by Susan Meier
Twenty minutes later, Devon looked up from his desk and through the office door at Isabelle, and laughed to himself. She had just calmed down from her tirade. He didn’t want to set her off again by laughing. But she was funny. So angry about being accused of being a gold digger that she couldn’t stop sputtering.
He didn’t know why she was so surprised that people would think she was after his money. Lots of women were attracted to him. Lots came on to him. And lately he’d realized at least fifty percent of them were only after his family’s money. The other fifty percent lived in Pittsburgh, where they didn’t know just how rich he was. He was growing accustomed to fielding the flirtations of women not interested in him, only interested in what his money could buy. Isabelle made it clear she hated being thought of as a gold digger. But the way she was dressed lately had set her up for that kind of accusation.
The big black sweater his mom had lent to her might cover the skimpy tank top, but there was no hiding her legs. Long and sleek, they snagged his attention every time she shifted on her seat.
And she shifted a lot.
He sat back. She’d mentioned that she’d never worked in an office before. She was accustomed to setting her own hours—which were long, but still, she set them. She also worked in a shop, walked around, probably got coffee any time she wanted. Yet here she sat, stiff and quiet.
He might not want her flirting with him, but he also didn’t want her to be uncomfortable. He rose and walked to the door. Leaning against the frame, he said, “You can go to the kitchen any time you want for coffee.”
“Thanks, but I had some at the diner where I heard the disgusting way the minds of the people in this town work.”
He strolled over to her desk. “Come on. I understand that they insulted you. But really, you had been flirting with me. And I warned you.”
“Right.”
He gasped. “Oh, I get it. That’s why you’re so mad. They were right.”
She flipped the page of the prospectus she was reviewing and put her attention on the next page. “Fantastic. You’re a genius.”
“I’m a genius who’s going to the kitchen for coffee. Why don’t you come with me? Take a break.”
“No.”
“Come on.” He reached out and took her arm, tugging a bit to get her to stand. When she wouldn’t budge, he tugged a little harder and she flew out of the chair, stopping only when she bumped into his chest.
She put her hand on his shoulder for balance and her gaze met his.
Time froze. He held her hand. She was pressed against his chest. Her mesmerizing green eyes linked with his. Like the flick of a cigarette lighter, his blood heated. His muscles flexed.
She shoved out of his hold. “This is exactly what Charlene Simmons was talking about.”
His head swimming with inappropriate thoughts, it took a minute for his brain to catch up with what she was saying. And another few seconds to realize she was right. He shouldn’t be touching her and looking at her intently. Letting his body react to her.
“Got it.” He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. “I was just offering a coffee break. You seemed like you could use it.”
She tugged his mother’s sweater back into place. “No, thank you.”
He headed for the door as quickly as he could without looking as awkward as he felt. “Okay. Good. But the offer still stands, whenever you’re ready.”
Though it was past ten, the kitchen was cold and silent. He didn’t have to wonder why. His mother had slept at Bob’s again.
He flipped the switch on the Keurig, found the K-cup that had the strong breakfast blend coffee he liked, then leaned against the counter while it brewed. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Bob. Everybody “liked” Bob. It was the timing. His mother had been separated for two years and not one man had gone near her. Then the news broke about their inheritance and suddenly Bob was by her side.
After putting cream in his coffee, he started for his office, but stopped himself.
He got it that Isabelle didn’t want anything romantic between them. He felt the same way. But he didn’t want their office to be silent and cold. Eventually, they’d be traveling together on top of spending eight hours a day twenty feet away from each other. They had to get along. He turned back to the kitchen, made a second cup of coffee, and carried it to her office.
Pausing beside her desk, he said, “I know you said you didn’t want coffee. But here’s a cup, just in case.”
She eyed him shrewdly. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome.” He took a sip of his coffee. “We’re lucky to have a Keurig since my mom apparently didn’t come home last night.”
Her focus back on the prospectus in front of her, she said, “Devon, like it or not, she’s an adult.”
She called him Devon. She always had. She’d never even considered calling him Mr. Donovan and he’d never considered asking her to call him Mr. Donovan. But it felt right.
“I know she’s an adult. I also want her to find somebody…eventually.”
She peeked up from her work with a smile that wobbled because she tried to hide it. “Eventually?”
“I believe she should get accustomed to having money. Travel a bit. See what the world has to offer.”
“Before she commits?”
“Before she finds herself stuck with a guy who only wants her for her money.”
Isabelle’s head tilted to the side. “She’s known Bob forever. We all have. It seems to me that if she went out into the world, traveling as a wealthy woman, there’d be more chance she’d find somebody only interested in her money.”
He picked up her stapler and twisted it to give himself an outlet for his nerves. “I still don’t like the timing.”
“You’re going to have to get used to it.”
He growled, put down the stapler, and returned to his office. He didn’t feel any better. His mood didn’t improve when he asked Isabelle to join him for lunch and she refused. He had leftover homemade soup from the night before and fresh bread from O’Riley’s Market in the kitchen. But she didn’t want any?
“It might be a good idea for me to go check on the Benjamin Brats,” she said.
“Oh.” Actually, that made sense and didn’t feel like she was deliberately avoiding him—though he knew she was. “Okay.”
She slid out of his mom’s old oversize sweater. For Devon the movement played out in slow motion. She unbuttoned the buttons, shrugged out of one shoulder, then the other, and probably slid off the sleeves, but he didn’t notice. Once the shoulder shrug was done, his gaze cruised from the thin straps of her tank top to her full breasts. And stayed there until his mother’s sweater hit his face.
“Stop that!”
He barely caught the sweater before it hit the floor. “What?”
“Looking at my breasts.”
Righteous indignation skittered through him. She’d started this and now she just expected it to go away because Alice Lenosky said some crappy things? “You were perfectly happy brushing those puppies against my chest on Saturday night.”
“That was an accident. I tried to step a little closer and got too close.”
He snorted. “You keep telling yourself that.”
Instead of getting angry, she reached for her little black purse. “Doesn’t matter. I felt one way on Saturday but feel a totally different way today.” She smiled confidently. “Besides, you should be glad. This is what you want.”
Isabelle’s cell phone rang. She dug it out of her purse. “It’s my parents.” She clicked to answer. “Hey, vacationers.”
Devon leaned against the filing cabinets and listened as Isabelle said things like, “Huh-uh. Okay. Wow. No. I never thought of that.” When she finally disconnected the call, her eyes were huge with something that looked a lot like confusion.
“What’s wrong?”
“My parents found another flower shop. In Myrtle Beach. They want to buy it and…they want me to come down to help them run it.”
With that, she turned and left the office, but a weird feeling tingled through Devon. Just when he was getting accustomed to having an employee, she wanted to move? He shouldn’t care. It was his brothers’ idea to hire someone to help him. But something like a rock had taken up residence in his stomach. He didn’t want her to go.
Chapter Seven
As soon as she got into her car, Isabelle called her mom back. She didn’t want to talk about this in front of Devon, but now that she was alone, she wanted an explanation. “So you found a flower shop you want to buy?”
“I told you yesterday that we miss you,” her mom said sweetly. “We want you to move down here with us. It’s a beautiful place to live. There are eligible men everywhere. So we went scouting for a business you could run and, lo and behold, there was a flower shop!”
She sucked in a breath. A bit of happiness flitted through her. Any thought of her and Devon becoming a couple had been annihilated. Her need to buy Buds and Blossoms back from Donovan, Inc. was based on wanting to put some kind of normalcy back in her life. But she’d realized running the flower shop without her parents wouldn’t be her normal life. But working in a flower shop with her parents? That made sense. And wouldn’t it just confuse the hell out of the gossips if she moved?
“Do you have enough money to buy the shop?”
“We can get a loan. But there is a bit of a ticking clock. The place has been running with a skeleton staff for two years. Which means the profits are down. Which means everybody who looks at it thinks it’s a losing proposition.” Isabelle could hear the smile in her mom’s voice as she added, “But you’re our secret weapon. You have an MBA. You’re a genius with arrangements. And there’s a huge market here. You could have that place making money hand over fist in a year.”
And wouldn’t it be nice to be back in her comfort zone.
“What’s the ticking clock?”
“When we went to the shop to ask questions, the owner told us that if it doesn’t sell in two months, he’s demoing the place, especially the greenhouses. So he can sell the land.”
“There are greenhouses?”
“Yes. We wouldn’t have to order flowers. We could grow our own.”
“Oh, man.” Grow her own flowers? “That sounds fantastic.”
“I know. But we only have two months to decide. And you also have to think about how to get out of the stipulation in our agreement with the Donovans that you were part of the sale of Buds and Blossoms.”
Crap. She’d forgotten about that. “Maybe I’ll talk with Jeff Franklin.”
“Good thinking. Get a lawyer’s perspective.”
She bit her lower lip, realizing that if she left Devon now, it truly was the end of her daydream that he’d someday want her. She straightened her shoulders defiantly. He might be attracted to her, but he didn’t want a relationship. And she didn’t want to be thought of as the town’s gold digger. Still, she couldn’t quite give her mom a definitive answer. “Let me think about it.”
“That’s why I called now. So you’d have lots of time to think about it. Two whole months.”
Her heart filled with love for her parents. “Thanks, Mom.”
Now all she had to do was figure out what she really wanted. She could rule out buying back Buds and Blossoms. The flower shop in Myrtle Beach with her parents was a much better idea. But give up on Devon? Completely?
Did she really want to end her forever crush?
Devon’s mom zipped home around three that afternoon, her arms loaded with bags of groceries from O’Riley’s. Isabelle trailed in after her, also carrying O’Riley’s bags.
“I know we’re flexible around here,” he said, taking the bag from his mom. “But that was an awfully long lunch.”
“Oh, shush,” his mom said, batting her hand at him. “I found her at the flower shop and asked for her help.”
He wanted to have a conversation with Isabelle. Yet, he didn’t. As the manager of the business that had stipulated purchase of Buds and Blossoms included Isabelle, he had every right to challenge her parents luring her away. As a guy who found himself suddenly attracted to her? He was even less thrilled about her leaving. And that troubled him. He never got emotionally involved with the women he slept with. He never got emotionally involved with co-workers. But here he was, his heart stuttering at the thought of Isabelle leaving. For that alone, he should forget the stipulation in the sales agreement for Buds and Blossoms and let her go.
But that didn’t sit right either.
He counted seven bags. “Did you do the weekly shopping?”
“No. Bob’s coming over tonight. I thought we’d barbeque.”
His hand around a jar of jalapeno peppers, he stopped it halfway out of the bag. “What?”
“Oh, come on, Devon, you love barbeque.”
He did, but that wasn’t the point. And it was really hard to say the point—that Bob was suddenly around their family a little too much.
“Izzy, you’ll stay for supper, too, right?”
She peered into one of the bags. “It depends. What are you barbequing?”
“The steaks we picked out.”
“Then, yum. I’m in. I also make a wicked potato salad.”
His mom walked two bags of veggies to the refrigerator. “That would be great. I love potato salad. Never quite got the hang of making it, though.”
Isabelle leaned close to LuAnn. “My mom had a secret. If you have enough potatoes, I’ll make it here and you can watch.”
“I love it!”
Feeling like a fifth wheel on a Buick, Devon turned and walked back down the hall to his office. This was the problem with family businesses. Situations could deteriorate to just family—forget business—in the blink of an eye. Worse, he still hadn’t figured out what to do about Isabelle. Should he confront her about the conversation with her mom about the new flower shop? He did have an in. She was part of the package deal for the Donovans to buy Buds and Blossoms. If she was planning on leaving, she’d be in violation of their agreement.
Two minutes after he took his seat behind his desk, Isabelle came into her office. She shrugged into his mom’s old sweater and started reading.
“Aren’t you hot?”
“Is that a question about the temperature or my general state of being?”
He laughed. And this was why he should let her go. They didn’t relate like a normal boss and assistant. They slipped into casual conversation too easily. “You know some men might take that as flirting.”
“I have a wickedly wrong way of looking at things.”
Which might be why he liked her so much, why it was so hard for him to ignore her. She was fun. Sort of silly but sort of right in her sarcasm. He’d always been a sucker for sarcasm.
“But I shouldn’t have said that.”
Her pink cheeks told him she regretted what she’d said, and he once again realized they were a little too comfortable with each other.
“Sometimes I don’t know when to keep my thoughts to myself.”
While they were talking so casually, he was tempted to walk into her office and ask about her parents’ plan to whisk her away, but he put his mind back on his work. If he asked about her leaving, even if he told her it was because she was part of the deal and she couldn’t quit, it could also become obvious that he had feelings for her. He might like her. He did like her. But they’d both decided they wouldn’t be doing anything about those feelings.
After two phone calls, he searched his computer for a file but realized he hadn’t scanned it. He’d have to get the paper copy. Without a thought, he went into Isabelle’s office and walked to the filing cabinet. He looked in the first drawer. It wasn’t there. The second? Not there either. The third…
“Damn it.”
Isabelle looked up. “What?”
“I had a file of articles on a guy who’s taking over a company I’d heavily invested in. I thought I’d scanned them and put them in my computer. But I didn’t find the
m there. And now I can’t find the hard copy file.”
“What did you file it under?”
“His name.”
She rose from her seat and came over to the filing cabinets. “If it’s alphabetical, it should be a no-brainer.”
He snorted.
“It is alphabetical, right?”
He said nothing.
“Do not tell me you just shove files in drawers.”
“Most of this”—he tapped on the filing cabinet—“is in my computer. I only keep hard copies just in case.”
“Well, here you are at ‘just in case’ and you’re lost, aren’t you?”
He shook his head. “Your mouth is going to get you into trouble someday,” he said, his gaze involuntarily lowering to her lips.
She casually said, “Yeah, my dad used to tell me that.”
But those weird emotions began to course through him again. Nowhere near love, but more than like, his affection for her combined with sexual responses and created one hell of a reaction in his body.
“Are you staring at me again?”
“You’re awfully hard not to notice.”
Still poking through files, she peeked up at him. “I know. It’s the red hair.”
“Not even a little bit. You’re pretty, but you’re a smart-ass. Educated but also a hard worker.”
He stopped.
Oh crap. She was him. The female version of him.
Or maybe what she really was, was his equal.
He stepped back.
“I’ve been saying all along that I’m educated. It’s why I wanted to punch Charlene Simmons for her rude comments.” She found the file he’d been looking for and handed it to him. “Here.”
He took the folder then stepped back a little more.
“You know we could hire the Benjamin Brats to alphabetize everything in these files. You could create categories. You could designate a drawer to be for accounting and others to be for prospectuses you’re not interested in.” She waved her hands. “That kind of stuff.”
Suddenly the room felt small and tight…and warm. Very, very warm. “That’s a good idea.”
She smiled.
