by Hope Ramsay
She responded by tottering forward on her screw-me shoes and using her sex appeal like a weapon. “So, what’s your name, honey?” she asked.
“Mr. McNeil, and I have work to do.”
She seemed surprised that he didn’t bother looking at the boobs she’d shoved at him. But he’d seen plenty of fake boobs in his day, and they’d always turned him off. His girlfriends might have been mostly cocktail waitresses and blackjack dealers, but he’d always insisted on real ta-tas. He had standards, and in his opinion, a handful was enough.
His mind wandered to that morning when Amy Lyndon lost her beach towel. He would never forget the sight of her all nude and perched up high on that fence. That woman defied all his expectations. She had a natural charm about her that made him want to laugh and kiss her at the same time. Like this morning when she got all grateful for his help and all eager to learn the names of the plants he’d asked her to mulch. She didn’t look down on him or his occupation. She didn’t treat him like a cabana boy.
Whoa, wait a sec. He’d lost his train of thought. And while he’d been woolgathering, Ivory had gotten right up on him in a cloud of spicy perfume that made him sneeze.
“God bless,” she said, patting his face. “Whatcha doing after work, honey? I think you and me could be friends. In fact, with a face like yours, I could probably get you a role on the show.”
He was about to tell Ivory to back off when chaos descended in the form of Sven the labradoodle, who had apparently escaped from his state-of-the-art kennel behind the barn and was now in hot pursuit of Muffin the cockapoo. The dogs came racing around the blind curve of the boxwood hedge. Muffin, small and agile, avoided colliding with Dusty and the showgirl, but the goofy Sven tripped over himself and knocked Ivory right into Dusty’s chest. He caught her, of course, and she sagged against him.
Just then the itty-bitty and adorably sexy Amy Lyndon rounded the corner and skidded to a stop in her oversized hiking boots. She paused long enough to take in the sight of Dusty and Ivory while a fetching blush ran up her cheeks. “Oh, uh, I’m sorry…I, uh—” She shut her mouth and tore after the dog.
“Muffin, you come back here,” she yelled as the dog made a wild circuit of the patio with her floppy ears flying and her pink leash dragging across the flagstones. The dog scampered by her mistress and then hightailed it around the boxwood and out toward the western wall, with Amy clunking behind in her ridiculous boots.
Dusty set Ivory back on her high heels, pivoted, and dove for Sven, but he missed badly and ended up skidding across the flagstones on his knees. Ow, that was definitely going to bruise, but he had succeeded in cornering the dog. At least for a moment.
Sven made a quick change of direction in a move worthy of any first-rate NFL running back. He evaded Dusty’s tackle and busted loose, heading after Muffin once again. Dusty pushed from the ground and gave chase, skidding around the boxwood just as Muffin cut a swath through a group of people out on the lawn a few yards in front of her.
Muffin’s passage through the knot of people caused barely a ripple except for the fact that the camera crew panned in Amy’s direction as she clumped along in her ridiculous work clothes. In fact, everyone turned toward Amy and her dog, a move that proved fatal.
Sven might not be as gigantic as his reindeer-sized namesake from the movie Frozen, but he still had a good fifty pounds on Muffin. So when the dog put on speed and hit the crowd, one cameraman went down and everyone else disbursed in a dozen different directions.
Yup, good ol’ Sven was the epitome of a reverse sheepdog. Instead of herding people together, he scattered them and knocked them down like duckpins.
Dusty stepped it up a notch just as Amy laid herself out and snagged Muffin’s leash. She landed with an audible ooof, the dog jerking to a stop. A moment later, a somewhat amorous Sven made his move. Their little X-rated dog show was almost amusing, but maybe not to everyone.
Dusty arrived on the scene, breathless, the knees of his khakis stained with blood. He grabbed Sven’s collar and pulled him away.
“Ew, that’s gross. Stop,” Amy said, pulling Muffin in the opposite direction.
Willow arrived on the scene. “What the hell is going on here? Why is Sven out of his kennel?”
“Uh, well, um…” Amy said. “It was sort of my fault.”
Willow turned her green-eyed stare on Amy, and the little-bitty woman wilted right on the spot. Willow could be intimidating as hell sometimes, and Amy’s downward glance and the defeated slope of her shoulders said it all. The poor thing expected to have her head handed to her.
“No, it wasn’t Amy’s fault,” Dusty said on a cough. “The latch on the gate’s been loose for weeks, and I haven’t gotten around to fixing it. Anyone leaning on that gate could open it up. I’m sure that’s what happened.”
Amy raised her head, surprise in her eyes. “But—”
“You did lean on the gate, didn’t you?”
She hesitated a moment and then nodded her head.
Willow turned on him. “Well, no harm done, I guess, since it was Danny and his cockamamie celebrity girlfriend up there. To be honest, if Sven’s antics have upset them, maybe they’ll decide to get married someplace else, because I cannot believe what that woman wants to do.”
Dusty nodded his head. “I heard she wants us to remove the Portuguese laurels.”
“It’s worse than that. She wants to turn the Carriage House into a circus tent because members of the Cirque du Soleil touring company will be putting on a special show during the reception. Which, you’ll be pleased to learn, is supposed to take place in three freaking weeks. The woman is insane.”
“Three weeks? We’re all booked up for the next three months.”
“On weekends. But Mia is happy to accommodate us. This wedding is taking place midweek. On April twenty-sixth.”
“You could always tell her no,” Dusty said.
Willow shook her head. “No, I can’t. David has asked me to be nice. For the family and Scarlett’s sake. Besides, you have to admit that the publicity will be good for business. Honestly, Dusty, I know we joke about how these weddings sometimes turn into circuses, but Danny’s wedding will actually be one.”
Chapter Ten
The Jefferson County Public Library sat at the corner of Washington Avenue and Third Street and stayed open every day until 5:30 p.m., giving Amy plenty of time to leave work at 4:00 p.m., drop Muffin at the cabin, and then return to scope the place out.
Who knew the Jefferson County Library had such a fount of knowledge readily available for free? She was amazed to discover that the library had free Internet with workstations that she could use to double-check the various Virginia registries of lost dogs. She scanned through the lost dog notices, but none of them matched Muffin’s description.
With a sigh of relief, Amy concentrated on getting herself a library card, and then the wonderful librarian, Donna Carlton, helped her find a book on dog training. Donna also introduced her to the extensive and almost overwhelming collection of gardening books.
Wow, Shenandoah Falls appeared to be the home of a boatload of garden enthusiasts, judging by the number of books and their well-used condition. After half an hour of perusing various volumes, Amy finally settled on a small paperback guide to trees and shrubs in the mid-Atlantic region. She figured she could carry it around in her back pocket at work and learn the names of all the trees and shrubs growing on the inn’s grounds. She couldn’t wait to impress Mr. McNeil with her horticultural knowledge at work tomorrow.
The sun hadn’t yet set by the time she returned to the cabin, so she settled down on the porch with a cup of ramen noodles and started the book on dog training. She had just made it through the first chapter when the sound of tires crunching on the cabin’s long gravel driveway interrupted her.
Uh-oh, company was coming—probably Aunt Pam on a mission to give her another pep talk about her life. Muffin must have picked up on Amy’s annoyance because the dog jumped up and s
tarted to bark like her visitor was a serial murderer or worse. But when Mr. McNeil’s blue pickup truck pulled into the driveway, the dog shut up and started wagging her tail.
Was this good or bad? Amy couldn’t decide. Dusty McNeil was not Aunt Pam, but then again, he had probably been paid to look in on her and report back. So either way, the family had decided to spy on her. At least they’d sent a nice-looking spy.
The late-afternoon sun back-lit his hair, giving him a godlike halo. He came striding up to the screen door carrying a brown paper sack. “Hey,” he said. “I stopped by the diner on my way. I got bacon and egg sandwiches.” He said this while frowning down at her half-eaten cup of ramen. “I’m glad I did. Ramen noodles are not a sufficient dinner.”
Yup, he’d been hired by someone to babysit her. She might not have a lot of work experience, but she knew that bosses didn’t usually come around bearing free meals and nutritional advice. Amy decided to give him the cold shoulder. She turned back to the Idiot’s Guide to Puppy Training.
“You need protein if you’re going to work the way you did today,” Mr. McNeil said. He pulled a sandwich out of the paper bag, and the mouthwatering scent of bacon filled the air.
It was a known fact that Muffin would do almost anything for a piece of bacon. The same could be said of Amy herself. She snatched the sandwich from Dusty’s outstretched arm. “Thanks,” she said, totally aware that her self-righteous need to be self-reliant had crumbled in the face of a bacon and egg sandwich.
“There are some hash browns in the sack. Help yourself. I came to chop wood,” he announced. “I’ll be out back by the woodpile.”
He dropped the sack on the small wooden table by the Adirondack chair, gave Muffin a little scratch under her chin, and then strode away, his boots sounding sharply on the porch’s floorboards, the screen door slamming behind him. A moment later, he pulled a long-handled ax from the bed of his pickup.
Substitute a war hammer and Dusty McNeil could be a stand-in for Thor. It almost hurt to watch him cross the yard. Amy longed to follow, but that would be unwise. So she settled back in her chair and devoured the yummy food while she worked at ignoring the heavy thud, thud, thud of Dusty chopping wood that echoed from the backyard.
Her imagination dreamed up something from right out of a smoking-hot porno movie starring Dusty, shirtless and sweaty, swinging that ax, his glistening muscles rippling with every stroke. Who knew she had such naughty Norse god–lumberjack fantasies?
This was bad. She needed to get up and clear her mind. “C’mon, Muffin, let’s take a walk.”
She snapped the leash on the dog’s collar and, armed with a handful of dog kibble, headed outside to begin her first training session. The book said that good dog owners taught their dogs leash manners. And since Muffin had no manners whatsoever, Amy could only surmise that Muffin’s original family had not done well by her. Muffin was lucky to have been abandoned because she was a Lyndon now, and all Lyndons had impeccable manners.
Following the book’s instructions, Amy said “heel” a few times and tried to get Muffin to behave. The dog made some progress, but every few seconds she’d sit down and look longingly at the path to the woodpile with her head cocked to one side. So in the end Amy let the dog drag her around the corner to investigate.
Holy crap! Dusty had taken off his shirt. And he’d most definitely worked up a sweat, which darkened his blond hair and glistened on his chest in full-out beefcake calendar mode. He sure could swing an ax and get results. He was a machine when it came to turning big pieces of wood into little ones.
Amy came to a standstill, and her mouth dropped open. She might have drooled a little. Muffin barked.
And Dusty stopped swinging his ax. “What?” he asked.
“Uh, nothing…I mean, thanks for the sandwich and, uh, thanks for chopping wood…And…” She stopped, took a breath, and started again. “Mr. McNeil—Dusty—I get that Willow is paying you to be nice to me. But you shouldn’t have taken the blame for the whole Sven debacle today. There wasn’t anything wrong with the latch on the kennel. I went back there to get a three-pronged rake, and I saw Sven, and he looked sad and lonely. And I thought I needed to get over my fear of him, you know? And I also thought that maybe he and Muffin could be friends, and so I opened the gate, and the next thing I knew, Sven made a move on Muffin. He was all over her kind of like you were all over Ivory out on the terrace this afternoon. I had no idea that Sven was a doggie Casanova.”
She ran out of words again just as she realized she’d been babbling.
He leaned the ax against the chopping block and took a few steps forward, displaying all the beautiful musculature of his chest, which, she noticed, also had a few golden hairs around the nipples. He reminded her of the Michelangelo statues Daddy had insisted she see during that trip to Italy they’d taken after Mom died. She hadn’t been all that blown away by the marble, but in the flesh, Dusty sure did impress.
“I was not all over Ivory,” he said.
“No?” Her spirits soared.
He shook his head. “Sven knocked her into me. And for the record, no one is paying me to be nice to you.”
“Then why are you being so nice?”
* * *
Amy had just asked the question Dusty had been asking himself from the moment he’d taken the blame for the dog fiasco. Why the hell had he done it?
Simple answer: Amy Lyndon had settled down in the back of his mind like one of those commercial jingles that sticks with you. She was hard to forget. And he needed a distraction from the reappearance of his father in his life.
She stood with arms folded, looking adorably kick-ass in her goofy, oversized work clothes. So he took another step forward and stooped down to get to her eye level. Her breath hitched a little as he invaded her space, and she bit her lip. No doubt about it, the attraction was mutual. The dark, heavy-lidded look in Amy Lyndon’s eyes gave him all the permission he needed to move in. Not that he needed permission—not even of a Lyndon.
He cupped her head and pulled her up into a kiss that he wanted to keep soft and reassuring. But the moment their lips touched, it morphed into something hot and confusing. Amy’s kisses were immediately intoxicating. They blew his mind like the moonshine his grandpappy used to distill out in the woods down by Liberty Run. The first time Dusty tasted that stuff, it lit up the inside of his mouth and made him dizzy as hell.
Wow. She packed a wallop. The next thing he knew, she’d jumped right up into his arms, wrapped her legs around his middle, and pressed all her sexy soft spots into all his hard ones. He ran his hands down her backbone and stopped when he got to her sexy ass.
Her moan sounded like heavenly music, and he lost himself for a little bit, until Amy broke the kiss and locked gazes with him. “Is Willow paying you?”
“No. Shut up. That’s insulting.”
She cocked her head. “Is it?”
He pressed kisses along her cheek to her ear. “It is,” he murmured. “I’ve been thinking about you this way ever since that morning when you lost your towel.” He nuzzled the tender skin under her earlobe, and she pressed into his touch. “Because you turned me on that day.”
“You’re not just being nice?”
How could Amy Lyndon be so unsure of herself? She’d grown up with a silver spoon, been pampered and petted and kept safe all her life, and spoiled rotten. How could she not know her own worth?
Clearly she didn’t, though, and that raised a whole passel of issues he didn’t want to deal with. A guy like him shouldn’t even think about messing around with a woman like her. She was way, way out of his league and didn’t even realize it.
If he took this any further, it would be the same as taking advantage of her. And he couldn’t do that. The women he hooked up with, like Zoe, were worldly and wise. Amy was neither of those things.
He gently pried her from his body and put her back on the ground. Then he took a giant step backward. “Amy, I’m sorry I started this. It’s a mista
ke.”
“No, it’s not. We could—”
“Nope. We can’t. And I better go.” He pivoted.
“So it is true, then?” she said to his back. “They’re paying you to be nice to me, right?”
“No!” he said over his shoulder before striding all the way to his truck without another backward glance. He was halfway down the mountain when he remembered that he’d left his ax and hadn’t taught her how to burn all that wood he’d split.
Dammit. He hated the idea of her being cold and alone up on that ridge. But he hated the idea of her throwing herself at him even worse. She deserved a better man.
* * *
Mia and the crew departed for New York and the Kleinfeld shoot early Wednesday morning, leaving Daniel behind to deal with Mia’s insistence that her groom and groomsmen be dressed in formal cutaway jackets and morning suits. Everyone in the family owned a tuxedo, but that wasn’t good enough for Mia. She pointed out on numerous occasions that Kate Middleton’s father wore a morning suit at her wedding, and nothing less would suit Mia, who increasingly saw herself as the princess bride.
Renting the morning suits would have been the cheapest way to go, but Mia wanted only the best. And since the producers refused to pay for handmade morning suits, Danny stepped up and offered to pay for them. So on Wednesday afternoon, he left Scarlett with her doting grandmother and met his brothers at one of the best bespoke tailors in downtown DC.
“So glad we’re camera free,” Jason said as the tailor measured his inseam.
“No one wants to see a guy getting measured for a suit, bro,” Matt said as he checked e-mails on his smartphone. “And if you’ve seen one suit, you’ve pretty much seen them all, right? Not like wedding dresses.”
The tailor lifted his head and gave Matt a long, sober stare, but Danny’s brother missed it because he’d returned his attention to his phone. Danny had to agree with the tailor. At more than thirteen hundred dollars a pop, these suits were something special, but neither he nor his brothers had any need for a suit of morning clothes. He doubted any of them would wear the suits again, unless they followed in Uncle Thomas’s footsteps and joined the diplomatic service. Or scored an invitation to Ascot.
