Sharon Swan - Husband In Harmony

Not that he should care one way or the other. And not that he’d even be here if he didn’t have his own agenda. Whether he decided to take Jane Pitt up on her offer would depend on how much it suited his goals as well as hers.

“I think it’s time for a better look around,” he said.

She nodded. “Sure, I’ll give you the nickel tour.”

Which was all a tour might wind up being worth, Adam reflected. He had to admit that he’d been thrown off balance by what he’d seen so far. For all the beauty of the surrounding area, no one with eyes could deny that the resort was in sad shape—a lot sadder shape than he’d bargained on. “Should we start here?” he asked, keeping his tone mild as he indicated the larger cabin with a slant of his head. “I assume that’s where the office is.”

“Right.” Jane led the way down a short gravel path, then up a step and across a narrow covered porch. She tugged open an old screen door and stepped inside.

Adam followed her into a room bordered by thick log walls and saw mostly what he’d expected to see. The scene gave, he thought, a whole new meaning to the phrase no frills. Nothing had probably been altered much from the time the place was first built. A long counter, the green tiles topping it scarred with age, stood at one side of the room and an ancient refrigerator at the other.

Jane glanced over at him. “Want a can of cold pop?”

He would have preferred bottled water, but he only nodded. Something told him you took what you could get with this woman. “I can help myself,” he said.

For the first time, she smiled a faint smile, showing a hint of small white teeth. “Good. I like a man who doesn’t expect to be waited on.”

Adam let that comment hang and started for the refrigerator. When he opened it he found several varieties of soda sharing space with two large coffee cans. “Looks as though someone has a caffeine habit.”

“I like it as well as the next person,” Jane said, “but one of those cans happens to be home to some worms.”

Adam resisted the urge to grimace—he had a hunch that would please her far too much. Instead, he calmly chose a can of cola and closed the refrigerator.

“Ever been worm hunting…Adam?” she asked, using his given name for the first time.

“Not lately…Jane,” he replied, and popped the can open. He didn’t miss the amused glint in her eye as he took a long swallow. Okay, so he hadn’t gone digging for fish bait since he was a kid, and even then he hadn’t done it that often. If he wanted to be candid, he could tell her that he wasn’t much of an outdoorsman—not the kind who would find this type of setting familiar, at any rate. But why admit it? If he decided to stay here, she’d probably discover it soon enough.

He glanced toward another doorway. “Is that the office?”

“Uh-huh.” She started past him, her low brown boots scraping on the slatted wood floor. “Next stop on the tour.”

Now he did grimace. The office was a far cry from the spacious suite he shared with a tax specialist and an investment counselor on the upper floor of a chrome and glass building in downtown Phoenix. Here, modern efficiency obviously didn’t rule. In fact, it was nowhere in sight.

Both the small pine desk and tall metal filing cabinets had seen better days. Two chairs and a short table holding an empty coffeemaker—all of which might be judged antiques by some and junk by others—completed the furnishings. In the stark light streaming in through a bare window, everything appeared so much a part of the past that the contemporary phone and answering machine combination resting on the desk seemed out of place. The best thing he would say about the room was that it, like the outer room, was clean. Working up a shine would be hard, but dirt and dust had clearly been dealt with.

“Sorry we’re short on the kind of fancy stuff you must be used to,” Jane said as she leaned a shoulder against one of the cabinets.

But she didn’t look sorry, Adam saw with a sidelong glance. No, she still seemed more amused than anything, as if she were waiting with considerable relish for him to avow needing state-of-the-art technology. Rather than giving her that satisfaction, he decided it was time to wipe off that faint smirk.

“What I’m used to doesn’t matter,” he replied bluntly, turning to meet her eyes. “What counts is whether I’ll agree to try and pull off a miracle by making this place profitable.”

Her lips, as free of any makeup as the rest of her face, thinned in a flash. “Will you?”

Despite the thick tension between them as they traded stares, he kept his gaze bland. “I don’t know yet. We still haven’t finished the nickel tour.”

SHE STARTED the next leg of the tour with the word miracle still ringing in her mind. Was that what she expected Adam Lassiter to pull off? He’d just said so in no uncertain terms, and maybe he was right, Jane had to concede, even though his candor had spiked her blood pressure.

After all, she’d known from the day she’d become determined to put the resort back on the map that it wouldn’t be easy. But that didn’t mean she intended to give up. Not hardly.

“How did you wind up the owner of this place?” Adam asked as they strolled toward the weathered log cabin closest to the office. Like its fellow cabins, it had a name. The rough wooden sign over the narrow front doorway declared this one to be Squirrel Hollow.

“My great-aunt left it to me when she passed away this spring,” Jane explained.

He slid her a probing sidelong glance. Apparently, he caught at least a trace of sadness in her calm expression, one born of the recent loss of someone she’d both admired and been so fond of, because he said, “I’m sorry.”

Jane climbed two short steps up to a narrow porch that held a spindled rocker dulled by age. “Thanks,” she told him. “I appreciate the thought. Although,” she added with typical frankness, “I have to admit that Maude Pitt would be the last person to invite anyone to mourn her. She’d say that she lived a good life doing exactly what she wanted to do. Which was run this place as she saw fit without wasting time taking orders from the male half of the population.”

“Hmm.” Adam slid another glance her way. This time it was one more rueful than probing. “Why am I thinking that you take after her?”

A wry smile tugged at her lips. “Because I just might in some ways, I suppose. I started helping out around here when I was still a child. Even though she was hardly the motherly type—she’d never had much desire to marry and raise a bunch of kids—Maude taught me a lot.” And provided a refuge from a family situation by no means always happy, Jane reflected.

What would she have done had she not been able to ride her bike over the mountain and Maude and Mother Nature had not taken her to another, far less quarrelsome, world? Jane didn’t have an answer for that question. She could only be grateful that Glory Ridge Resort and Campground had been there for her at a time when she’d needed it most.

It hadn’t taken her long as a young girl to fall in love with the place, that was for sure. And she still loved it, even though it had only continued to slide downhill during her aunt’s declining years.

That was why she was willing to deal with slick consultants—even one who might be the slickest of the bunch.

“This cabin will give you an idea of what the rest are like,” Jane said, opening the screen door, then the simple wood door behind it. She didn’t say that this was the best of the lot, although it was. It had two bedrooms. And no leaks in the roof. At least, she’d seen no signs of any.

Adam didn’t hesitate to investigate, checking out the small living room with adjoining kitchen and even smaller bedrooms—themselves large compared with the tiny bath.