by Leslie Kelly
“Yeah, yeah. You want someone nice.”
“Exactly. Decent, funny. A combination of Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks and every father from every old 1950s black-and-white family sitcom on TV Land.”
“Boring.”
She went on as though Nancy hadn’t spoken. “The kind who’ll be loyal and faithful.”
“Get a Labrador.”
“Gentle,” she added.
“Get a girlfriend.”
“Well hung.”
“Get a dil—”
“Don’t say it,” Sabrina ordered. “I prefer male sexual organs that are actually attached to a body.”
“Strap-on?”
Groaning helplessly, Sabrina muttered, “A male body.”
Nancy sighed. “Picky picky.”
One thing was sure, whoever the next serious guy in her life happened to be, he would not be the type who’d get so angry when a woman broke up with him that he’d seek cruel revenge. Like seducing her innocent younger sister, getting her pregnant and walking out on her.
Her sister Allie was currently waiting out the last two months of her pregnancy in Sabrina’s apartment. Allie’s entire life had been ruined as part of the stupid revenge plot concocted by a guy Sabrina had dumped.
Yes, she’d had enough scumbags to last her whole life. It was nice, decent men from now on. No wicked studs need apply.
So her almost overwhelming need to see this Max Taylor in person had to be about curiosity, that was all. She simply couldn’t believe any man could be a modern-day combination of Valentino, James Bond and a porn star—as Grace claimed.
Skepticism and curiosity, she reminded herself. Not interest. Not in a million years.
She was about to continue arguing that point, but a noise distracted her. A metallic banging split the quiet afternoon air. It came from beyond a small stand of scraggly trees right off the road. Just after it came the loud, familiar tones of a calliope—the plaintive call to come to the circus.
Glancing that way, she caught the sparkle of something brilliantly shiny—a beautiful gleam of light that seemed entirely out of place in this gray-washed landscape.
Sabrina liked shiny things—bright lights, big city, loud music, fun. Just one more holdover from an early childhood with her funny, doting father that life with Grandfather hadn’t been able to extinguish.
Which, she supposed, was why she ended the call, dropped her phone in her purse and stepped out of the car. The music and the colors were calling to her.
And her curiosity wasn’t going to let her head back to Trouble without finding out where they were coming from.
CHAPTER TWO
TROUBLE MIGHT be the name of this town, but as far as Max was concerned, a better one would be The Mental Ward. After two weeks in the Pennsylvania community his grandfather called his kingdom, he was ready to run screaming off a bridge. Anything to escape the sounds of people calling him a savior—or a villain, the rattle of cars on their last piston, or—worst of all—the excruciating chirp of dozens of cuckoo clocks, all cuckooing their black little hearts out when the minute hand struck twelve.
The clocks. They were the tormenting fiends who’d convinced him he was one inch from insanity. At least one—usually more—of the vile things decorated every room of Max’s grandfather’s house, where Max was staying. And his grandfather loved them as much as he loved the dusty old furniture that had come with the place.
A lumpy couch he could live with. A few dozen cackling birds he could not. They’d driven him out early this morning, seeking both peace and quiet and a distraction. Any distraction.
Only not a female one, which was the biggest frustration of all. He was here to live down his reputation. Not add to it.
Coming to Trouble had been about more than talking his grandfather into unloading this bottomless pit he’d dumped a mountain of money into. The man did have a thing for lost causes and a sob story—apparently this tiny town being bankrupted by an embezzling crook had tugged at Mortimer’s heartstrings.
Max couldn’t forget his second objective, however—to lay low and stay out of the limelight while his lawyer took care of this Grace Wellington nonsense. Which was why he’d been here for days and had so far not given so much as a second glance to a nicely curved feminine ass.
Not that he’d seen any. Which was probably a good thing, even though it felt like a bad one.
There were only two things Max liked as well—or did as well—as women. Piloting. And tinkering with machinery.
He’d gone flying this morning, and, as always, the freedom and beauty of an endless blue sky had helped. Zipping and soaring between a few fluffy white clouds provided the kind of mindless delight he otherwise only got with sex. But once back on solid ground, the feeling had quickly disappeared. He was still tense…restless.
Which was why he was now cussing and coaxing the rust-covered engine of an ancient carousel back to life. He’d stumbled across the glorious ruin in the falling-down remnants of what had been Pennsylvania Kiddie World during one of his daily get-out-to-stay-sane walks earlier this week. Something about the place had appealed to him, unlike anything else in Trouble. Certainly unlike the moldering, cuckoo-clock-infested ruin in which he was currently residing with his happy-as-a-pig-in-mud grandfather.
He supposed there were benefits to being the grandson of a town owner, because he’d been able to get the power to this park turned on. Not that it seemed to have done any good. The poor carousel motor hadn’t made so much as one long groan of agony in the days he’d been tinkering with it, even if he had managed to get a few wailing notes of the calliope to belt out.
“Come on, sweetheart, I know you’re tired and old, but you must have one more go-round in you, merry or not.”
“Excuse me?”
Jerking his attention from the control panel, which had required a good quart of WD-40 before even allowing itself to be opened, Max swung his head around and stared over his shoulder. A woman had come up behind him in the tiny, weed-encrusted, abandoned amusement park, which had once been the cubic zirconia jewel in Trouble’s dubious crown.
And speaking of jewels…good Christ, was the woman standing in front of him one. A blonde. She was a blonde. His absolute weakness.
She was also tall, curvy and had the kind of lips that’d make a man howl to the night in pure, primal hunger.
No. No howling. No wolfing at all, remember?
Swallowing his libido, he offered her a smile. “Sorry. I guess you caught me talking to myself.” He stood and brushed his hands off on his jeans, leaving a smear of grease on one thigh. Stepping closer, he forced himself to keep this encounter friendly, neighborly.
When what he wanted was sexy and suggestive.
She smiled back, also noncommittal. Cordial but not flirtatious. Unfortunately. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.” Pushing her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, she revealed a pair of bright sky-blue eyes.
Damn. A blue-eyed blonde with a pretty smile and a pair of succulent lips. A smooth-skinned face with soft cheeks and the tiniest jut in her jaw that said she was stubborn. A bright, smiling angel appearing in this private corner of perdition just like the sun coming out on a cloudy, overcast day….
He felt like groaning out loud. Who, he wondered, had he wronged in another life to have such temptation presented to him when he couldn’t—simply could not—give in to it?
She looked him over, head to toe, with that calm, innocent glance women always hid their interest behind. A tiny hint of color appeared in her creamy cheeks and she licked at her lips—those lips—to moisten them.
Just throw a lightning bolt at me and be done with it.
“Talking to yourself—that can be a dangerous thing,” she said, her voice throatier than he’d have expected from such a soft-looking female.
“So can cutting a hand on some of this sharp, rusty metal.” Max grinned. “I feel like I ought to sweet-talk her to make sure she doesn’t scratch me.” Hmm…had that s
ounded suggestive? He hadn’t meant it to.
Like hell. Knock it off, Taylor.
Her full lips twitching, she gazed at his hands. “Are you hurt?”
“Not yet. But I have the feeling I will be by the time I coax this old sweetheart into action.”
The blonde glanced toward the carousel, one fine brow lifting as she studied the decrepit wreck. The only intact portion was the mini-carousel perched on the top, its mirror-tiled roof still sending out flashes of light when the sun hit it the right way. As for the rest…the once brightly colored circus animals were now mostly a uniform gray, with spots of red or green occasionally showing through. The zebra was missing its front legs, and two jagged shards were all that remained of the lion’s mane. Behind each animal, old-fashioned mirrors—dingy and cracked—provided a distorted, fun-house reflection of the washed-out menagerie, duplicating and emphasizing the sadness of each pitiful creature
He had no doubt what the stranger was looking at—but did she see? He couldn’t help wondering if the blonde saw the same aching, sad beauty that had captivated him the first time he’d spotted this place, set back off the road in a tangled, forgotten clearing.
“I can’t believe this thing hasn’t been torn down.” She kept her words in close, as if talking to herself.
“Me, either,” he admitted. “From the service records on it, I’d say it’s been closed since seventy-eight.” Which meant it was probably almost as old as this woman. Just the right age.
For ignoring. He forced himself to focus on the book. And remember he was here as the boy next door. Not the wolf beneath the porch.
“I caught the sparkle of it out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t resist exploring. I bet a lot of kids around here have had the same impulse.”
“I would have when I was a kid.”
As she met his gaze, her blue eyes sparkled. Her chuckle was as throaty as her voice as she admitted, “Me, too.”
Their smiles and immediate mental connection to mischievous childhoods provided an instant rapport, one that took Max by surprise.
The blonde carefully stepped over the toolbox, which lay open on the ground, a smattering of hand tools jumbled inside.
Not Max’s—it was from his grandfather’s house. Max’s toolbox was immaculate. Some things a man just couldn’t mess around with. Like his tools.
And this woman.
“I guess the clang of metal I heard from the road was you doing some, uh, coaxing with your hammer?”
“Is that all you heard?”
“That and some music.”
“Whew. Glad you didn’t hear me yelling, so you won’t be reaching for the soap to wash my mouth out.”
Her gaze shifted to his mouth. Which made his blood grow one degree hotter and his jeans grow one size tighter.
“Don’t tell me you were cursing at your sweetheart.”
“Guilty. Patience isn’t my strongest attribute.”
He’d like to tell her what his strongest attribute was, but that seemed like a dangerous idea. Besides, if she liked danger, she’d know exactly what he was talking about and would continue the subtle innuendo of their conversation.
She stepped closer to the carousel, focusing only on it, obviously not a danger-seeker. That was probably just as well.
“It is a ruin,” she murmured, running a hand over the flank of a shabby horse whose braided tail was now merely a stump. “But somehow, it’s…it’s almost pretty in spite of that.”
She did see. And just like that, Max realized he liked her. Didn’t know her name or a thing about her, but the woman had vision. He liked a person with vision.
Especially when she also had incredibly long legs nicely hugged by sinfully tight jeans, and a mouthwatering hint of cleavage peeking from the scooped neck of her sleeveless top.
Stop.
“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “It tells a story.”
“A wistful one.”
“I was thinking more along the lines of pathetic, but I guess ‘wistful’ works.”
“She’s not pathetic. She’s majestic…but worn. Weary.”
“Very weary. I can’t even get a moan out of her, much less a ride.”
Bad choice of words. The blonde’s lips parted as she breathed over them.
He tugged his attention off her mouth. Off her face. Off anything that could make him think things he should not be thinking. Which pretty much left the ground.
Nope. Flat, open surfaces suitable for rolling around on didn’t work either.
“Not going to make it easy on you, is she?”
He lifted his eyes from the soft grass circling the perimeter of the park. “No way. She’s stubborn. Keeps herself tight as a drum—dry—no matter how much I try to lube her.” He almost groaned. This was going from bad to worse. Mentally kicking himself, he gave it another shot. “I can’t loosen her up and get her going.”
God, he was out of control. Blathering suggestive comments without any mental volition whatever. Like his mouth was on flirtation autopilot. It was just…second nature.
The woman kept watching, silently. Something that looked like amusement might have been dancing in those blue eyes of hers, but he couldn’t be certain. Because her expression remained merely curious—friendly—not the least bit sexual or inviting.
“I mean,” he said forcefully, almost dragging appropriately inane words from the un-sexed corner of his brain, “this thing might be too much for me to handle.”
Not great. But acceptable.
He hoped.
“You keep insulting her and she’s definitely going to scratch you,” the blonde murmured as she stepped around him to examine the junction box. She bent over, her jeans pulling tight against the finest hips and backside he’d seen in months, and Max had to send up a prayer for strength.
“You actually think you can get it working?” she asked. She crouched down, shoving a long strand of fine, blond hair back and tucking it behind her ear.
No, he really didn’t. But damned if he wasn’t going to try. “What can I say? I like to tinker and I don’t like having to give up on anything.”
Merry-go-rounds. Sex. Marriages.
“Are you a mechanic?”
In the early days of his business, he’d been a jack-of-all-trades. Mechanic, pilot, reservations clerk. Flight attendant. Anything to keep Taylor Made in the air and in the black. “On occasion. I definitely know my way around a toolbox.”
“I don’t think even Mr. Goodwrench could get this old beauty going again.”
“I don’t think he works on merry-go-rounds. And I’m pretty sure he doesn’t make house calls.” Crossing his arms, he leaned against a striped carousel pole, which was a muddy brown and gray color, rather than red and white. “So I guess I’m all you’ve got, baby.”
The woman tilted her head back to look at him from beneath her wispy bangs, as if she thought he’d been talking to her.
He hadn’t. Well, maybe he had, just a bit. He couldn’t help it. Flirting with women had come naturally to Max since childhood, when he’d realized his older brother Morgan was always going to be known as the smart, determined one and his younger brother Mike was a fearless daredevil who also had the whole baby thing working in his favor.
Max had his charm. He’d been using it since third grade, when he sweet-talked his teacher out of calling his parents after he’d been caught on the playground organizing an enthusiastic game of Han Solo Kisses Princess Leia.
He’d been Han Solo. Little girls had been standing in line waiting for their turn to play Princess Leia.
Even at age eight the middle Taylor son had understood the appeal of the bad-boy. Let Luke Skywalker get the glory—the Han Solos of the world were the ones who got the girl.
But not this one.
No. He couldn’t afford those kinds of games right now. Not until he got some good news from his lawyer that his threats to sue Liberty Books had succeeded in halting—or altering—Grace Wellington’s book. Until the
n, he had to be on his best behavior.
“Well, I guess I’d better get back to work,” he said.
Perfect. His voice had held a combination of down-home friendliness and sincere work ethic while also silently telling her to move along.
Having to play Mr. Squeaky Clean was ridiculous at this point in his life. It seemed impossible that a tiny publisher he’d never even heard of might be so desperate to keep their book project going that they’d go after him personally. Would any legitimate publishing company really try to get some tabloid to do an expose on Max, showing him as the Don Juan he was made out to be in Grace’s book?
Outrageous.
Though he came from a wealthy family—and his grandfather was pretty well known—there was absolutely nothing about Max’s life that would garner the interest of a national magazine. His marriage had been pretty crazy, but not headline worthy. And he’d done some stupid shit following the breakup—but again, nothing to write about in the papers.
Grace, however, was another story. The woman had been the Paris Hilton of her decade before she’d married an up-and-coming congressman. When he’d become a down-and-out congressman and had committed suicide after getting his hand caught in a publicly funded cookie jar, she’d gotten even more attention.
So, yes, it could happen. There were a lot of jaded people out there who got off on reading about the rich and scandalous, so Grace’s book might grab some attention. And if the chapter about him really had gotten most of the rich women of southern California talking, he supposed the publisher might be pretty desperate to keep it.
His lawyer sure seemed to think so. Suspecting the publisher might try something extreme now that Max had threatened to sue, he’d warned Max to keep himself out of trouble. So Max had dug out his dented halo and would be wearing it from here on out—if it killed him.
And it might.
Playing nice and proper was bad enough on a regular day, but with a female like this one—with a body made for silk sheets, sighs and sin—it was proving torturous. He hadn’t expected to come to Trouble and stumble over a woman who made him stupid with lust, but here she was.
