The Legacy of Buchanan's Crossing Read Online Free

and experience filled the page. Dean did have a point. Clint took another sip of the freaking divine coffee he hadn’t wanted. Maybe he should make an exception, just this once. Hadn’t he been told often enough that he should be more flexible, a little less obsessive and controlling?
    The snick of a pricey pen being uncapped sounded like success. Dean’s pink freckled face beamed. In spite of the disparity in their financial situations, Clint saw someone like himself, a man with something to prove.
    Dean signed the contract first, giving the Mont Blanc fountain pen to Clint. It felt good in his hand as it whispered across the paper with none of the usual scratching. He re-capped it before returning it, just to relish the subtle note of prosperity.
    “Keep it. We can use it to sign the next contract.” Dean’s smile oozed confidence as he reached out his hand.
    Clint shook it, surprised by the small man’s firm grip.
    He found himself standing in front of his truck without quite remembering walking there. A blast of trapped spring sun greeted him when he opened the door. His ring finger was itching again, and his stomach started rolling before he even had the key in the ignition.
    How had Cumberland persuaded him to drink that coffee, anyway? It was not mixing well with those cookies. He thought about the list of non-union workers in his briefcase, no longer sure what it was doing there.
    The powerful engine turned over. He needed this project. Queasy guts, strange itchy finger, and vague nightmares be damned.
    The not-quite country road dipped gradually. Cayden rolled along past clumps of stately pines and split rail fences in various states of repair, not really listening to The Damned’s “Grimly Fiendish” on her brand new iPod, when a static screech poured from the ear buds into her brain. The popping shock following it jolted Cayden hard enough to send her veering around the curve headlong into a shallow ditch.
    The ancient grove atop Buchanan’s Crossing glowed. The leaves on the gnarled oaks were that special sort of green they wore only in spring when they were still young and naive, before failure, disappointment, and the heat of the sun had their way. The deceptively gentle early light caught the leftover rain’s clinging drops. The leaves sparkled in the distance, enhancing the dangerous effect, tendering seductive fragments of joy.
    Yes, this was one of those brilliant spring mornings so full of new life. The kind that might fill a person with all kinds of ridiculous ideas, as long as that person wasn’t flat on her butt in a rain-soaked ditch, wet and bruised, smoke literally wafting out of her second iPod in a month.
    Ignoring the wildflowers that had cushioned her fall, she silently cursed Clint MacAllen. While some occasional trouble with anything electric might be expected by anyone this close to the Crossing, said trouble was absolutely certain to find her. She should have, would have, had her iPod long since safely stashed if she hadn’t been thinking about him.
    She was still vexed as she skated up to the solid oak door of Gran’s cottage. She wasn’t surprised it opened before she’d made it up the porch stairs. Gran always knew when she was coming.
    “Cayden. How lovely.” Gran’s blinding smile, the one everyone said Cayden had inherited, fell. “Oh my. That bad, is it? Well, don’t stand there on my doorstep looking like Armageddon’s come upon us. You’re just in time for breakfast.” She opened the door wider. “I’ve a nice Lorne sausage in the oven, potato scones, and some black pudding. There’s fried eggs and rasher too, if you’re of a mind. I had a feeling you’d be by.”
    Thank Goddess. At least something was going right today. A real Scottish breakfast was balm for the soul, true fortification against any manner of pains in the butt.
    She clomped in and Gran closed the door after her. “Take off those clever contraptions, why don’t you, before you cause