Their Unfinished Business. Jackie Braun

unsolicited advice. This was business, not a social call. She wasn’t going to doll herself up for Luke Banning’s return. No, indeed.

      Indifference, that’s what Wednesday’s meeting called for. Nonchalance.

      Ali yanked a weed out of the flower bed and tossed it atop the small heap of wilting interlopers next to her, warming to her strategy.

      She would be ruthlessly polite and exceedingly casual when she and Luke were finally face-to-face. She would show him, Audra and everyone else who thought otherwise that the past was ancient history, and that the fact he’d spent the past decade in New York City growing wealthy and respected and enjoying the tabloid-documented attentions of supermodels and liposuctioned socialites was of absolutely no concern to her.

      She snatched up her gardening trowel and hacked at the hard ground with its daggerlike metal point.

      On Wednesday, she would be professional and businesslike. She would be cordial, but in a detached—hack! hack!— and disinterested—hack! hack!— way.

      She swiped at the sweat beading on her brow and then set aside the trowel so she could wrap her fist around the base of another weed. As she knelt there locked in an intense tug-of-war with a deep-rooted dandelion, she heard the motorcycle. The mere sound of the engine reeled her back in time, as it always did, resurrecting the bittersweet memories she’d just convinced herself were safely buried and of no threat to her emotional well-being.

      Even as her heart seemed to kick out an extra beat, she told herself she was being foolish. It wasn’t Luke. It couldn’t be Luke. She still had three days, nearly seventy-two hours, before she would see him again. Besides, he wouldn’t still be driving a damned motorcycle after all these years. He probably traveled in a limousine, a stretch one so long it would barely fit on the ferry that brought vehicles over from the mainland.

      But as she shielded her eyes from the sun with one grimy hand, a Harley Davidson Sportster crested the hill and rumbled into view.

      In the years he’d been gone, sightings of Trillium Island’s most famous son seemed to be about as common as sightings of Elvis, and they’d proved to be as reliable. There was no mistaking the Harley rider’s identity, though, especially since he was flouting state law by forgoing a helmet.

      Even with the space of thirty yards and the span of more than a decade separating them, Ali knew him at a glance. Wind ruffled the almost-black hair she’d once run her fingers through. He was wearing it shorter these days, looking more like a respectable adult than the rowdy teenager and young man he’d been. Aviator sunglasses obscured his eyes, but she remembered that they were the same shade of blue as the cool waters of the great lake that surrounded the island.

      A dozen feet from her driveway the bike slowed and all hope that Luke would somehow fail to spot her evaporated.

      Indifference, she reminded herself.

      Disinterest.

      Nonchalance.

      And yet all she felt was mule-kicked when he brought the bike to a stop in front of her mailbox, grinning for a long moment in that sexy way that had haunted her dreams and taunted her heart.

      Finally he switched off the engine and swung one denim-encased leg over the seat.

      “Hi.”

      The sparseness of his greeting jolted her back to her senses. He’d been gone nearly a dozen years and the first word out of his mouth was hi? She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but he didn’t even have the decency to look contrite or uncomfortable or babble his way through an apology, which she would of course decline to accept. No. He was smiling, as handsome and overconfident as ever, and acting as if he hadn’t sped away on that same damned Harley more than a decade earlier without so much as a backward glance.

      Studying him, Ali wondered what she had ever seen in the man…beyond his staggering good looks. Those, she noted sourly, had only improved with age. It wasn’t fair. He should be balding or overweight, but the photographic images she’d seen of him over the years hadn’t been airbrushed or otherwise doctored. His hair was still thick, his physique lean and muscled, and his face chiseled and gorgeous.

      It dawned on her then that she was still on her knees gazing up at him like the same starry-eyed girl whose heart he’d broken.

      Pride fired Ali to her feet. She wiped her soiled hands on her jeans and inwardly cursed her habit of not wearing gardening gloves. There was no help for her dirty cuticles or her perspiration-damp appearance beneath the ball cap she wore, but she damn well wouldn’t kneel like some supplicant before Luke Banning of all people.

      “Hello.”

      To her relief her voice sounded normal, its tone just this side of cool, but he was smiling as if he thought she were delighted that he’d rumbled down her lane, disturbing her peace and nature’s quiet on this sunny Sunday afternoon.

      “God, you look the same as I remembered…give or take a dirt smudge.”

      Laughing, he reached out and touched her cheek, presumably to wipe away some errant soil. His smile dimmed when Ali backed up a step and crossed her arms over her chest.

      “Believe me, I’ve changed.”

      “I guess we all have.” He slipped off the glasses and she felt lost in those blue eyes until he added, “Ten years will do that.”

      “It’s been eleven.”

      He nodded and one side of his mouth crooked up. “Eleven. How have you been, Ali?”

      “Fine.”

      “I read in the paper last year that Audra had married again. When I spoke to her on the telephone a couple weeks ago, she seemed very happy.”

      “Yes. Apparently the fourth time is the charm,” Ali replied. And because the words seemed somehow disloyal given the vast metamorphosis her twin had gone through, she added, “Seth’s a great guy. I think this one will stick.”

      “I’m glad for her. What about you? Anybody special in your life these days?”

      She hadn’t expected him to come right out and ask her such a personal question, and so she spluttered, “I—I’m seeing someone.”

      Did one date actually count as “seeing”? Bradley had asked her out again since then, twice in fact. But she’d put him off. Standing in front of Luke, she decided there was really no reason she shouldn’t take Bradley up on his offer of dinner the following Saturday.

      “Is he an islander?”

      “No. In fact, he’s relatively new to the area. He lives on the mainland, just outside Petoskey.”

      Luke nodded. “Speaking of the mainland, there’s a lot of new development along the waterfront. I barely recognized parts of it when I flew over.”

      When Ali glanced in bafflement at his bike, Luke caressed the motorcycle’s handlebars. On a shrug he said, “One of the perks of having my own aircraft is that I always have room for my Harley.”

      His priorities apparently hadn’t changed, but she kept that thought to herself. No reason to dredge up the past. Indeed, she planned to keep the conversation as impersonal as possible.

      “Those new developments on the mainland are giving Saybrook’s some stiff competition, which is why we want to buy the property adjacent to the resort and add a golf course as soon as we can manage it.”

      Luke shook his head and grinned again. “I still can’t believe you guys bought the resort.”

      The comment rankled, so much so that her determination to remain impersonal began to waver. After all, he wasn’t the only one who had made something of himself. Ali had graduated cum laude with a degree in business and was now part owner of one of the Midwest’s most storied resorts.

      “It’s prime real estate and despite the fact that the previous manager drove it to the brink of bankruptcy, it’s already starting