by Noelle Adams
“Very well. Make her the offer you outlined. When she accepts, start the process of getting her moved out and doing the renovations you think necessary. You’ll need to stay to hire the management, and then they can deal with hiring the rest of the staff.”
“There’s a couple who have worked here for seven years. They live on the premises and take care of most of the housekeeping and upkeep.”
“Surely one couple can’t do all the work necessary to make an inn of that size run.”
“They hire day help in the high season, but the inn is this couple’s home, and I was thinking of keeping them on, since they know the ins and outs better than anyone else.”
He could almost hear his uncle shaking his head. “Andrew, we can’t go around picking up strays. This is business.”
“I know it’s business. I don’t think it’s a bad business decision.”
After a moment of hesitation, Damon said, “Well, you’re responsible for oversight there. You make the decision. But I’ll want to see a detailed accounting for all the staff decisions you make and why they’re financially appropriate. You can see some examples of how Harrison handled similar situations if you need any help.”
Andrew tightened his lips but didn’t respond to the comment. He knew very well that, in his uncle’s mind, he was poor seconds to Harrison. His brother ate and breathed this stuff. Andrew hated it. The idea of turning Agatha and Hector into monetary values on a spreadsheet made him rather sick.
But this was his life. This was his family. Business was what they did.
He finished up the conversation and then spent two hours working out a report and spreadsheet with his recommended plan for the inn and all of the necessary justification. He had to call up one of their corporate accountants in order to work out some of the details. Then he had a two-hour-long conversation with one of the contract lawyers at Damon Enterprises to draw up the contract they would offer Laurel as settlement.
When it was done, he sent the contract to his uncle, who signed off on it. It was after noon before he was able to print it up, put it in a folder, and go out to find Laurel.
He found her pressure washing the walls of one of the smaller guest buildings. She wasn’t using a commercial size machine—just a small one for household use—but it was cleaning grime from the whitewashed walls very effectively. He must have surprised her since she jumped and almost sprayed him with the hose when she realized he was there.
Quickly jumping out of the way of the spray, Andrew grinned at her. She really was amazing. He’d never have dreamed a trophy wife would get up before dawn every morning to cook and work in the garden, walk her German Shepherds miles every day, or do the pressure washing herself.
He wondered if she ever sat still. Other than her topless sunbathing in the evenings.
He shouldn’t have thought of that. The image of her luscious, naked body was not good for maintaining a clear, focused mind. Particularly since she’d decided that sex was now off the table.
She stared at him in confusion, since he hadn’t managed to say anything yet.
“Sorry,” he said, shaking himself out of his reverie. “Shouldn’t you let Hector do that?”
She frowned. “Hector has other work to do. What did you need?”
“I was wondering if we could set up a meeting with your lawyer.”
Laurel had turned off the hose, but her hand was still on the trigger, as if she was ready to get right back to work as soon as he’d said whatever he had to say. “Why?”
“We have an offer for you.”
“What offer?” Her expression had been impersonal before, but now it grew cool, almost suspicious.
Surely she didn’t still think he was going to cheat her or take advantage of her. She must know he wasn’t that kind of man. “It’s a good offer,” he said. “I have a contract here. We can go over it with your lawyer.” He was quite sure her lawyer wouldn’t do her much good, but he’d make sure she understood everything and knew she was being treated fairly.
Her frown deepened. “What kind of contract do you have to offer me? I’m not sure you’re in any position to offer me anything, since the inn is mine.”
Andrew tensed with frustration when he saw her shoulders stiffen defensively and her chin swing up in what looked like defiance. He’d been hoping she wouldn’t be difficult, since they’d been getting along pretty well.
“Perhaps you can reserve judgment until you actually see the offer.” He tried to keep his voice light, not wanting to get in an argument.
“I’m not going to set up a meeting with my lawyer until you tell me what you’re going to offer me.”
“Since we understand you acted on a sincere belief that the inn belongs to you, we’re willing to compensate you for what you’ve invested in it over the years. It’s a very generous amount.”
“You’re going to compensate me?”
“It’s very generous,” he repeated, starting to feel nervous about her reaction. He’d assumed anyone in her position, anyone with any sense, would jump at such generous terms, when the only other option was to lose a court battle. “You’d be able to do whatever you wanted—even stay on the island, if you want.”
“You’re going to pay me for the privilege of losing an inn that rightfully belongs to me.”
“Laurel,” Andrew began, doing his best to keep his tone mild, “it doesn’t belong to you. If we take it to court, they’ll find in our favor. This saves us all the time and hassle and allows you to live comfortably as you set up a new home, wherever you like.”
She stared at him in silence. He saw her body getting tighter, and her face shut down, as if she were suppressing her response. “This is my home,” she gritted out, turning around and aiming the hose at the wall again.
Andrew experienced a flare of anger at her obstinacy and at how his very generous arrangement had been tossed back in his face without even being seriously considered. What the hell did the woman expect? Did she think they would all just lie down for her to walk all over them?
She’d raised both arms to aim the hose at the wall, the sound of the forceful rush of water breaking the quiet.
“Laurel,” he said loudly. If they were going to argue, he wanted to actually have the argument. He hated when people just walked away or turned their backs on him, as if he didn’t deserve the respect of their attention. “Laurel!”
She ignored him completely, aiming the hose higher to reach the top part of the wall.
“Laurel,” he said one more time.
No response. Her hair had been clipped up but was starting to slip down in a messy fall around her neck. Her slim arms were bare, and her motion highlighted the slender, graceful muscles of her shoulders and biceps. Her firm, rounded ass gave him inappropriate thoughts, which just made him even angrier.
Determined that she wasn’t going to ignore him when he was standing right behind her, he took the three steps over and touched one of her arms to get her attention. “Laurel, would you listen to me?”
She gave a startled squeal and whirled around. It was a mistake.
The pressure washing hose moved with her as she turned. The hard spray hit him square in the chest, as powerful as a blow from such close range.
He grunted at the startling impact and stumbled back involuntarily as he processed the sensation of being hit and then the discomfort of being soaking wet.
“Damn it, Andrew!” Laurel yelled, dropping the hose like it was a snake. “What are you doing?”
He stared down at himself, trying to figure out if he was hurt or if it was just the shock. Pressure washers could definitely be dangerous. This one wasn’t strong enough to really hurt him, he finally realized, but his t-shirt and shorts were completely soaked, and he still felt jarred and breathless.
He rubbed water from his face, annoyance rising up stronger than ever now that he realized he wasn’t injured. “What am I doing?” he demanded roughly. “I wasn’t the one who was ignoring my attempts to tal
k and then squealing like I was being attacked.”
“You grabbed me,” she gasped, her eyes wide and face paler than it should be. “You startled me. Why the hell weren’t you more careful?”
“Why wasn’t I more careful? You’re the one who hit me with that thing.”
He felt like an idiot, sopping wet and still rather stunned, which did nothing to settle his indignation.
“You shouldn’t have scared me like that. I didn’t do it on purpose.” She walked over to him quickly and took fistfuls of his wet shirt in an attempt to pull it up. “Are you okay?”
He yanked himself out of her grip. “I’m fine.” While he wouldn’t object to her touching him, he certainly didn’t want it in this mood and with him in such a foolish situation. “Don’t.”
“Let me look,” she insisted, yanking his t-shirt up to look at his bare chest. “People have serious accidents with those things.”
He’d always been comfortable in his own skin, and there was no reason for him to feel self-conscious now, since he’d just had sex with this woman the night before. But he did. He didn’t want her peering at his chest, which was redder than it should have been. He didn’t want her this close to him.
She had brought him nothing but trouble and, at the moment, he wanted her as far away from him as possible.
“Not from such a small machine,” he said, stepping back from her again. “The water wasn’t even that hot.”
“But, Andrew,” she began, reaching out for him again, “let me at least—”
“Enough!” The word snapped out, in a tone he rarely used. “Enough. Let it be.”
She stared at him with huge brown eyes, looking breathless and momentarily shaken.
Andrew now felt like a brute and a fool, so he muttered something about changing clothes and just left.
The sex was the only good thing to have come from this trip, and now he wanted the whole thing over.
He’d never—never—felt like such an idiot in so many ways before Laurel had entered his life.
***
Laurel had really messed up.
She tried to go back to washing the walls of the lower-level guestrooms, but her arms were trembling and she just couldn’t do it. She turned off the pressure washer completely and stared down at the trigger.
She was shaky, confused, and disoriented, and she couldn’t figure out what to do now. She couldn’t believe Andrew had thought she would accept money to give up the inn—an inn that belonged to her. She couldn’t believe he’d been so smugly confident that he could buy her off so easily.
She should have reacted better, however. She should have been able to suppress her instinctive outrage and put on an appropriately winsome demeanor. Instead, she’d shown her resentment. She’d prompted an argument when it was strategically the worst thing she could do.
Then she’d sprayed Andrew at close range with the pressure washer, which had terrified her so much her knees were still rubbery.
She might have really hurt him.
If that hadn’t been enough to handle, she’d been shocked and upset by his sharp tone. She was used to Andrew being friendly and charming—easing his way through life, through relationships, with as little friction as possible. And she had no idea how to handle the fact that he’d spoken to her with such curt authority and that he’d somehow managed to silence her.
She tried to shake off her lingering trembling and start the pressure washer again. She hadn’t finished cleaning the wall, and she never left a job unfinished.
She couldn’t do it, though.
She needed to check on Andrew, to make sure he really wasn’t hurt.
Then she needed to figure out what to do about the inn.
Maybe she could smooth over her inappropriate response earlier. She could just act like she’d been surprised before but, now that she’d thought it over, his offer was worth considering.
It wasn’t worth considering, but if she closed down the lines of communication completely, then she’d lose any advantage she’d gained over the last few days.
She wiped her hands on her pants and went up to Andrew’s room. She knocked on the door.
There was no response.
She waited a minute and knocked again. She waited, listening, and heard some movement in the room. A few seconds later, the door swung open.
Andrew must have just gotten out of the shower and thrown on some clothes. His hair was wet and he was pulling on a white camp shirt over gray trousers.
“Oh,” she said, taken aback. “Sorry.”
He looked at her without smiling, his eyes uncharacteristically quiet and watchful.
“Are you all right?” she asked at last.
“I told you I was fine.” He looked more annoyed than anything else, but he moved out of the doorway, which she took for an invitation to enter.
He was buttoning his shirt, but she reached over to stop him, remembering horror stories she’d heard involving pressure washer accidents. “Can I please look at it to make sure it’s all right?” she asked, her voice wobbling in a way that made her cringe.
She wasn’t like this. She wasn’t this person. She always had a plan for handling circumstances efficiently. She always had things under control.
He let out a textured exhale but dropped his hands, letting his shirt fall open.
She stepped over and carefully, almost delicately, pulled the fabric apart to bare his chest. She tried not to think about how attractive it was—the well-developed muscles and clean lines made somehow more masculine, more human, by the dark hair and the faint white scar etched from his right shoulder to his nipple.
She didn’t focus on any of that, though. She focused on the splash of angry red spreading down his left side from his chest to his flat stomach. “Damn,” she breathed, “I did hurt you.”
“You didn’t,” he said, his voice more gravelly than normal. “It’s fine.”
“At least the water wasn’t turned up hot. Some people get badly burned. Do you think it will bruise?”
“No. Let it go, Laurel.”
She didn’t want to let it go. She wanted to fix it.
She wanted to fix everything.
She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, so she just stared at the redness on his chest. Her fingers trembled as they gripped the edges of his shirt.
He gently pulled the shirt out of her hands and started to button it.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to do that.”
“I know you didn’t. I shouldn’t have startled you. I thought you heard me and were just ignoring me.”
“I didn’t hear you. I’m sorry.”
“You don’t have to say sorry again.”
She took a shaky breath and had no idea what to say.
He said it for her. “About our offer…”
She swallowed hard, trying to remember that she really needed to keep him on her side and so she couldn’t antagonize him more than she already had. “I…I can look at it.”
He peered at her too closely, with too much scrutiny, as if he could somehow see into her head. She didn’t like it. She wasn’t used to feeling so vulnerable. She lowered her eyes so he couldn’t read her expression.
“You’ll look at it?”
“Sure,” she said, trying to sound casual. “I can’t promise I’ll agree to it, but I might as well look at it. We can set up a time to meet with my lawyer to go over it.”
There was a long pause before he said, “You don’t mean that.”
“Sure I do.”
“No, you don’t. I don’t know why you’re bothering to pretend. Your first reaction was the real one.”
She tightened her lips, a wave of resentment washing over her. “That’s presumptuous. You have no idea what my real feelings are.”
“Of course I do. Do you think you’re fooling me with the easy-going routine? You’re not easy-going, and there’s no use pretending you are.”
“You don’t know me at all.” She tried to
keep her voice even and not yell at him the way she wanted. The insufferable arrogance of his assumption that he knew who she was or what she thought was infuriating, as infuriating as his belief that the inn belonged to the Damons and not her.
“I do know you. You’re used to managing things—making things happen according to your plans. You might have gotten pretty far with managing everything else, but you’re not going to manage me.” He sounded resentful, as if he’d deserved better from her.
She was so angry now she was shaking with it, his face blurring slightly in front of her as she tried to hold back the force of emotion. “I have no desire to manage you,” she snapped. “I would prefer you to just leave me alone. You’re the one who’s used to strolling through life and charming people into doing what you want. You’re just annoyed because I’m not falling for your normal routine. I said I’d look at the offer. What more do you want?”
“I want you to be real for once in your life and not say things because they’re what you’ve planned.”
She gasped in surprise and indignation. “You arrogant jackass! You have no idea what’s real about me. And what’s real is that this inn belongs to me.”
“It doesn’t belong to you.” He was angry now too, she could see it in his tense jaw and in the intensity in his green eyes. “It belongs to Damon Enterprises. You gambled poorly on your rich husband. Maybe being a trophy wife was a logical step toward whatever your endgame is, but you chose the wrong man and the wrong bank account. It happens. But you can’t expect us to give up what’s ours because of your mistake.”
She had to clench her hands at her side to keep from slapping him. She was used to people believing she married only for money—which simply wasn’t true—but it hurt that Andrew believed such a thing. “I don’t expect anything from you. If your uncle had been serious about this property, he wouldn’t have sent you to handle it. Everyone knows that Harrison is the one who gets things done. You’re just a stand-in. Obviously, I’m not too worried about the situation.”
