Someone touched Miles’s shoulder, saving Katie from his patronizing flirtation. She gently pulled her captive hand back. Miles was too preoccupied to notice. His eyes widened with male appreciation when he looked up and saw the woman standing next to him. Katie continued to eat her salad as she studied the new arrival curiously.
“Amber. Well, aren’t you a sight for sore eyes,” Miles complimented, his gaze roving over the tall, curvy redhead wearing a wool skirt, leather boots, a matching belt and a soft-looking angora sweater that clung to generous breasts. One thing was for certain: whoever this woman was, she didn’t do her clothes shopping in any stores Katie had spotted as of yet in southern Illinois. When Amber twisted slightly in her heeled boots, Katie was reminded of a six-year-old showing off her new party dress to Daddy. Whoever Amber was, Katie decided as she chewed a cherry tomato, she couldn’t be much older than twenty or twenty-one.
“Katie, I’d like you to meet Amber Jones. She’s the new hostess at the restaurant.”
“Nice to meet you,” Katie said.
Amber’s return greeting wasn’t quite as warm, but Katie couldn’t really blame her. The girl obviously had a thing for Miles, the way she was staring at him like he was a rock star while they exchanged small talk.
“Well, I’d better get back to work,” Amber said breathily after a moment. “Will I see you at happy hour at the lodge bar tonight?”
“Sure. Maybe I’ll be there.”
Amber grinned and sashayed away from the table, apparently satisfied despite Miles’s ambiguous response. A dose of Amber must have dislodged the topic of their former conversation from Miles’s brain. He resumed his meaningless banter about his plans for the hotel and boat, and Katie nodded politely once in a while, which seemed to be a sufficient enough response for Miles.
It wasn’t bad at all, Katie decided as she sipped the last of her wine. The food and wine had been good; the sun radiating through the pane of glass had warmed and relaxed her. She watched idly as Amber seated a group of businessmen on the terrace and lingered to chat and charm them. One of them stroked her hip in a gesture that went beyond flirtation. Amber wasn’t put off, however, given her seductive smile.
After lunch, Miles asked her if she’d care to see the latest renovations he’d done on the house he’d had built on the club grounds, but Katie politely refused, explaining that the two glasses of wine had made her a little tipsy.
“All the more reason for you to come to my house and check out my hot tub and heated pool,” Miles told her suggestively.
“All the more reason for me not to,” she replied with a warm smile.
As they reached Miles’s car after lunch, Katie was surprised when he abruptly let out a stream of invectives. It wasn’t that she wasn’t used to cursing—Rill, for instance, had a repertoire of curse words that only an Irishman could acquire—but Miles hadn’t said so much as “hell” since she’d first met him.
She hurried around to the driver’s side of the car to see what he was staring at with such fury.
“Both tires. Slashed,” he said.
“Damn,” Katie mumbled. “Who would do something like that?”
“Take your pick,” Miles said bitterly. “Any one of those Vulture’s Canyon hippies or the illiterate coal miners from the hills might have done it. There’ve been little incidents in the past—plenty of them. Idiots wouldn’t recognize progress if it stabbed them in the eyeball.”
“You mean the person who slashed your tires doesn’t want you to put in the gambling boat?”
“That’s exactly what I mean.” He got on his cell phone and snapped out an order for some employee to call Sheriff Mulligan. He was in such a tiff, Katie felt a little uncomfortable. She was relieved when he told the same employee to bring another one of his cars around so he could take Katie home.
Despite that nasty bit of business, thanks to the two glasses of chardonnay, she was in a much better place to meet up with Rill later that afternoon. She saw him immediately when they pulled up to the house. He wore jeans, a red T-shirt, a flannel shirt and a pair of work gloves and walked around the corner of the house with a huge stack of logs in his arms. He came to a halt in the yard as she thanked Miles and got out of the passenger door of his BMW sedan. As she got closer to Rill, she noticed the storminess in his blue eyes and the rigidness of his facial muscles.
“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” he demanded as Miles turned his car around and headed back down the hill.
What the feck do ya t’ink yer doin’?
From the sounds of things, Rill was not in a good mood. Surprise, surprise.
“I went out to lunch with Miles,” she said with a shrug.
“You went to lunch with Miles,” Rill repeated sarcastically. “That man is reviled by every citizen of Vulture’s Canyon and every coal miner in the employ of the Black Velvet Mines. Fordham is fixing to change everything about their way of life by installing that gambling boat. Do you plan on making life hell for me, Katie, or does it just come naturally to you?”
“Why should you care what the people of Vulture’s Canyon think of Miles Fordham? He’s okay. And it’s not like you sympathize with the people in this town. I’m not a part of this town—isn’t that what you said the other day?”
Rill made a sound of deep disgust and stalked toward the front porch on long legs. Katie pursued at a jog, not finished with her argument. She tripped on the first step and caught herself from falling flat on her face by using Rill’s back as a brace, causing him to drop a log. It clattered loudly on the wood steps.
“Did Fordham get you drunk?” he asked incredulously, pausing on the stairs.
“No, I did that myself,” Katie mumbled, righting herself. She slung her bag on her shoulder and picked up the log. When she noticed Rill’s blazing eyes, she added, “Not drunk, just a little tipsy. We had wine with lunch.”
“You had wine with lunch.”