by Laura Moore
Her grandfather’s old study. She’d never been invited inside. Don’t think about that, she told herself. Concentrate on this man, who’s a techie, who’s work-driven, and likes snazzy espresso machines. “I have a hunch the electricity was upgraded to accommodate all these appliances.” She indicated the gleaming stainless steel surrounding them. “But I’ll have an electrician come out on Tuesday to verify.”
“How about today?”
She smiled. “Holiday weekend. I’m good, but I’m not God.” She thought of a few more of Mara Bridges’s home “essentials.” “How about an elevator?” she asked casually.
“This is a two-story house.”
“Some people’s luggage is too heavy to carry upstairs.”
“I think I can manage.” A faint smile teased the corners of his mouth.
She was not going to let him catch her glancing at the breadth of his shoulders or the bulge of his biceps for confirmation.
“And then there are elderly parents or in-laws who might have difficulty negotiating steps.”
His face became stony. “No elevator.”
She wasn’t stupid when it came to paddling into dangerous waters. She’d just entered them. Gathering up her pen and notebook, she said easily, “Shall we look at the other rooms?”
They toured the downstairs, Max walking beside her, his expression still remote.
The dining room held no interest for him. She’d figure that room out with Astrid.
Crossing the wide hallway, they entered the library. This was where the Christmas tree had stood, opposite the grand piano that no one ever played yet she’d been forbidden to touch.
The Ghost of Christmas Past was particularly ghoulish in her case. She had a hunch Max’s ghosts weren’t all that friendly, either.
“This library’s beautiful with the pond views. It might be nice to read here on a rainy weekend.”
He glanced at the empty shelves lining the walls. “I like history and biographies.”
“Any fiction?”
“Mysteries. Thrillers.”
Thank God she wasn’t going to have to buy books by the foot, she thought as she made another notation. “The room’s large enough to accommodate a pool table as well as sofas. Do you play?”
“Yeah, I shoot pool.”
They decided that her grandmother’s sitting room would become the media room. Dakota pictured her grandmother spinning in her grave.
As she suspected, it was the office that he cared about. To her relief, the tension that had gripped him over her elevator comment dissipated as he told her what size desk he wanted, what style of desk chair, and the need for extra outlets.
“Well, I think I can handle the rest of the downstairs with Astrid.” A sudden idea occurred to her. “But how about a personal gym? I read that you played football in college. It could go in the den, which—”
“You Googled me?” The question was sharp.
“Why, yes. It helps if I understand my clients’ lifestyles. And I routinely research potential clients’ backgrounds and run criminal checks, too. I’m not going to expose my employees to sex offenders or work for anyone with a history of nonpayment or a habit of making deranged allegations. My job is hard enough.”
“And what did you discover about me?”
Something in his tone had her abruptly wondering if he was going to show her the door. Her stomach clenched. In these past forty minutes she’d already envisioned Rae’s reaction when Dakota promoted her. She’d be over the moon.
But no matter how advantageous working for Max might be, she was not going to be intimidated for running her company diligently and protecting her employees.
“What did I find out? Well, besides the fact that you were a college football star, then traded in your cleats and shoulder pads for a job at an investment bank where you tore through the ranks before moving on to join a private equity firm where you became partner within two years, not much. From all the deals you’ve negotiated and companies you’ve guided, I assume you’re very, very successful.” And from the photos I’ve seen, I know you date beautiful women. Lots of them, she added silently. “You don’t, however, have a criminal record. Nor do I,” she finished with a tight smile.
“My assistant already informed me.” He looked at her in silence. “You’ll sign a confidentiality agreement.”
It wasn’t a question.
“Naturally. My staff and I—as well as the companies I hire for outside work—pride ourselves on discretion.”
“Naturally,” he repeated. “And yes to the gym. I’ll need free weights, medicine balls, a rack system, a bench, a rowing machine, a treadmill, rubber flooring, and a punching bag.”
And mirrors.
“What was that?”
Her pen stilled. Had she actually said that aloud? Or had she made some involuntary noise at the thought of all those muscles bunching and flexing? What was wrong with her? She didn’t do snark with potential clients or get hung up about their looks. She cleared her throat. “Nothing of importance,” she replied. “Shall we continue upstairs?”
—
The last room they visited was the master bedroom. By now Dakota had filled pages with notes for purchases and design ideas. The bedroom was big, with a fireplace, yet with Max prowling it restlessly, the room felt as small as the front closet in her own house. She wondered whether he, too, was trying to ignore the king-sized mattress with its twisted sheets and piled pillows.
When he came to a stop in front of the French windows, which opened onto a deck with a view of the ocean, she took a deep breath. Focus, she told herself.
“What do you like in terms of decor?”
He gave a restless shrug. “I know what I don’t like. Fussy wallpaper.”
She froze.
Had Max somehow learned of Piper’s great adventure in the bathroom of that apartment in the Dakota? Was he alluding to that wallpaper as a way of retaliating for her having Googled him?
She was being paranoid, she knew. She blamed it on the lingering effects of a visit with Mimi and Piper. It always brought out the worst in her.
Then something at the periphery of her vision registered and she looked about her rather than at him or the fantasy-inspiring bed. The walls were covered in a red floral pattern, the wallpaper fussy indeed. More fitting for an old lady with pretensions to royalty. And Max, for all his wealth and power, struck her as refreshingly unpretentious.
“The wallpaper will go.”
“As soon as possible. It’s driving me nuts. Take all the wallpaper down. Everywhere.”
She felt an odd and hopefully fleeting affection for him. But it was very hard not to like someone who was also a member of the I Despise Wallpaper Club.
He’d begun to circle the room again with the same restless energy he’d displayed earlier. He stopped in front of her, and she reflexively hugged her notebook to her chest.
“So did I pass the test?”
“Excuse me?” she asked.
“The tasting room, spa with sauna, elevator, home movie theater, what-have-you test. The one where you tried to assess just how much of a spoiled, self-important dick I was.”
She bit the inside of her cheek. She’d thought she was being fairly subtle. “You passed.”
A single eyebrow rose in challenge. “So will you take me on as a client and do the job?”
She clicked her pen and transferred it to her other hand, intending to reach out and shake his. Then she thought better of it. He was too potent and that unmade bed too unnerving. She nodded instead. “Yes. You’ve got yourself a personal concierge service.”
Dakota Hale had a voice that was made for hot nights and sin.
Max had been surprised when he opened the door. For all that Alex had hinted at how different Dakota was, he’d nonetheless expected a female version of her uncle Elliott: a blond, blue-eyed country club type. Instead he found himself staring at an Amazon whose olive skin tone would never fade in the dead of winter.
She stood easily five foot ten. In heels she’d be nearly eye to eye with him. It would be easy to lose himself in those gold-brown depths. Her face was as strong as the rest of her. Wide cheekbones were balanced by a square jaw; lush lips were coated with the barest trace of a nude lipstick.
She wore her brown hair in a tousled mop, its front ends grazing the line of her jaw. He thought it was just long enough for him to wrap his fingers around and hold her by as he claimed a first taste.
A weird impulse. He generally went for blondes with long shimmering tresses, women who wore more than a hint of lipstick, women who did everything they could to accentuate their femininity and sexuality. Dakota Hale was dressed in a beige wool poncho that hung from her shoulders and ended at the top of her thighs, obscuring everything except the tantalizing swell of her breasts.
What kind of woman wore a poncho?
One who didn’t want a man checking her out.
Message delivered.
But then, in the two seconds it had taken for him to catalog and acknowledge these details, she held out her hand and said, “Hello, I’m Dakota Hale.”
The husky rasp had everything inside him going on alert. Hers was the kind of voice associated with the Lauran Bacalls, Anne Bancrofts, and Kathleen Turners of the world—dames who smoked a pack a day and threw back whiskey like it was mother’s milk.
With a voice like that, she could stand on a street corner and read pages from a phonebook and men would empty the contents of their wallets onto her donation plate in the hopes that she might turn her gaze their way and say, “Call me maybe.”
He’d been similarly affected. It was why, when he led her into the empty house, that comment about them conducting the interview on his mattress upstairs had slipped out. He wasn’t usually a dumbass, but her voice and looks had him thinking of all sorts of things he’d like to discover about her. Not one of them involved the environmentally friendly cleaning products listed on the info sheets or what kind of food he wanted in his refrigerator.
Early on in business school Max had learned an important lesson: a successful entrepreneur was one who identified a pain point—a problem that the prospective business would satisfy. Dakota Hale had chosen to build a personal concierge service, hard work that was all about anticipating, solving, and fulfilling rich people’s needs and desires. It also required effacing oneself, no easy task when one was as striking as she and possessed of a sex goddess’s voice.
From the way she’d questioned him about his habits and preferences while they toured the house, he could tell how good she was at satisfying the pain point—as good as Alex had promised.
Perhaps with another client, one of those “Me, me, me!” types, she might actually be invisible. He supposed he should give himself a pat on the back that he hadn’t reached that level of self-absorption. As it was, he couldn’t help but wonder what was going on inside her head as they inspected her family’s former home. The flashes of vulnerability he caught on her face before she redirected her thoughts to ways of transforming the rooms for his pleasure alone told him there was a whole lot more to Dakota than she showed to the world.
Max liked puzzles, and Dakota, with her odd choice of business for someone with that pedigree and her mix of strength and vulnerability, was an intriguing one.
He glanced at her again and caught her stealing a peek at the mattress the realtor had delivered. The temptation to cross the bedroom and see what it would take to tumble her onto it, taste that mouth, and lift up that damned poncho was strong. Would she taste as good as he imagined? How would she feel as they rolled across the feather-topped expanse? If she ended up on top, would she stay or would she go?
He had to stop thinking with his cock.
In the aftermath of Ashley’s blackmail attempt, he should be abstaining from sex, not contemplating how to maneuver a complicated woman into getting naked.
After all, she’d openly admitted to Googling him. Okay, everybody Googled these days. It wouldn’t be a big thing for him, either, except it reminded him of Ashley and some of the more blatantly grasping women he’d slept with recently. He wasn’t sure yet if Dakota’s confession made her more trustworthy or simply cannier. Until he figured out her endgame, no nude wrestling on the king-sized bed.
So he remained by the window, staring out at the bank of waves approaching the shore, watching them crash and leave a wash of foam in their wake while he answered questions about what he wanted his bedroom to look like.
Christ, how should he know? Rosie had been the creative one, always carrying around a sketchbook and drawing everything that caught her imagination. Everything. He’d been the polar opposite—the jock, the math geek—and yet somehow that had only strengthened their connection….
Fighting the cold grief that threatened to choke him, he made a snarling comment about the hideously ugly wallpaper.
Preoccupied as he was, he nonetheless heard her indrawn breath. The sound of a quick and unexpected hurt. He couldn’t believe she liked it, either, not after the things she’d been suggesting to him, which meant something else was going on.
And here was the real reason he needed to stay far, far away from Dakota Hale. The flashes of vulnerability were getting to him.
The last person he’d felt protective of was Rosie. He’d failed her and destroyed his family, and now he was left with a hole inside him that nothing could fill.
He was not going to repeat past mistakes. His caring days were over.
Needing to finish this so-called interview and get her out of his bedroom before he did something stupid, he asked whether they were finished, whether he’d passed her test. He’d been amused by some of the over-the-top extravagances until she’d mentioned how some Hamptons homeowners installed elevators for their aging parents and his humor fled.
Because of course he’d bought this huge old place with his father in mind. But Phil Carr wouldn’t talk to Max, let alone step inside his new country house to take an elevator ride, or even sit out on the porch and watch the Atlantic in its ever-changing glory. Max would have installed elevators, escalators, and tasting rooms, even plunked a carousel down in the middle of the lawn, if it would have gotten the old man to come. To change his heart. To forgive Max.
But that was never going to happen.
When she told him he’d passed her test, he decided it was time to close the deal. “So will you take the job?”
As she nodded and told him he had a new personal concierge service, a surge of satisfaction went through him. Despite his instinct to avoid getting involved with someone like Dakota, he didn’t want her walking out of his life. Not until he was ready.
Neither of them spoke over the fall of their footsteps on the wide wooden staircase or as they walked out the front door to the U-shaped drive.
Her Land Cruiser looked as if it had some serious miles on it. A surfboard was strapped to the roof rack. Another intriguing detail to file away. He’d never surfed. His youth had been football or fixing up cars with his father. After the accident…well, everything changed.
She stood next to him, her face angled down as she returned her notebook to her shoulder bag. He thought of the notes she’d taken. It was weird to realize she now knew more of his dislikes and likes than anybody else had bothered to find out in years.
He balled his hands in his front pockets.
They both spoke at once.
“So I’ll have Fred Meyers, my assistant, call—”
“I’ll find a Marzocco machine—” she began, then stopped and motioned for him to continue.
“Fred will contact you to discuss the finances. Just tell him what you need,” he said.
“The biggest expenses will be through Astrid Shibles, the interior designer I mentioned. I’ll try to reach her, but she may have gone away for the holiday.”
He glanced at the surfboard. “I guess I took you away from yours.”
Her mouth lifted in a half smile. “It may have been worth it.”
She was referring to the large chunk of change she’d be making with him as a client. A flash of irritation accompanied the thought, which was ridiculous. Why should it bother him that everything seemed to circle back to his money? And why did it bother him especially with respect to Dakota? Why did he want her to be different?
“Well, I should go…” She ducked her head again and rummaged in her bag, taking out a set of keys.
She looked at him, and their gazes locked and held. She had beautiful eyes. Maybe he said it, or maybe he simply telegraphed his attraction. Her breath caught in sudden awareness. He heard the metallic clang of her keys hitting the gravel.
One of the things that had made him a good quarterback was his quick reaction time.
He crouched and scooped them up, rising just as she bent down. Their foreheads brushed and her eyes widened in a brilliant flare of gold. She straightened, swayed, and then his hands were on her shoulders and, before he could think better of it, his mouth was covering hers.
He could have stayed there for hours, ignoring everything he’d been telling himself just to stand in the driveway and kiss Dakota, his lips brushing in exploratory sweeps. Cinnamon-spicy, she tasted like fall and the cool wind blowing about them. She tasted as wonderful as he’d imagined.
Damn it.
He released her, letting his arms fall to his sides.
She stepped back. A big, at-the-edge-of-a-precipice step. A flush stained her cheekbones. “This is not the kind of service I offer.”
Crap, he’d pissed her off.
Inclining his head, he said, “Understood.” He held out the keys.
She snatched them and strode to the SUV.
He stood in the driveway long after she’d left, wondering what had prompted that impulsive kiss. It wasn’t like him to lose control. He should have been able to resist the temptation she presented. Yet even as he berated himself for his lack of restraint, he recognized a deeper and more troubling explanation. He’d kissed Dakota because he wanted her to think of him as something other than a way to make a profit.
