Bluegrass Blessings

Cameron looked up from the knob he was twisting. “No leeway?”

The poor man pushed his cap back on his head and exhaled. “Mister, if I had leeway I’d have given it to you the first time you asked. Asking three times ain’t gonna make things any different, okay?”

“Okay.” Cameron sounded as if he’d lost some kind of battle instead of gotten her one hundred dollars more than she expected for Old Ironsides. As a matter of fact, she hadn’t even thought to ask them about buying the old one—she’d completely forgotten it could be sold as scrap. And that made a whole load of sense—the thing weighed a ton and she was pretty sure they sold scrap by the pound. Still, she thought Cameron was coming on a bit strong.

“Did you have to go for the jugular?” she asked the minute the repairman left to get his dolly out of his truck. “It’s an oven, not a peace treaty.”

“It’s not the best deal until the other guy says ‘no.’”

Dinah cut out another cookie. “He said ‘no’ twenty minutes ago.”

“Reluctance is not refusal.” Cameron pulled a towel off her counter and wiped the grease from his hands.

“Is that what you do for a living? Beat other people down until you get what you want? The real estate brokers on television are all smiling guys eager to help families find the home of their dreams. You, you look like you’re going to snarl any second.”

“My job is to get the best deal between buyer and seller. That’s good for everyone.”

“Okay, you’re not the bad guy,” she said, holding up her hand. “You’re the good guy. But you have to admit,” she looked straight at him, “you’re mighty tightly strung for a good guy.”

“You got your oven, didn’t you?”

“Well, yeah, but I didn’t need it to be the high-level negotiation you made it. I mean, I’m grateful, but you can take it down a notch here, okay?”

Cameron fiddled with the knob he’d removed from the oven. Even though he had a game face that could scare those with weaker constitutions, Dinah could tell in his body language that he was giving in. Reminding himself to turn off—or at least tone down—the New York biz demeanor.

“Okay,” he said after a pause.

She had to give him credit; he was still doing pretty good for a guy who’d uprooted himself and dived head-first into a whole new culture. She’d come here of her own free will (which somehow she knew he hadn’t—or thought he hadn’t), and it had still taken her a while to find her footing. The guy hadn’t even been here half a week. As she loaded a second cookie sheet to take upstairs, Dinah said a quick prayer for rest and peace to visit Cameron Rollings—and maybe a little for herself, too.

The conversation lulled while the repairman and his buddy went through the huge task of getting the ancient oven out the bakery’s back door. The thing was a behemoth—it astounded Dinah how big a space it left in the kitchen when they hauled it out. Installation of the new one would begin at nine o’clock tomorrow morning and after that, life might tilt back toward normal. Dinah hoped. Although part of her thought “normal” wasn’t really on the radar anymore with Cameron Rollings next door.

“These are for you. Oven rent.” Dinah appeared at his door thirty minutes later with a batch of macadamia nut white chocolate chip cookies. A stack of large, blueprint-like papers lay strewn out on his kitchen table. The display made it easy to picture him in the corner office of some Manhattan high-rise.

“Thanks,” Cameron said, taking the cookies and putting them next to the papers. He had an elegant look about him that made him seem so foreign here, even in jeans. There was something in the set of his shoulders, the way he carried himself. A sleekness that came from always having the upper hand.

An upper hand she was pretty sure he felt he no longer had. That was pure intuition, but Dinah was a mighty intuitive gal and prided herself on her ability to read people. All that carefully crafted city confidence was coming unraveled in a few corners. She saw it in the way he’d overly defended his negotiation. In how he always tapped his left foot. There was a story there, all right. Even Sandy had alluded as much, although Dinah certainly had no idea what it was.

“I’m warning you,” Dinah pointed to the cookies, “don’t put those within easy reach. If you haven’t eaten lunch, you’re in trouble.”

“I’ll be fine,” he said.

“Willpower is no match for the smell of my macadamia nut white chocolate chip cookies. Don’t get cocky or I might come back up here to find you hiding an empty plate behind your back.”

He didn’t even laugh at the joke. “Baked goods don’t scare me.” He sat back down at the table, all business.

Dinah headed toward the door, but stopped before leaving. “So, why’d you leave New York, anyway?”

That made him look up. She knew it would. “To get away from people asking personal questions.”

If he thought she’d be put off by a few snarky replies, he had a think or two coming. “No, really. What made you come all the way out here?”

Cameron pulled off his glasses and wiped his hands down his face. “Let’s just say ‘employment issues.’”

Dinah leaned against the open door. “You got canned?”

“Are you always this diplomatic?”

“I’ll take that as a yes. I heard some famous guy say all truly innovative people get fired at least once in their careers.”

“That’s not true.”

“How do you know?”

“Let’s just say it was my lack of innovation that…heralded my job change.”

“Meaning?”

He leaned on one elbow. “It was because I wouldn’t get creative that I lost my job. And I didn’t lose it, by the way,” he corrected himself. “I merely agreed with the management that it would be best for all concerned if I left immediately.”

“Honey, in this neck of the woods, that’s called getting fired. Best own up to it now, so you can move on.” She walked back into the apartment despite the dark look he gave her. “What kind of ‘creative,’ anyway? You mean cheating?”

“It has a nicer term in real estate. Alternative accounting. Although that’s not the name I’d put to it. I wouldn’t look the other way when some guy started skimming off the sales when apartment buildings were made into condos. Unfortunately that process has a lot of convenient little places to hide some cheating—if no one is looking. But I was, and when they started really putting the pressure on me, I had no choice but to go to the local authorities. I just couldn’t sit by and watch them steal from people.” He sighed and got up from the table. “But, as you can see, it didn’t exactly go well for me.”

Cameron had told himself over and over that he wouldn’t go into his situation for his first couple of weeks in Kentucky. He had a set of polite but evasive answers for all questions about his sudden move. All of which left his skull in the presence of this relentless redhead. Why on earth was he getting into this with her? Already?

She blinked at him. “You’re a whistle-blower?”

There had to be a more noble term for it than that. If only he could remember it. “Let’s just say I’m a guy paying a very high price for doing the right thing at the wrong time.”

She scratched her chin and he noticed it left a smear of flour on her cheek. Brown eyes were a very normal color—so why did they stand out on a redhead like that? And that red hair—did that come from God or a salon? He looked at her, standing in his kitchen with a bright pink potholder tucked into her back jean pocket, and thought there wasn’t a single subtle thing about this woman. She narrowed her eyes and he wondered if he’d been staring too long. “Are you in the witness protection program or something?” she asked.

“Using my real name? Buying real estate? Here? With loudmouth Aunt Sandy?” There wasn’t a more ridiculous notion in the world. Although, based on the last couple of days, perhaps a phone call to the FBI might be in order. Disappearing into thin air looked like an attractive option at the moment.

“Well, yeah, that’d hardly do the trick, would it?” she laughed. He expected her to have a high, musical laugh, but instead the low notes of her silky chuckle tickled him somewhere under his ribs. “But really, is that what happened? You called the cops on some guys so your own company fired you? Can they do that, legally? I mean, that’s gangster stuff.”

Cameron laughed. “My old boss would tell you that’s simply a highly competitive marketplace. Everybody’s scratching everyone else’s back. Especially in a place like New York.”

She shifted her weight. “Are you sorry you did it?” she asked in a tone so sincere it caught him off guard. “With all it cost you, would you do it again?”

Funny how no one had asked him that before now. Which was odd, because it really was the question of the hour, wasn’t it? Was it all worth the cost? Would he have been able to sleep at night if he’d kept his mouth shut?

“You know,” he said quite honestly, “I thought I’d know that for sure by now.” Again, the prepared “noble guy” answer he’d crafted for the world just wouldn’t come. “I keep waiting for that great big atta boy of peace to come down from God and, well, I’m still waiting.”

A warm tone softened in her eyes. It looked far too much like pity and that sprouted a hard spot in the pit of his stomach. He really didn’t know what he wanted from all this, but he knew for certain he didn’t want pity. And for some reason, especially not from her. He shuffled his papers, suddenly wanting this conversation over.

“This isn’t one of those black-and-white morality tales, Miss Hopkins. There’s no hero, there’s no wicked witch. I made the best choice I could at the time and I’ll just deal with what comes.”

Her face told him his tone had been sharper than he would have liked, but she seemed able to irk him with a single look. Not even his boss…ahem, his old boss—could get to him so quickly.