Seasons of Love (9 page)

His expression relaxed, and he smiled gently. “Riley, truly… I didn’t mean to overstep. But you’re right. It’s getting late, and I have an early day tomorrow. I need to get on top of all that paperwork.” He flashed her another smile.

After Zane left, Riley locked the doors. She climbed the stairs and peeked in on Chad. Still sleeping. She wanted nothing more than to plop down on her bed, but she noticed a pile of envelopes on the pillow. Grandpa had placed her mail there instead of putting it in the office. Probably afraid her junk mail would get lost. She laughed and rummaged through the stash, some of which was forwarded from her California address, then tossed the mail into a cardboard box to be dealt with later. She still needed to unpack.

As she readied herself for bed, she couldn’t stop thinking about Zane Baldwyn. She didn’t doubt that his intentions to assist her with growing the farm were sincere. But his questions had sent a suspicious chill up her spine. She chided herself for revisiting the ridiculous notion. She’d probably misunderstood his intent and had overreacted. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t been emotional of late. Still, the niggling thought that he was after something wouldn’t leave until she drifted off to sleep.

Riley woke with a start and sat up, her heart racing. Sweat beaded on her brow. The images came rushing back. She’d dreamed she was married to Eric. He was the absolute worst husband, thoughtless, inconsiderate. He traveled constantly and never had time for her, just like her father. Riley lay her head back against the pillow and let out a soft cry. In the dream, Eric’s face had morphed into Zane’s.

Stupid! Stupid!

Zane slammed the door to his condo behind him. His car keys jingled when he tossed them onto the coffee table. The place smelled stale, neglected.

If it had been physically possible to kick himself, he would have. Instead, he settled for berating. He’d handled it all wrong, bungling his attempt to question Riley without raising her defenses or alerting her to his predicament. If he could solve this mess without involving her, it would be for the best. The last thing he wanted to do to John’s grieving sister was create fear. Nor did he think it would do any good for her to discover her brother had been murdered. Zane could prove none of it. Yet.

It was a delicate balance—convincing her of his sincere attempt to help Sanderford Cranberry Farms while using the opportunity to sleuth. If he had learned anything about Riley O’Hare, it was that she had a few trust issues.

Slipshod, Baldwyn, truly slipshod.

The bottom line was that he didn’t know how to question her and should have waited for a more suitable opportunity. He’d pushed things. So far, he’d gone about winning her confidence all wrong. He’d suspected that she didn’t trust him from the beginning, so he’d labored to win her favor.

He thought he’d gained ground as he watched her warm smile, enjoyed their banter. But it was she who’d disarmed him and won his esteem. He laughed at the irony and headed for the shower.

Despite his best efforts, he’d only succeeded in ruffling Riley’s feathers with his assistance, rather than pleasing her, right down to making coffee. Her first reaction to almost everything he did for her was to take it as a personal affront to her abilities. He was trying too hard.

He showered and dressed, then fell into a plush chair in the corner of his home office. Cardboard boxes from Cyphorensic were stacked and organized along the far wall, beckoning him. He ran his fingers through his still-wet hair and wondered why he’d dressed instead of getting into bed. Might as well get to work. He skimmed through papers in one of the boxes. Then another. When he looked up at the atomic clock, it read 1:00 a.m.

If he had done too much damage with his questions, Riley might not allow him back into the office, into her life. He couldn’t risk it. He grabbed his keys and rushed out the door to head back to the Sanderford Cranberry Farms office. He should retrieve as much information as he could from the dinosaur computer and finish organizing the endless piles of papers. It would be pleasant to walk into a thoroughly scrubbed and orderly office tomorrow, as well.

Until Zane figured out what was going on, he would not let any questionable activities rest. While talking with Robert Sanderford tonight, he’d learned that Sarah had used the office computer. If she’d used it for even thirty seconds, she might have hidden information that would help Zane—if that had been John’s plan. There was no way for him to know for sure whether Sarah had been involved unless he copied and examined the files on the computer.

In the meantime, he could possibly get an overview of Sanderford Cranberry Farms by looking at the files, depending, of course, on whether anyone had bothered to update things.

After the drive from Plymouth to Carver, Zane turned onto Cranberry Highway. Before long, he pulled into the entrance to Sanderford Cranberry Farms and turned off his headlights as he headed toward the office. He didn’t want to disturb anyone. As the tires of his car crunched against the gravel driveway, they seemed to shout his presence, and he winced, hoping no one heard.

Rather than slamming his car door, he pressed it shut until he heard the required click. He crept up the steps to the office and searched through his key ring for the one Riley had given him earlier in the day.

One of the keys engaged the lock, and Zane exhaled. The thick smog polluting his mind suddenly cleared. He hadn’t known what he was looking for until that moment.

The key!

He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, allowing the exhilarated pounding of his heart to calm. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? The criminals who’d stolen the Cyphorensic computers needed the key to the encryption code, or the software would be of no use to them. Still, it didn’t make sense. John was developing software to create a new encryption standard, but it wasn’t finished. Why steal it? Though he didn’t understand everything, Zane had at least figured out what John had hidden away somewhere, and his strong suspicion was that John had mailed the key to Riley. Only she would not recognize it for what it was.

In the dark, he stumbled to the desk and flipped on the banker’s lamp, hoping the low lighting would be sufficient for him to see while he copied files. While he waited for the old computer to boot up, he spotted one of the scripture pictures that Riley had hung on the wall. The dim light on the desk wasn’t bright enough for him to make out the words, so he strolled over.

He read it in a hushed tone. “ ‘Seek the Lord while he may be found; call on him while he is near.’ Isaiah 55:6.”

A sense of peace settled upon him, unnerving him. He backed away from the image. First Chelsea had said she would pray for him. Now his path had crossed with Riley, another Christian. She believed that it was her obligation to evangelize everyone, or at least she’d been upset with herself for not asking John if he had known Christ. It surprised Zane that she hadn’t asked him yet, and he wondered what he would tell her if she did.

Sure, he was a Christian.

He believed in God and His Son. He’d learned all of that as a child. But he wasn’t so sure that God cared much about the everyday details of his life. God hadn’t exactly been there for him when things had fallen apart in high school. But John had. And Zane had picked up the pieces and made a success of his life.

He shook his head. Some success. His partner and wife were dead, and more than Zane’s company was now at risk. The idea that God was trying to reach him for some reason wouldn’t let go. Did God do that? Zane wasn’t sure, but there was no way that he would believe God had gotten rid of John just to get Zane’s attention. No. If he’d learned anything in Sunday school, it was that the human race lived in a fallen world. God wouldn’t do something bad to achieve something good. Zane nodded to himself. Instead, He would act like any good manager and take something that had gone horribly wrong and create something good from it.

That was all Zane was trying to do here—solve a mystery to bring order back. Still, he wondered why God hadn’t involved Himself in Zane’s family crisis when he was in high school.

His ulcer flared, and he went back to the desk to find the bottle of antacid he’d stuck in the top drawer. He popped two of the pills and swallowed them dry; then he stuck a disk into the computer’s drive and began the laborious task of copying files.

This would take awhile.

In the meantime, he opened drawers and pulled out all the items, organizing them while he waited. For all he knew, Riley had received the item John had sent and simply stuck it in a drawer, not realizing its importance. Nothing he did could be counted as a waste of time.

He smiled to himself. Though Riley could blame most of the disorganization on her grandfather, Zane had seen her in action and was convinced she’d learned all she knew from Robert. John was her half brother, but they were complete opposites. John was a well-oiled programming machine with a brilliant mind that seemed to border on insanity at times. He could not exist if anything was out of place. Riley seemed to thrive amid disorganization.

As he thought of Riley, warmth spread through his chest. In only a matter of a few days, he’d begun to care about her as more than John’s sister. It sickened him to think of her reaction once she learned of the initial reasons for his proposal to help the cranberry farm. She would be angry and disillusioned. She’d lose faith in him. He was a fool to allow himself any attachment to her.

Zane shrugged off the nagging thoughts and focused on the task at hand. He filed every loose paper in its own category in manila folders, trashed others, and organized the boxes based on the dated information to be dealt with later. He swept the floor and shined the windows as well as possible in the darkened room. All the while, he continued to insert disks into the computer and copy the files. He was amazed at the amount of information on the machine, since it didn’t sound as though Robert Sanderford had spent much time on it. Though he could have searched the computer itself without copying the files, he didn’t want to take a chance that he would need access to the information again and for some reason that access would be denied. Riley might decide she didn’t want his help anymore.

By three in the morning, he’d finished copying the last of the files and uncluttered the office of most of the excess papers. He would head home and attempt to get a few hours of sleep. Tomorrow morning he would return to the farm, then spend his evenings searching for John’s key.

He thought of Chad, Riley, and Grandpa and prayed to God for the first time in years. He had to find the key to decipher John’s code.

Before someone else did.

After a difficult night of tossing and turning, Riley woke early and joined Grandpa for breakfast. She noted he was running behind this morning. She spoon-fed oatmeal to Chad to be sure that he ate something, because half of the mixture had already ended up on the floor. Grandpa slurped his instant coffee while he read the morning paper. She cleaned up the breakfast dishes and continued to peek out the window, eager for Zane to arrive.

“What’s eating you this morning, Riley?” Grandpa tilted his head enough to peer at the paper through his bifocals.

She pulled up a chair and sat down at the table. Chad sipped the last of the milk. “Am I that obvious?”

“You’ve had four cups of coffee already and are brewing more. You’ve looked out the kitchen window between every spoonful of oatmeal and every dish you put away.”

“I thought you were reading the paper,” she teased. It probably didn’t take much effort for him to see that she was about to burst. “I didn’t sleep well last night. I’m just anxious to get things moving for you. That’s all.”

Anxious to throttle Zane is more like it!

She had awakened in the night after a bad dream and slipped out of bed to head to the kitchen for warm milk but remembered she had to save the last of the milk for Chad. When she’d looked out her bedroom window, she’d seen a light on in the office and Zane’s parked car. By the time she’d slipped on her robe and hurried down the stairs, he’d gone.

She couldn’t imagine what he would be after in the middle of the night. Had he left something? Nothing could be that important.

More than anything, she wanted to believe the best about him. She liked him. But his questions to her about John had seemed more like fishing than curiosity. She’d been tired and emotional about the discussion of her brother and had dismissed the nagging in the back of her mind that Zane wasn’t being up front with her—that he was hiding something.

She wished she didn’t jump to the worst conclusions about people, but her time with Eric had left her unable to trust. He’d told her he cared for her, and at first, it seemed that he did. But over time, Riley came to realize that only work mattered to him. Eric had used her, allowing her to take the blame for a disgruntled client when, in fact, the blame was all his.

Seeing Zane in the office at three in the morning had aroused her questions about his motives once again. For some reason, she felt betrayed. Used again. Nausea rolled through her stomach at her disappointment. She would confront him as soon as he arrived. Grandpa’s chair scraped across the floor as he scooted from the table. The sound jolted Riley back into the present.

“Well, I’m off. Zane and I had a good talk last night. I need to check all our equipment to see what else needs to be repaired or replaced.”

Riley’s heart jumped. “Grandpa, I need to speak with Zane first when he gets here. Alone. Would you mind watching Chad for me for a few minutes while I do that? Then I’ll take him to the grocery store with me. I can’t put that off any longer. We’ll have something home cooked for dinner tonight,

I promise.” She hoped it wasn’t an empty promise.

“Sure I can play with Chad while you take care of your business. I think I hear Zane’s car now.”

Riley placed a hand over her stomach as if it could quiet the turmoil inside. “Let me wipe Chad off first.” She wetted a paper towel and cleaned his face, hands, and high chair. She needed to calm down before she went into the office. If anything, she’d need her mind to be clear before confronting Zane and his smooth talk.