Love's Paradise (8 page)

“Yeah, I remember,” she interrupted quickly. “It was in Haymarket near the battlefield. A developer wanted to build homes and they found artifacts on the property.”

“Exactly, and it turned into a public relations nightmare. We lost millions of dollars in funding. If we make the wrong move here, this will blow up in our faces.”

“But we have to do something.”

“We will, we will. I'm just not all that sure what it might be at this point. Let me confer with a few
people here and see what we can come up with. Just hold on, do nothing for right now.”

“How long will it take?”

“I don't know, a week, perhaps two or more.”

“Jack…” she began.

“Sheri, don't worry, I got this. I'll take care of it.”

That's when she started worrying. She knew there was going to be a delay. She'd run into situations like this with him before. He was useless when it came to actually doing something to help. When Jack didn't want to deal with something, he would just let the situation fester, ignore it as if it hadn't happened and hope for the best. It was a ridiculous way to manage museums, but when your mother sits on the board of directors and you have no professional qualifications for the post, ignoring it was the best he could do. “All right, thanks, Jack. Please keep me in the loop on this.”

“Sure, sure, we'll talk later.”

Sheri hung up and sighed heavily. It looked like Genie was right. With Jack at the helm, this was going to turn into a bureaucratic nightmare. He had no idea what it meant to love art and history and what it meant to want to preserve the past. All he cared about was impressing the higher-ups, coming in under budget and making as few waves as possible in the process.

It was obvious she needed some kind of backup
plan. But right now she had no idea what she was going to do or how she was going to do it. She looked up at the computer monitor. It had gone to sleep. She pressed a key on her keyboard and went back to work knowing she'd come up with something, even if it took her the rest of the afternoon. Much to her dismay, it did and she still had no plan.

As usual Sheri stayed late. She worked on some paperwork, but she also searched the internet for similar cases where artifacts were found on private property. Not surprisingly, she found quite a few, but none of them offered any promising resolutions. But she had no intention of giving up. She glanced at her watch. It was getting late and she had a stop to make before heading home.

S
heri left her office and hurried across the street. She looked up at the Rantone Building as she approached. Named after her grandfather, an influential and very popular public figure, the building housed the offices of the city supervisors.

The idea of going to her former stepfather occurred to her earlier, but she decided against it. Now, she figured, why not give it a try? Nolan Chambers was the chairman of the city council. Surely he could do something to help. After all it was the council who initially gave Hamilton Development the green light to build the resort after they purchased the property. They confirmed and
approved his blueprints and inspections, so perhaps he would help her get on the property and get samples to test. She definitely needed to ask him.

She got to the front door. It was a little after six, but she knew he'd still be in. He never left before seven o'clock. She signed in at the security desk and headed upstairs to Nolan's office. She knew most of the supervisors would be gone by now, but she hoped he'd still be there. She walked into the reception area of Nolan's office and looked around. No one was there, but she heard movement in the back office. “Hello?” she called out, seeing his office door still open and the lights on.

His assistant, Lori, came out of his office with a small watering can and a handful of dead leaves. “Hey, hi, Sheri,” she said, surprised to see her there. “What are you doing here?”

Sheri had only been to her stepfather's office twice in the five years he and her mother had been married. Each time she'd been there to see her mother, but not this time. “Hi, Lori, I was hoping to catch Nolan before he went home. Is he still in the office?” she asked, noticing that the door was open and the lights were on.

“No, he's been in a meeting all day in Richmond.”

“Do you know if he's coming back here or going home after Richmond?” Sheri asked.

“He's supposed to come back here later. At least
that's what he said. He called as he was waiting for the ferry to say he was on his way. That was about fifteen minutes ago.”

Sheri looked at her watch. She knew she was better off trying to catch up with him here. “Do you mind if I wait for him?”

“No, help yourself,” Lori said. “I'm headed out for the day.” Sheri nodded and watched her water the small, nearly dying plant on her desk and then put the watering can on the floor under her desk. She turned off her desktop computer and grabbed her purse from the lower drawer. “Okay, I'm headed out. He shouldn't be too long getting here. As I said he called about fifteen minutes ago. If he's not here by the time you need to leave, just turn the latch on your way out. The door locks automatically.”

“Okay, have a good weekend.”

Sheri took a seat in the reception area as Lori came around to the front of the desk and grabbed her jacket from the peg behind the door. “You can wait in his private office if you want. But just do me a favor, don't touch his computer. He gets really pissed when people touch his computer.”

“I won't,” Sheri promised faithfully.

“See ya later.”

“Okay, bye,” Sheri said. A few minutes later Lori left and Sheri was sitting in the office alone with a stack of political magazines on the desk in front of her. She picked one up, flipped through it
quickly and then placed it back exactly as she found it. There were a few brochures—Welcome to Crescent Island and See Our Growth—also on the desk. She grabbed one of each, opened them and looked through them. They were the typical tourism brochures she'd seen a dozen times before. The only difference was that these had a personal message from Nolan, the chairman of the board of supervisors.

He wrote about the beauty of the island and extolled its many treasures. It also went on to give his personal account of growing up here, which she thought was rather odd since he spent most of his life in Southern California. But that was Nolan. It was all about perception to him. He was a businessman, a politician and for the past three years her former stepfather.

When her father had died her mother was devastated. Having three young children to raise, she quickly remarried. It lasted two years. Sheri didn't even remember his name. Her mother remained single until she met Nolan. They fell in love and married. Nolan moved to the island and his political career blossomed. To his credit, Sheri believed he really had been in love with her mother.

She glanced up at the numerous awards, plaques and citations covering his walls. The office was like a shrine to Nolan's civic-mindedness. She stood, walked around and started reading a few. Noting
the dates, most had been awarded within the past few years. It was obvious this was what Nolan treasured in life. Like her mother, appearances were everything to him. A person could be the most despicable being on the planet, but as long as they maintained a sense of propriety they were considered socially acceptable.

She opened the other brochure and saw all the projects the board of supervisors had planned for the future. There were several new cell phone towers, new stores and boutiques and, of course, expansion of the resort. It appeared that the quiet island she knew was all of a sudden changing. Recently she'd noticed that the outside world was beginning to corrupt the quaint little island that she loved so much. The evidence was all around her, coffee shop chains and fast-food restaurants were replacing the small-town, mom-and-pop businesses that once thrived in Crescent Island.

“Change,” she whispered softly to herself. It seemed now everyone wanted a piece of the action. Land developers like Jordan Hamilton were carving up her hometown like a piece of pie. Each one took a bigger and bigger slice, leaving little or nothing for those who had cherished Crescent Island for decades.

She thought about the work site earlier today. The Hamilton Resort Complex was one of Nolan's new initiatives. She knew there would be more
projects like them and more men like Jordan Hamilton. He was everything she despised about what was going on here. To him Crescent Island was just another sand pile to dig up, build his castle and move on. He came to make money and had no feeling and no connection to the island.

Her thoughts drifted to what she and Genie had talked about as they drove back to the museum. She had downplayed it, of course, but he really was gorgeous. Genie was right. The man exuded pure sex appeal. Everything about him screamed take me home and do me all night. A shiver shot through her as her stomach fluttered at the thought. She smiled as several uncharacteristic thoughts and images floated through her mind. Her mouth watered just thinking about him. She quickly caught herself. Maybe Genie was right. Maybe it had been too long.

 

Jordan parked his car and walked toward the city office building. He was feeling good—no, better than good. He cleverly avoided seeing Mamma Lou by asking Cleveland to go to Gates Manor and pick up the papers for Darius. Cleveland picked them up and delivered them to him with no problem. Jordan knew it was cowardly, but he did it anyway. Mamma Lou's matchmaking efforts had been avoided, and he was feeling fantastic.

He walked into the building, signed his name at
the security desk and then continued up to Nolan's office. He knew he had to fix this. But having politicians dictate to him what he could and couldn't do always irritated him. He looked at his watch as he opened the door and walked into the reception area. Lori, who was usually at her desk, wasn't there now. He looked around to see that Nolan's office door was open. He walked over and went in. The first thing he saw was a woman standing across the room staring at the wall.

Apparently she didn't hear him enter since she didn't turn around. He stood in the doorway watching silently as she examined one of the framed certificates on the wall. He wondered what could be so interesting. Then his gaze leisurely eased down her body and caressed the curvy silhouette of her body. He knew it wasn't Lori. Lori was much shorter and rounder and this woman, whoever she was, had the perfect shape for him. The roundness of her rear accentuated the slim, fitted skirt she wore. It stopped just above her knee, leaving much to his imagination. She had a narrow waist with long, luscious wraparound legs. No, this was definitely someone new. He smiled at the possibilities.

But oddly enough, after having many meetings with the supervisors over the past six to eight months, it was strange that he'd never seen her here before. Then he decided that perhaps she was new or maybe associated with another part of city gov
ernment. He smiled. There was only one way to find out. “Good afternoon, I have an appointment with Nolan Chambers.”

Sheri turned around. Her jaw dropped. Standing there in front of her was the man she'd just been fantasizing about. Her gaze dropped down the full length of his body. Clothes, body, face, everything was the same. Her eyes widened in surprise. It was like she had conjured him up out of thin air.

“You!”

His smile faded then broadened a split second later into what looked like utter pleasure.

“You,” she repeated.

She watched as he walked casually into the room. His easy too-masculine swagger gave him an air of laid-back authority and homeboy arrogance. He stopped in the middle of the room and looked around. Apparently seeing that they were alone he continued toward her. She stood her ground.

“You know you have a way of saying that word and making it sound like I just stole your Halloween candy,” he said.

He seemed a lot taller, broader, stronger and—heaven help her—sexier than she remembered. Whoa, where did that come from? A quick flash of heat shot through her body. Her mouth went dry and her stomach fluttered nonstop. Sexier, what was she thinking?

“What are you doing here?” she whispered
almost accusingly, hoping to quickly cool the hot lava surging through her body. He licked his lips. Her knees nearly buckled. Correction, what was she thinking with?

“I already answered that question. I have an appointment with Nolan this evening. What are you doing here?” he asked. “I thought you said you worked for the museum, that you were a curator.”

“I said I was the museum's historian, not the curator.”

“So what's the museum's historian doing here in the office of the chairman of the board of supervisors?” He paused a moment then realized the answer. “Don't tell me it's got something to do with that hole in the ground at the work site.”

She glared at him without answering. He walked over and sat down on the arm of the sofa. The dynamics of their physical positions changed. Now they were nearly eye to eye. He'd had sunglasses on earlier, so this was the first time she actually saw his eyes. They were dark and dangerously sexy.

“So you're here to do what, somehow force me to allow you onto my property? Or do you intend to just shut me down?”

She moved closer to him standing at arm's length from him. “If you weren't so arrogant you'd see that a find of this magnitude could benefit both of us.”

“Really, now how would shutting down my work site, putting over fifty hardworking men and
woman out of work, delaying shipments and deliveries and pretty much costing me a small fortune benefit me?”

“I would never shut the whole work site down. I'm only interested in the small area on the side where the hole is located. There isn't much going on there anyway.”

“At the moment, no there isn't. That's why I have the workers clearing that area, so that we can begin working.”

“So, you are going to build something there.”

He nodded. “That's the plan.”

“It's a good thing plans can change.”

“Not this time,” he said quickly.

“We'll see,” she snapped right back.

Jordan smiled again. He was beginning to like this. She had spirit. He liked that, too. “I suppose that means you intend to get the board of supervisors to renege on their contract with me.” She didn't respond. He shook his head. “That's not how business works, sweetheart. But I am interested in one thing—what exactly do you expect to gain from all this?”

Sheri was instantly insulted but had no intention of being intimidated. “This isn't about personal gain, Mr. Hamilton. Not everybody has an agenda or blind ambition. And don't call me sweetheart.”

“Yes, granted, I am ambitious. Most people are unless they're fooling themselves. I'm guessing
you're ambitious as well. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be here. But the difference is my ambition doesn't get in the way of my ethics.”

She felt his words sting. “If that's the case then you'll allow me to test the wood samples in the hole. That's all I'm asking. It's that simple.”

“Take off the rose-colored glasses, Ms. Summers. Do you really think it's that simple? If there is something down there then the land could be seized and months of hard work and millions of dollars circles down the drain. Over fifty workers, dozens of vendors and subcontractors would have lost their jobs. So no, I can't allow that.”

“You don't know that for sure and I can't imagine that would even happen.”

He chuckled. “Let's just say I have firsthand knowledge and a lot of experience with situations like this. So trust me when I tell you, it's never that simple.”

“It's only about that one space, not the whole property,” she insisted. “It should be about what's right.”

“Right for whom?” he asked quietly.

She immediately thought about the protective order her uncle would be signing Friday evening. She smiled. It was only a matter of time. By Monday she'd have her test samples. “You really don't get it, do you?”

“Look, I don't want to do this with you. Why
don't we call a truce and go grab a drink. I believe I still owe you one.”

The man was infuriating. “Don't patronize me.”

“I wouldn't think of it. You appear to be a very intelligent woman. I admire that.”