Birthright Read Free

face.”
    “You’re too hard on him.” Roger tapped a fingertip to Lana’s nose. “He’s just doing what he thinks is right.”
    When Lana merely angled her head, stared blandly, Roger laughed. “Didn’t say I agreed with him. Boy’s got a hard head, just like his old man did. Doesn’t have the sense to see if a community’s this divided over something, you need to rethink.”
    “He’ll be rethinking now,” Lana promised. “Testing and dating those bones is going to cause him some major delays. And if we’re lucky, they’re going to be old enough to draw a lot of attention—national attention—to the site. We can delay the development for months. Maybe years.”
    “He’s as hardheaded as you. You’ve managed to hold him up for months already.”
    “He says it’s progress,” she mumbled.
    “He’s not alone in that.”
    “Alone or not, he’s wrong. You can’t plant houses like a corn crop. Our projections show—”
    Roger held up a hand. “Preaching to the choir, counselor.”
    “Yeah.” She let out a breath. “Once we get the archaeological survey, we’ll see what we see. I can’t wait. Meanwhile, the longer the development’s delayed, the more Dolan loses. And the more time we have to raise money. He might just reconsider selling that land to the Woodsboro Preservation Society.”
    She pushed back her hair. “Why don’t you let me take you to lunch? We can celebrate today’s victory.”
    “Why aren’t you letting some young, good-looking guy take you out to lunch?”
    “Because I lost my heart to you, Roger, the first time Isaw you.” It wasn’t far from the truth. “In fact, hell with lunch. Let’s you and me run off to Aruba together.”
    It made him chuckle, nearly made him blush. He’d lost his wife the same year Lana had lost her husband. He often wondered if that was part of the reason for the bond that had forged between them so quickly.
    He admired her sharp mind, her stubborn streak, her absolute devotion to her son. He had a granddaughter right about her age, he thought. Somewhere.
    “That’d set this town on its ear, wouldn’t it? Be the biggest thing since the Methodist minister got caught playing patty-cake with the choir director. But the fact is, I’ve got books to catalogue—just in. Don’t have time for lunch or tropical islands.”
    “I didn’t know you’d gotten new stock. Is this one?” At his nod, she gently turned the book around.
    Roger dealt in rare books, and his tiny shop was a small cathedral to them. It smelled, always, of old leather and old paper and the Old Spice he’d been sprinkling on his skin for sixty years.
    A rare bookstore wasn’t the sort of thing expected in a two-stoplight rural town. Lana knew the bulk of his clientele came, like his stock, from much farther afield.
    “It’s beautiful.” She traced a finger over the leather binding. “Where did it come from?”
    “An estate in Chicago.” His ears pricked at a sound at the rear of the shop. “But it came with something even more valuable.”
    He waited, heard the door between the shop and the stairs to the living quarters on the second floor open. Lana saw the pleasure light up his face, and turned.
    He had a face of deep valleys and strong hills. His hair was very dark brown with gilt lights in it. The type, she imagined, that would go silver and white with age. There was a rumpled mass of it that brushed the collar of his shirt.
    The eyes were deep, dark brown, and at the moment seemed a bit surly. As did his mouth. It was a face, Lana mused, that mirrored both intellect and will. Smart andstubborn, was her first analysis. But perhaps, she admitted, it was because Roger had often described his grandson as just that.
    The fact that he looked as if he’d just rolled out of bed and hitched on a pair of old jeans as an afterthought added sexy to the mix.
    She felt a pleasant little ripple in the blood she hadn’t experienced in a very long time.
    “Doug.” There was