He responded to the suggestion with a nonchalant twitch of his lips. “I don’t know about that, but you’re welcome to try.” Leaning over, he slit the carton open with a single-edged blade, set the blade back on the counter and pulled the flaps up. “Go ahead. I’m listening.”
He was wearing the same plaid shirt he’d been wearing that morning, only he’d paired it with jeans. They fit his lean hips so familiarly that his shoulders looked broad. She hadn’t expected that. She had thought he’d be spindly under his corduroy blazer. She had also thought he’d be weak, but from the looks of the carton he’d been carrying—and the fact that, though sweaty, he wasn’t winded in the least—she’d been wrong. She could see strength in his forearms, in his shoulders, in the denim-sheathed legs that straddled the box as he began to unload it.
Straightening with an armful of books, he looked at her. “I’m listening,” he said again, and the mild derision in his eyes wasn’t to be mistaken. Only when she saw it, though, did she realize something else.
“You’re not wearing your glasses.” She’d never seen him without them before, had simply assumed they were a constant.
“They get in the way sometimes.”
“Don’t you need them to see?”
“When I’m reading. Or driving. Or thinking of doing either.” Turning away, he hunkered down by a low riser near the cash register and began to stack the books, turning one right, then one left, alternating until his arms were empty. When he was finished and stood, she realized yet another thing. Though he wasn’t tall by the standards of men like Carter Malloy and Gideon Lowe, in relation to her own five foot two, he was long. She guessed him to be just shy of six feet.
“Something wrong?” he asked with maddening calm.
She felt a warm flush creep up from her neck, all the more disconcerting because she wasn’t normally one to blush. Rarely did things take her by surprise the way John Sawyer’s physical presence had. “No, no. It’s just that you look so different. I’m not sure that if I’d walked in here cold, I’d have connected you with the man at the bank.”
He considered that for a minute, then shrugged. “Different circumstances. That’s all. I’m still the same guy you’re gonna have to give a slew of damn good reasons to before I’ll agree that those condominiums should be priced out of sight.”
His words stiffened her spine, counteracting any softening she’d felt. “Out of sight? A million dollars would be out of sight. Not six hundred thousand.”
“You were arguing for six-fifty to seven-fifty.”
“The local market supports that.”
He held her gaze without a blink. “Are there any other condominiums—not single-family homes, but condominiums—selling in that range around here?”
She didn’t have to check her listings. At any given time, she knew the market like the back of her hand. “No, but only because there haven’t been any built that would qualify. Crosslyn Rise does. It’s spectacular.”
He rubbed the bridge of his nose. “Is that reason to price it so high that no one will be able to enjoy it?”
“Plenty of people will be able to enjoy it.”
“Not at that price, and if the condos don’t sell, you can kiss the shops goodbye. No merchant—least of all me—wants to open up in a ghost town.”
“It wouldn’t be a ghost town,” Nina scoffed, but softly. He’d raised a good point, namely the connection between sales of the condos and success in renting out the shops. Granted, the shops would hardly be relying on the residents alone; none would survive without the patronage of the public, for which purpose public access had been carefully planned. But the public wouldn’t be coming to shop if the rest of the place looked deserted.
Returning to his carton, John bent over and filled his arms a second time with books.
Helpless to look away, Nina noticed the way his dark hair fell across his neck, the way the plaid shirt—darkened in random dots of sweat—stretched across his back, the way his fingers closed around book after book. Those fingers were long and blunt tipped. Rather than being delicate, as she’d have assumed a bookworm’s to be, they looked as sturdy as the rest of him. She had the sudden impression that his laid-back manner hid a forbidding toughness. If so, she could be in for trouble.
Wanting to avoid that, she gave a little. “Okay. We could set a limit at seven. The smaller units could be in the low sixes, the larger ones closer to six-ninety-five.”
John gathered books into his arms until he couldn’t hold any more, then moved to the riser and arranged a second pile beside the first.
“John?”
“You’re still a hundred grand too high. There’s no need to price gouge.”
“There’s need to make a profit. That’s the name of the game.”
“Maybe your game,” he said complacently, and returned for a third load.
“And not yours? I don’t believe that for a minute. You put your own good money into the consortium, and from what I hear, there isn’t a whole lot more where that came from.”
One book was stacked on another. He neither broke the rhythm nor looked up from his work.
“The only reason,” she said slowly, hoping that maybe a man who spoke slowly needed to hear slowly in order to comprehend, “why a man stakes the bulk of his savings on a single project is if he feels he has a solid chance of getting a good return.”
John straightened with the last of the books. “Exactly.”
She waited for him to go on. When he simply turned and began arranging a third pile by the first two, she moved closer. “The higher we price these units, the greater your return will be. The difference of a hundred-thousand over two dozen condos is two-and-a-half million dollars. That spells a substantial increase in our profit.” She frowned. “My Lord, how many of those books do you have?”
“Twenty-five.”
“And you really think you’ll sell twenty-five at $22.95 a pop? I could believe five, maybe ten or twelve in a community this size. But twenty-five? How can you be so optimistic about books and so pessimistic about condos?”
Taking his time, he finished stacking the books. When he was done, he stood, wiped his palms on his thighs and gave her a patronizing look. “I can be lavish with books because the publishers make it well worth my while. When they’re trying to push something, they offer generous deals and incentives. They’re pushing this book like there’s no tomorrow.”
“It stinks.”
He shrugged. “Sorry, but that’s the way the publishing world works.”
“Not the deals. The book. It stinks.”
“You’ve read it?”
For the first time, she had caught him off guard, if the surprised arch of one brow meant something. “Yes, I’ve read it.”
“When? I thought you worked all the time.”
“I never said that.”
“Sure sounded it from the way you were standing at the bank this morning struggling to squeeze in a single meeting with me.”
“This week’s worse than most because of the seminar. It’s four intensive days—”
“Of what?”
“Classes on commercial real estate transactions. In the past year or two, I’ve been doing more with stores and office buildings. I’ve been wanting to take this seminar for six months, but this is the first time it’s been offered at a time and place I could handle.”
He gave her a long look. “Funny, I assumed you could handle most anything.”
“I can,” she said without flinching. “But it’s a matter of priorities. Let me rephrase what I said. This is the first time the seminar’s been offered at a time and place that work into my schedule without totally screwing up everything else.”
He gave that brief thought. “So, when do you read?”
“At night. Late.”
“When you can’t sleep because you’ve got yourself wound up about everything you should be doing but can’t because no one else is awake to do it with you?”
She was
about to summarily deny the suggestion when she realized how right he was. Not that she intended to tell him that. “When I can’t sleep, it’s because I’m not tired.”
The look in his eye was doubtful, but he let her claim ride. “And you didn’t like this book?”
“I thought it was self-indulgent. Just because an author writes one book that wins the Pulitzer Prize doesn’t mean that everything else that author writes is gold, but you’d have thought that from the hype the book was given. So I blame the author for her arrogance and the publisher for his cowardice.”
“Cowardice?”
“In not standing up to the author and sending her back to rewrite it. The book stinks.”
John pondered that. After a minute, he said, “It’ll make the bestselling lists.”
“Probably.”
“And I won’t lose a cent.”
Given deals and incentives and bestselling status, he was probably right, she mused.
“Out of curiosity, if nothing else,” he went on leisurely, “people will buy the book. No one will be broken by $22.95. Readers may be angry, like you are. They may feel gypped. They may even tell their friends not to buy the book, and I may, indeed, have two of these stacks standing here three months from today, just as they are now. But one disappointing book won’t hurt my business.” His eyes took on a meaningful cast. “At Crosslyn Rise, on the other hand, a thirty-three percent sell rate will hurt and hurt bad.”
Nina shook her head. “The analogy’s no good. You’re comparing apples and oranges—sweet apples and moldy oranges, at that. Crosslyn Rise is quality. This book isn’t. No one who buys into the Rise will ever say that it wasn’t worth the money. In fact, some of the sales will probably come about by word of mouth, people who buy and are so excited that they spread the excitement.”
“People who are stretched tight financially may not be able to feel much excitement.”
“People who are stretched tight financially have no business even looking at the Rise, much less buying into it.”
John’s eyes hardened. “You’re tough.”
“I’m realistic. The Rise isn’t for first-time home owners. It isn’t for twenty-five-year-olds who’ve just gotten married and have twenty thousand to put down on a mortgage that they’ll then pay off each month by painstakingly pooling their salaries.” She held up a hand, lest he think her a snob. “Listen, I have properties that are less expensive, and I have clients who are looking for that. But those clients aren’t looking for Crosslyn Rise, or if they are, they should be awakened to the rude realities of life.”
“Which are?”
“Everything costs. Everything. If you don’t have money in your pocket to pay for what you want or think you need, the cost comes out of your hide and is ten times more painful.”
Her words hung in the air. Even more, her tone. It was hard and angry, everything Nina was accused of being from time to time by one detractor or another whose path she crossed. Now she held her breath, waiting for John Sawyer to accuse her of the same.
He didn’t say a word. Instead, after studying her for what seemed an infinite stretch, he turned away, bent and swept up the empty carton, and forcibly collapsed it as he walked from the room.
She waited for him to return. Gnawing on her lower lip, she kept her eyes on the door through which he’d gone. His footsteps told her that he’d taken a flight of stairs, leading her to guess he’d returned to the basement, but all was still. She shifted her bag from the left shoulder to the right, shifted her weight from the right foot to the left, finally glanced at her watch. It was after nine-thirty, getting later and later, and they hadn’t reached any sort of agreement on Crosslyn Rise.
“John?” she called. When the only thing to greet her was silence, she let out a frustrated sigh. Wasted time drove her nuts, and this meeting spelled wasted time in capital letters. She and John Sawyer had some very basic differences. He was relaxed and easygoing, she was driven. Neither of them was going to change—not that change was called for. All that was called for was some sort of compromise recommendation for the pricing of the units at Crosslyn Rise.
At the sound of a quiet creaking over her head, she looked up. He must have gone upstairs, she realized, probably to check on his son, and she couldn’t begrudge him that. It would have been nice if he’d said something, formally excused himself, told her he’d be back shortly, rather than just walking out. She hadn’t associated relaxed and easygoing with rude before, nor had she associated rude with John. Slow, mulish, even naive, perhaps. But not rude.
He didn’t like her. That explained it, she guessed. The hardness that came to his eyes from time to time when he looked at her spoke clearly of disapproval, which was all the more reason why she should finish her business and leave. She wasn’t a glutton for punishment. If he didn’t like her, fine. All they needed was to come up with a simple decision, and she’d be gone.
The creaking came again from upstairs, this time more steadily. Soon after, she heard footsteps on the back stairs, but they went on longer than they should have. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that he’d gone on down to the basement, and in the wake of that realization, she realized something else. She didn’t like John Sawyer any more than he liked her.
Annoyed, she stalked toward the back room, turned a corner until she saw the stairs and called out an impatient, “I haven’t got much time, John. Do you think you could come up here and talk this out with me?”
“Be right up,” he called nonchalantly. She could well have been the cleaning lady, for all the attention he was giving her.
Spinning on her heel, she returned to the main room of the shop, where, for the first time, she took a good look around. The bookstore took up the entire front portion of the house. Working around tall windows, a fireplace that looked frequently used, a sofa and several large wing chairs, bookshelves meandered through what had once been a living room, parlor and dining room. The overall space wasn’t huge, as stores went, but what it lacked in size, it made up for in coziness.
Antsy, Nina began to prowl. Passing a section of reference books, she wandered past one of history books, another of fiction classics, another of humor. As she wandered, her pace slowed. That always happened to her in bookstores and libraries. Whether she intended to or not, she relaxed. Books pacified her. They were nonjudgmental, non-demanding. They could be picked up or put down with no strings attached, and they were always there.
At the shelves holding recent biographies, she stopped, lifted one, read the inside of its jacket. She liked biographies, as was evidenced by the pile of them on her night shelf, waiting to be read. Tempted by this one but knowing that she didn’t dare buy another until she’d made some headway with the pile, she replaced the book and moved toward the front of the store. At the cookbooks, she stopped. One, standing face front, caught her eye, a collection of recipes put together by a local women’s group. She took it from the shelf and began to thumb through.
“Don’t tell me you cook.”
Nina’s head flew up to find John’s expression as wry as his voice, but neither of those things held her attention for long. What struck her most was the surprise she felt—again—at the way he looked. Tall, strong, strangely masculine. She hadn’t expected any of those things, much less her awareness of them. The relaxation she’d felt moments before vanished. “Yes, I cook.”
He turned to put down another carton where the first had been. Looking back at her, his eyes were shuttered. “You work, you read, you cook. Any other surprises?”
At least they were even, she mused. He surprised her in not being a total wimp, she surprised him in being a businesswoman who cooked. She still didn’t understand his dislike for her, but there was no point in pursuing it. Their personal feelings for each other didn’t matter. If Crosslyn Rise was the only thing they had in common, so be it.
“It’s getting late,” she said with studied patience as she watched him bend in half and slash the new carton open. “Do you t
hink you could take a break from that for a few minutes so that we can settle the matter of pricing?”
Straightening slowly, he slipped the blade back onto the counter. In measured cadence, he said, “I’ve been listening to everything you’ve said. You’re not swaying me.”
“Maybe you’re not listening with an open mind.”
He gave the possibility consideration before claiming, “My mind is always open.”
“Okay,” she said in an upbeat, “why don’t you run your arguments by me again?”
He arched a casual brow. “Would it do any good?”
“It might.”
After studying her for several long moments, he bent to open the box and began to unload books.
“John,” she protested.
“I’m getting my thoughts in order. Give me a minute.”
Tempering her impatience, she gave him that. During its course, he carried half a dozen books to one shelf, half a dozen to another. She was beginning to wonder whether he was deliberately dragging out the time, when he came to face her. His skin wore the remnants of a moist sheen, but his eyes were clear.
“I believe,” he said slowly and quietly, “that we should keep the pricing down on those units because, one—” he held up a long, straight finger “—we stand a good chance of selling out that way, which in turn will make the shops more appealing both to shopkeepers and to the general public—” he held up a second finger, “two, we’d attract a better balance of buyers, and three, the profit will be more than respectable.” He dropped his hand and turned back to the box of books.
“Is that it?”
“That’s enough.” Hunkering down, he started to fill his arms. “Didn’t I win you over?”
“Not quite.”
With a sidelong glance, he shot back her own words. “Maybe you’re not listening with an open mind.”
“I always have an open mind.”
“If that were true, you’d have already given in. My arguments make sense.”
“Mine are stronger.”
“Yours have to do with profit, and profit alone.”
She wanted to pull her hair out. “But profit is what this project is about!”
The Dream Comes True Page 3
