Read Online Firefly Glen: Winter Baby (Harlequin Signature Select) by Kathleen O`Brien - Free Book Online Page B

tragic.”
    She sounded sincere. Maybe she understood, Parker thought. Maybe she already felt a little of the magic of this peaceful valley. After all, she lived in Florida, a tropical paradise that wobbled on the same environmental tightrope.
    â€œI don’t know,” he said honestly. “It could. All you have to do is look at some of the big tourist spots around here to see how tacky and congested things could get. But I guess it’s human nature. If you’re a businessman, you always want more business.”
    He sighed, feeling as conflicted as he did whenever he tackled this conundrum. “Anyhow, this year the city council voted to open some of the events to outsiders, and to advertise big time. I think, for Ward, that was just the last straw. He’s making it his mission to ensure that the festival fails.”
    Sarah was finished with his hands. He held them up, eyeing the white gauze skeptically. He looked like a prizefighter, taped and ready to don his gloves. His deputies would get a good laugh out of this. They already liked to tease him about being a “city kid,” even though he was born and raised right here in the Glen. Those years in Washington had really cost him.
    Sarah put her supplies carefully back in the cabinet. She lowered herself to the edge of the large white tub and looked up at him, her expression more somber than ever.
    â€œHe actually wants it to fail? That must make a lot of people very angry,” she said.
    He nodded. “It does.”
    â€œHow angry?” Her voice was quiet. “Do you think my uncle is in any danger?”
    What should he say? He didn’t think so. He knew these people, had known many of them all his life, and they weren’t wicked. They weren’t violent. They were, for the most part, people who valued solitude, people who revered nature, people who believed in individualism. That was why they had chosen to live in such a place, where nature was raw and beautiful, so dangerous it taught you courage, so powerful it taught you humility.
    But he couldn’t be sure. He had experienced enough to have learned that you never really knew how far a person would go if you pushed him. And Ward was definitely pushing.
    â€œI can’t be sure,” he said carefully. “I don’t think so, but I’d be a whole lot happier if Ward would back off a little. It’s true that love makes people do some pretty weird things. Well, so does money.”
    Sarah studied his face for a long moment, as if she were trying to read between his lines. Finally she took a deep breath and stood, smoothing her honey-colored hair back with one steady hand. She was only about five-four, and she probably didn’t weigh a hundred and ten pounds dripping wet, but she looked like a force to be reckoned with. She also looked sexy enough to make Parker’s palms tingle where she had dressed them.
    â€œI see,” she said. “Then maybe it’s a good thing I came when I did.”
    Parker couldn’t have agreed more.
    Â 
    I T WAS NINE O’CLOCK . Snow had been floating outside the library windows for hours. Sarah and Ward had long ago fallen quiet, in that lovely way good friends do, when comfortable intimacy has no need of words.
    Plus, the chess game had reached its climax. Sarah had just realized that her uncle’s king was only two pawns away from her undefended queen.
    But then the telephone rang.
    Its metallic trill was jarring, an ugly crack running through the glassy silence. Though the phone actuallyhad been sitting on the table beside Ward’s chair all along, Sarah stared at it as if it had landed there from outer space.
    Ward didn’t seem to share her confusion. He answered it without skipping a beat, taking her pawn with an evil grin even as he said, “Hello?”
    Then, to her surprise, he held the phone across the chessboard. “It’s for you.”
    Sarah’s heart thumped