A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8) Read Online Free PDF

this
all
come from my uncle winning my aunt from your father?” Lindie asked, feeling frustrated with his hardline stance.
    “
Winning
implies a fair fight,” he said, arching an eyebrow as he leaned against the side of his SUV, settling in to focus on her. “Camdens don’t fight fair.”
    “But we do!”
    He ignored that claim and instead answered her question. “No, this doesn’t
all
come from what went on between my father and your uncle. It started there—certainly I grew up hearing that story more than once. Then there were a couple of things that added to it.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like the Camden Superstore that went into Dunhaven when I was in middle school. My dad was in construction. He worked all over and he’d seen what happened in the wake of your stores. He knew what we were in for. So by the time I was ready to go to high school my folks decided they’d better sell the house I’d grown up in and get out while the getting was good.”
    “Part of Dunhaven ended up like this side of Wheatley?”
    “Yeah, it did,” he said as if wondering how she could not know that.
    “So you and your parents—”
    “And my younger brother, moved,” he went on. “My parents had to take a loss on the house to sell it. I ended up having to enter a different school district and leave behind all my friends.”
    “That didn’t make you happy,” Lindie commented, interpreting his tone.
    “No, that did
not
make me happy. And when I went back to visit those friends I saw this.” He motioned to what she’d now had her eyes opened to.
    “The last time I went back—for a Friday-night visit in the summer,” he continued, “my old friends were bashing in windows for entertainment. The movie theater had closed. They didn’t have anything else to do. The building they were vandalizing was a tire store in an area of town that had been doing okay when I moved. But thanks to Camden Superstore’s automotive department it had eventually gone under and so had my friend’s father—he’d managed it. My friend had a lot of pent-up anger about it and that was how he let it out. It was the last time my parents let me go back to visit, but I heard over the transom that that particular friend kept to that path. He got into more and more trouble and ended up in jail.”
    “And you blame us,” Lindie attested.
    “I can tell you firsthand that he wasn’t on the road to prison before your store came in and ruined his old man...” He left the rest of the answer to her.
    “Then, in college, H. J. Camden came up in a couple of my business courses,” Sawyer went on. “I’ll grant you that it wasn’t always negative—he is quite a success story and more than one of my business professors admired the hell out of him. But he also came up on a list of modern-day robber barons.”
    Lindie had heard that title applied to her great-grandfather before but it still caused her to flinch. “And
that
was what you paid attention to,” she concluded.
    “Like I said, I grew up on the story of a Camden’s ruthlessness. So, yeah, I paid a lot of attention to that side of things.”
    “And that was when you declared war on all Camdens?”
    He motioned with one hand to all that was around them. “I had good reasons
not
to admire you all. Nothing personal,” he added.
    “Right,” Lindie said with a tone full of sarcasm, goading him. “Because
personally
you admire me.”
    He smiled a sly half smile and shrugged, leaving her unsure exactly what that meant. It did seem as if he might at least be admiring the way she looked, though, because his cool blue eyes never veered to take in anything else.
    Then he said, “Are you and the corporation the same thing? Isn’t there anything about you that isn’t business to
be
admired?”
    “There’s a lot about me that isn’t business.” Why was this starting to sound a little flirty?
    “Like what?” he asked. “Are you married? Because there’s no ring. Kids?”
    “No, I’m not