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to believe in mind-reading to know the question in each of theirs. Just thinking about their concerns made her queasy. Having other people’s futures in her hands wasn’t anything she’d ever imagined doing, and she certainly hadn’t asked for such a responsibility. What she needed was a brisk walk to let the afternoon winds blow through her and clear her head.
    As she stepped out of the house into the sunshine, she fingered the stone in her pocket.
    Blessings in a new land .
    She’d need them.
    She turned her face to the sun, felt its warmth spread through her. She closed her fingers tighter around the stone and decided to stop in Peg Martin’s office before she went down to the barn. Peg could talk to the neighbors. She was friendly and pretty and had an easy air of confidence.
    “You missed lunch,” Peg said as Alana walked in. “Mark made leek and mushroom pizzas.”
    “I was on the phone with Mr. Wilkinson.”
    Peg groaned. “That’d put me off lunch too.” She slanted a sly look at Alana. “I saw that gorgeous guy in your tour yesterday. He was making saucer eyes at you.”
    “Not interested—he has a kid. Married. I have standards.” Alana’s tone wasn’t as light as she’d aimed for.
    “Nah. His daughter told me she doesn’t have a mom. She died in a plane crash. Shocked the hell out of me. But you know how kids can be—they say the darnedest things.”
    Alana didn’t know how kids were. And the fact that Matt had no wife didn’t negate the kid factor. In fact, it accentuated it. But it troubled her that she couldn’t put him out of her mind. She’d always been good at keeping her perspective about men. It was a discipline that served her well. But she knew from her changed feelings as she’d spoken with Marcel that Matt Darrington had had an effect on her. A strong and deep effect that baffled her and made her want to know more in spite of the warning signals that barked don’t go there .
    “I wanted to talk to you about the problem with the windmill,” Alana said, changing the subject. “I’d like for you to meet with the neighbors, see if you can get them to see why it’s a good thing.”
    “Already tried.” Peg spun her chair to face Alana straight on. “They want to talk to you . You own the place, and these are Sonoma County ranchers; they don’t do staff. Imagine Texas, John Wayne and Clint Eastwood, and you’ll just about have the picture. Although our neighbors aren’t as tall. Except for crotchety Mr. Hartman. He’s tall. And grumpy. If you can get him on board, you’ll have the whole county. But good luck. He thinks anything built in the twenty-first century is suspect. Especially a windmill run by a computer.”
    “No one mentioned a computer.”
    “It’s a Norwin, state of the art. They use them all over Europe. It’s going to be great—we just need those final plans approved. I’d hate to have to pull it down. It has twenty-inch steel bolts driven into a twenty-five-foot concrete foundation. It’s meant to last.”
    Every cell in Alana’s body told her to flee. Arguing with ranchers about computer-controlled windmills just was not going to happen, Nana’s final project or not. The fact that her grandmother had put the thing up before she had the final approvals astonished her. But then again, maybe it didn’t—Nana was a Tavonesi, after all.
    “I’ll think about it.”
    Her stomach grumbled, reminding her that she’d missed lunch. But she hadn’t been to the gym in a week, so maybe missing a meal wouldn’t hurt. Marcel might be a Frenchman, but he had an eye, a critical eye, for any inch of her body that wasn’t perfectly trim.
    “Would you have someone call the travel agent and get me tickets to Paris for the end of next week? And book a limo, please. Thursday would be the best day. Danielle at the agency has the log of all my travel preferences.”
    “One of the staff can drive you.” Peg’s tone had lost its friendly lilt. She spun her