by Maria Luis
“I keep telling him that the B&B idea isn’t a good one,” she threw in after taking a sip of her cider. “Shelter Island already has The Rosedale, and that place doesn’t even need a calling card. Locals know about it, tourists know about it.” Daisy shrugged, then glanced at Reese to scope out his reaction to her assessment. “Opening up a bed and breakfast next to a place like that is a recipe for failure.”
It wasn’t often that she tugged on her boxing gloves and went to bat with her boss, but when it came to the Victorian mansion on Shelter Island, Daisy had something to say. Unlike the mountain of a man sitting next to her, she’d lived in Fortune’s Bay her entire life. She had a sixth-sense for what would work and what wouldn’t, and it drove her batty that he couldn’t see what was staring right back at him.
He saw the short-term sale and the massive profit margin.
She envisioned the long-term battle.
And the latter was a fact—the Victorian house would always lose out to the grandeur of The Rosedale. She might not be a real estate agent or an architect, but she knew Fortune’s Bay better than anyone else at this table.
The bed and breakfast would be a major flop, and then the poor house would be right back on the market again, staring down another round of real estate agents, prospective buyers, and a possible renovation to be converted back into a single-family home.
With his thigh pressing against hers, Reese shifted in place, the water bottle dangling from his fingers by just the screw cap. “Daisy doesn’t enjoy the commercialization of neighborhoods.” He nudged her leg under the table. “It makes her crazy.”
“It doesn’t,” she protested, already feeling the “crazy” grip her by its rabid claws. So what if she wanted to see her hometown keep its quaintness? That wasn’t a crime.
“Green-Hulk-sort-of crazy.” Reese lifted the water bottle, his mouth pulling into one of his almost-smiles as he sipped it. “The sort of crazy that makes my workers shiver in fear.”
Fighting the urge to roll her eyes, Daisy muttered, “Now you’re just exaggerating.”
Reese twisted in his seat to face her. “Craig Anderson.”
Oh, jeez. She did her best to maintain eye contact, but, boy, Reese made it hard when he got that familiar I’m-always-right glint in his eyes. Sound casual. “What about him?”
“You freaked him out so bad that his wife called the office to personally thank you for whipping the man into shape. She’d never seen him color coordinate socks before.”
The way she saw it, Craig had simply been an organized-freak in the waiting. All he’d needed was a nudge and a reminder that if he was late again, she’d start hacking away at his vacation days, and voila! A man could always change his stripes, no matter the age.
If only she’d been able to do the same with her ex.
“Everyone color coordinates socks, Reese.” Daisy drew out a long pause, then cut him a side glance. “Those who don’t are heathens, anyway.”
That made him chuckle, and it was a test of strength that Daisy’s spine didn’t snap straight with awareness.
“Want to take a poll?” he asked. Without giving her the chance to respond, he pointed his water bottle at his cousin’s wife. “Matching socks? Yay or nay?”
Wide-eyed—no doubt because Daisy and Reese could be terrifying to outsiders once they got going—Lizzie peered under the table to check out her feet. A moment later, she faked a white-flag surrender with a wave of her hand. “I’m a heathen.”
Crap.
“Gage?” Reese asked, tilting the bottle so that it pointed at his cousin. “Socks or no socks?”
To their surprise, Gage lifted one leg past the booth and showed off his bare leg. His khaki shorts stopped just above his knee, and on his feet he wore a pair of leather flip flops. “Heathen,” he murmured, “straight down to my core.”
Double crap.
She lifted her gaze to Reese’s face. “And you?”
Smoothly, he slid from the booth and rose to his feet. His hands stayed locked onto his hips until she got the impression that he wanted her full attention—Reese rarely, if ever, made demands outside of the office.
The moment drew out, waiting, waiting, waiting, until Daisy finally scooted a foot to the right, curled her hands around the edge of the booth, and leaned over to get a gander at his shiny leather shoes.
Another pause.
And yet another.
And then he pulled up his slacks just far enough so that she could see his socks.
His matching socks—both were a bland gray.
It took every inch of strength to keep from throwing a fist in the air. “I knew it!” She pointed at his feet. “Matching, of course. I would seriously expect nothing less from a man who drinks his coffee with—wait, what are you doing?” Wide-eyed, she watched as he slowly, dramatically, toed off one shoe and then kicked off the other. “Reese?”
He wriggled his toes in his socks.
Socks, which had mismatching colored stripes across the toes.
Blue on one. Green on the other.
Daisy’s eyes darted up to his face, and . . . oh wow. Wow. In the three years that she’d worked for him, she had never—not once—seem him wear such a smile. It was wide and it was full and it made him look so many kinds of sexy.
Sinfully handsome, her brain offered up, he looks sinfully handsome.
It took her a moment to hear the words crossing his lips, and then another moment to actually digest them: “You don’t know everything about me, Daisy. Not yet, anyway.”
That was a challenge if she’d ever heard one, and Daisy couldn’t help it—she was intrigued . . . even if she was on a sabbatical from men.
Chapter Four
“We’re going on a trip.”
Daisy’s fingers pressed down on the computer keys like a Mozart impersonator in the midst of a crescendo—dramatics all the way around. Cringing, she swiveled in her desk chair to face the music.
Err, rather, her boss.
It’d been three days since her dinner with Reese and his family from New Orleans at the Wilde Pirate. Three days since he’d grinned at her like she’d shown him a future of Super Bowls, all boasting his beloved Saints team as the trophy-bearing victors. Three days since she’d sat in that booth, all too aware of his big body pressed flush against hers.
Well, their thighs had been flush. Did that count?
Daisy shook her head, blinked, and said, “The only place you ever take me to is Home Depot.”
Cocking a brow, Reese leaned one broad shoulder against the doorframe. His fingers slipped into the front pockets of his worn jeans. “We go to Lowe’s,” he murmured, “sometimes.”
She mirrored his expression and lifted a brow of her own. “Don’t you ever wonder why I stick around?”
He pretended to ponder that, his dark eyes searching the popcorn-raised ceiling. “It’s definitely not the coffee since you’re inhuman and hate the stuff.”
With purpose, Daisy plowed right past his response. “It’s not the pay,” she said, just to see his reaction. Reese paid her well. But ever since she’d broken three printers in a row two years ago, he made a point to tease her about cutting her paychecks. He never did—if anything, he’d always been more than generous with pay. Still, she had a game to play, and so she rapped her knuckles on the desk and announced, “I’m demanding a raise.”
“Funny.”
She stared him down, gaze unwavering. “I need a new sofa.”
“You just purchased a new sofa. The girly one with all the . . . fru-fru.”
Daisy blinked. She’d mentioned the sofa in passing a few weeks ago, although . . . she hadn’t even thought he’d overheard her at all. He’d been nose-deep in a hardback about restoring dumbwaiters in nineteenth historic homes. Riveting.
After a beat, she admitted, “Monster shredded the armrest.”
Reese shook his head, a husky chuckle escaping him. “Your cat is a menace.”
“Hence why I called him Monster.
” Daisy shrugged. “The name’s appropriate. Anyway, that sofa isn’t coming back to life anytime soon.”
“Hence,” he said with dramatic emphasis, “if you come on this trip with me, I may be tempted to throw in a bonus.”
Daisy didn’t care about the raise—nope, she just wanted to see that smile of his again. The big, all-consuming one. The smile that had sent her home the other night with the wish that she’d been quick enough to snap his picture. I want to see that smile again for myself.
Spinning around, away from him and away from the crazy emotions bubbling to life just beneath the surface, Daisy set her computer to Sleep Mode and gathered her purse from the top drawer of her desk. “How big of a raise are we talking here? Like new sofa purchase or am I going to be able to put in an underground pool?”
Reese stepped to the side as she edged past him. “I was thinking more along the lines of lunch.”
On cue, her empty stomach voiced its presence. “Are we talking somewhere fancy?”
“Takeout, actually. Plastic utensils, a redheaded guy named Ron, and an indoor jungle gym with multi-colored balls. The whole nine yards—just for you.”
His deadpan tone stole a laugh from her. It rumbled forth, engaging her stomach muscles and even curling her toes. In a voice that Daisy worried wasn’t all that steady, she quipped, “So gallant, Mr. Harvey.”
“Only for you, Mae.”
Daisy blinked. And then she blinked again for good measure.
Hold up . . . was he flirting with her?
Not once in three years had she ever gotten that sort of vibe from him. They’d shared lunch countless of times in the office or on a jobsite. They’d even caught Deadpool with Ryan Reynolds a few years back when Daisy had voiced how badly she wanted to see the blockbuster at the theater.
But not once—not ever—had Reese Harvey ever been less than professional.
Not that he wasn’t unprofessional now, either. There was just something about him today that seemed . . . different, somehow. He was always confident, always a little demanding of his employees—Daisy included—but in the span of a breath, there was a definite shift in his demeanor.
“Ready to go?” he asked, casually tossing the company’s truck keys from hand to hand.
Toss. Toss. Toss.
Back and forth they went, and all Daisy could do was watch. Maybe she’d imagined that husky edge to his voice just now? She shook her head to scatter her wild thoughts. “Yeah, of course, let’s go.”
Like always, he stood off to the side to allow her the chance to pass him. Only this time, she couldn’t stop herself from inhaling his scent as her arm grazed his hard chest. Fresh laundry. A hint of spicy cologne. Addicting.
It wasn’t until they were on the way that she spoke: “We’re not actually going to McDonald’s, are we?”
“Nah.” With one hand on the steering wheel, Reese flashed her a quick, inscrutable look. “Thought you might want to take a ride with me out to Shelter Island.”
The muscles in her neck tensed when she snapped her head to the left to look at him. Excitement seeped into her limbs like a shot of adrenaline straight to the vein. “Are we going to see the house?”
“That’s the plan,” he said, nodding his head toward a set of keys on the dashboard. When she reached out to pick them up, he added, “I told the realtor that I wanted to see it another time.”
Daisy ran her thumb over the ridged cuts of the silver key. Glanced over at Reese, only to find his gaze bouncing from the road to where she mindlessly fiddled with the keys. And, yes, that was her heart thumping in her chest at the intensity of his stare. Breathe, just remember to breathe.
She tucked the key into the front pocket of her purse. “And she’s just letting us go in? I’ve met Miranda before.” So it had been one time, but who was counting? “She’s not the sort to let a prospective buyer go meandering around a property without her.”
Reese drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Miranda and I . . . we have an agreement.”
“Because that doesn’t sound suspicious.”
Lifting one hand from the wheel, he raked his fingers through his hair. “Let’s just say that the faucet at their office keeps leaking and her husband is pretending he doesn’t know what a wrench is. She gave me the keys”—he jerked a finger toward where Daisy had stowed the keys—“and I fixed the faucet while I was there the other day for the meeting. Everyone’s happy.”
It wasn’t the first time Reese had traded services. He had a knack for bartering to get exactly what he wanted, and Daisy couldn’t help but feel awed whenever Reese walked away from a business deal with every item checked off his list. In fact, she couldn’t think of a single time since she’d started working for Harvey Construction that Reese hadn’t gotten what he wanted.
The man was an enigma. A grumpy but handsome enigma.
By the time they pulled up to the water-taxi station along the harbor, the sun was directly overhead, and Daisy fully regretted wearing pants and a light sweater. Ignoring the sweat prickling on her temple, she and Reese stepped up to the ticket counter. The water taxis in Fortune’s Bay ran every thirty minutes and didn’t stop until ten at night.
“I can’t remember the last time I even went out to Shelter Island,” Daisy mused after they’d collected their tickets and had found a bench along the pier to sit and wait.
Reese crossed one leg over the other, his ankle resting on his opposite knee. “It can’t have been that long. What, a year? Tops?”
More like five years—aka the moment when she realized that even though she dreamed of being a comedian, she didn’t have the chops to make it big. Managing a comedy club? Sure, no problem. Daisy was particularly good at bossing people around and juggling fifty different tasks.
Up on that stage, though, at The Rosedale’s mini theater? A shiver thumbed its way down her spine at the memory. Bad, so bad. The kind of bad that left you terrified to ever try again. The kind of bad where, once your vision cleared and you could make out hundreds of eyes watching you from the audience, not even picturing the lot of them naked could snap you out of your this-isn’t-a-dream nightmare.
No one knew that she was the writer behind Love Letters Unrestricted, and something about that soothed her. If she published a letter that wasn’t completely up to snuff, she didn’t have to face the pitying glances when she went to the local supermarket.
Being anonymous worked for her—even if it did suck that no one could personally compliment her on a witty turn of phrase or a particularly gut-busting joke.
“Mae?” Reese asked, his voice a deep, familiar rumble that grounded her. Although he didn’t lay a hand on her, she sensed the tension radiating in his big frame—along with his concern. “You good?”
Her smile stretched like a thousand untruths across her face. “Oh, yeah. Absolutely.” Without thinking, she patted him on the thigh. The heat of his leg warmed her palm, and how completely inappropriate was it to realize that she hadn’t felt this attracted to a man since Steve . . . until now. Until her heart gave an unsteady thump at her closeness to a man who was absolutely off-limits. Until she stared at her hand like it was something offensive, and there she was in her head shouting for it to move, and yet she was frozen to the endless possibilities of what Reese might say or do.
In the end, he didn’t have the chance to do much of anything.
The water taxi pulled up at the dock and released one ear-splitting honk.
Time to go.
She lurched to her feet, her purse clutched to her front like she could physically still the butterflies swarming in her belly if she applied enough pressure.
A masculine hand wrapped around her arm, directly over her elbow. “Mae,” Reese said. His voice was a soft command—he was as stubborn as they came, and she knew that tone. He wouldn’t move an inch until he had her attention.
With a sigh, she twisted to stare at him over her shoulder. “Yeah, boss?”
His nostrils flared and he qu
ickly released her. “Nothing. It’s nothing. Let’s go.”
As Daisy climbed into the water taxi a minute later, she couldn’t help but wish she’d pressed him for more information. Too bad her case of stage fright wasn’t relegated to just the stage.
Chapter Five
The Victorian mansion was a chaotic mess of broken gables, dangling hurricane shutters, and rotting wood.
Reese had never seen a project he wanted to take on more.
“How much are they asking for the place again?”
He cut a glance from the troubled house to the woman beside him, whose beautiful features were pinched in an equally troubled expression. “A little over fifty-thousand,” he told her. Grabbing his phone from his jeans pocket, he tapped in his password and then pulled up the listing on the Metairie Realty website. “Five bedrooms, three baths, built in 1895, all gas.” He scrolled down, then glanced up at the house. “Says here they’ve got an in-ground pool—I forgot all about that.”
“Because the pool is necessary when you’ve got all of this”—she flung her arms wide—“right at your doorstep.”
She had a point. While the Rosedale was on the southwest coast of the island, this house sat nestled among the tranquil waters of the northeast side. If he faced the sea, as opposed to the bluff where the Victorian was cradled, he could spot the shoreline of Fortune’s Bay.
In the almost ten years that he’d lived in this slice of paradise, he’d never seen Fortune’s Bay from this vantage point. It was strange to find that element of surprise he’d first experienced all those years swarming him now, just as it had then.
“What was it like to grow up here?” he asked, the words escaping before he had the chance to wrangle them in.
Daisy stepped up next to him, until the rounded toes of her simple flats lined up along the same slab of stone that he stood on. Shoulder to shoulder, they stood, with their backs to the Victorian. Before them, a ten-foot drop led to beautiful white sand and glistening turquoise waters. Beyond that, nothing but the sea and the smattering of green in the periphery—Shipwreck Island, Buccaneer Island, Sparrow Island.
