She knew what she’d said was unreasonable, but with a wedding reception for an “intimate gathering” of two-hundred guests to face she wasn’t feeling all that reasonable.
“Now where am I supposed to get another waiter on such short notice?”
Alex’s tone was bordering on impatience. Fiona strained to make out what he was saying above the din of background noise.
“Call the temp service. It’s where you got me originally,” he reminded her.
She’d thought of that as soon as Alex had told her he was calling from the hospital ER, but then discarded the idea. It would be physically impossible to get someone here on time. And besides, there were other complicating factors to consider. She felt as if she’d just stepped into a nightmare.
“It’s where I got you with five days to spare,” Fiona noted, nervously dragging her hand through a sea of reddish-brown hair. “Not five minutes. I wish you’d called sooner.”
“Hey, I’m really sorry, Fiona.” There was sympathy in every syllable. “My nephew’s skateboard was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. Or maybe I was. When I went flying, I thought for sure I was going to land on my head.”
“Then you would have cracked the cement, not sprained your ankle.”
What the hell was she going to do? Fiona wondered. Her brain scurried like a high-powered mouse sniffing out the right corridor leading to the sliver of cheese. Right now, the cheese perversely insisted on eluding her.
“Very funny. Seriously, this is the first chance I’ve had to call you. I’ve been buried in this emergency room all morning.”
He made her feel guilty. She was going on about a wedding reception while he was there, hurting.
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t be carrying on this way. There’ll be other weddings.” She hoped. “You just get better, I’ll manage,” she told him cheerfully. With a deep sigh, she replaced the receiver. “I’ll just grow another pair of arms in the next half hour, that’s all,” Fiona muttered under her breath.
This was really going to be a problem. There was no way she and Bridgette would be able to manage on their own. Not with all those drinks to make and the buffet to manage. And there was no one she could call at this late hour.
Fiona closed her eyes, praying for a miracle. “Just a tiny, kitchen-size one. You’d hardly notice it was missing,” she murmured to whatever patron saint had been assigned to fledgling caterers.
As if in response, Fiona heard Velcro suddenly screech, followed by a very male gasp. The next moment there was rather an urgent knock on her kitchen door.
Patron saints didn’t knock. Even unnamed ones.
“Now what?”
Feeling hugely put upon and, for once in her life, not the least bit friendly, Fiona strode to her back door. From the sound of Velcro’s screech, the cat had found someone new to stick her sharp little claws into. Fiona shook her head. Other people had pets, she had an attack cat.
She didn’t have time for this.
Frazzled and without a decent solution to her problem, Fiona swung open the door.
“Yes?” she demanded just as she came face-tobud with a rather large, fragrant arrangement of pink and white carnations.
“Is this cat yours?”
The question, coming from above the center of the bouquet, was laden with barely suppressed pain. A direct result of Velcro’s claws, which had to be digging into the man’s leg. All Fiona could think of was two inches higher and the florist deliveryman would have turned into a soprano.
Velcro meowed rather loudly, as if to negate whatever it was the man was saying.
Gingerly, trying not to seem as if she were being too personal, Fiona detached Velcro’s claws one by one from the stranger’s leg. When he sucked in his breath, she winced in sympathy.
Holding Velcro to her, Fiona backed away.
“I’m so sorry,” Fiona apologized. “Would it help to know that she does that out of affection?”
Hank’d known a woman like that once. But luckily, not for long. Balancing the bouquet, he quickly rubbed his leg, surprised that there was no blood spurting out. He could have sworn the cat had sunk her claws in clear down to the bone.
“Affection, huh?” He brushed cat fur from his pant leg. “I’d sure hate to run into your cat when she’s mad, then.”
“Not a pretty sight,” Fiona assured him, petting Velcro as she stared at the stranger.
He, however, was. Pretty. Very pretty, in a sensual, bone-melting sort of way, Fiona decided. The man’s face, tanned from the sun, was comprised of an incredible number of planes and angles that somehow formed a gentle, sensitive face, rather than a hard one.
Fiona blinked, forcing herself to focus. This wasn’t the time to notice things like that. She had a crisis on her hands, an attack cat in her hands and a gorgeous arrangement of carnations practically in her face, not to mention a gorgeous man on her doorstep.
She nodded at the flowers, stroking Velcro a little harder than she should. “Are those for me?”
She looked exactly the way Hank had expected her to, he thought Lively, sparkling. He’d been wrong about the hair, though. He’d thought she’d be a blonde. The smoky auburn hair was striking.
Hank presented the carnations to her. “Yes. I’m—”
“Tall,” Fiona suddenly blurted. The man from the florist’s was tall. Maybe even taller than Alex, she thought Maybe there really was a patron saint for fledgling caterers.
“Well, yes, I am, but—” Hank had been this height since he was thirteen, waiting for everyone else to catch up. Not many had. Hank was accustomed to people pointing out the obvious.
Perfect, he was perfect. Fiona thought of the uniform that was hanging in her hall closet, the one Alex always wore whenever she used him on a catering assignment. This man looked as if the uniform had been made for him.
Like a tailor taking one final measurement, Fiona began to circle the stranger.
“Perfect,” she pronounced again, this time out loud.
Hank had never had a woman sound quite this forward before. “Excuse me?”
Fiona hardly heard him. Her mind was humming. “Are you busy?” Oh, please, don’t let him be busy. “Right now, I mean—are you busy?” she repeated when he didn’t say anything. The answer to her prayers looked a little stunned. “I mean, you don’t have any other flowers to deliver, do you?”
Lost now, Hank had absolutely no idea what this woman with the wild, gypsy hair was getting at. “No,” he responded cautiously.
A huge sigh of relief escaped her. “Wonderful. How would you like to make some money for about three hours’ work?”
Maybe she wasn’t as innocent as she looked. Hank’s eyes narrowed as he studied her. He was usually a pretty good judge of character, but it seemed that he’d miscalculated this time.
“Just what is it you have in mind?”
Fiona’s mind was racing, trying to cover all bases. What if he was clumsy? No, no one this good-looking could possibly be a klutz. There had to be some unwritten law about that.
“How’s your balance?”
The only reason Hank’s mouth didn’t drop open was that it had frozen in place.
“Excuse me?” He was trying very hard not to let his imagination take over and run away with him, but it wasn’t easy.
Fiona realized that her mind was going faster than her tongue. She tried to get control of herself. “Can you hold a tray?”
His eyes never left her face. “While doing what?”
“Serving.” Quickly she set Velcro on the floor and took the man’s elbow. Pulling hard, Fiona tugged him into the hallway. And into her dilemma. “The waiter I had lined up for the wedding I’m catering this afternoon just called to say he sprained his ankle. I’m in a real bind. I can’t get anyone on such short notice, certainly not anyone as tall as he was—”
“Height matters?” Hank still couldn’t make any sense of this. Just who was going to be at this wedding she was catering, a basketball team?
Fiona was getting ahead of herself again. No wonder he was having trouble keeping up. The man spoke as if he had all the time in the world to form words. She, however, did not. Fiona struggled to curb her impatience. She needed this man.
“It does if the only uniform you have hanging in your closet is made to fit a man who’s six-four.” She crossed her fingers as she opened the closet. “Are you six-four?”
Now it was beginning to come together for Hank. “And a quarter.”
Fiona could have hugged him. “Bless you.” She was already reaching into the closet. “You’d really be doing me a tremendous favor and the job pays fifty.” Pulling the uniform out, she handed it to him.
Shifting the flowers he was still holding to one side, Hank took the hanger she thrust at him. “But I—”
She had no time to argue about money. “I can go as high as sixty.” The look she gave him bordered on begging. At the moment, Fiona was far from proud. Just desperate. “Please.”
If ever there was a surefire way to erase a debt, this was it. Hank didn’t even hesitate. “Sure.” And then he remembered. He looked at the bouquet. “Don’t you want these?”
“Oh, yes, sure.” Hastily, she accepted the bouquet, then parted several of the flowers, looking for a card. She glanced at the person she took to be the deliveryman. “There’s no card.”
Since he’d had every intention of delivering the flowers in person, Hank had seen no reason to write one. “No, I—”
But she was way ahead of him again.
“Lost it, that’s okay.” He was bailing her out. The last thing in the world Fiona wanted was to make him think he’d done something wrong. “I’ve lost plenty of things myself.”
She could always call the florist later to find out who’d sent the carnations. They were undoubtedly from a client. She wasn’t in the habit of receiving flowers, but whenever she did, they were always from clients. These had probably come from the Albrights. The couple had been especially grateful for the job she had done for their twins.
Fiona saw that he looked unconvinced. “No reason to beat yourself up over losing it.” One arm around the bouquet, the other around his arm, Fiona urged him back into the kitchen. “Believe me, you’ll be more than making up for it by helping me out of this jam.”
In what seemed to Hank like one fluid motion, she took down an empty jar that had, until this morning, held bow-tie pasta. She filled it with water and placed the carnations into it.
He could almost feel the charged energy bouncing around this woman.
“Does everyone around here talk as fast as you do?” he asked, wondering for the first time if he was going to be able to keep up in Southern California after all.
“No, only when they’re having a crisis.” She pointed him toward the bathroom. “Now please, put on the uniform. And hurry. I’ve got to be over there in half an hour.” She glanced at her watch, although it was entirely unnecessary. Fiona had the time down pat. She could feel the minutes ticking away in her soul. “Bridgette’s already at the house, setting up.”
His hand on the doorknob, Hank paused. “Bridgette?”
Agitated, Fiona placed her hand over his and turned the knob, opening the door. “My sister.”
Ever so slowly, he looked down at her hand, then back up at her. Suddenly aware of what she was doing, Fiona dropped her hand. A warm flush danced through her like summer fireflies fanning their wings against the sultry night.
“Is this her business?”
“No, it’s mine.” Her self-consciousness faded. Fiona flashed a grin, lighting up the entire kitchen. “Can’t you tell?”
At the moment there wasn’t a whole lot Hank could tell, except that he’d somehow managed to wander into the path of a twister and had gotten sucked up.
And he had to admit that it wasn’t an altogether unpleasant experience. All he had to do was wait until his breath managed to catch up to him.
“Wait,” she cried just as he was about to close the door behind him. “What do I call you?”
He often ran into that. Most people took one look at him and declared that he didn’t look like any Henry they knew. “My friends call me Hank.”
She nodded. “Hank.” And then she smiled beguilingly. “Thank you.”
“Sure thing.”
Fiona hurried off to change the moment the bathroom door was closed. There wasn’t much time left. Accustomed to wiggling into her uniform quickly, she was out just as the bathroom door opened again and her “kitchen-size miracle” emerged.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. She smiled, surveying the fit. “It looks terrific on you. Better than on Alex.”
She especially liked the way the pants adhered to his muscular legs and butt. Maybe no one would notice if he did happen to be clumsy. At any rate, none of the women would.
She’d changed, as well, Hank noticed immediately. Changed into a uniform that was guaranteed to wander through many a man’s fantasies. Certainly his. It was a maid’s outfit, black, trimmed in white lace with a distractingly short skirt. And she was now wearing heels. Black heels that made her more than three inches taller.
He liked her at this height, he thought Her face was closer to his. That made it rather nice.
Hank made no effort to suppress the smile blooming on his lips. “Does that outfit come with fishnet stockings?”
She looked down, as if to check. “No. Just Suntan,” she said, giving him the name of the color stamped on the side of the panty hose box.
The grin definitely went with the drawl, Fiona decided. “Last time I saw legs that long and pretty, I fell in love.”
Uh-oh, she thought, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“They belonged to the filly my father gave me,” he continued. “Gwendolyn was my first love, and we were an inseparable pair. I was five.”
Fiona let out the breath she was holding, feeling instantly at ease. “Your first love was a horse?”
“Yes, ma’am, except that Gwendolyn thought she was people.”
She knew all about the way animals fancied themselves. “Velcro thinks she’s an attack cat.”
He laughed. The sound, deep, resonant and sensual, wound its way through her system, finally lodging itself in her gut.
“Yes, I already know that,” he said.
“Sorry.” She couldn’t help laughing herself. Some of the tension that naturally accompanied her on these assignments seemed to fade into the background. But it didn’t dim her awareness of the time— and the fact that it was growing short.
“I’ve got to get the rest of the food over there before the reception starts.” She picked up one box of hors d’oeuvres she’d packed away and handed it to him, then picked up a second one herself. “The van’s out front.” Not waiting for a response, Fiona led the way.
Outside, she looked around, expecting to see another vehicle parked at the curb. Instead, there was an impressive-looking sports car she didn’t recognize. The woman across the street undoubtedly had a new boyfriend. Ever since her divorce had become final—Fiona had catered her “divorce party”—the woman had been going through boyfriends as if they were tissues. This car probably belonged to the latest candidate.
“Where’s your van?”
He looked at her, wondering where the question had come from. “I don’t have a van.”
Why wouldn’t a deliveryman drive a van? Where did he put the flowers he delivered? “How did you get here?”
“In that.” He pointed toward the sports car.
That was his? “Just how much do they pay you to deliver flowers?”
With every passing minute, Hank felt as if he were going deeper and deeper into the forest. “‘They’ don’t pay—”
“You enough. Yes, I know.” She placed the box she was holding onto a shelf in the back of the van, then took his. “A common feeling, I’m sure: That’s how I felt, working for someone else. Underpaid, under-appreciated.” She slammed the doors shut and secur
ed them. “That’s one of the reasons I began my own company.” She flashed an unconscious smile, then headed for the front of the van. “That way, there’s no one telling me what to do—at least, not for long.”
He was wrong, Hank thought. She moved faster than his filly had. And the legs were definitely better. “Could they?”
Fiona turned around to look at him. “What do you mean?”
His eyes swept over her. She was small, compact, but then, so was dynamite. He wondered what it was like when she finally erupted. Would it be all noise, or would there be the kind of fireworks that lit up the sky on the Fourth of July? “I get the feeling that no one could tell you what to do if you didn’t want to do it.”
It took Fiona a moment to pull herself together. The look in his eyes was positively hypnotic. And she didn’t want to go where his smile was taking her. It was much too warm and decadent there.
“That’s one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me.”
“That, I find very hard to believe.”
Despite her best efforts, his smile wound through her like warm, sultry sea breezes, seducing her. “You’re very easy to talk to.” So easy, she realized, that she hadn’t even thought to introduce herself. “By the way, I’m Fiona Reilly.”
“Yes, I know. And I’m—”
Of course he’d know. He was delivering the flowers to her. She was such a dummy at times.
“A godsend,” Fiona concluded. She ducked into the vehicle, motioning him over to the passenger seat. “C’mon, get in the van, we’re going to be late.”
Feeling more amused than confused, Hank got in next to her. He recalled hearing that line, or a similar sentiment, uttered by the white rabbit as he ran down the rabbit hole. Except that this time, it was “Alice” who was dragging him down the rabbit hole in her wake.
He looked at Fiona as he put on his seat belt. “Are things always this hectic?”
“Only if I’m lucky.” Fiona revved the engine, easing the van out of the driveway and praying that every light from here to the Kellermans’ house was frozen in her favor. From the corner of her eye, she saw the strange look he was giving her. Probably thought she was crazy. He wouldn’t be the first. “It’s June, the month of weddings. And this year, the personal, homey touch is in. And if there’s anything I can do, it’s give things that homey touch.” She turned the van as sharply as she dared. “Hang on, it’s going to be a bumpy ride.”
Fiona And The Sexy Stranger Page 3
