The thought made something fierce and possessive rise in Aidan’s chest—a feeling he’d never experienced before, not with any of the women he’d dated over the years. Those relationships had been easy, comfortable, ultimately disposable. But Dylan…
Dylan was different. Had always been different. He just hadn’t let himself see it until now.
“I’ll figure out the clues myself,” he said, pocketing the letter.
“Sure you will,” Duncan said with elder-brother skepticism. “Just like you figured out how to do your own taxes.”
“That was different?—”
“Or how to bake a cake for Mom’s birthday?—”
“Okay, okay.” Aidan held up his hands in surrender. “Maybe I could use some help. Someone who thinks differently than me.”
“Someone clever,” Sophie said, her smile innocent as spring rain.
“Someone who can’t be charmed,” Raven added.
“Someone who might already be making plans to leave town if you don’t move fast,” Anne said quietly, and her words carried the weight of maternal wisdom that couldn’t be ignored.
Aidan looked around the table at his family—his brothers who’d all found their perfect matches, his parents who’d been together forty years, the children who represented the next generation of O’Haras who would call Laurel Valley home.
Then he thought about Dylan, alone in her apartment above the antique shop, probably reading one of those mysteries Sophie saved for her, definitely not thinking about him at all.
“I’ll ask her,” he said finally. “Tomorrow. If she hasn’t already decided to take whatever that suit was selling.”
“His name is Marcus Rowan,” Sophie supplied helpfully. “He’s staying at Laurel Valley B&B until tomorrow and Lorraine told me about him when she came in to buy some coffee table books. He owns Pacific Custom Restoration.”
“Yeah, I recognize the name,” Aidan said through gritted teeth.
“Well, we don’t know the name,” Duncan said, arching a brow. “Who is he?”
“Businessman,” Sophie said. “Owns restoration garages through the Pacific Northwest all the way down the coast into California. He’s very successful. Very persistent. According to Lorraine, that’s who Jay Leno uses to restore all his cars.”
The fork in Aidan’s hand bent slightly.
“Easy there,” Hank said, grinning. “Mom’s good silverware doesn’t deserve whatever you’re imagining doing to Marcus Rowan.”
As the evening wound down and the family dispersed into the October night, Aidan stood on the porch looking out at the land that had been in his family for five generations. Somewhere out there, his grandfather had hidden a ring that represented everything the O’Haras stood for—love, loyalty, friendship, tradition.
But first, he had to convince Dylan to help him find it.
And maybe, if he was very lucky and considerably less charming than usual, he could convince her that whatever Seattle was offering wasn’t worth leaving Laurel Valley.
That staying—staying for the town, for the garage, maybe even for him—was worth considering.
The thought terrified him more than any challenge his grandfather could have devised.
Which probably meant it was exactly what he needed.
Chapter Three
Monday morning arrived with the kind of pristine clarity that made the mountains look like they’d been cut from glass and placed against a painted sky. Dylan had spent the weekend in self-imposed exile, walking the trails above town where she could think without the weight of watching eyes, turning Marcus Rowan’s offer over in her mind like a restoration project she couldn’t quite figure out how to approach.
Ten thousand dollars. A restoration bay of her own. The chance to work on cars that belonged in museums—Duesenbergs and Bugattis, the kind of automobiles that were art as much as engineering. It should have been an easy decision. Would have been, for someone who hadn’t spent five years accidentally growing roots in a place she’d only meant to pass through.
The Pinnacle Garage welcomed her at six with its familiar embrace of motor oil and possibility. She’d beaten everyone there, as always, needing the quiet hour before the day began its demands. The Ferrari sat in her bay like a satisfied cat, its fuel injection problem solved, waiting for its owner to remember where he’d left it. Three days it had been sitting there, three days at five hundred dollars a day in storage fees that the owner would pay without blinking. Rich people, she’d learned, had different relationships with their possessions—they could afford to forget about things worth more than most people’s houses.
Dylan made coffee in the ancient machine, the ritual as necessary as breathing. Black, no sugar, no complications—the same way she’d been drinking it since her father had let her have her first cup at fourteen, working beside him in a garage not so different from this one. Through the windows, she watched Laurel Valley wake up—delivery trucks making their rounds, Rose arranging pastries in the bakery window that would sell out by noon, the town preparing its daily performance of quaint mountain charm for the tourists who’d start arriving by nine.
