then she stepped closer, so deep inside his space she had to lift her chin to look him in the eye. She searched his face for a long moment, and he wondered what she was looking for. She reached up and placed her hand on his cheek, and said something cryptic. “I never thought you to be the kind of person to think about failure.”

There was an intuitiveness to her words that crawled down his spine with cold, sticky feet, and he pushed deeper into her touch to try to ignore it. It worked, because it only made him even more aware of her, of where they’d left off last time they’d seen each other, the last time they’d touched.

“I’m not thinking about failure.” He bent down as close to her face as possible without taking her mouth. “I’m thinking about getting our date started.”

A slow, rewarding smile. “Good. Is this place okay?”

“Perfect.” He looked nowhere but in her eyes. “I have one condition, though. A challenge, actually.”

“Oh?”

With a long look down at the unusually small purse she had draped over her shoulder, he said, “I see you’re not shackled to your laptop today, which is good, but I want no phone. For two hours. No phone; just me.”

That little wrinkle appeared alongside her nose and her eyes danced. He could practically see her thoughts driving back and forth across her brain, and he was pretty sure she’d deny him.

“All right,” she said. “Deal. But I want to change our date venue, then.”

He grew suspicious. “Why?”

She pressed a hand to her fine chest in mock indignation. “You make an ultimatum and then question my agreement? I’m agreeing to the no phone thing, remember?”

No wonder she usually got whatever she wanted. She could be demanding when she needed to be, charming when she had to be, and utterly personable and magnetic . . . well, pretty much all the time.

“Good point.” He shrugged. “Like I said, I don’t care where we go. As long as it’s with you.”

She turned to the side and offered him her arm. “So come on then. Let me show you one of my favorite places in New York.”

“You know, a shot and a beer at a corner pub would’ve been just fine,” Leith joked as he held open the hefty wood door to the Amber Lounge and let Jen go in ahead of him.