Yesterday's Love

“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 yesterday, and he’s already leaving clothes lying around your house?”

“It is not what it seems.”

Katherine Marshall looked at her skeptically. “Are you quite sure?”

“Now you sound disappointed, Mother. Are you that anxious to be rid of me?”

“I am not anxious to be rid of you. I would like to see you settle down with some nice, sensible young man who could take care of you.”

The description certainly fit Tate, but Victoria was not about to get her mother’s hopes up. Given the slightest provocation, her mother was capable of planning maneuvers that would terrify and subdue an entire company of marines, much less a lone IRS agent. “I do not need someone to take care of me. I have a home—”

“Such as it is.”

Victoria shot her a reproachful glance. “I have a business—”

“Which you run like a front yard lemonade stand.”

“And I have my friends—”

“Who are all nuttier than you are.”

“Mother, I’m so glad you are on my side.”

Katherine Marshall beamed at her, ignoring her sarcastic tone. “You should be dear. But I won’t be around forever, and I’d like to know there’s someone who’ll look after you and keep you out of mischief when I’m gone.”

“You’re healthier than I am, so I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about today. Now could we drop this subject and get over to the shop? You may be missing a sale.”

“Oh, dear. Of course, you’re right.” She put the jacket back on the chair. “But Victoria, I want you to promise me that you’ll bring this young man of yours over to meet your father and me.”

“Mother, I solemnly swear that if this man ever becomes my young man, you and Dad will be the first to hear. Just so you know, though, you will not have the power of a veto.” Not that that was likely, she thought dryly.

When they pulled into the driveway at the shop a few minutes later, the young man in question was pacing around the barn much to her amazement and dismay. His very neat and very flattering navy pin-striped suit looked totally out of place in the rural setting. Victoria wondered curiously if he even owned a pair of blue jeans. Then she caught sight of the mud caked on his expensive leather shoes and winced. If Tate planned to keep up these visits, he obviously needed to get a new, more practical wardrobe before he destroyed the one he had.

“Is that the young man?” Katherine Marshall hissed, as her daughter opened the car door and got out. Victoria rolled her eyes heavenward. These were not the circumstances she’d had in mind for a second meeting with Tate McAndrews.

“Do you always show up for work an hour late?” he was demanding irritably, a scowl on his handsome face.

“I have an ‘in’ with the owner,” she responded tartly, as she unlocked the door and stalked inside.

“That is no way to—”

“Run a business,” Katherine Marshall chimed in. “I’ve been telling her that very thing myself. Hello. I’m Victoria’s mother.”

She held out her hand and waited expectantly. Tate took it, then looked in amazement from this trim, tidy woman with the firm handshake and no-nonsense style to Victoria in another one of her outrageous getups. He’d never have believed it. This woman seemed perfectly…normal. She would never keep her bills in shopping bags.

“Tate McAndrews,” he told her. “I’m from—”

“Tate is a friend from Cincinnati,” Victoria interrupted quickly, shooting him a warning glance. “I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”

“I needed to talk to you about—”

“Dinner.”

“Oh, is Victoria making you dinner tonight, Tate?” Katherine Marshall asked cheerfully. “How lovely. Why don’t the two of you drop by the house for dessert?”

“Mother!”

“We’d love to, Mrs. Marshall.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Victoria snapped at him, marching into the back room with Tate trailing after her.

“What’s wrong with you? I was just trying to be polite.”

“Don’t you realize that if we go over there for dessert tonight, my mother will have the church reserved by next weekend? She already thinks we’re involved,” she told him, her brows lifting significantly. “That’s in capital letters, by the way.”

“Involved?” Tate repeated, his expression completely baffled. “You mean…?” His eyes widened as the implication finally registered. “Why on earth would she think that?”

“Your jacket.”

“My jacket?” Tate was getting that spinning sensation in his head again.

“You left it in the kitchen. My mother, the protector of my virtue, found it there this morning. She’s assumed the worst.”

Tate burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. “You’re kidding!”

“I do not kid about matters such as marriage and murder, particularly when they’re my own.”

“Can we expect to find your father on the front porch with a shotgun?”

Victoria gave him a withering glance. “Okay,” she warned. “Make fun of me. But I’m telling you, before you know it, that woman in there is going to have you marching down the aisle.”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.