Silver Sparks Read Online Free Page A

too.
    Maggie gritted her teeth and rattled off her phone number. Stalking toward the door, she added, “Feel free to lose it after tonight.”
    She heard the muttered “Gladly” as she walked out with Cal on her heels.
    She knew he was behind her on the winding drive down the mountain only because of the constant distance he kept between their cars, two headlights she couldn’t shake. When she pulled into her drive he slowed, idling down the street until she closed the front door behind her. When she looked again from the living room window, he was gone.
    She didn’t sleep well, and blamed it on Cal. He’d been so sure she’d be a tabloid sensation by morning that she couldn’t relax, and kept waking every hour until she gave up and decided to open the store early. Saturday shoppers weren’t early risers, but she could always find paperwork to keep her busy.
    Traffic was light at seven in the morning. Few downtown stores opened before nine, including hers. The town of Barringer’s Pass fit snugly into a narrow valley between three towering peaks, with the picturesque downtown crowded alongside a rushing snow-fed stream. The stream was high with May’s snowmelt, swirling around boulders and flashing in the morning sun. On the east bank, old brick buildings lined the main road through the pass, most dating back more than a hundred years, to the town’s first settlers. Maggie cruised by slowly, scanning the brick sidewalks and the pedestrian bridge over the stream that led to the public parking lot. Only a few people were out, drawn by the coffee shop on the corner. The other storefronts were dark.
    Perfect. She could duck inside before any of Cal’s rumored reporters showed up, if they ever did, and spend a quiet two hours on inventory before she had to open the doors. Then, if a reporter showed, she’d be ready to give them a few minutes for a polite but brief “no comment.”
    She drove around to the small employee lot, parking behind the back door of Fortune’s Folly. She’d named the store after the abandoned silver mine on Tappit’s Peak that had drawn settlers to this area. The mine had fizzled back in the 1930s, but Maggie’s store had struck gold. Her eclectic home and office decor found plenty of customers among the wealthy residents and visitors to Barringer’s Pass.
    Locking her car, she headed for the back door and was halfway there when a car door slammed, and she turned to look. A man in a suit moved briskly on an intercept course, waving when he caught her eye. He didn’t look like a reporter. The suit was too expensive, and the portfolio under his arm surely wasn’t standard issue for paparazzi. She waited.
    “Good morning, Miss Larkin.” He held out his hand, offering a business card. “Parker Jameson, with Finch, Hartley, Bass and Epstein.”
    She glanced at the card, then at the three-piece suit, and finally met Parker Jameson’s smile with a more cynical expression. Cal Drummond had been right. “Let me guess—you represent Rafe De Luca?”
    “My firm represents the De Luca family, yes. May we go inside and talk?”
    She was tempted to say no, but the forty-degree breeze rippled her thin blouse and slipped beneath her skirt. It might be late May, but winter didn’t surrender easily at this elevation. She unlocked the back door, letting Parker Jameson follow her inside, but not into the shop itself. As clean and wholesome as Jameson looked, he worked for the De Lucas; she suspected that something slimy lurked beneath the surface. The back room was good enough. Tossing her purse on the packaging table, she turned to face him. “What do you want?”
    Jameson zipped open his portfolio as he went into his pitch. “We are, of course, aware of the unfortunate incident at the Alpine Sky resort last night. The De Luca family would like to offer you reassurances that they believe no action need be taken against you.”
    “Against me ?”
    “That’s correct.” He stepped around her