The Passions of Chelsea Kane Page 7

  One small Ford Escort, one newer Chevy Blazer, and a dirty gray truck with dirty white lettering stood in the driveway. On the far side of the truck, visible only from the tail end of the muffler on back, was Hunter Love’s motorcycle.

  Chelsea parked on the street beneath the skeleton of a locust tree. Other skeletons abounded—maples, birches, lilacs, and forsythia—as well as evergreens that looked winter-tired and wet. Looping the straps of her briefcase over her shoulder, she climbed from the car, opened her umbrella, and went up the dirt walk. In the absence of a bell, she knocked on the door before pushing it open.

  The front office was a small room made even smaller by three file cabinets, two folding chairs, a cooler, a lopsided coat tree, assorted calendars and lists taped to every exposed wall, and a large metal desk. Behind the desk sat a petite woman with short, salt-and-pepper hair, pale skin, and alert eyes. The look in those eyes suggested the same curiosity that Chelsea had sensed in the people at Farr’s. She guessed that in this case the curiosity had been heightened by something Hunter Love might have said.

  Utterly professional, Chelsea introduced herself. “I have an appointment with Mr. Plum. Is he in?”

  The woman nodded. Putting the telephone receiver to her ear, she pushed a button and said in a loud voice, “Miss Kane is here, Mr. Plum.”

  From the inner office, whose door was open to the left of the secretary’s desk, came a gruff, “Send her in.”

  Chelsea, who had a strong suspicion that the intercom was either nonfunctional or nonexistent, either of which supported Hunter’s claim of trouble afoot, crossed the planked floor.

  She was no sooner over the threshold than her footsteps began to echo. In contrast with the front room, this one was startlingly bare. There were two straight-back chairs, one austere wooden desk with a telephone on it, and a bookcase filled sparsely with dog-eared files. The walls were a montage of yellowed photographs in cheap black frames, which, had she been alone in the room, Chelsea would have liked to study. But she wasn’t alone. Three men were there. Only one was old enough to be Oliver Plum.

  Her eyes met his.

  “Mr. Plum?”

  Lean, with thinning gray hair combed straight back from a high forehead and a mouth that was ruler straight, Oliver Plum was as stern-looking a man as Chelsea had ever met.

  With the scrape of his chair legs, he slowly straightened his long frame, tucked his hands behind his suspenders, and stared at her.

  She decided against offering her hand. “I’m Chelsea Kane. I’ve come to see the white granite that your company is quarrying.”

  “What you want it for?” he asked in a voice that was steely for a man his age and surprisingly defensive for one in need of the work.

  “I’m designing a building for an insurance company.”

  “Just you?”

  “It’s my design, yes, but I’m part of a firm.”

  “A fancy one with three names.”

  “Fancy? I don’t know. But we’re good.”

  “How good?”

  “The projects keep coming, bigger and better all the time.”

  “And your profits?”

  “Are up. But I didn’t come here to discuss that,” she said. “The fact is that my partners and I use a good deal of granite in our designs. We’re always on the lookout for new sources of supply.”

  “Nothin’ new about Plum Granite,” Oliver argued. “We been around since 1810, gone through seven generations of men. There was a time when we were takin’ stone outta six quarries in three different counties all at once. No, ain’t nothin’ new about us, and you know it. You were gonna use us once before, then you changed your mind.”

  Chelsea had to hand it to him, his memory was sharp. But she wasn’t being put on the defensive. “That’s not quite right, Mr. Plum. We didn’t change our mind. You were never really in the running. Right from the start, your price was too high.”

  “And you think it’s down now? Think again, missy.”

  From the side of the room by a window overlooking the street came a disparaging sound.

  Oliver Plum turned toward the man who’d made it. “You got something to say?”

  “Yeah. We happen to have the best white granite around, and we need the work. Don’t tell her the price’ll be too high. If she likes the stone, we can bargain.”

  The man was Hunter Love. Chelsea recognized his voice. She had expected him to be younger and was surprised to find him close to her own age, though there was a hardness to his features that aged them. His eyes were brown like his hair, which was on the long side and mussed from his helmet, giving him a rebellious look that was reinforced by the gold stud in his ear. He wore jeans and a black shirt, both worn but clean. She guessed him to be just shy of six feet, but where he lagged behind Oliver in height, he matched him in boldness.

  “We can’t afford to bargain,” Oliver growled.

  “We can’t afford not to,” Hunter growled right back.

  “Lower the price and we’ll lose money.”

  “Keep the price up and we’ll lose the job.”

  “We can’t work for nothin’.”

  “No one’s askin’ us to.”

  Chelsea interrupted. “The problem with the price is that the granite has to be cut and polished elsewhere. Why don’t you do it on-site like most of the other companies do?”

  “Costs too much to set up,” Oliver said. He settled back on his heels and stared at her again.

  “Sometimes,” she said, “you have to spend a penny to make a penny.”

  “If you don’t got the penny to start with, you can’t spend it.”

  “You can take out a loan.”

  Oliver shook his head. “George won’t do it. Gov’ment’s on his back about too many loans as ‘tis.”

  “George?” Chelsea asked.

  Hunter said, “Jamieson. His bank’s the one on the green.”

  “He’s the only banker in town?”

  “You got it.”

  “Why can’t you go out of town to a different bank?”

  “Good question. Not new, though.” Hunter gave Oliver a look.

  “Plum Granite banks with Jamieson,” Oliver vowed. “Always has, always will.”

  “So we’ll all go down together,” Hunter warned.

  “No one’s goin’ down. Norwich Notch is solid as a rock.”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Because we stick together.” Oliver faced Hunter and lectured, “There’s three things that touch everyone in this town—the Farrs, the Jamiesons, and the Plums. Someone in every family here works for the Plums, someone in every family here banks with the Jamiesons, and someone in every family here trades with the Farrs. There’s tradition in that, and stability and trust and a whole lot of other things that you’d a picked up in that fancy school you went to, only you were too busy puttin’ jewelry in your ears to use ’em for hearin’. You’re no good, Hunter Love. Got no brains at all. Don’t know why I even bother to keep you around.”

  Chelsea didn’t miss the familiarity of the words and waited for Hunter to lash back. Instead he relaxed against the window frame with his hands tucked under his arms and a small smile tugging at his mouth. Recalling what he’d said about guilt, she suspected that he found satisfaction in goading Oliver. Whether he was right or wrong, she couldn’t say until she knew more.

  Then it hit her that she had no business knowing even as much as she did. Looking back, she couldn’t quite believe the conversation. She was here to inspect granite, not to tell the owner of the company how to run his affairs.

  She fingered her watch. “I hate to say this, gentlemen, but if I don’t take a look at that granite soon, I won’t make it to my other appointments.”

  “Who’re they with?” Oliver asked, shifting disgruntled eyes from Hunter to her.

  Chelsea held no secrets. “Tocci in Amherst, and Petersen in Concord.”

  “Tocci isn’t in granite.”

  “No, he specializes in fieldst
one, but I use a lot of that, too. I wouldn’t have come all this way for just one appointment.” Yes, she was interested in Norwich Notch, but it wasn’t the be-all and end-all of her life. By nightfall she planned to be in Wiscasset, on the coast of Maine, visiting her college roommate.

  “Busy lady,” Oliver muttered. “Take her outta here, Judd,” he said with a wave of his hand, and for a split second, with Oliver regarding her as though she were the bane of his existence, Chelsea felt an odd bonding with Hunter. Then she turned to the third man in the room and forgot about the first two. “Judd Streeter,” Oliver grumbled by way of introduction. “He’s my foreman. He’ll take you to the quarry and show you what you want to see.”

  Up until that moment, Judd Streeter had lounged silently against the bookcase. Now, slowly, he straightened. He was taller than Oliver, darker than Hunter, and while Chelsea doubted he bore an ounce of fat, there was a solidity to him that the other men lacked. His hair was thick, cut so that it looked good even disheveled. Wearing jeans that were damp from the knees down, a blue workshirt, and dirty boots, he appeared to have come from the quarry, but there was nothing tired about his carriage. His movements were fluid as he came forward, the hand he extended strong and callused, and if all that weren’t potent enough, his eyes were dark, deep, and direct in a way that shook Chelsea.

  She had expected a visceral spark when she arrived in the Notch, and that was just what she felt, but with a totally unexpected twist. Judd Streeter was, very simply, the most attractive man she had ever seen. Not necessarily the most handsome or polished or cultured. But startlingly, stunningly male.

  Five

  Chelsea hadn’t intended to phone Carl while she was gone, since one of the purposes of her trip was to give their relationship a break.

  Then she had a change of plans and began to worry that if something happened to Kevin, Carl wouldn’t know where she was. She also felt a need to hear his voice. It was reassuringly familiar. It was amicably predictable. It didn’t unsettle her the way Judd Streeter’s had.

  She let the phone ring ten times before hanging up and trying the office, but if Carl was there working late, he was letting the answering service take the calls. That was at nine. At nine-thirty she tried again, then again at ten. At ten-fifteen he finally answered.

  “Carl,” she breathed in relief, “are you okay?”

  “Hey, Chels, how are you?”

  “I was worried. I’ve been calling since nine.”

  “I played squash. You said you wouldn’t call.”

  “I know. But I just wanted to tell you that I’m still in Norwich Notch. I won’t be going on to Glynnis’s until tomorrow.”

  There was a short silence, then a too casual, “What kept you there?”

  “Actually, I left and came back. I met with Tocci and Petersen, but it’s been raining here, so I couldn’t see the granite as well as I wanted. It’s supposed to clear up by morning. I thought I’d have another look before I head for the coast. Amazing, but the quarrymen keep working in weather like this. It was a mess. Everything was wet and slippery. Apparently the only time they stop is in really cold weather, and then only because the stone doesn’t cleave well.”

  “You felt something, didn’t you?” Carl said with barely a pause.

  She thought of Judd Streeter—of the stomach fluttering she’d felt sitting with him in the cab of his truck, following him into the quarry office, moving beside him from ledge to ledge to examine huge blocks of granite. It was absurd, she knew. Pure fantasy.

  Of course, Carl was asking about her reaction to Norwich Notch. “I don’t know,” she said, trying to be nonchalant. She felt something for the town, but she wasn’t sure what. “It’s hard to feel something for a place that’s so wet.”

  “What’s it like, besides wet?”

  “Small. Quiet. There’s a great general store. I’m at the inn now. It’s in the center of town, overlooking the green. It’s been a stopover for travelers for two hundred years. You’d like it. There’s lots of dark wood and antique furniture.” She looked around as she talked. The place had been nearly as much of a surprise as Farr’s. “The rooms were done over a few years ago. Mine is blue and white with matching wallpaper and drapes. Everything has lots of little flowers, I think the whole town has lots of little flowers. The bed’s a four-poster. It’s Colonial, like the rest of the furniture. There’s a blanket chest and a rolltop desk. There’s even a cheval glass.”

  “Sounds pretty.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “How about the people? Anyone look familiar?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Anyone stare at you?”

  “Only because I’m a stranger. I had dinner in the restaurant downstairs. I put a pair of slacks on instead of my skirt, and I still felt overdressed.”

  He chuckled at that, seeming to relax. “How was the granite?”

  “Nice, from what I could see of it. I’ll see more tomorrow. I’m also stopping at the plant in Nashua that polishes the stone from the Plum quarries. The color may be just right for my job, but I want to be sure. White with a touch of gray is okay. Not so, white with a touch of pink.”

  “What about the cost?”

  “It may be negotiable. They’re hungry for business.”

  “Can they produce in quantity and on deadline?”

  She hesitated. “I’m not sure. There are money problems. The company hasn’t kept pace with the times in terms of equipment or output.”

  “Do you think they’ll fold?”

  If so, they wouldn’t be the first. That was one of the things Chelsea had picked up from her waitress at dinner—not Matthew Farr’s Shelby, but a girl named Jenny, who looked to be no more than nineteen and had a way of rounding her eyes for emphasis when she talked. And talk she did. Chelsea, who was a slow riser in the morning and needed silence through two cups of coffee, prayed that the girl didn’t work the breakfast shift.

  This being dinner, she had absorbed all the girl said with interest. Now she told Carl, “Two other granite producers in the state have folded in the last five years, so there’s plenty of work for Plum Granite if it can win the contracts. Unfortunately, the owner is a cantankerous old man. He turns most people off.”

  “But not you.”

  “He’s just another challenge.”

  “Like learning who your birth parents are.”

  Chelsea could have sworn she heard sarcasm. She wondered if she’d imagined it, if she was simply feeling guilty. But she refused to lie. “Yes. Like that.”

  “Have you asked around?”

  She had driven by the Norwich Notch Community Hospital. No matter that Kevin had said she’d been delivered at home by a midwife, there was always the possibility that her mother had seen a doctor before or after the birth. The hospital was in a big, old Victorian, past a covered bridge west of town. She had stopped the car and looked, then driven on. Likewise, she had noted the names of the town’s five lawyers but hadn’t called a one.

  “I told you, Carl. I didn’t come for that.”

  “Come on, Chels. It’s me.”

  “I didn’t come for that.”

  “But I bet you’ll like that granite,” he teased.

  “By rights I should hate it,” she grumbled. “Someone in this town didn’t want me enough to keep me. It’d be fair play if I rejected the town’s granite.” Strangely her anger died there, leaving her as curious as ever about Norwich Notch. Using granite from the town could give her a reason to return until her curiosity was appeased. “If the color looks right, it might be worth considering.”

  “Even if the company is shaky?”

  “No. But I don’t know that for sure. That’s why I want you to call Bob Mahoney.” Bob was a lawyer who’d done work for Harper, Kane, Koo in the past. “He’ll be able to get information on the financial situation here.” He was also an acquisitions specialist, which Carl knew only too well.

  Quietly he said, “You’re not seriously thinking of that.
”

  “Not until I know more about the company.”

  “Not even then,” he declared in disbelief. “We can’t buy a granite company.”

  It was the wrong thing to say to Chelsea, who had spent her life doing the improbable. “Why not?” she asked.

  “Because we know nothing about quarrying.”

  “We knew nothing about soccer until we designed a stadium. We’re still making money on that one, Carl.”

  “But granite?”

  “It’s right up our alley. We use it all the time. Just think of the bargains we’d get for our clients.”

  “Uh-huh, which would be money out of our pockets if we’re the suppliers, but that’s beside the point. You just said that the company is behind the times in terms of equipment. Do you have any idea how much money would be involved updating the operation?”

  “No. That’s another thing I want Bob to find out.”

  “Don’t you think he ought to find out if the company’s for sale?”

  “Uh-huh. That, too.”

  Carl sighed. “You’re incredible.”

  She grinned. “I love you, too, babe.”

  “Not incredibly good. Incredibly bad. We’re not buying into a company in rural New Hampshire.”

  “We’ve bought into companies in worse places,” she reminded him in a good-natured way. “We don’t have to live here to own a piece of the action.”

  “We’re not buying into a granite company.”

  “Why not?” Her grin faded. “Because it’s in Norwich Notch? Are you as threatened by this place as my father is?”

  “No,” he said calmly. “I just don’t think it’s a wise business move.”

  “How can you say that before you know the facts?”

  “It’ll cost us money to get the facts.”

  “I’ll pay. Just me.”

  “But why?” he asked, agitated again.

  Chelsea had no answers. She didn’t know what she’d do with a granite company. She didn’t know what she’d do with Norwich Notch. All she knew was that she was drawn to the town and that the thought of having a material connection to it gave her comfort. There were people here, some pleasant, some not so, but all different from the people at home. If she was affiliated with the granite company, she might come to know them better. In time she might even produce the silver key on its frayed ribbon. Someone might recognize it, even claim it.