“You are losing it, Victoria,” she muttered aloud. “It’s barely 8:00 a.m. No man, however enchanted he might be, is likely to call at that hour, and Tate McAndrews did not seem the least bit enchanted.” She paused thoughtfully, recalling those one or two looks that could have sizzled bacon to a crisp. She shook her head and dismissed them. “Uh-uh. The man thinks you are a certifiable nut. There is a very good chance he will not call at all…unless he remembers his jacket or decides to haul you in for income tax evasion. Forget about him.”
Deep down she knew this was good advice. She also knew she wasn’t likely to follow it. Unfortunately romantics never listened to their heads. Lancelot, who had finished his breakfast and retreated to the windowsill for his morning sunbath, meowed softly as though in complete agreement with her analysis of the absurdity of her behavior.
“Oh, shut up, cat! Don’t you start on me,” she grumbled irritably, slamming down her teacup and grabbing the morning paper. She turned the pages with a vengeance that caused more than one of them to tear. When the phone shrilled a moment later, she jumped nervously and stared at it, almost afraid to pick it up.
“Hello,” she said at last, her voice soft, low and unintentionally sexy.
“Victoria? Is that you? You sound like you have a cold.”
“Oh. Hi, Mom,” she said, unconsciously trading sexiness for disappointed grumpiness.
“My goodness, that’s certainly a cheerful greeting. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothing,” she denied, trying to inject a little spirit into her voice before her mother rushed over with chicken soup and parental advice. “I’m fine. What’s up?”
“I was just wondering if you’d like a little company at the shop today. I haven’t seen you in a while.”
“Three days.”
“Well, it seems like longer.”
Victoria chuckled. She knew how her mother loved to help out at the shop. She enjoyed meeting the people, and she absolutely loved haggling with them over a price. She said it made up for the frustration of having to pay outrageous prices without question in the local stores.
“Come on over, Mom. I should be there about ten.”
“Why don’t I stop by and pick you up? There’s no point in driving two cars.”
“I gather you’re planning to spend the day?” Victoria teased.
Katherine Marshall refused to rise to the bait. “I thought I might as well. Your father had to go up to Columbus on business, and you did say you wanted to do some refinishing work in the back on that new washstand you bought last week.”
“Why don’t you say it, Mom?”
“Say what?”
“That you think you’re better at the business side of running the shop than I am.”
“Dear, surely even you must agree that you are a bit casual about making the best possible deal. I swear, sometimes I think you’d give something away just because someone admired it.”
“I like my pieces to go to people who’ll treasure them,” she said defensively. “Not just to the highest bidder.”
“Hasn’t it ever occurred to you that the highest bidder must like something very much to pay so dearly for it?”
“I suppose. But it seems so…”
“Businesslike?”
“Okay, okay. You’ve made your point,” Victoria said, wishing her mother didn’t sound quite so much like Tate McAndrews. She had a feeling if the two of them ever joined forces, her life would become a boring, organized regimen of computerized bookkeeping. The very thought made her shudder. “If you promise to drop the lecture, you can come on over and pick me up.”
“I’ll be there in a few minutes,” her mother replied tartly. “But I won’t promise to keep my mouth shut.”
She hung up before Victoria could respond.
As Victoria dressed in a pair of oversized, paint-splattered coveralls appropriate for the refinishing work she needed to do, she thought about her shop. Located just outside of town in the front of a large, converted barn, it had been open less than a year. She’d started the venture at her parents’ enthusiastic urging. She’d accumulated so many interesting odds and ends at garage and farm sales that she’d run out of space to store them. In fact, her parents’ garage had become so cluttered that for three months in the dead of a very snowy winter they’d been unable to get their car inside. At first they had dutifully admired the battered, scratched treasures she had dragged home. But after digging the car out of snowdrifts more than once, they had begun dropping subtle hints that these wonderful finds of hers would look much better “someplace where they could be displayed to advantage. Perhaps even sold.”
The idea of selling something she’d discovered in a dusty old attic or in the back corner of some other shop had vaguely disturbed Victoria. She’d bought these things because she’d loved each and every one of them. Only after her mother had reminded her that she couldn’t very well afford to hoard every antique in southern Ohio had she agreed to consider the idea. The more she’d thought about it, the better she had liked it.
Once the plan had taken hold in her mind, she went about it with her usual high-spirited enthusiasm, spending a small inheritance from her grandmother to rent the perfect, old, unused barn on the Logan property and to renovate it. At first she’d only been open on weekends, continuing to teach history during the week. Soon she had quit her job at the high school and kept the shop open Tuesdays through Sundays. Her mother willingly filled in whenever she needed to go to an auction or wanted to take some time off.
“Victoria!” Her mother’s shouted greeting broke into her reverie.
“I’ll be down in a minute, Mom.” She ran a brush hurriedly through her hair, then twisted it into a loose knot on top of her head. Golden-red curls promptly escaped in every direction. She tried taming a few of them, then gave it up as a lost cause. “So, I look like Little Orphan Annie. I’m going to refinish a washstand, not try out for Miss Ohio.”
When she ran down the stairs and skidded to a halt in the kitchen a few minutes later, her mother was holding Tate’s jacket out in front of her as though it were a live snake.
“This is not your father’s,” she said emphatically.
Victoria couldn’t help grinning at her puzzled expression. “Nope,” she said, opening the door of the refrigerator and sticking her head inside to scout around for some yogurt to take along for lunch.
“Victoria!”
She peeked around the side of the door. “Yes, Mother?”
“Whose jacket is this?”
Somehow Victoria did not want to explain about the IRS audit or about Tate. Her mother would want to hire an entire office of attorneys to defend her, and she wasn’t quite up to fighting with her about it. “A friend’s,” she replied vaguely, sticking her head back in the refrigerator. She wasn’t sure how long she could spend deciding between black cherry and lemon yogurt, but she was hoping it would be enough time to chill her mother’s questions.
“What friend?”
She sighed. Obviously, her mother did not intend to drop the topic until her curiosity had been fully satisfied. Victoria gave up the idea of hiding and slammed the refrigerator door. Her nose had been getting cold anyway. “A man, Mother.”
“I can tell it’s a man, young lady. What are you trying to hide? Are you involved with someone? Is it serious? Why haven’t your father and I met him?”
“Mother, I only met him myself yesterday.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “You only met this man