Head Over Heels for the Boss (Donovan Brothers)

by Susan Meier

  LuAnn followed her out to the van again. They made six trips back and forth. On the final trip, one of the Dinner Belles asked to see LuAnn’s ring and all the ladies surrounded her as she displayed her ring finger.

  Karen O’Riley, Piper’s mom, gushed and got teary-eyed. Though there was a time the O’Rileys and Donovans feuded over O’Riley’s Market, Richard Hyatt had put an end to that when he gave the store to Karen’s daughter Piper and LuAnn’s son Cade. Tonight, Karen hugged LuAnn so hard, Isabelle thought she’d burst. Charlene grudgingly hugged her. Then the scene in the kitchen deteriorated to a hen party, with everyone asking details about LuAnn’s wedding.

  Isabelle stood back, taking it all in. It was true that Harmony Hills had a gossip mill that ran twenty-four seven. But there were more nice people in her little town than mean people. So if she and Devon started dating, everybody wouldn’t think she was a gold digger, would they? Just the mean people would. And really, that was their problem.

  When the conversation died, Isabelle drove LuAnn back to her house. They talked about cake, decorations, where she should get her dress, Piper and Ellie as bridesmaids, invitations, and the ceremony.

  Exhausted, Isabelle finally lifted herself from one of the cute black-and-white club chairs in the living room, holding a notebook half filled with scribbled thoughts and things she needed to look up for LuAnn.

  LuAnn hugged her then headed upstairs. Isabelle headed for the front door. Now that she’d put in a full day’s work, delivered flowers, made arrangements with the Dinner Belles, and talked about LuAnn’s wedding, she had to go turn on some lights.

  Chapter Nine

  Isabelle pulled into her parents’ driveway ten minutes later. With a quick punch of a button, she cut her car engine, then grabbed her purse and started toward the back porch. Reaching into the side purse pocket for her phone so she could use it for light, she discovered it wasn’t there. She pivoted to return to her car to look for it and walked right into Devon.

  He stepped back. “Hey.”

  “Hey? What are you doing here?”

  He displayed her phone. “You left this on your desk.”

  “And you’re just now giving it to me?”

  “Did you think I’d drive around town looking for you when I knew you had to be here to turn on lights?”

  “You knew?”

  “Your mom called.”

  She snorted. “Again?”

  “That means you’re really not going to like it when I tell you she wants you to clean the master bathroom.”

  “What?”

  He motioned for her to start walking again. “Your mom is nervous about someone who is coming in tomorrow to look at the house.”

  She started for the back porch and climbed the steps, fishing inside her purse for her keys. “There’s a showing tomorrow?”

  “I think the realtor called right after you got off the phone with your mom and told her about it.”

  The door sprang open when she turned the key in the knob, but Isabelle stood frozen to the spot. “Oh my God. There aren’t enough hours in the day.”

  He gave her a little nudge into the kitchen. “I get it. Being the oldest in my family, I recognize the overwhelm of family responsibility when I see it.”

  Saying nothing, Isabelle fell to one of the stools by the center island.

  “I could ask my mother to find another wedding planner.”

  She shook her head. “No. She needs me.”

  “I figured you’d say that. That’s why I brought this.” He pulled a bottle of wine from the basket she just noticed he was holding.

  She raised her eyes to meet his gaze. “You brought wine?”

  He pulled out crackers and cheese. “And a snack.” He shrugged. “I’m guessing you haven’t eaten.”

  Her head tilted as she studied him. It was the sweetest thing anyone had ever done for her. “No. I haven’t.”

  “So what do you say we go into the living room and have some crackers and some wine before you check out that bathroom?”

  She shook her head. “As tired as I am, after a glass of wine, I’ll be too drowsy to do anything. Let me check the bathroom first.”

  He smiled. “Okay. I’ll set us up in the living room.”

  She forced herself off the stool and upstairs to her parents’ master bedroom. The place was immaculate. She didn’t want to test it out, but she was pretty sure she could have eaten off the floor of the shower. Her mother, good housekeeper that she was, was just being paranoid.

  With the bathroom clean and enough lights on in the house to alert any potential thieves that the house wasn’t always empty, she headed for the stairs, only to stop on the top step.

  He’d brought crackers and wine.

  It really was the nicest, sweetest thing anybody had ever done for her. Of course, given that her only long-term relationship was in high school and it ended the second year of college, that wasn’t really saying much. Still, he wasn’t supposed to do nice things for her. And she wasn’t supposed to be noticing. She was moving. Maybe. Because he only wanted an affair.

  She sucked in a breath and walked down the stairs. When she reached the bottom, she noticed Devon had not only found her dad’s state-of-the-art stereo system and had mellow jazz music drifting through the room, but he’d turned on the electric fireplace.

  “Fireplace? In June?”

  Handing her a glass of rich red wine that picked up the light from the fireplace, he grimaced. “I also turned on the central air.”

  She laughed then took a breath. “That felt good.”

  “The laugh?”

  She nodded and sat on the beige leather sofa. He sat beside her.

  “I noticed we all are sort of piling work on you.”

  She raised her knee to the sofa and faced him. “I don’t mind. Really.” Having a lot of work to do kept her from thinking about him. Still, she wouldn’t tell him that. “What else do I have to do?”

  “You could have a private life?”

  “Look who’s talking.”

  He chuckled. “I manage to get some fun in.”

  “Yeah, well, in Harmony Hills our private lives sort of get wrapped up in our professional lives. Do you know how much fun it is to be part of nearly everybody’s wedding?”

  His eyebrows rose. “That sounds like torture to me.”

  “It’s not. It’s fun.”

  He leaned forward and kissed her. “That’s just because you’re nice. Cute. Honest.”

  She sighed. “Cute? I haven’t grown beyond cute yet?”

  “Okay. Gorgeous. I think you’re gorgeous.”

  Her heart leaped. Those hopes she’d always had about somehow being in his life and catching his attention were finally being fulfilled. And she was probably leaving.

  “But I also understand how it feels to be responsible for everyone.” A shadow flitted through his eyes. “As oldest in my family, I’ve handled a lot of things my brothers didn’t even know were going on. But I always knew that if I needed them, all I had to do was ask. Being an only child, you don’t have anyone to call.”

  “No. I don’t.” The seriousness of this topic made her forget all about her hopes. “But I also didn’t have the problems you had.” She searched his eyes and quietly said, “I heard a rumor that you used to hide your brothers in a closet and deal with your dad alone.”

  “When I was ten, Finn was six. Six. That’s still a little boy. My father hit him once, and only once, because he knocked him out.” He sat back and took a long, slow breath. “If I hadn’t stepped in, he would have killed him. I had to make sure he never hit him again.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He didn’t say anything for a minute, only stared into his wineglass, but she realized he was pushing down some memories and she gave him that space. From her first day of working with him, they’d been able to read each other. Talk to each other. Admit things they probably didn’t discuss with anyone else.

  That caused a tug on her
heart. He might be saying he only wanted an affair, but they were quickly becoming important to each other.

  He glanced up slowly. “My life started out really bad and ended up really good. I can’t complain.”

  “You’re not complaining. You’re being honest.” She smiled. “I sort of like it.”

  “I do, too.” He shifted his shoulders as if releasing tight muscles in his back and neck. “What about you? What do I not know about Isabelle Cooper?”

  “My life was always good.” She laughed and nudged him. “Only children are spoiled brats.”

  “You’re not a brat. You’re a very nice person. A good person.”

  “A good person who got everything she wanted for Christmas and had a fancy birthday party every year.”

  “But you’re paying for it now, because there’s no one to help you with all this house crap.”

  “I’m young. I still have a lot of energy. I can handle it.”

  He put his hand over his chest as if wounded. “Are you making fun of my age?”

  She laughed. “Actually, I like your age. I like that you’re a bit older, a bit smarter, a bit more experienced.”

  “Oh, I think you’re going to enjoy the more experienced part a great deal.”

  “Really?”

  “I have learned a lot of special tricks in my travels.”

  Her heart rate picked up. If he was talking about sex, he’d just piqued her curiosity to the nth power. “Special tricks about what?”

  He leaned in again and brushed his lips across hers slowly, skillfully, knocking all the air out of her lungs and every thought out of her brain.

  “I’d much rather demonstrate.”

  “So I’d be like an experiment?”

  He took the wineglass from her hand and set it on the glass coffee table in front of the sofa. “I’d rather look at it as a really, really fun game.”

  As he said the last, he took her by the shoulders and leaned in far enough that they both slid down on the couch. Then he kissed her fully, completely, his tongue invading her mouth and her tongue eagerly mating with it. The tempo was soft and slow, like the song wafting around them from her dad’s fancy sound system. He didn’t kiss like an inept boy or an over-eager college date. He kissed like a man making love to a woman.

  The very thought had her senses reeling. In the same way her wardrobe hadn’t kept up with her age, her sexual experience had also stopped in college. And she was desperate to catch up. Which was another thing she supposed she had to factor into her decisions. She’d been stuck in grad school mode forever. Now that she had her degree, had work skills, had a new older look, wasn’t it about time her sex life stepped up, too?

  Her hands slid down the crisp material of Devon’s dress shirt. The soft material of expensive suit pants brushed her legs. She wasn’t lying on a sofa with a jeans and T-shirt guy, worried about his grade point average. This was a man.

  Every fiber of her being warmed and pulsed. His mouth moved from hers to her jaw, along her neck to her collarbone. And, oh boy, did that feel good. Pinpricks of pleasure danced from every spot his lips touched to her stomach and lower. His hands slid beneath her and cruised up her back, positioning her as his mouth moved toward her breasts—

  Things had gotten very real very quickly. But he still wanted an affair, and she suddenly didn’t have a damned clue what she wanted.

  Stop.

  She cleared her throat and actually said the word out loud this time. “Stop.”

  He inched up so he could look at her. “What? Why?”

  “What are we doing?”

  His face clouded in confusion. “The thing we both want to do?”

  She almost denied it, but honesty wouldn’t let her. She’d wanted this for five years. More since she’d gotten to know the real him. And maybe even more since he understood her troubles, confided a bit about his own life to her, realized she hadn’t eaten and brought her wine and cheese as he delivered her lost phone to her.

  He was a great guy.

  She liked him. He liked her. And even if nothing came of this, it was time for her to enter the world of an adult woman who had a sex life.

  Still…

  Really? Drop her panties for somebody who’d rejected her twice—prom date and at the wedding? Who was her boss? Who admitted he wanted nothing but an affair?

  This wasn’t a decision that a woman should make just because somebody brought her some cheese.

  “If you’re worried about someone seeing my car, don’t. I found a great place to hide it.”

  That was the last thing she’d expected him to say. So much so, that that one little comment started knitting everything together in her brain.

  “Oh my gosh! You did all this”—she motioned to the wine and cheese, the pretty basket—“to show me we have a place we can have an affair?”

  “What’s wrong with that? Your parents want the house to look lived-in, at least a little bit.” He smiled sexily. “Besides, we really like each other.”

  He was right. And this felt right. Not because she thought he’d fall in love with her forever once they were intimate, but because she was an adult woman who was sexually attracted to an available man. If she took the promise of happily ever after out of this equation, there was no reason for them not to make love. She finally understood his side of the story, and the roadblock in her own line of thinking. If she wanted him, it had to be on his terms. And tonight those terms made sense.

  “You’re right.”

  He blinked in surprise. “I thought I’d have to do a little more convincing.”

  She shook her head. The pleasure of being in control, making her own decisions, flitted through her. “No. I’m good.”

  He picked up his wineglass and looked at her over the rim for a few seconds before he said, “You’re willing to risk your reputation?”

  “I think my reputation would be okay.” She thought back to the Dinner Belles, even sourpuss Charlene Simmons always came around—eventually. And wasn’t anything worth having worth fighting for? “Sandy Wojak lives in the real world and keeps the Dinner Belles in line. Even if gossip started, ultimately it would be nipped in the bud.”

  “Just because there isn’t gossip, that doesn’t mean people wouldn’t be thinking bad things.”

  She tried to envision what he was saying. “You’re suggesting people like your mom would think less of me for dating you?”

  He gave her a funny look over his wineglass then chuckled. “We’re not really going to be dating, remember? I don’t date. I don’t have relationships. I have sex.”

  She understood not making a commitment, but was he saying he didn’t want to be seen in public with her? “Ouch. Maybe give me a warning before you slap me with a reality check.”

  Sliding his thumb across her cheek, he whispered, “What did you think I was suggesting?”

  “Not a commitment, but even an affair is something of a relationship.”

  “Not the way I do it.”

  He rose from the sofa. “Maybe you need some more time to think about what you want.” His fingers brushed her jaw again, lightly, like a wisp of a feather, or a man touching something so precious he didn’t want to risk breaking it.

  When he touched her like that the answer quickly blurred, and she couldn’t speak, couldn’t move.

  “Do you want the real me, or do you think it’s better to sit around believing you’re going to get some sort of fantasy. A happily-ever-after kind of thing that only happens in romantic comedies?”

  She searched his eyes. They were dark pools of sincerity. He did not believe—whether in love or happiness, she couldn’t tell. “Lots of people find happy endings.”

  He sniffed a laugh and turned away. “And lots of people lie about how happy they are.” He found her gaze again. “But that’s not even at issue here. My question is what do you want? Do you want a fantasy I can’t provide or do you want the real me?”

  He gathered their wineglasses. “Let’s cle
an this up and get out of here.”

  Confused, Isabelle almost asked him why, but then she realized this was his way of letting her know he wasn’t going to push her. But also a very clear demonstration of the fact that he wouldn’t be involved with her at all unless it was on his terms.

  Though the decision was hers, he was setting the rules.

  Chapter Ten

  When Isabelle walked into the office Monday morning, Devon tried not to look up to see what she was wearing, to see what kind of mood she was in. If he was going to have an affair with this woman—and he was; they were far too hot for each other not to take advantage of this good thing—then he had to separate the two relationships immediately. He had to do what he’d done on Friday. Wait until 5:01 before he even said anything flirty.

  But when she stepped into his office and said, “Good morning,” he couldn’t very well ignore her. He looked up, saw the long length of her legs beneath the hem of the pretty pink dress she wore, and had to fight to hold back a compliment.

  “Good morning.”

  “I was wondering if you would have time this morning to go over some of my questions?”

  There were lots of things he’d like to go over. The shiny pink fabric of the dress that hugged her curves without being too tight. The swing of her hair. Her long, long legs. But she had to be on the same page he was on. An affair only. No relationship. It might take some time to get her on board with that.

  Part of the way he intended to bring her around to his way of thinking was to show her the line between business and pleasure. And he intended to be in control of both. “How about this afternoon?”

  “Sorry. I have another wake.”

  He gaped at her. “Somebody else died?”

  She strolled a little closer to the desk, her shiny hair swaying. His fingers itched to touch it, but, once again, he stopped those thoughts.

  “Yes. Harmony Hills might be a small town, but it’s not tiny. When you’ve got five thousand people, new babies are being born every week and somebody dies every week.”

  He sucked in a breath. “Of course. I didn’t mean to sound so gruff. It’s just that with you still managing the flower shop, we seem to be running on your schedule not mine.” He leaned back to get a better look at her legs. “And I’m the boss.”