by Stacey Keith
“Sonofabitch,” Jake muttered.
The only part of Todd he ever wanted to see again was that stupid hat of his crushed on the road with a tire track across it.
To hell with waiting. He hurled his cigarette to the ground and then started across the street. If Todd wanted Maggie, he’d have to go through Jake first. A tiny voice in his head told him it was too soon. The wrong move. Exactly the kind of macho crap a woman like Maggie hated. He didn’t care.
By the time he got halfway across the street, a white Ford F-350 pulled up to the curb and the three foremen got out. Jake had worked with them before, renovating an old turn-of-the-century bank he’d won at auction. If he went into that bakery now, he would not only make an ass of himself in front of Maggie, he would lose face in front of the foremen, too.
He was smarter than that. He had to be smarter than that.
“Good to see you again,” Pete Manford said, shaking his hand.
Through a small window on the side of the bakery, Jake could see Todd inside, grinning like an idiot.
Don’t you do it, a tiny voice inside his head told him. Don’t you fucking do it.
Jake shook hands with the two other foremen, both smart professionals specializing in restorations. He needed to get them on board with his restoration instead of wasting time doing this jealous teenager routine. Hell, acting like a jealous teenager wasn’t something he’d done when he was a jealous teenager. Back then he had the luxury of pretending that he didn’t care.
But after the meeting?
He planned to find out everything he could about that shit kicker Todd. In life and in business, it paid to know everything you could about your opponent.
Game on, motherfucker.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Oh, good job, Master Chef, the cinnamon buns are burning.
Maggie lunged across the kitchen and yanked open the oven. Sure enough, they were completely ruined.
Damn. No amount of glazing was going to fix that.
“For heaven’s sake,” Coralee exclaimed, dashing into the kitchen and waving the smoke away from her face. “That’s the second batch that’s gone up this morning!”
Maggie pulled on Lexie’s pug mitts, grabbed the ruined cinnamon buns and set them clattering on top of the stove. “What on earth happened to the timer?”
Coralee peered at it. “Don’t look like it was set proper. You feeling okay? If you don’t mind me sayin’, you ain’t yourself this morning.”
“I didn’t sleep well,” Maggie told her. Or at all. Who knew running a business and having a social life could be so exhausting? Except that she wasn’t only exhausted. The plate she’d cracked this morning, the failed cinnamon buns, the dropped bag of flour, all of it came from not having her feet on the ground where they should be.
“The after-church crowd’s coming,” Maggie fretted, pulling off the mittens. “We’ve got to feed them something.”
While Coralee disposed of the charred remains, Maggie brought her roll of “emergency dough” out of the freezer. Not as tasty as cinnamon buns, but it would have to do. Maybe a nice cream cheese icing? She took a sharp knife and cut the roll into thick slices. A horrible thought occurred to her: were these sudden-onset kitchen disasters a way for her to not have to deal with her feelings about Jake?
Last night was the best night of her entire life.
Last night, Jake had kissed her until she couldn’t remember her name.
Last night, she’d almost changed her mind about the perils of dating devastatingly handsome men.
And while she was on the subject, how did you go from the best night of your life to this? How did you go from kissing a man like Jake under the stars to just another day of “business as usual”?
The bell above the door jingled. Maggie went out front, trying hard not to think about kissing. There stood Todd with his two kids. And he looked like a real estate salesman with a bridge to sell.
“Hey, Maggie,” he said, all dimples and cowboy hat. “Burn something?”
Oh, crap, she thought miserably. Somebody just go ahead and kill me.
Todd’s son, Sawyer, gazed up at her, his face clean-scrubbed and earnest. Abigail had on another pink bonnet. She sucked her mouth in and out and made bubbles.
Maggie smiled warmly at Sawyer, but her smile disappeared by the time it got to Todd. “Make it quick. I’m having a terrible morning.”
“Sawyer has something to ask you that should make it all better,” Todd said. “Don’t you, Sawyer?”
“What is it, sweetheart?” she asked the boy. He blinked up at her and her heart lurched around in her chest. It wasn’t his fault that his parents were selfish jerks. He opened his mouth and then closed it. His gaze skittered away.
“He wants to invite you to his birthday,” Todd said. “Wednesday, four o’clock, at the municipal park.”
Before Maggie could answer, the door opened and in walked Priscilla and April, dressed in their Sunday church clothes. Priscilla’s nostrils flared the minute she got a whiff of Todd. Oh, boy. Maggie could already see the fur fly.
“Whaddyou know?” Priscilla drawled, stabbing Todd with her eyeballs. “I thought I smelled smoke and brimstone, and here you are. I don’t remember seeing this much of you when we were in-laws.”
Maggie would have felt sorry for Todd if he weren’t such a dick. He nodded to her and then edged out of the bakery, using his kids as a shield. She watched him herd poor Sawyer across the street as if the bakery was on fire.
Priscilla frowned and tugged her blazer into place.
“Did you have to be so mean in front of his kids?” April asked, always the tender heart.
“I can’t stand the sight of that man,” Priscilla said. “Every time I turn around he’s sucking up to your sister. Makes me madder than a sprayed roach.”
Maybe it was a good thing her family had decided to pay her a Sunday visit. They always did a great job of keeping her feet on the ground. Maggie skirted the counter and headed for the espresso machine, knowing everyone would want coffee.
“You’re back from church early,” she said.
Priscilla plopped herself at a café table. She was wearing her new heels, the ones she’d gotten at the outlet mall off Interstate-10. They looked painful, but pain had never stopped Priscilla. “Your father had a stomach upset. Out of sheer decency to the folks sitting next to us, we sent him home.”
Maggie spooned coffee into a filter and glanced curiously at April. Something was up. More than just her father’s bowels had brought them here.
April hopped up on a stool by the counter. Out of the corner of her eye, Maggie could see Priscilla gesturing to April to say something that Maggie already knew she wasn’t going to like.
“So I came by to say hi last night, only you weren’t home,” April said with a sly attempt at acting casual.
Maggie busied herself with the cups and saucers. “I was out with Gus.”
“You were?” April exchanged a look with Priscilla. “Gus barked like anything when I knocked on the door.”
“I was asleep.”
“Oh, for Pete’s sake!” Priscilla burst out. “Mary McFiggen saw you leaving last night with a man!”
Maggie pressed the button for hot water, fighting the urge to scream. Dating in Cuervo was enough to make you swear off religion. She’d known this would happen. Now she’d have to explain herself—and she didn’t want to explain herself. Her brain had short-circuited. But Priscilla wasn’t going away until she got some answers.
“Fine,” Maggie said. “I went out with Jake Sutton.”
There was a little yip and something crashed in the kitchen.
Terrific. Now Coralee knew. Now everybody knew.
“I don’t know what made me think I could keep my private life, you know, private,” Maggie fumed while she brought out the cups of
coffee and set them on the table. “It was pretty crazy of me, now that I think about it. A woman pushing thirty, going on a date with a single man. That’s worth at least a dozen phone calls around town right there.”
Priscilla gazed up at her with the faux-innocence of a mother who’d been on the prowl for sons-in-law since her girls were in diapers. “I’m just happy to see you going out again, sweetheart. That’s all.”
Oh, that was far from all. Maggie could practically hear Coralee holding her breath back there, rubbing her hands together, hanging on every word.
Priscilla sipped her coffee and then clicked the cup back on its saucer. “Being filthy rich isn’t a bad thing, you know. There are plenty of nice men out there who—”
“Don’t give me the pitch, Mom. I’m not dating Jake because of his money.”
“I know what we’ll do,” Priscilla said, conveniently ignoring her. “We’ll invite him over for dinner, like we did that time with Mason. You remember—when he and Cassidy first started dating. Then he can see what nice folks we are and that you were raised by a decent family.”
“No,” Maggie said louder than she meant to. It worried her to see that distracted look on her mother’s face, the one that meant she was plotting, planning, devising ways to pull him in. She didn’t want Jake getting the wrong idea about things. She didn’t want him thinking that he was being scrutinized as potential husband material. She didn’t want him believing she had “designs” on him, period.
On a flare of panic, she said, “There will be no inviting. Jake and I are nowhere close to the dinner-with-family stage.”
Priscilla barely heard her. “I’d better go check on your father.” She stood and gathered her purse. “April, are you coming? I may need you to run to the pharmacy for me later.”
Maggie opened her mouth to argue. Priscilla needed to understand that Jake was strictly a hands-off situation. “Mom!” she said. “Tell me you heard what I said. No inviting Jake to dinner until I say so.”
Halfway out the door, Priscilla turned around and beamed at her. “Of course, honey. I wouldn’t dream of it. You’re a grown woman. Jake is your business and he’s going to stay that way.”
* * * *
Jake pulled off his yellow hard hat and stood looking into the theater. The place was a disaster. Old flooring and rotted lumber lay in stacks, ready to be busted up and hauled away. The air was hazy with dust. A dozen workmen were pulling down termite-eaten beams that couldn’t be salvaged. Taking apart an old building might be an exciting part of the process, but it was nerve-racking as hell. Jake hated the idea of missing something that might have been made beautiful again.
The old girl was on life support, he thought with a pang. The Regal was on the brink of being…well, not a newer, younger version of herself. If she were young, she wouldn’t be as interesting. No, he was giving her a chance to shine again in all her gloriously fascinating imperfection.
“I’m heading out,” he told Pete, who stood behind him frowning at blueprints. “I’ll feel better once we get all this crap hauled away. Then we’ll really know what we’re dealing with.”
“I wouldn’t worry,” Pete said. “On a project like this, there are always problems. You can expect them. But at least we’re getting closer to figuring out what they are.”
Jake took one last look at his theater, buoyed by his vision of what the Regal would be once he finished with her. Restorations were a battle with time, and time was always working against you.
“You going home?” Pete asked him. “If not, my wife and I would be happy to have you over for dinner. You know we don’t live close to Cuervo, but we’re not that far either.”
Jake smelled a fix-up. Pete and his wife Shaylene, nice middle-aged folks who followed high school football and played a round of golf every Sunday, were convinced he needed a woman in his life—not because of his money, but because they’d decided he was lonely. It would have been funny if it weren’t also mildly annoying. He’d been to dinner with them three times and there was always a single female relative there.
“Actually, I’ve got a date tonight,” Jake told him. “We’re meeting up at the ranch. Gotta get over there before she shows up so I can wash some of this dirt off.”
“You don’t say?” Pete scratched his cheek where a patch of silver stubble grew. “The missus will be disappointed.”
That meant for sure there’d been a fix-up. Last time it had been a schoolteacher cousin who’d sat staring at her placemat the whole night. Shaylene kept kicking her under the table. He knew because once or twice Shaylene missed the cousin and kicked him instead.
“Well, maybe if things keep going well with Maggie, I can bring her over,” Jake told him. They strolled out to his car, which was parked on the street in front of the theater.
“Good luck on that date.” Pete winked at him, which made Jake feel like he was a teen in the fifties going to a sock hop. He started the car and glanced at the dashboard clock, realizing he’d have to make tracks if he wanted to get everything ready for Maggie tonight.
After his meeting with the foremen yesterday, he’d wandered over to the bakery around noon, hoping to catch her. There she was taking that ridiculous dog for a walk. She’d knelt down to adjust something on his collar and a few spirals of dark hair had tumbled into her face.
He watched, undetected, enjoying the view and thinking he’d never seen a more irresistible woman.
When Maggie stood, she saw him. Her eyes held his for a long moment. Then she did something very un-Maggie-like: she blushed and looked away.
He would have taken her right there on the sidewalk if he could. To hell with being a gentleman. He was about to explode.
“When’s your day off?” Jake asked.
He remembered her blush intensifying. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Monday.”
“Let’s go horseback riding at the ranch.” He’d managed to smile then, even though his blood surged like it was boiling in his veins.
Even now, just sitting in his car thinking about that brief conversation yesterday, his blood heated. To distract himself, he turned on the radio. A reporter was interviewing the son of a celebrity dying of stage-four cirrhosis of the liver.
Like his mother.
He quickly silenced the radio. Then he passed one hand over his mouth, a little shaken, sure, but determined not to let it get to him. Goddamn Loretta. It felt as though she were reaching out for him across the airwaves. He’d even had a dream last night where he was lost and every street he turned down was the street he’d grown up on.
If thoughts of Loretta pushed at him, he’d just push back. It’s not going to work, Mother. I’m not coming to see you. You can die just the way you always wanted—alone.
By the time he drove into Willow Ridge, he was calmer and more focused on the task at hand. He caught up with one of the stable boys who was coming out of the tack barn with a coil of rope.
“I need you to saddle up the mare and that brown Morgan for me in about an hour,” he said.
“Going on the trails, sir?” the kid asked. “If you need a guide, I’d be happy to ride out with you.”
Jake grinned. A chaperone? Not quite what he had in mind. He shook his head. “Do you know where Mrs. Birch is? I didn’t see her car.”
“I think she went into town, sir. Maybe an hour ago?”
Jake set out for the house. Did he even have Mrs. Birch’s cell number? Well, he’d just have to improvise something for dinner.
The bigger guest bathroom, which was where he showered, had a window overlooking the driveway into Willow Ridge. He kept an eye out for Maggie’s pickup, ran the electric razor over his face—just in case there was kissing—and then threw on jeans, a T-shirt and his Black Jack alligator-skin cowboy boots. He knew from experience that you could kick a lot of shit with those things.
Every minute brought him one m
inute closer to seeing Maggie. He had plans for their trail ride. Big plans. Maybe that magic moment would happen when she’d finally see that he wasn’t just trying to get into her pants.
The problem was he hadn’t figured out yet what he did want to get into. Not marriage or kids. The last thing he needed was to ruin some kid’s life the way Loretta had ruined his.
He saw Maggie’s truck bouncing along the road that led to the house, and his heart rate kicked up a few beats. Jake went outside just as she was pulling up, gravel pinging the inside of her wheel wells, all country girl sexy in the old Chevy pickup with its rounded edges and decorative spare tire on the side.
She hopped down from the cab wearing blue jeans and a faded gingham shirt tied at the waist. When she turned around to get something, Jake feasted his eyes on her sweet curvy bottom. Holy crap, he had no idea she looked that hot in a pair of jeans. He whipped his gaze back to her face where it belonged, but everything about this woman reminded him she was trouble.
There was trouble in the way she looked at him, half-challenging and half-seductive, chin up, breasts straining the seams of her top. There was trouble in the way she stomped around in those boots, as though determined to show him this other side to her personality.
And there was plenty of trouble in how much he liked it.
This Maggie knew how to honky-tonk. Get a couple of beers in her and she might have ripped her top off and ridden the mechanical bull.
Jake wiped his face with one hand. If he didn’t have sex with her soon, he was going to be spending an awful lot of time in the shower.
“Hey,” she said, giving him the once over. “I’ve never seen you in a T-shirt before. You look…nice.”
Nice. What did that even mean?
“If I start talking about what I think of you in those jeans, we’re never going to get out of here,” he said, directing her toward the barn. “Let’s catch what’s left of the day.”
