by Serena Bell
Smart girl.
15
She needed to stress bake.
After her visit with her brother, she’d sat down with Chiara and set up a Bootstrapper page, then trudged into town to visit all four banks and credit unions. Two had said no outright.
It wasn’t that they were unfriendly. They were eager to do business with her, in the form of a twenty percent-down mortgage, which—they explained hastily—was already generous—hotel loans usually had down payments of twenty to fifty percent. But since they knew her family, and her brother had a proven track record, and she herself had so much hotel experience … if she could raise the money for a twenty percent down payment some other way, they’d be overjoyed to loan her the rest.
The third and fourth lenders …
Keegan Horan, an old friend of her father’s, and Diane Cooper, who’d worked with Levi on the Cape House loans, had both said they’d see what they could do. They’d asked her to send them all her financial information and they’d assess the possibility of extending her a low- or no-down-payment loan. They’d promised to get her an answer, one way or the other, by Friday, the day after the July 4th holiday. Keegan had been his usual gruff but reasonable self, and Diane had been gentle and sweet, but Auburn wouldn’t exactly characterize either of them as brimming with optimism. More like—not wanting to burst her tiny little bubble.
Still—it was something.
Of course, before the money could matter, she still had to win over Trey. And he obviously didn’t want to be won—every time she thought she’d begun to see a glimmer of his sympathetic side, he hid it away beneath that icy exterior. Could you make someone fall in love with something if he was determined not to? The romance writers clearly thought so, and they’d assured her they knew their stuff. Auburn wasn’t so sure. Trey didn’t seem like a guy who’d just … slip-slide his way into anything.
And there was always the chance that he’d just flat out lie, even if she did win his sympathies. Say she hadn’t.
Except the one thing she sensed from Trey was that he was honest. To the point of bluntness, in fact. She couldn’t imagine him lying.
But she really didn’t know him at all, did she? She’d thought Patrick was a decent guy, too, until it had been impossible not to see the truth.
Oh, bloody hell, this was such a mess.
Making cookie dough always calmed her down and cleared her head.
Auburn made loads of dough at a time, then froze it so she could bake a batch of assorted cookies fresh each afternoon—chocolate chip, ginger molasses, peanut butter, snickerdoodle. Prepping new batches of dough couldn’t help but restore her equanimity.
Only, when she made her way back to the kitchen, there was a man on her floor with his head under her sink.
Trey.
Wearing jeans and a soft gray t-shirt. The first time she’d seen him in anything other than businesswear.
The t-shirt had ridden up and the jeans had ridden down—just a little—showing a narrow band of golden ridged stomach and just the very top edge of the place where his skin turned white and his hip muscle dove—er, south.
That little bit of pale, bare skin did something weird to her insides. It was like a visual reminder that Trey had an underbelly, a vulnerable side. That he was a mere mortal like the rest of them.
She was afraid that if she startled him, he’d hit his head on something, so she held very still and watched, probably for longer than was appropriate. The jeans were well-worn and clung to his thighs, and when he wiggled to adjust his position, all the muscles she could see bunched and flexed and—
Her mouth was dry, which seemed to be because all the liquid in her body had pooled, like hot gold, between her legs.
She turned, tiptoed out of the kitchen and stood outside it contemplating her next move. She tried very hard not to think about the thigh muscles she’d seen under his jeans. Or any of the other contours his jeans had made, hugging his body…
She needed a clear head to do this. She could not, could not afford to be attracted to Trey Xavier. If she lost her head, she had no doubt he would rampage over her like … well, like a construction vehicle clearing ground for a new development.
She re-entered the kitchen, making as much noise as humanly possible. It worked. He slid himself out from under the sink. His t-shirt rode up even further, but he yanked it down when he saw her. “Oh. Hey.”
“Hey,” she said. “What are you doing under my sink?”
“I had to fix that leak.”
His phrasing struck her oddly. “You had to?”
For a moment she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he sighed and sat up. His eyes were troubled, the sky over the Pacific before a storm.
“I hate anything that’s broken or ugly. I have a—I guess you’d call it a compulsion—to fix it. Comes from growing up in a shithole.”
She could tell from the way his gaze jumped away from hers that he’d said more than he’d meant to. And that made something squeeze in her chest—maybe just hope for his humanity?
Okay, so he’d grown up in a shithole. Huh. She guessed she could see it. Beachcrest was successful but not minting cash or anything, and there were all Carl’s investment troubles, and Brynn had alluded to the fact that she and Trey hadn’t grown up with money. That meant Trey was self-made at some point in his history.
It cast things in a different light. The way he talked down about Beachcrest, scorned its shabbiness. His obvious need to gild the world.
“Let me show you what I’m doing, so you can do it yourself next time,” Trey said.
She realized he was asking her to get down on the floor with him and look under the sink. And that—
That would put them very close together in a horizontal position.
“I don’t bite,” he said wryly.
“I’m not scared of you,” she said bullishly. She got down on the floor and slid in beside him. Lying down made her feel shockingly vulnerable. Which made no sense, because he was on the floor, too. But she felt like—like she’d just exposed her own pale white underbelly to him.
Worse, she could feel the heat coming off him, all along the length of his body. If she turned her head …
Don’t turn your head.
“See this? This is the valve handle, and this is the packing nut. So I just wrapped a rag around the nut, gripped it with these—” He produced pliers— “and turned it about one-eighth of a turn. It compresses the rubber, and usually that’s enough to stop the leak. In this case it was. But if it happens again and you can’t fix it this way, you’ll need to disassemble the valve. Or find someone who can.”
“Well, it won’t really matter if Beachcrest is gone, will it?”
The words popped out before she could stop them. She hadn’t meant to let her bitterness show. In order to beat him at his game, she needed to have ice in her veins, like he did. She couldn’t be leaking feelings out all over the place.
“No,” he said, quietly. “No, I guess it won’t.”
She’d expected a note of gloating in his voice, but there was none there. Which was somehow more unsettling.
And then she made the mistake of turning her head, at the same time he did, and their faces were—almost touching. She could feel his breath move over her lips.
She hastily slid away from him, feeling cold all along the side of her body and hating herself for noticing. She stood, and he stood next to her. There was a long moment of almost painful awkwardness, and she burst out with the first thing that popped into her head.
“Where’d you learn about plumbing?”
“I flipped houses for a while.”
“Was that your first business?”
“No. My first business was leaf raking and lawn mowing. Age twelve. My dad sucked with the house upkeep. It bugged me.”
“Because you hate things that are ugly and broken.”
“Yeah.”
He looked away from her, like his compulsion to make things better and
more beautiful was something to be ashamed of.
“Then what? After the leaf raking and lawn mowing?”
“That grew into a full-on landscaping company. After that, house painting. Through high school.”
“Then?”
“Contracting. Then the house flipping. Then that turned into real estate development. And then real estate technology. When I was flipping, I’d wished I had an app that would make flipping and other sales more efficient. So I found a guy to develop one for me and turned it into a business.”
“A very successful business, word has it.”
He dipped his head. The modesty of the gesture made her feel like she’d read him all wrong. He wasn’t an arrogant asshole. So why had he come off so much that way in Bob’s? Was the way she saw him tinged by the deep grudge she still bore against Patrick?
“That’s—that’s really impressive.”
His eyes raked her face, like he was trying to figure out if she was putting him on.
“I mean it,” she said.
“Well. Thanks. It was just what I had to do.”
“How so?”
Something in his face tightened, and she thought he wasn’t going to answer. Then he took a breath and spoke again.
“Things weren’t great at home.”
She wanted to ask him more, but she knew she’d pushed him far enough. Something dark and shuttered in his face told her that part of the conversation was over.
“Do you miss it? Fixing things? Building things? Instead of—”
“Moving money?” he asked, amused.
“Well, yeah.”
He opened his mouth to answer, and then paused. Seemed to consider her question.
Abruptly, he reached out and touched her arm near the shoulder.
For a moment their eyes held, and held, and held. She heard every tiny sound in the kitchen. The purr of the fridge, the odd rattle of the ice maker, the tick of the old-fashioned analog clock Carl loved.
Then his hand dropped away, leaving a trail of warmth where it had touched. “You had something on your shirt from the floor. A dust bunny.” He held it out.
Oh, for the love of God, it was just a stupid dust bunny. She was totally losing her head, her body blooming like a June rose at the unexpected touch.
She needed to pull herself together and get her mind fully back on what mattered. Saving Beachcrest.
“Oh, look at that,” she said sarcastically. “A little bit of shabby stuck to me.”
She took the dust bunny from him and tossed it in the trash, then got the broom and swept along the edge of the sink. When she was done, she took out the mixer.
“I’m making cookies. For afternoon tea. Which is on your schedule.”
“What kind?”
“Molasses ginger, snickerdoodles, oatmeal raisin, and chocolate chip. Hot and fresh from the oven.”
“I like chocolate chip best.” There was a hint of lust on his face, the same as when he’d bitten into the buttered biscuit, and it was enough to make her heartbeat kick up.
It was just because she liked feeding people. That was all.
“Nuts or no nuts?”
“I’ll make some of each.”
“Good. Because chocolate chip cookies shouldn’t have nuts. It ruins the gooeyness.”
She couldn’t help it, she smiled. “Did you just say ‘gooeyness?’”
He shook his head. “Must have been someone else.”
She startled herself—and him too—by laughing. “So you’ll be there.”
“I’ll be there. I agreed to follow the schedule, didn’t I? I don’t break my word.”
I was right, she thought, and then, shut up, you’re so naive.
For a moment she doubted the entire wisdom of the plan. Because saving Beachcrest was not worth losing her self-respect again. Not by a long shot.
But no one was asking her to sacrifice her self-respect. She could take a deep breath, tamp down the unruly scraps of attraction, and Get. This. Thing. Done. Wherever they went, including afternoon tea this afternoon, there would also be other people. The romance writers, the fishermen. Reinforcements. Buffers. It would be relatively safe.
“Will there be milk, to go with the cookies? I’m not exactly a dainty tea drinker.”
And, after all, he was the one showing weakness. He was the one who’d slid under her kitchen sink, who’d picked a dust bunny off her shirt, who’d used the word “gooey,” who’d admitted that chocolate chip was his favorite.
She should be thrilled by the fact that he was showing himself. Showing a soft, almost playful side. Because it was a sign that Beachcrest’s magic was working on him.
But it felt like the most dangerous thing of all.
She knew. The danger was inside her. It was her weakness. For his body, honed by expensive gym equipment, his power, stoked by years of ambition, and his money. The same weakness that had left her at Patrick’s mercy.
“Ice cold,” she said.
It was an answer to his question about the milk, but also a reminder to herself.
16
Auburn moved around the room as Trey watched. Chatting. Laughing, with a toss of her curls. Carrying trays of cookies from one guest to the next, offering them to the writers, the fishermen, the family.
She giggled at something her front desk clerk said to her, then threw an arm around the other woman’s shoulders. She looked up and her eye caught his. Damn it. He looked away.
He had tried, several times, to stop watching her, but every time he thought he’d tamed the impulse, he found his eyes on her again.
Something bad was happening.
When they’d lain under the kitchen sink earlier, he’d been unable to think about anything except her closeness. They’d turned their heads at the same time, and he’d heard the hitch of her breathing and thought about what it would feel like to lick into the wet heat of her mouth.
It would fuck everything up. Right now, this was all very straightforward. He just needed to march through this schedule of hers, remain sufficiently indifferent, and win.
The fact that he’d been able to completely forget his mission for at least three inhalations and exhalations, long enough to fall into a rhapsody involving her tongue, was a bad, bad sign.
Luckily, she’d jumped away before he’d really had to test himself. Of course she had. Because he’d been an asshole to her. Because he was still being an asshole to her, going through the motions of what she’d asked him to do while still planning to screw her in the end, and not in the way he’d imagined doing when he’d seen her at Bob’s.
Except there was the way she’d looked at him when he’d touched her shoulder—
It wasn’t the way you looked at someone you hated.
Which only made things worse, of course.
He should probably do something completely assholic so she would hate him again. One of them should have their head on straight.
“Here,” she said.
She had a glass in her hand. Filled with milk. He took it from her, and it was ice cold against his palm.
“You remembered.”
“Of course!” she said. “That’s my job.”
She handed him a chocolate chip cookie, still warm, and watched him closely as he took a bite.
He couldn’t hide how damn good, tender and flavorful and chocolatey, that bite was, and her pupils flared, setting up an answering curl of heat in his groin.
She’d be like that during sex, he thought suddenly. She’d watch him like that, and her pupils would widen with sympathetic pleasure as he drove into her.
In bed, their combativeness would be smoking hot. She’d demand what she needed and meet him stroke for stroke and crest for crest. They’d go up in flames.
His cookie had gotten suddenly tasteless, like it wasn’t possible for his body to enjoy both the pleasure of Auburn’s baked goods and the fantasy of her getting off on his arousal.
She was still watching him, and there was something on
her face, an echo of his non-cookie thoughts.
If he hadn’t had both his hands full, he would have—
What? What would he have done?
Nothing, because acting on that particular impulse would be suicidally stupid.
“It’s delicious,” he said, instead. “You can make a cookie.”
She grinned knowingly. “I’m glad you like it.”
“Auburn.” It was the mother from the family of four. “You’re out of snickerdoodles. Are there more?”
“There’s another tray over there,” Auburn said. She bit her lip as she turned to walk away from him, and he had to resist the urge to stop her with a hand on her arm.
The fishermen came down, grabbed a ginger molasses cookie each, and sat on the couch together. Not quite touching, but their non-cookie hands were interlaced. Trey didn’t think he had a romantic bone left in his body, but Auburn’s story must have gotten under his skin because he felt a small curling sympathy in his chest for them. He tried to imagine having made it that far in life without ever admitting to yourself what you really needed. What it would feel like to have those needs met. The sense of liberation would be overwhelming.
At least, that’s what he would imagine if he had a heart. Good thing he didn’t. It would be such a liability in this situation.
He looked up from them and found Auburn watching him. He gave her a slight nod, like the tip of a hat. I see, now. A smile spread over her face. He could feel that smile, like it was moving in his bloodstream.
“Well, well, well.” Deja, the ringleader of the romance writers, had appeared at his side. Her eyes moved from his face to Auburn’s and back again.
“Don’t,” he found himself saying.
“Don’t what?” she asked.
“Don’t do whatever you romance writers do.”
“What we romance writers do,” Deja said primly, but not unkindly, “is believe that love conquers all.”
Across the room, the father and mother were talking to each other and laughing, her head thrown back, his hand reaching out to push strands of hair off her face.
