Collide & Burn (14 page)

I shook my head. “No, no, but go ahead. I’ll just have the coffee.”

“Please, humor my whim, Miss Doogan. Join me, do. I hate to eat alone, and it seems lately that is all I do.”

I glanced at the elderly waitress, who was impatiently fiddling with her pen. I could see she wanted to get our order and move on. I hadn’t eaten a thing since yesterday afternoon, and in fact the aroma in the coffee shop of bacon and onions had me suddenly famished. I caved and said, as I gave him a warmer smile than I had meant to, “Okay, thanks yes, I’ll have scrambled eggs and one piece of whole-wheat toast.”

He grinned and ordered the works for himself—bacon, eggs, and potatoes—and then turned back to regard me thoughtfully. His voice was soft when he said, “Ye know, lass, ye could do with a pound or two. I’m thinking ye were thin enough before ye lost yer grandmother and are way too thin now.”

My eyes snapped open. “You must have looked pretty closely at my photos?”

Was this stalking? Was he a stalker? Was this stalking going on?

“Well, in truth, Maddy took every opportunity to show me yer latest pictures. She adored ye, but ye know that, don’t ye?”

I sighed, and got wistful. “Yes, we were close.”

“Aye, ye would send her pictures on yer computer, and she would print them up and frame ‘em.”

I laughed. “She was so funny about the computer. Never wanted to learn, and then one day, there it was in her kitchen.” I shook my head over the memory and all the laughs I had enjoyed at poor Granny’s expense while she mastered the use of a mouse.

“Did you know her well?” I asked, suddenly hungry to talk about her.

“Aye, I came to know her very well,” he said gently. “Hers was a great loss to our community in Sutterville, but especially to me as I often found myself stopping by for a cup of tea and a bit of her wisdom.”

“Yes, she mentioned you to me quite a bit.” I chewed my bottom lip and frowned. “I am afraid I didn’t pay much attention. I thought she was playing at match-making.”
Oh no, did I just say that?
Why
did I say that?

“And ye don’t wish to be matched with anyone?” he quizzed, his green eyes alive with twinkling gold lights.

Wasn’t answering that. “Why did you come all this way, Mr. Dunraven?” I needed to get to the point and off this subject.

“Call me Finn, eh?” he said.

What did he want? What? For expediency I smiled and said hopefully, “Sure, Finn …?”

“Tenacious, are we?” He inclined his head. “Right then, to the point. Ye want to know what I want.”

My breath hitched. There was something in the way he said that—something ambiguous that made me want to run. Everything about him seemed …
intense.

“That’s right. Just what do you want?” I managed to squeak.

He laughed, and his sultry eyes took on a warm, suggestive glint. “A dangerous question, lass, to be asking of me. Well, then, just what do I want? I don’t think ye are ready for that, Riley, not sure ye ever will be.”

He said my name with that lilt of his, and it sounded like a song.
Stop, stop
, I told myself. Okay, I’d walked into that one, but I was so not going there. Wasn’t flirting with him like that. Oh no. Not.

I gave him a rueful smile and said, “I came here to find out what business you wanted to discuss.” I put up my hand, took on what I call my ‘teacher tone’, and added, “If you mean to take this where I don’t wish to go, I am so out of here. Got it, Mr. Dunraven?”

“Touché!” he said with a wide grin. “Are we back to Miss Doogan and Mr. Dunraven then? Have I slipped that far back?”

“You weren’t that far forward, so not that far back,” I said breathlessly.
Okay, getting back in form.

He chuckled and said, “Right then, lass. Since I don’t want ye to get into the habit of saying no to me right from the start, I’ll get to the point. As I mentioned, I returned to Dunraven about a year ago, though I have still had to do quite a bit of traveling as I consolidate some of m’holdings. It came to my notice that there is a stretch of land between
yer estate
and mine that I could use beneficially for both of us. I made an offer to Maddy … yer grandmother, and she said she would talk to ye and get back to me. Unfortunately I was away when we lost her.” He shook his head. “I’m sorry for it.”

He seemed sincere. He liked my grandmother, and that gave him some points. I tried to imagine the piece of land that bordered Dunraven and allowed him a warm smile. “I would hardly call our land an estate when compared to yours.”

“No? Yer land encompasses over three hundred acres. I call that an estate. However, there is a narrow stretch of rowan oaks—about twenty acres of the lovely trees. I wish to buy that narrow stretch from ye.”

I had to wonder at this. After all these years, what could anyone want with this acreage? I eyed him and came right to the point. “Why?” I shook my head. “Dunraven is over seven hundred acres strong. Why would you want a measly twenty acres?”

“Ah
, I have a personal reason for that, but allow me, lass, to say this, those twenty acres ye have more rowan oak trees than I have on all my seven hundred acres.” He shook his head, and then he looked away from me before he brought his gaze back to my face. “Ye grandmother said that she was more than happy to sell this piece to me but meant first to discuss it with ye. I was hoping she did that … before we lost her.”

I frowned and remembered my last conversation with my grandmother before her stroke. She had said, “Riley, come home for a few days. I want to show you a piece of land I’m thinking of selling to Dunraven. You can use the money to open that new store you have been talking about. Maybe you could open it here … in Sutterville, near me?”

I had been surprised and reminded her, “But, Granny … you told me that the white and rowan oaks were planted on our land during the Salem witch trials. You said they gave us power and were a place of sanctuary. You said they were sacred.”

She had answered that Dunraven was a friend and could I not please come up so she would explain the whole of it.

I had forgotten that until now, and then I remembered one more thing. Just before my grandmother died, she and her coven had held a “witches’ ball” at Dunraven. I never went to coven events. It was a social thing, yes, but the witches always performed magic at the witches ball. He must have known. He must have.

He must realize that, like my grandmother, I am a witch, from a long line of witches, as are the members of her coven
, I thought
.

So the question that I put to myself again was, what was he? We witches can recognize one another, almost instantly. We give off a magical vibe that identifies us to each other. I did not get any such vibe off him.

Busy in my mind, I nearly jumped when he touched my folded hands on the table and brought me back to earth. He asked, “Did Maddy not mention any of this to ye? I was sure she would.”

Chewing my bottom lip, I looked up and saw his gaze settle on my lips. Self-conscious about this nervous habit, I stopped immediately and answered him. “Yes, I do remember her telling me she wanted me to come up and have a look at a piece of land she was thinking of selling. I didn’t think there was any rush … you see, Betty and I have been talking about expanding the business, and I thought she was trying to help …” He smiled and I pictured my grandmother. “She was like that.” I shook my head and realized I hadn’t visited my granny enough before I lost her. What had been wrong with me? I should have made more time for her. She sure had given me all her time after my parents’ deaths. I felt something in my throat catch, and I had a difficult time swallowing as the words slipped out. “I should have …” I couldn’t finish, and guilt swept through me.

He reached out and held my hand. “Now, now, lass, don’t be going there. Ye know yer grandmother was proud of yer success, and ye had no way of knowing time was against ye.”

I looked at him sharply. Something in his tone made me feel like he knew more than he was saying. I took a long pull of air and said, “Thank you. I know she was considering selling that piece, and it surprised me at the time, as she had never agreed to sell any land before. Makes sense, because she talked about you like you were a legend amongst men.”

“Did she now?” he said with that dreamy lilt.

Coffee.
I had it to my lips as soon as the waitress set it down, and, oh, it was a great diversion and also quite good. I waited for him to sip his and said, “Well, I suppose you need an answer.” I shrugged and wondered what I should do, what my grandmother would want me to do.

“Far sooner than I thought I would,” he said in a voice that had suddenly dropped low and husky. His eyes flirted, his body language flirted, and he had to know the effect he had on women and undoubtedly used it to his advantage. Was he doing that now? Was he flirting with me to get his way about the land?

I wasn’t going to have my head turned by his extraordinary style, by his tone of voice, by his hotness, oh, no,
not I
. My brow arched quizzically as I sat back. In control, I questioned myself.
This is not about him, his flirting, his needs. This is about my granny. What would she want? Would she want me to sell him this piece of land?
I knew what she’d want. I knew it in my heart. She would want me to come home. She would want me to go through her things, her journal. She had always told me that if anything happened to her, I would need to read her journal. She had been adamant about that. She would want me to look out for her coven … until they were able to reorganize. I needed to attend to my grandmother’s wishes
.

What was he doing? He diverted my attention to his hand … large, strong, yet groomed hands he had. He had reached for something in the inner pocket of his sports jacket and laid it out flat on the table. Ah, it was a survey.

I frowned but did not touch it as I studied it for a long moment. He pointed to the stretch of land between our properties, and I tried to picture it in my mind.

I had lived most of my youth in New York with my parents. When they died, Granny came and scooped me up, and off we went to her home in Maine. There I flourished until I went to college at Columbia.

I knew the three hundred acres well. I had walked over most of its beautiful terrain, but I’d done most of that walking when I was a teenager, and then off I went to college. I had never given much thought to the rowan and white oak trees at the far end. I couldn’t quite picture this particular twenty acres.

I would never sell Granny’s home. In addition to the trust fund my parents had set up for me, Granny had managed her money very well, and the interest from both funds were more than enough to handle the costs of keeping the family home in Sutterville.

I knew she’d wanted me to come back and settle in Sutterville, but how could I live there when my life was so centered in NYC?

Did any of those questions have anything to do with this piece of property? No, so why was I stuck in that never-never land?

Oh, damn, I just didn’t know what to do.

I’d adored Granny. She had always seemed larger than life, her smile warm enough to blot out the sun. Her wisdom came from the ages and was unbreakable and untarnished. She got me through the loss of my parents and the grief that had wanted to tear me apart then.

Her death was a double-whammy, as she was my last living relative. She left me everything that she had, but after her death all I’d wanted to do was curl up into a ball. The business and the people who depended on us in that business—all the ladies that made a living at creating the beautiful hand-knit baby clothes—well, that had made me pick myself up and get back to work.

“I don’t know,” I said and sighed, and I heard the heaviness in my sigh. I looked at him as straightforwardly as I could and sighed again before saying, “Here is the thing. I can’t answer you now. I think I have to go home first. I haven’t even gone through my grandmother’s things. I need to get a feel for what she would want me to do.”

“I understand that, lass,” he said gently.

“Yes, but you need an answer, and you deserve it. Granny would want me to give you an answer, so I guess it’s time for me to pick my butt up and take it home. This puts it squarely on my shoulders. I can’t put it off any longer. I see that it is something I have to do immediately,” I said with the resignation I felt. “I have been planning a trip home. I left things … unfinished. I have to go through my grandmother’s documents and set everything in order at the house just the way I know she would want me to. I need to look through her things and see if she left any instructions for me. She might have made a decision and wrote what it was in her journal.”