Reluctant Partners

by Kara Lennox

  “One of many,” Max hastened to add.

  “So what do you say?” Cooper looked at her expectantly. “Want to lend us your expertise? I’ll make it worth your while.”

  “Why would I want to help you?”

  “Because,” Cooper said, and she could tell he relished making his final point, “if you win, you get to keep whatever we come up with. Free. It won’t be any use to us.”

  That brought her up short. She’d always wanted to do a full-blown marketing campaign, but she hadn’t known where to begin. Aside from the capital investment it would require, Johnny had been against it, anyway-he said they kept their schedule pretty full without running a lot of fancy ads.

  But if these Ivy League-educated Remington boys could come up with ways to increase profits without alienating their longtime customers…she’d be a fool not to benefit from their expertise in areas where she had none.

  “How much are you willing to pay me?” she asked.

  “Whatever you’d make as a deckhand, plus twenty-five percent.”

  “You don’t know what I make as a deckhand,” she pointed out.

  “See, that’s one of the reasons we need you. We may need to hire on some help, and we have no idea what sort of pay to offer them.”

  It was tempting to take them for a ride, but in the end she named a figure she probably could have earned working freelance.

  Cooper nodded. “Plus twenty-five percent. You there, with the calculator-what does that work out to?”

  Reece looked up a bit foggily. “Huh?”

  “Never mind him,” Max said. “He’s deep into his facts and figures. We’ll sort it out.”

  Working side by side with Cooper for a week might be foolhardy. What if he had some ulterior motive, some way to use her agreeability to gather evidence against her? But she looked at it from every angle, and she couldn’t find a reason to turn down the offer.

  “Do we have a deal?” Cooper stood and offered her his hand.

  Allie hesitated only slightly before clasping his hand in hers. “Deal.” A tingle of awareness buzzed through her at his touch, and she almost hated to release his hand. Why did he have to be so good-looking? Why did he have to have that charming smile and those twinkly blue eyes? She would have a much easier job despising him if he was as cold and arrogant as he’d first appeared.

  “Our first order of business is to buy you some new clothes. Not that the Daisy Dukes aren’t attractive, but we don’t want to start a riot at the trade show.”

  “Trade show?”

  “This weekend, in Houston. Vacation Expo. You and I are going to work it. Together.”

  Chapter Seven

  Cooper enjoyed the look of consternation on his new employee’s beautiful face.

  Reece and Max both thought he was slightly insane for wanting to hire Allie. But everything he’d told her was true. If the court awarded her the boat and the charter business, she would benefit from all the work they were doing. And if Cooper and his cousins prevailed, well, they had one week of Allie’s cooperation, which they sorely needed.

  They had an incredible amount of work to get done before the weekend. It was a stroke of luck they’d heard about the trade show from Miss Greer, who paid to participate in a booth run by a bed-and-breakfast association. But it sounded like exactly the sort of place Remington Charters could get good exposure to people who were actually planning vacations, and he hadn’t wanted to toss away the opportunity, even if it meant they had to scramble to get ready in time.

  “You want me to buy new clothes?” Allie repeated, looking at him as if he was insane.

  “I’ll pay for them. Company expense. I was thinking something nautical.”

  “You’re going to dress me in a sailor outfit and turn me into a trade-show booth bunny.”

  “Hey, don’t be insulted. All the booths at trade shows hire beautiful models-you’ll see when we get there. We’re fortunate to have our talent in-house.”

  Allie looked down at herself. “I’m fine the way I am.”

  “Did someone say shopping?” Sara entered the living room wearing sunglasses and a straw hat, a huge denim purse slung over her shoulder. “Allie, if you’re going to shop, take me along. You can’t trust a man’s shopping advice.”

  Cooper sensed an ally in Sara. Though she wasn’t exactly a fashion plate, she did have a certain style about her with her big, dangly earrings and bright, multicolored skirt. She certainly had Reece’s attention. The moment she’d appeared, Reece had lifted his gaze from his books and he hadn’t taken his eyes off her since.

  Interesting.

  Reece had been adamant that he wasn’t relocating to Port Clara, but maybe there was a way to keep him here after all.

  The three youngest Remington cousins had always stuck together. And though he and Max would carry on without Reece if they had to, it wouldn’t be the same.

  “All right,” Allie said, “I’ll go shopping if you insist. I guess it wouldn’t hurt me to buy a few new clothes, especially on the Remington dime. But you back me up,” she said to Sara. “Don’t you let him push me into buying some ridiculous, low-cut, nautical streetwalker outfit.”

  That was sort of what Cooper had in mind, something form-fitting and low-cut to show off Allie’s figure. He’d have to see what he could talk her into.

  Port Clara had one mall, if you could call it that, a collection of about twenty stores, mostly tourist-related. But the mall was anchored by a small department store and a couple of high-end boutiques.

  Sara immediately zeroed in on the most expensive-looking of the stores. “This one,” she said. “I love the clothes in here.” She grabbed Allie by the arm and dragged her in, ignoring Cooper completely. Well, perhaps shopping just wasn’t something men really understood. He didn’t select his own clothes, after all. He had a personal shopper who knew his tastes and took care of all that for him.

  But he did know what looked good on a woman. Sara veered to a rack of summery dresses first.

  “No dresses!” Allie declared. “I don’t do dresses. Besides, I’m supposed to be the captain of a fishing boat. It wouldn’t be seemly. If I have to dress up, a pair of trousers and some kind of shirt will be fine.”

  Sara looked disappointed, but she peered around the store until she saw what she wanted, then made a beeline for it. “This would look fabulous on you,” she said, grabbing a pair of white pants with a short jacket that matched. “And let’s see, how about a striped tee to wear underneath? That would be nautical.”

  It also wouldn’t be sexy. Cooper looked around the store himself, trying to find something that matched his idea of what Allie should wear at the trade show. A couple of minutes later he found it: a blue-and-white halter dress with a plunging neckline. It had little anchors embroidered on the straps and around the bottom.

  If he could get her to try it on, maybe to humor him, she would see how good it looked.

  “What size do you wear?” Sara was asking.

  “I don’t know,” Allie answered.

  “What do you mean, you don’t know?”

  Allie shrugged. “I never go shopping. I don’t think I’ve bought any new clothes this century other than the uniform shirts I put the logo on, and I got those mail order. I think they’re a medium.”

  Sara looked Allie up and down. “About a six, I’d say. We’ll just have to try.”

  A sales clerk showed them to a dressing room. Cooper handed the halter dress to the clerk when she came back out. “Could you take this in to the redhead? I think she might like it.”

  The clerk looked skeptical. “Didn’t she say no dresses?”

  “She might change her mind,” Cooper said hopefully.

  The clerk took the dress and disappeared again into the fitting rooms. He didn’t hear any screams of outrage, so he kept his fingers crossed. Having Allie in their booth at the trade show was a stroke of genius. Even if she wore a potato sack, with that gorgeous red hair and green eyes, she would pull peopl
e in-at least the men.

  He wasn’t sure about advertising she was the captain. He still felt that people would be more comfortable with a man in charge. Sexist of him, he knew, but that was the way of the world. But he could work on that part of their plan later. One step at a time.

  A few minutes later, Sara dragged Allie out of the dressing room. He had insisted he must see her in the clothes before making any decisions.

  He hadn’t expected to like the white outfit, but now that he saw it on her, he realized Sara knew her stuff. The T-shirt’s scoop neck gave him an intriguing glimpse of the shadow between Allie’s full breasts, and the way those pants hugged her hips made his mouth go dry.

  “Doesn’t she look fabulous, Cooper?” Sara said.

  Allie was looking anywhere and everywhere but at him. She was actually trying to pull away from Sara, trying to escape back into the dressing room like a gopher seeking the safety of its burrow.

  “She does, in fact, look fabulous.” His voice was low, laced with innuendo, though he hadn’t meant for it to come out like that.

  Allie blushed in the way only a redhead can. “All right, fine, let’s buy it already.” She slipped Sara’s clutches and darted to safety.

  “What about the dress?” Cooper asked.

  “Haven’t gotten her into it yet,” Sara whispered, “but I’m working on it.”

  ALLIE GAZED AT HER REFLECTION in the mirror and wasn’t quite sure what to think. She hadn’t seen herself in anything but denim and T-shirts since she’d graduated from baby clothes. She was a tomboy through and through. Her mother had practically had to tie her down to get her into proper school clothes.

  Even for Johnny’s funeral, she’d borrowed a pair of black jeans and a sober shirt from Sara, and she certainly hadn’t bothered to look at herself in a mirror. Matter of fact, she hadn’t seen herself in a full-length mirror in…she didn’t know how long.

  “You look great!” Sara tucked in the tag at the back of the halter dress. “Cooper’s right, you could be a model.”

  “Oh, Sara, get real.”

  “No, really, you’re a knockout. Little makeup, some earrings…I’d give anything to have your boobs. Well, you know what I mean.”

  “It shows too much chest,” Allie argued, though she had to admit she kind of liked how she looked. She’d never thought of herself as sexy, or even very pretty. Growing up she’d always been “that redheaded Bateman girl,” with no figure to speak of and too many freckles.

  But she actually did have a figure now.

  “I really would be a booth bunny if I wore this to the trade show.” The dress fit as if it had been tailor-made for her. The soft knit clung to her every curve and moved when she did; the daring neckline showed more of her chest than even her bathing suit did.

  “Cooper picked this out?”

  “That’s what the salesgirl said. Oh, Allie, you have to buy it. If not for the trade show, then wear it to a party or something.”

  “Cooper isn’t going to buy me clothes to wear to any party-as if I ever go to parties.”

  “But you look so pretty.”

  “No. Let’s find another top to wear with the white pants.”

  It wasn’t difficult to find a blouse that coordinated with the white pants, and soon Cooper was at the register paying for their purchases while Sara looked over the purses.

  “What about shoes?” she asked.

  “I can wear my white deck shoes.”

  “No! You’ll ruin the whole outfit. You need a pair of white strappy sandals.” With that declaration, Sara dragged Allie down the mall to a shoe store, and before she knew what was happening, Allie was trying on shoes. Anything with a high heel was out; she absolutely could not walk in them and couldn’t risk breaking an ankle.

  They finally settled on some sandals that would probably rub blisters. But they were cute. Cooper didn’t even blink at the ridiculous price. Allie hadn’t paid that much for all of the shoes in her closet combined.

  Cooper seemed to enjoy their shopping outing, which surprised her. Her father had refused to go near a shopping mall, and he’d claimed all men felt the same.

  “Sara, do you mind if we make a stop before going back to the B and B?” Cooper asked as they headed back to his car.

  “I’m in no hurry.”

  “How come you didn’t ask if I minded?” Allie asked.

  “’Cause you’re on the payroll.”

  “I guess that makes you the boss of me,” Allie said dryly, but he was paying her, so she left it at that. She climbed into the back seat with all the shopping bags-she wasn’t up to polite conversation.

  “I want to stop by a rental house,” Cooper explained. “I can’t stay in the B and B indefinitely. The owner said she’d be there all afternoon working on the yard.”

  Allie was curious what sort of house Cooper would want to live in. Something with a lot of glass and cold stone, probably. So she was surprised when he pulled up in front of a white, two-story frame house with red shutters.

  “I know this house,” Sara said. “The Mulvaneys live here. You know the Mulvaneys, Allie. Sam runs the Buick dealership. I used to baby-sit their kids.”

  “Oh, right,” she said distractedly. The house was captivating. It had a big palm tree in the front yard and pink petunias growing along the walkway. In fact, it looked disturbingly like the house where Allie had spent her early childhood, before her mom had died.

  Her death, like Johnny’s, had been expensive. After she was gone, her dad had sold the house, declaring they didn’t need such a big place for just the two of them. They’d moved to an apartment near the marina, and eventually they’d given that up, too, and lived on the Ginnie, which was a little bit larger than the Dragonfly.

  She half expected Cooper to eliminate this cozy, family-looking home without even going inside, but he parked and got out.

  “You coming?” he asked when she remained in the car.

  She opened her door and got out, but she felt a strange sense of dread about entering the house. It was almost as if she was afraid to see how a normal family lived, because she’d been divorced from that reality for so long.

  What if she liked what she saw?

  It was dangerous to even think about a different way of life. She’d made her choices long ago. Yeah, she’d given up a lot to choose fishing as her way of life. Sometimes she wondered what it would be like to have a garden, or a cat. But spending every day on the water-that was worth an awful lot.

  Allie tagged along as Julia Mulvaney showed Cooper around, emphasizing the selling points.

  “We’re empty nesters now,” she explained. “No reason for Jim and me to keep a house this big. But we aren’t quite ready to sell it. My daughter says she might like to buy it in a few years, when she and her husband are more established and have kids of their own. I would love to see my grandkids raised in the same house where I raised their mom.”

  As she’d feared, Allie felt a pang of envy. She had almost nothing from her family. She’d kept a Bible of her mother’s, a pocketknife that had belonged to her dad and a few photographs, but that was pretty much it. If she ever had children-and that seemed doubtful-they would never know their grandparents.

  She kept expecting Cooper to cut Mrs. Mulvaney off and tell her the house really wasn’t his style. But he looked it over thoroughly.

  “I’ll take it,” he said, surprising her. “I’ll read the rental agreement tonight and bring it back in the morning. My furniture should arrive next week.”

  “Great! I’m sure you two will be very happy.” She looked not at Sara, who had taken a much more active role in touring the house, but at Allie.

  “It’s just me,” Cooper said hastily.

  “I’m not living here,” Allie said at the same time. How in the world had this woman gotten the idea Cooper and Allie were a couple?

  “Oh, sorry,” Mrs. Mulvaney backpedaled. “I just assumed…It’s such a family-type of house, I thought…”

&nb
sp; “It’s only temporary, until I find a place to buy,” Cooper said smoothly. But the woman had echoed the same thoughts Allie had. Why would Cooper want to rent here? Any number of rental condos were available with all the conveniences.

  Sara had expressed enthusiasm for the house. Maybe he was trying to impress her. Maybe he had a thing for Sara.

  Then Allie remembered the way Cooper’s eyes had lit up when she’d emerged from the dressing room in the white outfit, and she felt another blush coming on. His gaze had held enough heat to kindle a campfire without matches.

  She could deny it all she wanted, tell herself she’d imagined it or that it was impossible, but in her heart, she knew. Cooper wanted her, not Sara.

  She wondered if there was any way to use his lust to her advantage, then was ashamed of herself. She had no need to come up with any tricks. She had right on her side.

  Anyway, however much he might harbor lustful feelings for her, she had it at least as bad. She hadn’t slept a good night’s sleep since the morning he’d boarded the Dragonfly uninvited. She’d spent way too much time covertly studying him whenever he was within eyesight.

  How unfair that the one guy she’d shared chemistry with in a very long time was the one guy in the world she could never be with.

  “YOU RENTED A HOUSE?” Max’s mouth hung open in surprise.

  “You’ll have to mow the grass,” Reece pointed out. “And fix stuff when it goes wrong.”

  “I can hire people to do that sort of thing, if I find I can’t handle it myself.” He’d been surprised himself at his decision to rent the Mulvaney home. It was bigger than he needed, and since it was more than forty years old, it would require a lot of maintenance.

  He’d lived in Manhattan apartments all his life. He’d never had a lawn, or a backyard, or a tree to climb. He’d never had a bike.

  Not that he would go climbing trees or riding bikes now. But he’d been intrigued by the idea of living in a real house. In the end he probably would buy a condo or a townhouse. Max had already found one he liked in a brand-new complex with a golf course and an ocean view.

  “It’s just for a few months, till I find something to buy. Hey, it was clean, the price was right, and I don’t have time to waste apartment hunting. I’ve got to be ready for a trade show in three days.”