Free Whatever It Takes by Gwynne Forster Page B

think I’m satisfied and don’t care about the brooch.”
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    Kellie’s cunning was wasted on Lacette, for her sister rarely remembered that she owned a brooch. Instead, she focused upon the business that she hoped to open early in the coming year. After receiving her first week’s report, the Warren Pitch Company offered to extend her contract until the end of January, and she promised to consider it. Everything depended on how soon Lawrence Bradley could get her papers in order and officially processed. She loved the work and, for the past week had rolled out of bed each morning and skipped down the stairs in her rush to meet the day. She gave a customer a lesson on the role of salt and sugar in making bread dough. The man ordered two bread machines and asked her if she’d be willing to demonstrate recipes from his cookbook.
    She said she would think about it and accepted the man’s card. She didn’t see Douglas Rawlins when he walked up to her booth, and she had to steady herself when a jolt of anticipation shot through her.
    â€œYou’re really good at this,” he said, surprising her with those few words, because he usually nodded when he saw her but didn’t offer conversation.
    â€œI hope to open my marketing consultancy in a few months,” she said. “I’m enjoying this, because I’m learning how people decide to make a purchase.”
    â€œWhere will you have your office?”
    â€œRight here in Frederick. My lawyer is checking out some possible places. I’ve dreamed about this since I graduated from college, and my intuition tells me my ship is about to dock.”
    â€œI’m glad for you. Mine is still a little ways out to sea, but I know it will come in. Well, I’d better be getting back to those miniature cypress trees. The manager wants dozens of them decorated and lighting the lobby for Christmas, and I can’t seem to convince him that one huge, well-decorated Frazier fir will be a hundred times more dramatic. Well . . . see you later.”
    â€œI wouldn’t mind getting to know him better,” she said to herself. “He’s hardworking, meticulous, and carries himself well. Dignified. I have a hunch something is going to happen, but it doesn’t point to him. We’ll see.”
    She saw him several days later with a replica of a huge turkey that he placed in the barnyard setting he had created for the reading room. “I love the scene in the reading room,” she said, and she did, for it represented Thanksgiving as rural folk still lived it.
    He smiled and kept walking, stunning her with his strange behavior. Annoyed, she followed him to the reading room. “How is it that you can be friendly one day and behave the next as if you’ve never seen me before? I hate that.”
    An expression that she thought suggestive of pain flittered across his face. “I’m sorry, but I have learned that it’s sometimes best to keep to myself, Miss Graham. If you’ll excuse me, I’ll put this bird over there and get on with my work.”
    Outraged, she told Lourdes, the receptionist, what she thought of him. “I don’t know what this is about,” Lourdes said, “but he asked me if you had a sister named Kellie, and when I said you did, he seemed disappointed. Then he nodded and said, ‘I see.’ Does he know your sister?”
    â€œProbably. He worked at City Hall before he came here, and she’s in the transportation department.”
    â€œMaybe something happened between them. Why don’t you ask your sister?”
    â€œThanks.” But she didn’t say that she would. If Kellie had been as forward with Douglas as she was with most men, Douglas probably expected her to behave the same way. She let out a groan and went back to her booth. Would there ever come a day when there was a man in her life that Kellie didn’t touch?
    Lacette’s