“Hi, Emma. Great to see you!”
At the voice coming from the hot stranger, she looked up. He was tall, lanky, with work-rough hands and long eyelashes. She had the disconcerting thought that she should know him but couldn’t quite place his face.
She narrowed her gaze. “I’m sorry. I’ve been gone from town for a few years. Do I know you?”
“Bryce!” Her mother’s voice from behind her drew the guy’s attention and he straightened, smiling broadly. Emma suddenly knew exactly who he was.
Bryce Kendall.
The man who currently had everything she wanted.
Rosie hurried forward, her features bright with pleasure. Ethan was nowhere in sight and Emma assumed he had resumed stocking shelves.
“I didn’t know you were coming into the bookstore today,” Rosie exclaimed. “I’m so happy to see you. This is my granddaughter.”
“Of course she is. I immediately recognized her from the many, many,manypictures you have on your desk. Hi, Olive. I’m Bryce and I work with your grandmother.”
“My grandma builds houses.”
“I know. So do I. And offices and stores and restaurants sometimes.”
Her mother wore a proud expression but Emma couldn’t tell if it was directed at Olive or Bryce.
“I guess you know Emma,” she said. “You were in the same grade at school, right?”
“Only because I graduated a year early and Bryce was held back a year.”
As soon as Emma said the bitchy words, she regretted them. They made her sound like a spoiled, surly child in the playground, kicking sand all over someone else’s bigger and better sandcastle.
“Sorry,” she muttered.
He gave a cool smile that didn’t quite hide the tiny glimmer of emotion in his hazel eyes.
She couldn’t tell Bryce or her mother the reason for her pettiness, that she was fiercely jealous of his role as her mother’s trusted second-in-command at Lucas Construction.
How had that happened, anyway? It still made no sense to her.
Bryce had been the class clown, always causing trouble. Though mostly annoying, he used to make her laugh the way no one else ever could.
Yet now, at twenty-seven, he was a respected builder whom her mother seemed to trust above all others.
Grandma Sylvia had mentioned to her a few months ago that Rosie expected Bryce to one day take over running the company.
Not if Emma could help it.
Lucas Construction was her family’s legacy. Not Bryce’s.
Her father had fought hard to build it from the ground up to the well-respected business it was today. Going on job sites with him had been her favorite thing in the world. She used to love handing him nails, helping him clean up the site or simply sitting beside him, chattering away about whatever came to mind.
She wanted in at Lucas Construction. While running the bookstore would do in the short term, eventually she wanted to prove to her mother she was capable of handling the responsibilities of a big operation like Lucas Construction.
“What brings you to the bookstore?” Rosie asked Bryce, her features bright with affection. At forty-five, she was still as lovely as ever, Emma realized with some degree of shock.
“You know me. I love to check out the new releases and sometimes Sundays are my only chance.”
“I wouldn’t have taken you for much of a reader,” Emma said. “We had English together both our junior and senior year and if I’m remembering correctly, it wasn’t your favorite subject.”
“I love books, but not really reading them.”
