There was a repressed violence surrounding him. “There’s only one person with the imagination and the desire to pull off something like this. Which means we have a heap load of trouble. But that’s not something for you to worry about. You focus on the good stuff.”
He started walking back to his truck. What the hell— “Not worry? Ben, this center is important to me. I’m a part of it.”
I’d all but decided I’m staying today.
Another stillness came over him, and then he was spinning around. His eyes were hopeful and there was the hint of a smile on his face. “You can’t know how happy you’ve made me, hearing you say that.”
She felt an answering smile spread across her face. A new bond seemed to be forming between them, the threads stronger after their recent honesty and his gestures of support.
“Is there something I can do?”
He rested his hand on the door as he opened it, studying her with a tenderness she remembered all too well. He shook his head. “Keep on doing what you’re doing. It looks good on you.”
Her heart gave a serious tremble. “I’m tempted to give you the screw you gave me about the truck.”
“Ah…give me a win,” he cajoled. “I’m headed into rough waters.”
Remembering how upset he’d been and how serious the situation seemed, she nodded. “This time, cowboy, but you better watch yourself.”
His head tipped to one side, considering. “I’ve missed you calling me that. Keep it up.”
With an adorable little wink, he got into Gramps’ truck.She watched as he backed out of the driveway and followed the sheriff’s car down the street. Neil appeared beside her along with the Prentice boys.
“What’s wrong, lass?” Neil asked, his protective mode obvious.
“Someone sabotaged the lumber shipment.” Worry doused any good feeling from their interaction and wound its way around her. “Ben thinks he knows who it might be.”
“It’s that jerk of a billionaire who wants Wild Mountain, I’ll bet,” Ford spat. “He wants it bad. Ma said he planned to make a resort there like Will plans. Except fancier. It certainly wouldn’t help people. He came into town all puffed up–like about his ancestor way back.”
“Except Elena McAllister ran that jerk out of town,” Luke added. “Ma says Taft likes to throw his money around. He offered to bring in a new chef to her restaurant to improve things. From back East. Can you believe that? Ma wanted to clobber him. She ordered him out of the place. Said if her place wasn’t good enough, he didn’t need to cross the threshold.”
When Ben had first told her that this center was causing him trouble, she hadn’t really believed him. Now his willingness to make the center a reality and her share in it seemed a huge gesture—one might even call it a sacrifice.
He certainly was showing her all of his facets.
She clearly had a lot to catch up on. “Tell me everything you know.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Taft hadto be behind the diverted lumber.
“Nothing else makes sense,” Ben told Logan as they left the lumberyard.
“I agree. Still, Taft was clever if he did. Everyone knows this place is the only choice for the volume Will ordered. That means he had to put someone on the payroll here or he had someone steal into the lumberyard and make up a new invoice with Braden Springs and the illegible phone number. One that looked real enough to the people filling the order.”
“Stinks all around,” Ben ground out as they walked to their vehicles.
The manager had produced the invoice for Ben and Logan, clearly suggesting Will had spoken the wrong town name over the phone. Seemed impossible. Of course, the person who’d taken the order said he would have written down the exact address as it was given. Logan had pointed out how odd it would be for someone not to know where they lived. They’d only gotten a shrug with a “Maybe he was having a bad day and was confused.”
Horseshit. The only item Ben had argued was why Will’sphone number hadn’t been legible, resulting in them not calling him. The manager hadn’t had a good answer for that, saying they'd delivered a lot of orders and that drivers had done the best they could.
Ben had pointed out the insanity of delivering lumber to a location that flooded where no one was present to accept the order. The manager had turned green but held firm. They were paid to fulfill orders and ship them. In the contract Will had signed, what happened after they delivered was not their fault.
Stalemate.
Ben wasn’t satisfied with any of it, but he knew the man wasn’t going to eat the mistake. He’d told the manager they would hear from his lawyer. Logan had taken a copy of the invoice and said he’d be back to talk to the driver as he was out on delivery. They’d briefly talked to the order associate when the manager had called him to his dusty office. How they could keep anything straight with the kind of half-assed file system, Ben would never know.
But he had bigger fish to fry. His brother was out a buttload of money, and now so was he, and they had a pretty smart cat playing at sabotage.
