JUST A LITTLE FLING

by Julie Kistler

  Now, Steffi's eyes narrowed to slits. "You always have to find some way to wreck things for me, don't you?"

  "Well, no—" Lucie started, thinking that Steffi did a pretty good job of that on her own, but she didn't get very far.

  "Lucie, this is disgusting, even for you," Ginetta interrupted, sticking her thin nose in the air. "Pushing yourself on the Mackintoshes, taking advantage of someone as kind as Ian, and then parading around like a tramp in front of all of us just to steal attention on your sister's wedding day. How could you?"

  "The wedding was yesterday," Lucie pointed out quietly.

  "Does it matter?" demanded Ginetta.

  Ian leaned close to her ear. "I can't believe you're letting them talk to you like this."

  "I'm sort of used to it."

  "That's no excuse."

  "What are you two whispering about?" Steffi interrupted. "Is she trying to poison you against me, Ian? For Kyle's sake, don't let her do that."

  "Kyle doesn't tell me who to be with, and I don't tell him, either," Ian said coldly. He set a strong arm around Lucie's shoulders, steering her around the Webster family roadblock and toward the stairs. "Look, here's the deal. Lucie and I are what you might call an item."

  "Ian, you don't have to—"

  But he cut her off. "It's the least I can do," he said with a mischievous wink, firmly guiding her down the first few steps. "We've been together, oh, for a while now. But, hey, we didn't want to steal Steffi and Kyle's thunder, so we kept it quiet and tried to keep our hands off each other in public, out of respect … yadda yadda yadda. You know the drill."

  "I don't believe it for a minute," Steffi scoffed.

  "Believe it." It was wrong, but Lucie couldn't help herself. She stopped, turned back, and smiled at Steffi. Smiled. Ha! Take that! "We were only thinking of you, Steffi. I knew how you would feel about us getting together so close to your wedding, so I convinced Ian our relationship should be a secret. But we're crazy about each other and, last night, we both had a little too much to drink, and—"

  "And we couldn't deny it any longer," Ian finished, backing her up. "So we stayed together in my room—"

  "Because we couldn't stay in my room, which was halfway to Wisconsin," Lucie added sweetly.

  "Right." When he glanced down at her, she saw a definite sparkle of amusement in his beautiful blue eyes. "But we didn't plan ahead and Lucie didn't bring any clothes. Our mistake. It was the heat of passion. What can you say?"

  "That's about it." Lucie stood there in the middle of the staircase, enjoying the enraged expression on her half sister's face. She also felt some guilt, but she did her best to squash it. Steffi deserved it. "Any questions?"

  "This isn't finished, Lucie. Not by a long shot," her father bristled. She'd been expecting him to get in his licks.

  Now he would undoubtedly bring up her inheritance from her mother, the company he was supposedly holding onto until she proved she was mature enough to handle it. He always threw that in her face when things got complicated. Lucie pressed her lips together, waiting for the inevitable.

  He didn't disappoint her. "You want me to treat you like an adult and yet you behave like this, doing your best to ruin this important day for Steffi. You may never get the company at this rate."

  "I wasn't holding my breath, Dad."

  "Lucie?" Ian nudged her down the steps. "We should probably get moving."

  Poor Ian. He was undoubtedly embarrassed beyond belief at this unpleasant commotion. Lucie ducked her head and let him lead the way. They were almost at the bottom when the other side of the family chimed in.

  "Ian?" Uh-oh. It was his mother, the lovely and gracious Myra Mackintosh, waiting patiently near the door. "What is this all about?"

  Ian hesitated, and Lucie sped up so she could explain things first. She owed him. Scrambling down the steps, she said earnestly. "Mrs. Mackintosh, I'm so sorry. It's not what it looks like. Well, actually, it is kind of what it looks like, but it was just a mistake and—"

  "Now, really, dear, I think it's Ian who should be apologizing, don't you?" his mother said dryly.

  "No, not really—"

  "Sorry, Mom," he offered automatically.

  "I'll just bet you are. All right, darling, get the poor thing out of here, why don't you? At least find her some shoes. We'll speak about this later." She stepped back, clearing a path to the Inn's massive front door, held open by a man in—what else?—a kilt. "Nice to meet you, dear," she called after them.

  Safely out the door, Lucie glanced up at Ian. "'Nice to meet you'? 'At least find her some shoes'?" She laughed. "Your mother was so calm. Does this happen often to you? Is your mother used to catching barefoot women sneaking out of your bedroom after a night of wild passion?"

  "Not often, no," he returned, lowering his voice and gesturing that she should do the same.

  Looking around, she understood why he wanted to keep it down. There were wedding guests out here under the portico, too, plus dumps of them standing with umbrellas under the cloudy June sky, holding rice, ready to toss. Lucie tried to paste on a smile, but they still regarded her as if she had "harlot" stenciled on her forehead.

  What did she expect? They'd just heard her talking about wild passion and sneaking out of Ian's bedroom. And they could see for themselves what a mess she was with her strange attire and bare feet and unkempt hair.

  "Carry on," she said loudly, waving at them. A well-dressed matron sniffed and another woman hid her daughter's eyes.

  Lucie slunk around the corner toward the parking lot. Could things get any worse?

  Ian had tried to warn her it wouldn't be so easy to just stroll out of the Highland Inn, and she hadn't listened. Well, now she was sorry.

  "You know," she said out loud. "My dad's been telling me for years that I'm an irresponsible twit who hasn't got a clue how to run my life. I guess it was time I finally proved him right."

  Looking way too gorgeous for someone as sweet as he was behaving, Ian bent down and ruffled her hair. She hated that, especially from him. It made her feel about six years old. On the other hand, it also made her feel as if last night had never happened. Could never have happened.

  "Lucie, you are way too hard on yourself," he said gently, following her onto the paved parking lot. "None of those people know you. And they'll never remember."

  "They know you. They're going to be greeting you for years going, 'Who was that crazy woman in your shirt at your brother's wedding? What was that all about?'" Lucie let out an aggrieved sigh. "I'm afraid you're going to bear the brunt of this one."

  "It's as much my fault as yours. So I guess I deserve it."

  "Nice try." She gave him a sly smile. "But, hey, good save there at the top of the stairs. That was terrific. You'll probably never live it down and your mother is going to blister your hide, but it was very gallant. Again."

  "It was the least I could do."

  Lucie laughed, running ahead of him as it started to sprinkle. "I really am going to have to kill you. You know that, don't you?"

  But her laughter died when she spotted her Jeep. Unless her eyes were playing tricks on her—entirely possible, given her state of stress and exhaustion—the top had caved in. Racing to it, climbing up on the sideboard, paying no attention to the fact that the rain was coming down harder now, she saw that something had hurtled down from the sky, slashing a deep gash in the canvas top of her car and smashing the windshield to smithereens. A waffle iron. A waffle iron from the sky. The shiny appliance was sitting in the middle of the dashboard. Or half of it, anyway.

  Meanwhile, a toaster had dented the car next to hers, plus another toaster and some shards of china lay broken on the pavement. Toasters, waffle irons and china falling from the sky? All she could do was gape up into the rain, gazing at the balcony jutting out from the fourth floor above her head.

  "Steffi strikes again," Ian murmured, opening up a small umbrella he'd pulled from the side of his duffel bag. "Your Jeep was parked under the honeymoon
suite. On the bright side, you won't need to break in to get your suitcase."

  As Lucie lingered by the car, speechless, he reached in through the wreckage and pulled a tapestry overnight bag from the back seat. He waited there, carrying her suitcase, holding his umbrella at the ready. "Lucie, can I offer you a ride home?"

  She didn't want to impose on Ian any more this morning. But what choice did she have?

  Swearing under her breath, Lucie still hung onto the door of her beloved Jeep, getting wetter and wetter in the downpour. She had no shoes, no keys, no car, no reputation… And all because of one stupid fling. Other people flung all the time and nobody was the wiser. She did it once and her life went to hell in a handbasket.

  "Ian, if the offer for the ride still stands…" She hopped off the sideboard. "I'd love to."

  * * *

  She had to admit it—Ian Mackintosh was excellent company, and very handy to have around. Damn him, anyway.

  He had a big, comfortable sedan, he had paper towels to blot off some of the rain—he even had a supply of granola bars and bottled water. Drinking greedily, Lucie settled into the passenger seat, gazing out the tinted window and wishing she could go back about twenty-four hours and try again.

  But if she had to have a disastrous fling, she supposed Ian was the person to do it with. She spared him a quick glance. Not only was he incredibly cute, but he'd stood up for her and then offered her a ride home. What more could you ask?

  She shifted awkwardly in her seat. Maybe someone not quite so athletic in bed would've been better. She still didn't have a firm grasp on the details—thank heavens—but her body was sore enough in strange enough places that she knew it had to have been steamier than anything in her imagination.

  And now, here she was, stuck in a car with him. Every mile that they traveled was one mile closer to her modest, private place, her sanctuary. Her house. Flings were supposed to be nameless and faceless, weren't they? They weren't supposed to turn your life upside down, drive up to your front door, and invade your personal boundaries.

  Lucie couldn't think of one man she'd dated who'd set foot in her house. That was mostly her fault, because she didn't keep things very neat and she always had underwear lying around everywhere. But still…

  She hazarded another glance Ian's way. Was she obligated to ask him in? What was the etiquette after you'd explored every inch of each other's bodies? This was way beyond her experience.

  She sat there, stewing. How had everything gone so wrong in such a short time?

  Okay, time to perk up. So what if she now had this bizarre, instantly intimate relationship with a stranger? So what if her entire family hated her? So what if now, after this debacle, her father never would turn over Pandora's Boxers, the company that should've been hers years ago?

  "Damn it, anyway. I was this close," she whispered. "I know I could've talked him into it. But not now."

  Oh, pooh. Who was she kidding? Her father had no intention of giving her Pandora's Boxers, no matter what she did.

  "What did you say? Something about socks?" Ian asked. He turned down the volume on the radio.

  "Socks. I need to put on some socks." Leaving her dashed dreams about Pandora's Boxers for later, she turned her focus to more practical matters, squeezing through the opening to the back seat to drag her suitcase closer. After rooting around, she found socks, shoes and a pair of pajama pants she could pull on right there in the passenger seat.

  "If we're in a wreck, you're good to go," he offered, checking on her progress.

  Lucie bent over her bag, groping for a hairbrush and a scrunchie. "You planning to be in a wreck?"

  "Nope." He raised an eyebrow. "You?"

  "I hope not. But the way my luck's been running today, I wouldn't bet against one. Keep your eyes on the road, okay?" She pulled down the visor, got one glimpse of her too-pale face and the wild state of her hair, and slammed it back up. She found a couple of pencils in her bag, wound her hair into a lump, and secured it with the pencils. "I look like the wreck of the Hesperus."

  "What's that?"

  "I don't know. Something my mom always used to say." Lucie shrugged, wishing she hadn't mentioned it. It was probably because she'd been thinking about Pandora's Boxers, her mother's old company. But the last thing she wanted was to share misty memories with Ian, her one and only one-night stand.

  "Are you close to your mother?"

  She knew he was just making conversation, and she could've just said no. But she wasn't going to lie to him. "My mother died when I was twelve."

  "I'm sorry." Ian's expression was rueful. "I think I've said that more today than in the rest of my life combined."

  Lucie smiled. "So maybe you'd better stop apologizing."

  "Maybe. I guess that means you grew up with Don and Steffi and what's-her-name, the Wicked Witch?" He shook his dark head. "That bites."

  "Not really." She lifted her shoulders in a careless shrug. "I mean, not really, I didn't grow up with them. I kind of lived on the outskirts—part of the time with my aunt and part with my dad and Ginetta, except not with them. You'll see when we get to my place. I still live on the outskirts. But it's also not really something I want to talk about, so…" Forcefully, she changed the subject. "So, Ian, what do you do? I mean, as a job. Do you work for your dad with the golf course thing?"

  It seemed really strange asking him basic questions like that. Everything was so mixed up. Where did you get that cute little scar below your belly button and oh, by the way, what do you do for a living? But he didn't seem to notice.

  "I used to work for my dad's company. But then Kyle and I set up a business of our own. And we're cashing in." He grinned. "So pretty soon I won't be doing anything."

  "I don't understand. Cashing in?"

  He shrugged. "It's really boring. We created this Internet thing. We're in the process of selling it to someone else who is willing to pay us a lot for it. That's about it."

  "An Internet thing?" That was not what she would've guessed. Oh, I sail the Seven Seas, swashbuckling by day, and then I'm a secret crime-fighter and professional basketball player by night. "How did you get started in that?"

  "By accident." With his hand looped over the steering wheel, Ian yawned, reminding her that neither of them had gotten much sleep last night. Lucie stifled her own yawn, resting her head on the back of the seat and sipping from her water bottle as he continued. "Kyle and I both used to work for Dad's company, developing golf resorts. It was fine, but we were getting bored. So we started playing around on our own time and we got this brilliant idea to do this virtual tour of golf courses around Chicago. It's pretty cool, actually. Only then we wanted to know who was playing our virtual golf courses, so we sort of invented this marketing info collection system…" He sent her a quick look. "Boring, huh?"

  "No, not at all," she hurried to assure him. "I just don't know anything about that stuff. I'm actually starting to—it's one of my summer projects—but for right now, I'm still kind of technologically impaired."

  "Me, too. But we got lucky. Or we will when the deal goes through." He lifted his shoulders. "It should be quite a lot of cash. And this isn't my dad's money, or his dad's. This is our own windfall, Kyle's and mine—unless Steffi gets in the way." His expression darkened.

  All Lucie could think of was that Ian Mackintosh was even more of a catch than she'd first thought. If you were into that. Which she wasn't.

  But there was no denying the facts—Ian was gorgeous, sexier than hell, kind enough to rescue disheveled damsels in distress, and backed up by a wonderful family. On top of that, he was wealthy in his own right, arid unlike other successful men she knew, this one wouldn't be spending every waking minute on his job because he was retiring at the grand old age of … what? Thirty? Thirty-five?

  She didn't even know how old he was. Once again, she was struck by how stupid it was to go flinging with a stranger. "How old are you?"

  He blinked. "Thirty-two. Why? How old are you?"

&nbs
p; "I just turned thirty. Yesterday, as a matter of fact."

  "Oh. So, uh, with me, last night, was that your way of throwing yourself a party?"

  Some party. "I guess you could look at it that way."

  A long pause hung between them.

  It didn't escape her that half the women in Chicago would die to change places with her, riding around with Mr. Eligible Bachelor. And all she wanted was to go home and take a nap and pretend he didn't exist.

  After that depressing little exchange, what with her orphan status and her calamitous thirtieth birthday, she could see him mentally changing gears, trying to lighten the mood in here. "So how about you, Lucie? What do you do for a living?"

  "Oh, well, now that's boring. I teach at a private school for girls." She gazed out at the green countryside passing her window. Not so far from home now. Not far from bringing Ian into her inner sanctum. No, Lucie, he's already been there. And then some. She shook her head to clear those horrifying thoughts, but the images remained. Ian, buck naked, sliding off the bed. Ian, ragingly aroused, sliding into her…

  She choked, sitting up straighter and gulping down water from her bottle. She was trying to block all that out. If only the bits and pieces in her disjointed memory would cooperate.

  "Are you okay?"

  "No, but I will be," she mumbled. When you leave and my life goes back to normal and I'm plain old Lucie the Nitwit again instead of Lucie the Harlot.

  "Okay, so you're a teacher. What subject?"

  "Sort of a hodgepodge. I do arts and crafts, sewing, stagecraft, even a little woodworking. In my classes, we make birdhouses and decoupage, Halloween costumes and papier-mâché masks." She'd explained this one a million times and she used her familiar refrain. "If you can make it with your hands, I can teach you how."

  "Well, that's different."

  Poor Ian. He was really working to keep this lame conversation going so that neither of them would have time to think about all the other things they were really thinking about.