Change of Heart Read online

  Chelsea would be here soon and he needed time to think about what he wanted to say to her. Originally, first on his list was to ask why she’d stopped writing him.

  But Jeff had vetoed that. “You cannot start an interrogation of her the second she gets out of the car!” he’d nearly yelled.

  “I would just like to know—”

  Jeff had thrown up his hands in frustration. “She was sixteen and beautiful and rich. That’s all the excuse she needed not to keep up some deep, philosophical letter-writing campaign with the kid she used to ride a bike with.”

  “We did more than that!”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Jeff said. “I’ve heard all about it. But it was a different time back then. If you illegally used corporate letterhead today, you’d be facing charges. You two were white-collar juvenile delinquents.”

  “I guess we were.” Eli said. “Robin and Marian Les Jeunes.”

  “I want you to swear that you will not question her. Just have fun.”

  “Fun?” Eli asked.

  “Tell me you’ve heard of it.”

  “Of course. Chelsea and I always had a good time together.”

  “Figuring out about a kid’s dental health care is not a ‘good time.’ ” Jeff was glaring at his boss. In the last months he’d done a lot of research on Chelsea Hamilton. It hadn’t taken much to learn about her penchant for polo players, race-car drivers, and Olympic skiers. Lots of excitement. Not a computer nerd anywhere to be seen.

  He looked at Eli, standing in his jeans and T-shirt, and thought that he certainly looked the part of the man Chelsea would like—except for his expression. He was scowling in a way that was almost scary. “Too bad you couldn’t be me on the inside,” Jeff mumbled.

  “What?” Eli asked.

  “I said it was a shame you and I couldn’t do one of those Freaky Friday exchanges. If I had your looks and body along with my humor and way with women, I’d have a harem in minutes.”

  Eli grimaced. “Then you’d have a dozen women complaining that you never pay any attention to them.”

  “No,” Jeff said. “You have heard women say that, but not one of them has said it to me.”

  Eli smiled. “Then I wish we could trade. I’d do most anything to get Chelsea to stay, even if it’s only for a few days.”

  Jeff shook his head. “You do have it bad, don’t you? Okay, my advice is to lighten up. Act like you haven’t compared every girl you’ve ever met to her and found her to be lacking. Pretend that seeing Chelsea is nice but not some monumental event that you hope will change your entire life.” His head came up. “You haven’t bought her a ring, have you?”

  “I thought we’d go together to look at—”

  Again, Jeff threw up his hands. “That poor girl. If I were her, I’d never get near you again. I wonder why she agreed to this visit?”

  Eli frowned. “Maybe she wants to see me as much as I do her.”

  “I doubt it,” Jeff said and was glad when his phone rang. “It’s Pilar and she says she needs to talk to you.”

  “Tell her I’ll call her back later.”

  Jeff relayed the message, but after he hung up, he said, “You ought to be nicer to Pilar. If Chelsea falls through, your secretary is a great backup. I don’t know why she stays around you.”

  Eli shrugged in dismissal. “I’m going to get a beer. You want one?”

  “No thanks,” Jeff said. “I’m watching my figure.”

  His joke cleared the air and they were back on good terms. Actually, Chelsea was their only real bone of contention.

  That had been days ago and with every minute since then, Eli had become more apprehensive. He spent hours in the local gym, doing some sparring with the owner, Mike Newcomb, and being spotted on the weight bench by Colin Frazier. With Mike being a retired police detective and Colin the town sheriff, Eli had felt very comfortable in the gym. In fact, just a couple of weeks ago, Eli had used his contacts to help on a case Mike had taken on. “Retirement is a relative term,” Mike had said.

  As for Colin, when Jeff and Eli first arrived, he’d asked them questions about why they were here, who they knew, where they worked. Eli had answered all that he could. He couldn’t tell much about his job, and he knew little about his father’s family, the Harcourts.

  “My wife, Gemma, and I will have to have you over for dinner and introduce you to some people,” Colin said.

  Eli said that sounded nice. Maybe he and Chelsea . . . He had to force himself not to think like that.

  Now, he moved on to a row of bushes and began to trim them. He really should find out what kind of plants they were and when they should be pruned. But his mind was so full of Chelsea that he couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

  Chelsea didn’t pull into the driveway. She was afraid that Eli would hear the gravel crunching and suddenly open the car door and say, “Why did you stop writing me?!”

  She had no idea what her answer would be because she had no legitimate excuse. On the long drive to Edilean, she’d thought of lots of answers to give him. There was the therapist way—something she’d had experience with—of explaining how she’d been young and frivolous and didn’t understand the value of friendship. Or she could get angry and yell at him. Or she could laugh and say, “And hello to you too, Eli.” She came up with dozens of ways to confront him, ways to answer him, but every scenario ended with her getting back into her car and leaving.

  But then she’d seen Eli in the grocery store. She knew she was being shallow, but it was a lot harder to say no to a drop-dead gorgeous man than it was to a man-boy whose ears stuck out.

  Since seeing him, her answer to his question of why she hadn’t written had changed. One of them was to shoot back at him, “Why didn’t you tell me you’d grown a foot and put on forty pounds of muscle?” The thought of throwing her arms around him and French-kissing him hello was another answer she rather liked.

  But all in all, she wasn’t sure what she was going to do.

  She closed the car door quietly. She’d seen the assistant, Jeff, drive away, so it was her guess that Eli was in the house alone. She wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

  As she quietly walked across the lawn, she wished she hadn’t worn heels. If Eli got too bad, she’d need flats for running away. Maybe she should give a quick knock on the door, then leave before he answered. She could tell her parents that—

  She didn’t complete her thought because Eli was outside. He had his back to her and his shirt was off. From his thick dark hair to his feet, he was beautiful. His shoulders were broad and his waist was small. He was using big cutters to trim some bushes and the action made the muscles on his back move like waves in an ocean.

  For a moment, Chelsea closed her eyes. I am in trouble, she thought.

  If only this weren’t Eli, a guy she had so much history with—and knew so very well. She had no doubt that he was going to make her feel disloyal and superficial, and he was probably going to point out that she had no clear direction in life. Yes, she was the one who hadn’t written. No, she hadn’t given her life over to helping her country, as he had done. But she had . . . What? Well, actually, she’d had a damn good time in her life. Could Eli say that?!

  She took another step forward, ready to take her punishment for past offenses, but then an idea came to her. Why not turn some of that Robin and Marian Les Jeunes onto themselves? Save the two of them, so to speak. His muscles were still moving under his skin, and Chelsea thought how much she loved surfing.

  She took a breath. Courage! she thought. I need all of it that I can muster.

  “Is he gone?” she asked.

  Eli turned toward her, and for all that his face and body were different, those were the same eyes—and she could read the accusation in them. She knew she’d better talk fast or he was going to start with the questions about why she’d broken contac