Nora Roberts - Remember When

"Go ahead," Vince invited. "No point letting those eggs get cold. They make a nice omelette here."

"What kind of break-in was it? Burglary?"

"Looked that way. Why was Miss Tavish with you last night?"

Max sat, decided to pour the coffee. "Socializing. I asked her to have a drink with me. She agreed. I hoped to be able to extend that to dinner, and since she was agreeable to that after we had a drink-down in the lounge here-we went into the dining room."

"You always make dates with women when you buy presents for your mother?"

"If it worked that well, I'd be buying my mama a lot more presents." Max lifted his cup, drank and met Vince's eyes over the rim. "Laine's a very attractive, very interesting woman. I wanted to see her, socially. I asked.

I'm sorry she's got trouble."

"Somebody got in and out of her place during the time she was in town here, socializing with you."

"Yeah, I get that." Max decided he might as well eat, and forked up some omelette. "So you're wondering if I go around hitting on pretty women in shops, then setting them up for a burglary while I charm them over dinner.

That's a stretch, Chief, since I never set eyes on Laine before yesterday, don't-as yet-know her residence or if she's got something worth stealing in it. Be smarter, wouldn't it, to hit the shop? She's got a lot of nice merchandise in it."

Vince simply watched Max eat, said nothing. "Couple of good thick glasses over there," Max said after a moment, "if you want some of this coffee after all."

"I'll pass. What's your business in Angel's Gap, Mr. Gannon?"

"I'm with Reliance Insurance, and I'm here doing some fieldwork."

"What kind of fieldwork?"

"Chief Burger, you can contact Aaron Slaker, CEO of Reliance, and verify my association with the company. He's based in New York. But I'm not at liberty to discuss the details of my work without my client's permission."

"That doesn't sound like insurance work to me."

"There's all kinds of insurance." Max opened a little jar of strawberry jam and spread some on a triangle of toast.

"You got identification?"

"Sure." Max rose, walked over to the dresser and took his driver's license out of his wallet. He passed it to Vince, then took his seat again.

"You don't sound like New York City."

"Just can't drum the Georgia out of the boy." He was just irritated enough to exaggerate his drawl and make it a challenge. "I don't steal, Chief. I just wanted to have dinner with a pretty woman. You go ahead and call Slaker."

Vince dropped the license beside Max's plate. "I'll do that." He started for the door, turned with his hand on the knob. "How long do you plan to be in town, Mr. Gannon?"

"Till the job's done." He scooped up more egg. "Chief? You were right. They do a really good omelette here."

Even when the door shut behind Vince, Max sat and ate. And considered. A cop being a cop, Burger would run him, and the run would turn up his four years on the force. And his investigator's license. Small towns being small towns, that little tidbit would get back to Laine before too long.

He'd decide how to play that when it had to be played. Meanwhile there was the matter of the break-in. The timing was just a little too good to be serendipity. And it told him he wasn't the only one who thought the very attractive Miss Tavish had something to hide.

It was all a matter of who was going to find it first.

***

"Don't worry about anything," Jenny assured Laine. "Angie and I can handle things here. Are you sure you don't want to just close the store for the day?

Vince said your place is a wreck. I could come over and help you out."

Laine switched the phone to her other ear, scanning her home office and thinking about the very pregnant Jenny dragging chairs and tables into place.

"No, but thanks. I'd feel better knowing you and Angie have the shop. There's a shipment coming in this morning, a pretty big one from the auction in Baltimore."

And, damn it, she wanted to be there, getting her hands on all those lovely things. Admiring them, cataloguing them, arranging them. A good deal of the enjoyment came from setting up new stock in her place, and the rest came from watching it walk out the door again.

"I need you to log in the new stock, Jen. I've already done the pricing, that's in the file. There's a Clarice Cliff lotus jug, with a tulip design.

You want to call Mrs. Gunt and let her know we have it. The price we agreed on is seven hundred, but she'll want to negotiate. Six seventy-five is firm.

Okay?"

"Gotcha."

"Oh, and-"

"Laine, relax. It's not my first day on the job. I'll take care of things here, and if anything comes up I can't handle, I'll call you."

"I know." Absently, Laine reached down to pet the dog, who was all but glued to her side. "Too much on my mind."

"Small wonder. I hate the thought of you handling that mess on your own. You sure you don't want me to come? I could bop over at lunch-time. Angie can handle the shop for an hour. I'll bring you something to eat. Something loaded with fat and wasted calories."

Angie could handle the shop, Laine considered. She was good and getting better. But Laine knew herself. She'd get more done if she worked alone without conversation or distraction.

"That's okay. I'll be all right once I get started. I'll probably be in this afternoon."

"Take a nap instead."

"Maybe. I'll talk to you later." When she hung up, Laine stuck the little portable phone in the back pocket of her baggy jeans. She knew herself well enough to be sure she'd find half a dozen reasons to call the shop during the day. Might as well keep a phone handy.

But for now, she needed to focus on the matter at hand.

"'Hide the pooch,'" she murmured. Since the only pooch she had was Henry, she had to assume Willy had been delirious. Whatever he'd come to tell her, to ask of her, to give her, hadn't been done. He'd thought someone was after him, and unless he'd changed his ways, which was highly unlikely, he'd probably been right.

A cop, skip tracer, a partner in crime who hadn't liked the cut? Any or all of the above was a possibility. But the state of her house told her the last option was the most likely.

Now, whoever had been looking for him, was looking at her.

She could tell Vince... what? Absolutely nothing. Everything she'd built here was dug into the foundation that she was Laine Tavish, a nice, ordinary woman with a nice, ordinary life with nice, ordinary parents who ran a barbecue place in New Mexico.

Elaine O'Hara, daughter of Big Jack of the charming and wily ways-and yard-long yellow sheet-didn't fit into the pretty, pastoral landscape of Angel's Gap. Nobody was going to come into Elaine O'Hara's place to buy a teapot or a piecrust table.

Jack O'Hara's daughter couldn't be trusted.

Hell, she didn't trust Jack O'Hara's daughter herself. Big Jack's daughter was the type who had drinks in a bar with a strange man and ended up knocking said man on his excellent ass with a steamy, soul-deep kiss. Jack's daughter took big, bad chances that had big, bad consequences.

Laine Tavish lived normal, thought things through and didn't make waves.

She'd let the O'Hara out for one brief evening, and look what it had gotten her. An exciting, sexy interlude, sure, and a hell of a mess at the end of it.

"It just goes to show," she murmured to Henry, who demonstrated his accord by thumping his tail.

Time to put things back in order. She wasn't giving up who she was, what she'd accomplished, what she planned to accomplish, because some second-rate thief believed she had part of his last take.

Had to be second-rate, she thought as she gathered up the loose stuffing from the once pretty silk throw pillows she'd picked out for the George II daybed.