by Leslie Kelly
He immediately got it. “Thought he only did his nudist act in the backyard.”
“I’m not taking any chances.”
He didn’t blame her. In fact, he thought it was also pretty damn brave of her to stay at an inn run by a guy who liked to get naked and tiptoe through his tulips. And this town thought his grandfather was nuts?
“I wish I could offer you another option in terms of housing while you’re in town,” Max said, leaving an unspoken suggestion hanging in the air between them.
No way was he actually going to make that suggestion, and it wasn’t merely because he wouldn’t inflict the clocks on anyone. He also wouldn’t inflict the torture of having this lovely woman sleeping under his roof—knowing he couldn’t go near her—on himself.
She reached for a glass of orange juice and sipped from it, licking her lips—oh, the agony—before setting the drink back down. “I suppose I could go knock on the door of the hotel up on the mountain and ask if they’ll reopen for me.”
“Don’t you even!” This came from Scoot, who lowered Max’s cup and saucer to the table so hard that coffee sloshed out. “He has lampshades made from human skin.”
Max hadn’t heard that one before.
“I was joking,” Sabrina said.
“I wasn’t.” Scoot looked over her shoulders, one way then the next, then bent closer to avoid being overheard. Fat chance, since the woman could outdo a professional cheerleading squad in sheer volume.
Scoot leaned close enough for Max to see the thin line of elastic skirting the roots of her bright red hair and the few mousy brown strands of real hair beneath it. Catching the combined scents of maple syrup and cigarettes, he figured she’d been sampling today’s special, and found himself half wishing he’d gone for the slimy eggs at the café.
But then he wouldn’t have bumped into his most charming dining companion. And he wouldn’t miss getting to know Sabrina Cavanaugh better for an omelette whipped up by Emeril himself.
“He closed the hotel down as soon as he came back, when his uncle died. Stays up there all alone, prowling along the top of the cliff looking down here, but never comes into town.”
“Who?” Sabrina asked, her voice lowered to a loud whisper, just as Scoot’s was.
“Him. The owner of that place,” the woman said. She made a funny little hand gesture, which might have been to ward off evil or could have been to wave off a fly. “He moved here to hide from the police after he killed a bunch of people down in South Carolina.”
“Not much of a hiding place if everybody knows he’s here,” Sabrina pointed out as she lifted her glass again.
“No one’ll squeal on him because he’ll get his revenge, even if he’s in prison. Simon Lebeaux is not one to cross.” She instantly bit her lip, as if speaking the name of the devil would make him arise.
Max couldn’t take it anymore. He nodded toward the door. “You mean him?”
Scoot lurched back, staggering a couple of steps and bringing a hand to her heart as she stared wild-eyed around the restaurant. “Where?”
“Just kidding.”
“You naughty man,” the waitress said, shaking her head as she lifted a hand to her brow and wiped away a sheen of sweat that had appeared there. “I nearly soiled my britches I was so scared. Now, ready to order?”
“Well, who wouldn’t be, after that lovely comment?” Sabrina muttered under her breath.
He liked her sarcastic wit. “Give me the special, will you?”
The server wagged her pencil at him. “I’ll give you anything you like, honey, long’s you don’t scare me anymore, telling me there’s murderers coming up behind me.” Then she looked at Sabrina. “You still want just toast and the fruit cup?”
Sabrina nodded, apparently having placed her order before Max came in. After the waitress walked away, she whispered, “Mentally running down your list of serial-killer names right about now?”
He liked how she’d pegged him so easily. Maybe because they thought the same way. “Yeah. I’m glad we had that conversation yesterday. Has them fresh in my memory. If she ever cops a feel I’m going to tell her Hannibal Lecter is ready to order some fava beans.”
Reaching for the sugar, he dumped a spoonful into his coffee, stirred it, then lifted the cup to his lips. Tootie might put rubber in her pancakes, but she did know how to serve a damn fine cup of coffee.
“Now, since my grandfather is not here to whisk you away with promises of aphrodisiac tea, how about we continue our conversation from yesterday?”
“Is that what you want to talk about? Because I don’t think we actually ever fully discussed aphrodisiacs.” Her gaze was direct, her voice throaty.
Max silently begged for mercy. Shifting in his seat, he mumbled, “Uh, no, not that one.”
“The one about horror movies?”
He shook his head. “No. The one about you wanting to invest in this thriving, gold mine of a town. You and Mortimer were so busy socializing yesterday, the topic never really came up, did it?” Crossing his arms on the table, he leaned over them—closer to her—and added, “But having been here for a couple of days now, do you still want it? Are you still in the mood to get in on the action?”
That was just a tiny slip into suggestive repartee. Not nearly as bad as the come-ons that had been bouncing out of his mouth like Ping-Pong balls out of a lottery machine on the day they’d met, so he didn’t start any mental self-flagellation over it.
Fortunately, she didn’t notice, anyway. She looked around the room, her gaze resting a little long on the weary-looking residents lazily stirring their coffee. Then she focused on the water-stained ceiling and the cracked and dusty linoleum floor, which was the color of dirty mop water—not that it’d seen any in a very long time.
“You seeing the potential?”
“For disaster?”
“Hey, is this the same woman who saw the beauty of that carousel?”
“Touché.” She looked out the window. “The small park across the street is pretty.”
“Yes, it is. I hear there is still a sliding board under that tangled mound of brush.”
“And the old ice cream parlor looks like it was once very quaint.”
“Probably still ice cream in the freezer, too. Cuts down on start-up costs. And it even has a working ice maker. You could be the ice cream queen of Pennsylvania.”
She rolled her eyes.
“What, ice cream isn’t your thing?”
“Not exactly.”
“Do you have some other specific ideas? Some particular kind of business you’re looking for?” he asked, wondering exactly what her background was. He’d been so interested in her as a person that he hadn’t done a whole lot of prying into her life before he’d entered it.
She shook her head. “No, definitely not. My family isn’t exactly the business type.”
“What type are they?”
“The rigid, judgmental, Bible-thumping type,” she admitted with a humorless smile. “My grandfather founded his own church in Ohio and would probably decide that this town had brought its troubles down on itself because of its own wickedness.”
Max could have fallen out of his chair at that one, because Sabrina Cavanaugh sure didn’t seem like any church mouse he’d ever known. “But you…”
“I left home at eighteen and never looked back.” She curled her fingers around her water glass, holding it tightly. “I’m an entirely self-made woman.”
Okay. Self-made. He liked that about her. Especially since Max, too, had chosen to follow his own path rather than take the easy route by letting his grandfather give him money to replace the trust fund he’d pissed away. Which was why he was in debt to his ass but still able to say he’d made it on his own, despite how badly he’d stumbled after his divorce.
Max was curious to learn more about her background—wondering how a woman as warm, sexy and delicious as this one could have come from the kind of family she described—but he sensed she didn’t want to talk
about that. Still clutching her glass, her fingers looked white. So obviously she hadn’t finished saying whatever it was she needed to get off her chest.
“What else?”
Sighing, she peered at him from behind her wispy bangs. “Look, I don’t want you to have the wrong idea. I am not in the position to buy this whole town.”
Few people were in a position to buy a town, so she wasn’t telling him anything he didn’t know. “Sabrina, my brothers and I have no illusions that some other fabulously rich, bored person is going to come take this whole thriving metropolis off Grandfather’s hands,” he said with a dry laugh. Even as he said it, he wondered why he was being entirely honest with her when he should be buttering her up for the sale.
He couldn’t help it. Something about her—something about the way they were already reacting to each other, as if they both knew they were headed for something more than a business relationship, even more than friendship—made him want to clear the air. At least, as much of it as he could without throwing caution to the wind and revealing the truth about himself. Including the Grace Wellington crap.
But that would mean trusting her completely, enough to really be himself. And he wasn’t quite ready to go there yet, no matter how blue her eyes and how great her smile.
“So you’re okay with a smaller investor?”
He nodded, reaching for her hand and tugging her fingers away from the glass. “Yeah. That’s why the ad in the Times said we were looking for forward-thinking businesspeople who wanted to rejuvenate Trouble’s downtown. We weren’t advertising for sheikhs or princes who want to play king of the castle.”
Though, hell, it had worked for the guy who’d reeled his grandfather in.
She smiled slowly, looking relieved. “Okay. I just didn’t want you thinking…believing…”
Her need to be honest was both refreshing and attractive. “I didn’t. There aren’t many people in this country with the bank balance of Mortimer Potts. A modest investor is absolutely fine, all right?”
“All right.”
Their eyes met and they were silent for a moment, each of them acknowledging that they’d taken another step forward. They were already knocking down the walls that typically existed at the start of any relationship.
Personally, Max couldn’t wait to blow them straight to hell. But until he was certain it was safe to get involved with any woman again, he knew he could not.
“So what exactly do you do?” he asked, realizing he’d never asked her that. She’d mentioned liking to write, but had never confirmed that’s how she made her living. “I know you live with your sister and Butch the Doberpoodle in Philadelphia and that you’re self-made…but how’d you ‘make’ yourself?”
Her lashes lowered over her eyes, almost fanning her cheeks as she played with the condensation on her water glass.
“What, are you a secret agent? A high-priced assassin?”
She chuckled. “No. I’m more…in the arts.”
So she was a professional writer. Probably a successful one, considering she had enough money to invest in out-of-town properties, and to support her pregnant little sister. His curiosity about what she wrote—if he’d read any of her stuff—was killing him. He’d often noticed writers were quick to talk about their books, figuring every person they met was a potential client. He couldn’t imagine why this one was so circumspect.
Maybe she wrote romance novels. Hot ones. Sexy, wild ones.
He could hope, anyway. He was about to ask her, but she shifted gears, obviously not wanting him to know.
“So, back to the town.”
He nodded, respecting her right to privacy. “How about the movie theater? With a few hundred new seats, a new screen, new carpeting, lighting, walls, floors, ceilings, projection equipment, snack bar, roof and foundation, plus busloads of moviegoers imported from other towns, you might really have a gold mine on your hands.”
Grinning, she tucked one long strand of hair behind her ear. “Are you trying to talk me into investing…or out of it?”
“Oh, in. Most definitely. Do you allow yourself to be talked into things easily?”
That was not a sexually loaded question. Absolutely not.
She apparently didn’t read that mental denial. Because Sabrina’s eyes suddenly narrowed and she leaned across the table, her arms folded on top of it. The loose, filmy dress pulled tighter against her body, the plunging neckline shifting a tiny bit to one side to reveal a thin, pale strip of skin on the curve of her breast. Max’s mouth went dry and a dull hum filled his head as everything and everyone else seemed to fade into the background.
“Why do you ask?” she practically purred. “What did you have in mind?”
Oh, what he had in mind. Grabbing her by the hand and striding out into the sunlight. Leading her to his car and driving like a bat out of hell to the regional airport where his personal plane—a smart little single-engine Cessna Skyhawk, the first he’d ever bought—was waiting for him. Taking off into the sky with her and leaving this crazy town and its sour people behind.
His mind filled with possibilities. Pulling her on his lap in the cockpit, settling her filmy dress over their legs. Untying the halter. Kissing the nape of her neck and feeling the soft brush of her hair against his face.
Filling his hand with her breast and sliding into her sweet, tight body. While they flew and flew and flew.
Forget it.
Grabbing his own glass of water, which the waitress had just deposited on the table, he gulped it down. He needed to thrust that idea right out of his head because it was never going to happen. Not now. Not ever.
Max was not that kind of pilot. He might be a daredevil and he might enjoy women, but he wasn’t a damn fool. He’d never risk anyone’s life, least of all his own, by doing something as irresponsible as having sex while at the controls. He didn’t even know where the thought had come from.
Max had already come too damn close to losing his right to fly because of women. Bad enough he’d had to drop out of the pilot training program in the Air Force because of an unexpected pregnancy and a quickie marriage. But the threat of having the FAA yank his license because of his wild partying after the divorce had forever cured him of any desire to be reckless in the cockpit.
Yet the thought of flying with Sabrina—even without sex—was so incredibly appealing. Watching her beautiful eyes grow large as she leaned forward in her seat to see every sight, hearing her breath catch in her throat as they topped ten-thousand feet. She’d love it. The thrill-seeker in her would absolutely love every dip and roll.
“Too soon,” he muttered, unable to believe he was even thinking this way.
Taking a woman into the sky was something he rarely did. In the past, he had only invited the few women he’d gotten serious with.
Hell, he hadn’t even kissed this one.
Flying was personal. Not when he was ferrying clients, but when he was alone, in his own plane. He was entirely in the moment, his senses filled with blue sky above and green earth below. Everything else falling away as easily as the clouds did beneath his wings, he genuinely came alive when in flight. Every inch of him in the present, with no masks to hide behind, no defenses.
No bad memories. No fears of the future.
It was…intimate. Taking someone with him was like letting someone into his head. Much more intimate, in Max’s opinion, than taking a woman home. Or even, strange as it sounded, into his bed.
So taking this woman to the skies was out of the question. Completely. Totally. No doubt about it.
But somehow his brain disconnected from his vocal cords. Because before he could even think about it, the words were leaving his lips.
“Come fly with me.”
THE MOMENT IDA MAE realized her sister Ivy’s favorite pink hat with the lavender pearls and long, swooping purple feather that curled around the face was missing from its honored place on the top middle shelf in her closet, she knew she’d been had. Hoodwinked. Snookered.
“That lying little bitch.”
Ivy was a no-good, cheating, stinking sneak. She hadn’t had any appointment to go get a bunion scraped off her heel. She would never—ever—wear her favorite hat to go to a doctor’s appointment, else she’d be wearing the blasted thing three times a week.
Ida Mae had suspected all along that Ivy was fibbing about this morning’s destination. Because Dr. Tarryton, the only G.P. still practicing in Trouble, didn’t keep Saturday hours. Her younger sister had claimed she’d used some eyelash-batting to charm him into opening for her.
Ida Mae had always suspected Dr. Tarryton would rather have Jack Fennimore, the taxidermist, bat his eyelashes in his direction, so she should have been much more suspicious of her sister’s boasts.
“Not this time, you don’t,” she snapped as she whirled out of Ivy’s closet—where she’d been hunting for Daddy’s ashes—and raced toward her own house next door.
She didn’t have time to do a proper going-hunting preparation. Thankfully, however, she’d had her bath two days ago and she still smelled a bit like that sweet, rose-scented soap she’d bought for Ivy last Christmas. The soap she’d stolen back out of Ivy’s closet a few months ago, when her sister had refused to loan it to her.
Plus she’d set her hair last night before bed, so it was nice and springy. She didn’t need some frilly hat to hide any thinning spots like Ivy did, which was only fair. If Ida Mae had gotten the cursed thick calves of the women in her family, it was right and proper that she should also get the thick, lush hair.
Ivy hadn’t gotten either one. So, to Ida Mae’s disgust, she had nice slender legs. And to Ida Mae’s delight, Ivy also had a bald spot that she hid with hats and hairpieces.
Ida quickly grabbed her prettiest summer dress—with the lilacs and the ivory satin trim—and pulled it on over her head, careful not to muss her curls. If her sister thought she was going to snatch up the first attractive, eligible bachelor to move into these parts in the past twenty years without a fight, well, she was most sorely mistaken.
