Start Me Up (22 page)

“Yeah?”

“Lori Love?” a woman’s voice asked in a very professional tone. A lawyer who’d heard rumors of a work-place accident, perhaps?

“Yeah.”

“Lori, are you all right? Mr. Jennings said you’d been injured in an accident.”

“Oh, hey, Jane. I’m okay. I broke my hand, but I’m fine.” She lay back down on the bed to wait for the painkiller to kick in. She’d timed it at seventeen minutes the night before. Amazing that only two bones had fractured; it felt more like twenty.

Jane was saying something, but Lori had zoned out. “I’m sorry, Jane, what did you say?”

“I said maybe I should call you back tomorrow.”

“No, I’m good. I haven’t had any coffee, but I should be okay.”

“All right, well, I wanted to tell you that I remembered what I’d overheard. About highway nineteen?”

Lori’s eyes blinked open. “Seriously?”

“It’s not much, but…Have you ever met Harry Bliss?”

“He actually goes by
Harry
Bliss?”

Jane snorted. “Yeah. Anyway, maybe because of his name, he’s a bit of a blowhard. He talks too loud and likes to look important. He’s always on his cell phone. A couple of months ago, he was in the office waiting for Mr. Jennings to show up for a meeting and he got a phone call. If Mr. Bliss doesn’t want people to eavesdrop, he shouldn’t leave the volume turned up to walkie-talkie levels.”

Lori nodded, as if that would encourage Jane.

It seemed to work. Jane took a deep breath and her voice lowered considerably. “The man on the other end said ‘the committee is open to the reclassification of highway nineteen.’ Do you know what that means?”

“Reclassification?” Lori frowned. “No.”

“Well, Mr. Bliss said if it happened, it would probably happen in December, and they’d have to move before then or too many people would know. He specifically said, ‘Every Tom, Dick and Harry will have their finger in the pie.’”

“The pie?” This didn’t give her any more info at all. “Did they say anything more about this reclassification?”

“No, that was it. I’m sorry. I was hoping it would mean something to you.”

Lori threw her good arm over her eyes. “I don’t think it does. But it’s a good starting point. Thank you so much.”

“You’re welcome. I hope it helps with…whatever it is you’re doing.”

Despite her pain, Lori managed a smile. “I promise to fill you in as soon as I figure it all out. Deal?”

“Deal.”

She hung up and took a deep breath against the pain.

Okay. Things were urgent now. She couldn’t screw around any longer.

Lori had never thought of her debt as a mountain, the way they showed it in those debt-relief commercials. Mountains were majestic and gorgeous. Deadly, yes, but chilling in their beauty. No, her debt was a mine shaft sinking her deeper and deeper beneath the rocky spine of the world. Every day that passed, the interest dripped, wearing away the stone like water. Every week brought new explosions that dropped her another hundred feet. And the gravity was so heavy down here, pressing her into something small and hard. She just couldn’t handle it anymore.

Despite that the pain meds hadn’t quite kicked in, Lori forced herself from bed. She ran a bath because she couldn’t get her cast wet, but she didn’t spend any time soaking. Instead she simply washed up, pulled on her capripants and a tank top and headed out.

The sight of Quinn asleep on her couch stopped her dead in her tracks. Somehow she’d lost track of that confrontation during the night, and she’d lost her will to fight him, as well. Perhaps because he looked vulnerable and sweet with his feet hanging off the end of the sofa and his arm stretched wide toward the coffee table. He just looked like Quinn, and not some threat to her heart.

He must have been up half the night if he was still sleeping so hard, so Lori tiptoed past to grab her keys and get out. She might not know anything about a reclassification of the highway, but she now had just enough information to find out. And not a moment too soon. Whether or not Ben solved the mystery of what had happened to her dad, she had to sell that land. There was no longer any choice. Any sentimentality she’d had left had drowned in that pool of oil in her garage.

The drive to Aspen struck her as particularly beautiful today. Maybe because the painkillers had kicked in, maybe because she’d spent too many hours in bed. Regardless, she felt strangely peaceful as she pulled up to the three-story office building and let herself in. There was no security guard or receptionist, just a board listing the names of the occupants. Lori found the one she wanted and headed for the second floor.

When she opened the door to Chris Tipton’s office, her peace burned away in the furnace blast of shock. Un-fucking-believable.

“Yes?” the skinny blonde asked in a dismissive tone.

Tessa,
Lori thought.
Tessa Smith,
otherwise known as Dream-Whore Barbie. The woman raised perfectly waxed eyebrows as Lori continued to stare.

“Uh, sorry,” Lori stammered, then shook it off. Tessa Smith and her very round breasts had nothing to do with her today. “I need to see Chris Tipton, please.”

“
Christopher
Tipton isn’t available at the moment, but I’d be happy to deliver a message.”

Christopher,
she scoffed inside her head, but only offered a polite smile. “Is Christopher in? I’m certain he’d be interested in talking with me if he is.”

Her eyebrows rose even higher, her shiny mouth turned down. “Mr. Tipton is in a meeting.”

“Just pull him out and tell him Lori Love wants to talk, all right? It’s important.” If she’d been hoping to see a flash of jealous horror on the woman’s face, she’d hoped in vain. Of course Tessa Smith had never heard of Lori. Mechanics didn’t often make it to the society page, and Tessa didn’t look like the type to read the
Tumble Creek Tribune.

Tessa didn’t even seem particularly put out by the request. “Well, give me a minute then. I’ll see what he says.” When she stood, she towered over Lori. The heels she was wearing pushed her nearly to six feet. Were they all that tall?

Whatever jealousy Lori might have been feeling turned into something more like pain. This was Aspen, where even receptionists looked like models. Where women still wore mink coats and men owned private jets. Quinn fit in here. He was an artist commissioned by royalty. But this was no place for her, even if she could get up the courage to fall for Quinn.

Tessa Smith reappeared from the hallway she’d stepped into, a welcoming smile pasted on her face. “Mr. Tipton will be out in just a moment. Please have a seat.”

But before Lori even had a chance to look around for a chair, Chris came striding around the corner. “Lori Love!” he called.

“Chris,” she answered, just to let him know that he might be wearing an expensive suit and calling himself “Christopher,” but she remembered that he used to French-kiss his own fist in sixth grade. When he pulled her into a hug, she remembered the time he’d kissed
her
in seventh grade. He hadn’t worn such nice cologne back then.

“Come on into my office. Tessa, would you bring in some mineral water for Ms. Love?”

“I’m fine, thanks,” she protested.

He was handsome in a used-car-salesman kind of way. Too smooth for her taste, but when he put his hand on her lower back and walked her toward his office, she didn’t protest. If he wanted her charmed, she’d act charmed.

“What happened to your arm, Lori?”

“It’s my hand, actually.” She watched him from the corner of her eye. “There was an accident at my shop.”

“Yikes. That sounds ominous.”

“This is the worst of it.”

He looked guileless as he led her into his office, but used-car salesmen usually did. “So,” he said as he took a seat behind his shiny desk. “I’m hoping you’re here to talk about your land. Not that I wouldn’t welcome a visit otherwise.”

“Right. Well, lucky for you, I
am
here to talk about the land.”

“Wow. I can’t thank you enough for coming to me with this.”

“No problem, but you might not be thanking me in a minute.”

His smile didn’t budge. “Why not?”

“Because I know about the talk of reclassifying highway nineteen.”

This time, the smile definitely dropped a notch. “The what?”

Lori crossed her legs and wished she’d thought to wear a dress and heels so she could play the part of high-powered landowner more convincingly. “Come on, Chris. If you want to play games with me, I’ll go to Anton/Bliss. They seem pretty serious about getting that lot. Maybe they’ll be willing to treat me with respect.”

The smile headed down two more notches and became a straight line. “I take this seriously. What do you want?”

“I want a legitimate offer, not the crap I’ve been handed before.” She brushed a piece of imaginary lint off her pant leg. “We both know this reclassification could change everything.”

“Jesus. How did you find out about it?”

“How did I find out that you’ve been trying to cheat me?”

Chris leaned back in his chair, looking a bit deflated as he reached into a desk drawer for a bottle of water. “Look, I wasn’t trying to cheat you.”

“Yeah, right.”

“Give me a break, Lori. There’s no guarantee the state will agree to improvements. Winter maintenance alone could approach a million a year. Buying your land is still a huge gamble at this point. It could all fall through.”

Winter maintenance? Whoa! “They’re going to keep the pass open all year,” she breathed, not quite believing it. If they opened the pass, that would change everything, and not just for her.

He stared at her for a long moment, a bit of the color leaving his face. “Goddamn it. I can’t believe I just did that. You didn’t know, did you? You totally played me.”

“I knew something, just not everything. And it’s my damn land anyway, so pardon me for screwing you over.”

He had the decency to smile at her, even if it did border on a smirk. “Hell, I wasn’t going to get the land anyway. Anton/Bliss has a heck of a lot more capital and clout than my firm does. My best hope was that you’d sell to me because I’ve known you for years.”

“Huh. Well, I don’t really play by the hearts and unicorns rules of business, so you wouldn’t have had much luck there.”

His wide smile was back. “It was bound to get out anyway. Too many people know about the rumors already. Offers are being made to other landowners. You got hit first because yours was the best undeveloped lot. Riverfront, totally level, right-of-way access that runs through public land, large enough to be broken up into two dozen lots, if need be.”

She nodded, trying to absorb it all.

“Fly-fishing cottages are the new thing for the wealthy. Skiing in the winter. Fishing in the summer. All of it within commuting distance of an airport and five-star restaurants. Of course, these rich guys always overestimate the amount of free time they have. The caretakers spend more time in the house than they do.”

Well, the mystery was solved then, but not the right mystery. She couldn’t imagine this had anything to do with what had happened to her dad a decade before. “How long has this talk been going around?”

He shrugged. “I heard about it a few months ago, because Peter Anton and I were dating the same woman.” Chris winked at her. “She liked me better.”

“Congratulations. And since we’re being honest here…”

He took a drink and raised his eyebrows for her to continue.

“Do you have any idea who’s been trying to intimidate me into selling?”

With a wet cough, he set the water down. “
Intimidate
you? How?”

Lori raised her broken hand.

“Good God, are you kidding me? Somebody did that to you?”

Shrugging in response, she let him believe the worst in the hopes that he would reveal something. But Chris shook his head hard.

“No way. I don’t know anyone who’d be involved in that sort of thing. I mean, some of these guys are hard-asses, but there are always other deals to be made. Your land isn’t worth that kind of trouble.”

“Yeah,” she muttered. “I guess not. Thanks, Chris.”

“You should talk to the cops,” he called as she walked out.

And he was absolutely right. Time to turn this over to Ben completely. The more she found out, the less she could see how any of this had to do with her father’s attack. First, there was only a
chance
that the vandalism had anything to do with the pass. And even if it did, the idea that the same proposal had been floated ten years before and inspired someone to hurt her father was even more far-fetched.

The truth was that her father’s attack had probably been random. Dark night, cheap bar…not much of a mystery. And her vandal? Hell, it could be any one of the half-dozen people who had outstanding bills with the garage. It could be bored teenagers. It could be that shitty mechanic, James Webster.