She could see it in his tanned skin. The strength of his stance. The scars on his hands and forearms. And one scary-looking one from his ear to his neck.
Who was this man? He was big and hard and tough and kind of dangerous.
He wasn’t the sweet boy she remembered.
He was the kind of man who might screw a woman hard and fast in a dark corner of a bar.
This wasn’t a good line of thought for her, so she pushed it out of her mind. “What exactly are you looking for, if you don’t mind my asking?” Ria was relieved that her voice was easy and natural.
“Mostly just checking the condition. Seeing what shape these old places are in.”
“Well, this store is pretty good, since my dad fixed it up for a long time, and Fitz has been doing it lately. But some of the other places on this block are pretty run-down.”
“Yeah. Grandpa couldn’t really keep them up, I guess.”
“So are you going to fix them up?” Ria was genuinely interested in this topic, so she forgot to be nervous about the fact that she was talking to Jacob Worth.
He shrugged, glancing at his phone and then snapping one more picture. “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“Well, if you want to sell, I think we could probably afford to buy this building now. We’re doing pretty well.”
“I know. I’ve heard. What y’all have done is damn impressive.”
His face was still serious, so she had to assume he was being sincere. “Thanks. So if you want to sell...”
“I’ll probably have to. Even if I fix these buildings up, I’d still be hard-pressed to find anyone to rent the empty ones. But I can’t sell this one unless I can sell the rest of them.”
Ria frowned. She started to ask why, but then she figured it out for herself.
Of course he wouldn’t want to sell one building—right in the middle of the block. He’d never get buyers for all the individual buildings. If he was going to sell, he’d need to sell all of them.
“You’re not going to hand them off to a developer or something, are you?” she asked, the chill she was feeling reflecting in her voice.
“I don’t know.” He wasn’t meeting her eyes, and that gave her the answer she needed.
“You can’t!”
He turned his head. “What?”
“You can’t, Jacob. You can’t come strolling home and sell out this town. A developer would tear down this whole block and put up a Walmart or something! All the local businesses would die. You can’t do that to us.”
“I’m not going to do it on purpose.” The quiet, controlled demeanor he’d displayed since he’d arrived was fading into visible impatience. “But what exactly do you expect from me? This place is a money pit. My grandpa hasn’t made anything on these properties for years. I can’t hold on to it to indulge your nostalgia.”
“Nostalgia!” She was so angry now her cheeks had flushed. She could barely take a full breath. She wasn’t sure how it had happened, but she’d gone from nervous and shaky to full-blown rage in no time flat. “Nostalgia?”
“Well, whatever it is.” He still looked more sober than anything else, but there was an edge of bitterness in his tone that wasn’t at all like the boy she used to know. “I can’t pour money I don’t have into a lost cause just for sentimental value. What the fuck do you want from me?”
“I want you to think through all your choices and not take the easy way out because you’re too scared to face something hard.” She hadn’t intended the words to mean more than the current situation, but she suddenly heard the resonance underlying the words.
Years old now.
Jacob obviously heard it too. He froze. His hands were fisted at his sides, and he was almost shaking from reined-in tension. Anger. Resentment. Frustration. And who knew what else.
It took a minute, but he finally controlled himself enough to speak. “I’m not taking the easy way out. I told you I haven’t made any decisions yet. But I have no good options here.”
She was about to cry. She could feel the tears burning behind her eyes. But there was no way in hell she was going to let them fall in front of Jacob.
She straightened up to her full height and met his gaze. “Well, start looking for more options. Because a decent man would never throw out like garbage a town that did nothing but love him.”
She’d said too much. Too much had come out with her words. But at least she hadn’t cried.
She turned and gave Belinda a pleading look.
Belinda didn’t let her down. “Oh, Ria, I forgot to tell you that Missy Grady wanted to talk to you about the flowers for her daughter’s wedding this afternoon. If you want to run over and see if she’s home, I can finish up with Jacob.”
“That sounds good. Thanks.” Ria took off her apron and grabbed her purse before she turned back to Jacob. She opened her mouth to say something. Anything.
Nothing came out.
So she gave up trying and just walked away.
Three
“SO WHAT DO YOU THINK we should do?” Ria asked, having just laid out the building situation for the third or fourth time that day to Skye and Madeline.
They were eating dinner together in Madeline’s cute little kitchen in a loft apartment over an empty storefront in downtown Azalea that three different people had tried unsuccessfully to turn into a coffee shop. She rented the apartment from old Mr. Worth just like everyone else on the block.
“Okay,” Skye said, after swallowing a bite of the chili Madeline had made in her slow cooker. “Worst-case scenario. Jacob sells the block to a developer and they turn it into a big box store or a row of expensive town houses or something. We’re making plenty of money to lease or buy a different site for the shop.”
“Yeah,” Ria said rather woefully. “But
