A Sweetheart for the Single Dad. Victoria Pade

and bring them to our attention.”

      “Oh, very slick,” he said as they moved on, returning to the community center parking lot. “And once I’m on your payroll it would mean my job if I made a stink and refused to spout the company line. Again—not a chance,” he repeated as they reached the driver’s side of her car and stopped.

      “Did this all come from my uncle winning my aunt from your father?” Lindie asked, feeling frustrated with his hardline stance.

      “Winning implies a fair fight,” he said, arching an eyebrow as he leaned against the side of his SUV, settling in to focus on her. “Camdens don’t fight fair.”

      “But we do!”

      He ignored that claim and instead answered her question. “No, this doesn’t all come from what went on between my father and your uncle. It started there—certainly I grew up hearing that story more than once. Then there were a couple of things that added to it.”

      “Like what?”

      “Like the Camden Superstore that went into Dunhaven when I was in middle school. My dad was in construction. He worked all over and he’d seen what happened in the wake of your stores. He knew what we were in for. So by the time I was ready to go to high school my folks decided they’d better sell the house I’d grown up in and get out while the getting was good.”

      “Part of Dunhaven ended up like this side of Wheatley?”

      “Yeah, it did,” he said as if wondering how she could not know that.

      “So you and your parents—”

      “And my younger brother, moved,” he went on. “My parents had to take a loss on the house to sell it. I ended up having to enter a different school district and leave behind all my friends.”

      “That didn’t make you happy,” Lindie commented, interpreting his tone.

      “No, that did not make me happy. And when I went back to visit those friends I saw this.” He motioned to what she’d now had her eyes opened to.

      “The last time I went back—for a Friday-night visit in the summer,” he continued, “my old friends were bashing in windows for entertainment. The movie theater had closed. They didn’t have anything else to do. The building they were vandalizing was a tire store in an area of town that had been doing okay when I moved. But thanks to Camden Superstore’s automotive department it had eventually gone under and so had my friend’s father—he’d managed it. My friend had a lot of pent-up anger about it and that was how he let it out. It was the last time my parents let me go back to visit, but I heard over the transom that that particular friend kept to that path. He got into more and more trouble and ended up in jail.”

      “And you blame us,” Lindie attested.

      “I can tell you firsthand that he wasn’t on the road to prison before your store came in and ruined his old man...” He left the rest of the answer to her.

      “Then, in college, H. J. Camden came up in a couple of my business courses,” Sawyer went on. “I’ll grant you that it wasn’t always negative—he is quite a success story and more than one of my business professors admired the hell out of him. But he also came up on a list of modern-day robber barons.”

      Lindie had heard that title applied to her great-grandfather before but it still caused her to flinch. “And that was what you paid attention to,” she concluded.

      “Like I said, I grew up on the story of a Camden’s ruthlessness. So, yeah, I paid a lot of attention to that side of things.”

      “And that was when you declared war on all Camdens?”

      He motioned with one hand to all that was around them. “I had good reasons not to admire you all. Nothing personal,” he added.

      “Right,” Lindie said with a tone full of sarcasm, goading him. “Because personally you admire me.”

      He smiled a sly half smile and shrugged, leaving her unsure exactly what that meant. It did seem as if he might at least be admiring the way she looked, though, because his cool blue eyes never veered to take in anything else.

      Then he said, “Are you and the corporation the same thing? Isn’t there anything about you that isn’t business to be admired?”

      “There’s a lot about me that isn’t business.” Why was this starting to sound a little flirty?

      “Like what?” he asked. “Are you married? Because there’s no ring. Kids?”

      “No, I’m not married.”

      “Ever been?”

      “No. So I also don’t have any kids.”

      “You can have one without the other,” he informed her as if letting her in on a secret.

      “Well, I haven’t.”

      “So what is there about you that isn’t business?” he challenged.

      “I have a nephew—Carter—who I love to death. And there’s a new baby in the family—Immy—that my cousin’s about-to-be wife inherited. I love babysitting for her, too. And there’s my family. And I have four dogs.”

      “Four? Let me guess, some snobby kind of show dogs?”

      “Actually, they’re four rescue mutts that were hard to place. And whenever there’s a need for a temporary foster home for dogs requiring special care until they can be adopted, I take those, too.” Because all the local animal shelters knew she was a soft touch.

      “You realize that when your stores do what they’ve done to places like Wheatley and the economy suffers, so do pets. If people are struggling to feed their kids, they certainly can’t feed their dogs and those dogs end up needing to be rescued.”

      “Oh, you just never miss an opening, do you?” she lamented, feeling more weight on her conscience.

      But this time, rather than tell her she deserved it, he grinned and said somewhat sheepishly, “One too many jabs?”

      “If I cry uncle will you stop?”

      “Maybe for now.”

      “Uncle!” she said.

      That made him grin again. “Okay. You did do your own little cleanup tonight along the way, I’ll give you that.”

      Lindie made a face, knowing that picking up a bicycle here or a newspaper there was inconsequential and that nothing had really been solved tonight. Not for Wheatley and not for her goal of winning over and compensating Sawyer Huffman.

      Yet, somehow, even given all that, she’d enjoyed the long walk and talking to Sawyer in spite of everything else.

      “So Thursday...” she said. “What time do you come here?”

      “I’m with the kids on Thursdays,” he warned, reminding her that he was unavailable.

      “I’ll still be here,” she insisted. After seeing more of Wheatley she felt a need to do something. Coming to the center wasn’t only about finding an excuse to get to him anymore.

      “I end my work schedule at two-thirty on Thursdays so I can get here by three, about the time the kids start showing up after school.”

      “I’ll be here at three, then,” she said.

      He didn’t say anything but this time it didn’t look as if he doubted her the way he had yesterday.

      Instead, sounding as if he was admitting something reluctantly, he said, “I’m glad you came tonight.” He smiled mischievously. “Even if I did give you a hard time, it was better than walking the streets alone.”

      Lindie laughed at his gentle gibe over her verbal gaffe at the start of the evening. “You just couldn’t let it go completely.”