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him a quick glimpse of the skirt tightening over her hips.
    â€œStewart’s Crossing City Hall,” she answered sweetly. “This is Rhea Hernandez.”
    She had a nice butt, he’d give her that, but he wasn’t interested.
    Attractive and smart, Rhea had been married and divorced three times, and was looking for husband number four at the ripe old age of forty-two.
    It wasn’t going to be Clint, and he suspected she knew it. Rhea’s flirting was more out of habit than sincerity.
    â€œ. . . I’m sorry, the mayor isn’t in. Can I take a message, or, if you’d like, you can e-mail her directly,” Rhea was saying as she stretched the cord around the desk and took her seat, disappearing from view. He heard her start rattling off Mayor Leslie Imholt’s e-mail address.
    Clint picked up the stack of papers she’d dropped into his inbox. Plans for the complete renovation of Blue Peacock Manor, the historic home set on property that backed up to his own ranch, was the first request. No surprise there, as he’d heard Sarah was returning to do a complete renovation of the Stewart family home. The preliminary drawings were already with the city engineer for approval; these had to be renovations to the original plans. A helluva job, that, he knew, and to think that Sarah was taking it on and returning to a place she’d wanted so desperately to leave. He eyed the specs and noted that he needed to see what work had already been accomplished on the smaller residence on the property—the guesthouse, as the Stewart family had called it.
    Until the mayor had hired Doug Knowles, Clint had been the only inspector in this part of the county and had checked all the work himself. Now he could hand jobs off to Doug if he wanted. Clint had already decided that was generally a bad idea. It certainly would be in this case, he thought.
    But if he took on Blue Peacock Manor, no doubt he would see Sarah again.
    Frowning, he grabbed one of the damned bits of candy, and unwrapping a tiny Kit-Kat bar, leaned back in his chair. He and Sarah hadn’t seen each other for years, and if he were honest with himself, he knew that their split hadn’t been on the best of terms. He tossed the candy into his mouth, then wadded up the wrapper and threw it at the waste can.
    High school romance, he thought. So intense, but in the larger scheme of things, so meaningless, really.
    Why, then, did the memory of it seem as fresh now as it had half a lifetime ago?
    His desk phone jangled, and he reached for it willingly, pushing thoughts of Sarah Stewart and their ill-fated romance to the far, far corners of his mind.

C HAPTER 2
    â€œT hat’s it. I’m outta here,” Rosalie Jamison said as she stripped off her apron and tossed it into a bin with the other soiled towels, aprons, jackets, and rags that would be cleaned overnight, ready for the morning shift at the three-star diner. She slipped her work shoes onto a shelf and laced up her Nikes, new and reflective, for the walk home. “I’ll see you all later.”
    Located a few blocks from the river, the restaurant had been dubbed the Columbia Diner about a million years ago by some hick with no imagination. It was located at one end of the truck stop about a half mile out of Stewart’s Crossing. Rosalie had spent the past six months here, waiting tables for the regulars and the customers just passing through. She hated the hours and the smell of grease and spices that clung to her until she spent at least twenty minutes under the shower, but it was a job, one of the few in this useless backwoods town.
    For now it would do, until she had enough money saved so she could leave Stewart’s Crossing for good. She couldn’t wait.
    â€œWait!” Gloria, a woman who was in her fifties and perpetually smelled of cigarettes, caught up with Rosalie before she got out the door where she stuffed a few dollars and some change into