“Tell me, Lance,” Melanie began, and saw a wary look entering the fire inspector’s eyes, “what does it take for you to do something personally?”

Chapter Two

The question took him aback.

Was she making him an offer she thought he couldn’t refuse in exchange for eliminating the violations? His first answer to himself would have been yes, but there was something in her eyes that made him unsure. Lance didn’t know exactly what to make of the woman in front of him, then decided it didn’t matter one way or the other. His job description was clear.

In one smooth movement he signed his name to the bottom of the report. Finished, he spared her a glance.

“A lot more than anything I find here,” he said tersely, in response to her question. Pulling the sheet from his clipboard, he handed it to her. “I’d see to this fine if I were you.”

She was still looking at him as if the fine and the violations that generated them were secondary to her. As if there was something else on her mind, something that, for whatever unfathomable reason, had to do with him. Maybe it was childish of him, but he’d be damned if he was going to look away first.

“That is, if you don’t want to be closed down,” Lance emphasized again.

Two women in separate parts of the store turned around immediately. Lance had no idea that he’d raised his voice until one of them asked, “Closing?” Her eyes were almost glowing as she looked around the cozy setting. “Does that mean you’re going to be having a closing sale?”

“No, and we’re not closing, either.” Melanie offered the woman an easy smile. Turning, she shared the smile with Lance. The look he returned was grim. “The gentleman was talking about closing time. We plan to stay right here for a very long time.” She gave that assurance to Lance as well as to the customers in the store.

Lance used the interruption to look away from her. He had the oddest, queasiest feeling when she’d been looking at him, almost as if she were offering him sympathy. It was a completely ridiculous idea, but he couldn’t seem to shake it.

Lance handed her the citation form. “Then I’d see about those violations if I were you. You have thirty days to get to them.” He tucked the clipboard under his arm and turned to leave.

“Does that mean you’ll be back?” she asked as he walked away.

“I’ll be back,” he assured her, though he wasn’t looking forward to it, he added silently as he got to the door. Behind him he heard the scraping sound as she pushed the dolly under the stack of boxes.

“I’ll be waiting.”

She sounded almost cheerful about it, he thought. This visit obviously hadn’t gone well. Why would she welcome another one?

More scraping noise. Somehow, he managed to hear it above the soft music and the low hum of voices in the shop. Lance had an uneasy feeling that he knew what the McCloud woman was up to. Not his business if the slip of a woman wanted to get a hernia or worse, he thought again. The tiny bell overhead tinkled softly as he opened the front door, announcing his exit. The sound seemed to mock him. But he was here to do an inspection, not help her clear away one of her violations. That was the job of whatever poor unfortunate slob she corralled.

Lance liked to think he would have made it out the door if the beveled glass hadn’t caught her reflection and flashed it up at him in an almost blinding light. But it did, and his mistake, he realized too late, was to stop and look.

As he’d thought, she was trying to get the dolly under the first pile of crates by herself. Straw had more sense than she did.

For a second he debated leaving her to it, but he couldn’t, in good conscience, just keep walking. Aunt Bess had trained him all too well. With a sigh, Lance let the door go and marched back to the annoyingly cheerful woman in the rear of the store.

Melanie could feel a bead of perspiration beneath her bangs as she fought to angle the dolly into position beneath the crates. Another woman would have given up, but another woman wouldn’t have wanted to run this sort of shop, either. A place where people came to talk, as much as to buy.

She should have let the delivery man do at least this part of it, Melanie thought, brushing back her bangs before they pasted themselves to her forehead. That’s what she got for being softhearted. Not that she really could be any other way. She’d accepted that as part of her nature a long time ago. Some people moved the earth with muscle, others did it with a smile. She chose to take the second path, although she prided herself on being no slouch when it came to strength. She just never muscled in on people, that’s all.

Straining, she finally managed to get the platform solidly beneath the bottom crate. Melanie was just beginning to brace herself before attempting to hoist the load when she felt the elbow in her side. It wasn’t a gentle nudge, more like an out-and-out takeover.

“Are you out of your mind, trying to do this by yourself?”

The inspector was back, coming to her rescue despite his annoyed question. Melanie tried to suppress the smile that rose to her lips and only partially succeeded. Whoever had named him Lance knew what they were doing.

Lance had taken off his jacket as he’d made his way to the rear of the store and slung it now over the back of a forest green wing chair. With two neat moves, he’d folded up his sleeves.

All her life Melanie had been taught that while people were kinder than they liked you to believe, the best person to rely on in any given situation was herself. She took this approach even with Joy, who was the first to admit that though she was the taller of the two, she was a weakling. This wasn’t the first shipment that Melanie had wrestled with on her own.

She shrugged in reply to his reprimand. The man’s heart was in the right place, but his attitude needed some fine tuning before it could claim the same thing.

“I’m stronger than I look,” Melanie told him.

She was still holding on to the handles. Was he going to have to pry them out of her hands?

Lance looked at her expectantly as his hand covered hers. After a beat, Melanie withdrew hers, that same funny little smile he didn’t know what to make of on her lips.

“Harder-headed at any rate,” he allowed. “Move out of the way,” Lance ordered when she remained standing where she was. “This isn’t a two-man job, and even if it were, you wouldn’t be one of them.”

Obliging him, Melanie raised both hands in a sign of surrender as she stepped to the side. But she was grinning as she did it. “Is that your way of telling me I’m petite and delicate?”

Where had she gotten that interpretation from? Lance wondered. She’d twisted his words into a compliment, when he’d meant nothing of the sort. Although he had to admit, looking at her, that she was both petite looking and delicate. But noting that hadn’t been his intent.

He scowled at her. She was making him late for his next appointment. Lance sincerely missed the routine solitude of his work and hoped they’d find a replacement for Kelly soon.

“That’s my way of telling you to get out of the way.” He could feel his muscles straining as he kept the dolly level and at an angle. What the hell was she thinking of, trying to work this? “You probably hear a lot of that,” he couldn’t help adding. How had she even managed to wedge the platform under the pile of crate? Glancing at her, he decided that maybe she was stronger than she looked. “Where do you want this to go?”

“In the storeroom.” Melanie pointed to the back, then realized that he had to know where it was. “But I imagine that you’re already acquainted with where that is.”

Yeah, he was “acquainted” with her storeroom. “Violations three and four,” he muttered, struggling to turn the dolly around. What did she have in this boxes, anyway, anvils? They were a lot heavier and more unwieldy than they looked. If he wasn’t careful, the whole stack was going to collapse. Lance didn’t particularly like the prospect of getting egg on his face.