Page 11 of Her Property

“No.”

“Oh?” She sounded surprised.

“I’m starting up a new camp for kids in trouble. A place for them to get help in a supportive and natural setting. For them to have fun, when not a lot of them have fun in their lives.”

He wasn’t sure he’d ever explained it so succinctly before. But it worked.

“Oh,” she said. “Do you have experience with kids like that?”

A nerve jolted in Jake’s stomach and he remembered that no matter how much he wanted to trust her, he had no idea if he could. “Why do you want to know?” he asked, hating the suspicion in his tone. But she had to know he’d be wary.

“Curiosity,” she said, without missing a beat. Her voice was harder now—that lawyer at the front door voice he’d heard earlier.

He glanced over at her, but she was looking straight ahead.

“I don’t know what’s happening between you and Alfred, and honestly, I have no interest in getting involved. So if you don’t want to tell me, that’s fine. I don’t really care. I just think it’s a good idea.”

Her words were softened by the bit at the end, which of course he agreed with. The tightness that had come over his body loosened. “Man, I’d hate to be your victim in the courtroom.”

“You would,” she said, sitting up straight.

But was that a smile he saw tugging at the corner of her mouth?

Jake grinned.

They rounded another corner and the sign for Lakeview Lumber rose from the trees. The lumber yard was at the edge of Barkley Falls.

“So what are you doing out here on Ruby Lake?” he asked, wanting to shift the attention from himself.

Catherine seemed to stiffen a little in her seat again. “I’m on vacation,” she said, her voice tight again.

He’d struck some kind of nerve.

“You don’t sound like someone on vacation.”

She pinched her lips together. “It’s not exactly by choice. Alfred thinks I’ve been ‘overdoing it’. I made a… mistake, recently, and he sent me here for a couple of weeks.”

“Sounds awful,” Jake said, trying to keep the smile out of his voice. He didn’t think she’d take too kindly to him teasing her.

“It is! He kept my phone, my laptop, all my case files. I guess he doesn’t trust that I wouldn’t be able to relax without them.”

“Is he right?”

Catherine went to fold her arms, then remembered her hand in the towel again. She dropped her hands into her lap, letting out a sound of exasperation. “Sure, he’s right. But we’re in the middle of a trial. He needs me! Two weeks is ridiculous. It could cost us this case.”

“What did you do?” Jake asked.

She looked over at him too quickly, but said nothing.

“That bad, huh?”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

“Mattered enough to get you sent up to this hellhole,” he said, glancing out the windows at Barkley Falls’ pretty Main Street. Baskets of autumn foliage hung from the street lamps, and some shops had already begun decorating for Christmas.

“Okay, it’s pretty up here, I just… I have things to do back in the city, you know?”

Jake knew. He knew all about what it was like to have no time for anything but his own life. Up ahead, the medical center’s neon sign shone brightly. “You could try to relax, you know. While you’re here.”

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