“She is if she won’t sell to the group we’ve put together,” Skip warned.
Connor was silent.
Beginning to look as upset with the situation as Connor was, Skip leaned forward and warned, “You’re not for one minute forgetting we’ve spent the past five months putting this project together or that we each stand to make a fortune from the deal, are you?”
No, Connor wasn’t forgetting that.
The problem was, he realized with a weary sigh, he couldn’t seem to forget Kristy Neumeyer, either. And that made it awfully darn hard to push on with a business proposition he knew she not only loathed, but was also resisting with every fiber of her being.
Chapter Four
When Harry Bowles returned from his shopping expedition, he was wearing a pair of loose-fitting trousers, a short-sleeved shirt and sneakers. He’d added a souvenir cap that said Folly Beach across the front, and he looked a lot more relaxed as he and Kristy sat down in her office to go over the work she had slated. Kristy took two bottles of water from her office fridge and handed him one. “I hate to tell you this, Harry,” she said as she sat down behind her desk, “but we’ve really got our work cut out for us if we want to be ready for that insurance agents convention next week.”
Harry smiled, unperturbed. “I’m used to hard work.”
Kristy was glad to hear it. “If you don’t mind my asking, what exactly did your duties as Winnifred Deveraux-Smith’s butler include?”
Harry unscrewed the lid to his water and drank sparingly. “A little bit of everything, as it happens,” he said rather formally. “I arranged parties, oversaw the household help that came in to cook and clean, dealt with the decorators and handymen that were hired for various tasks. I even managed Winnifred’s social calendar until her aunt Eleanor came in and took over those duties.”
It sounded as if he was a flexible guy, willing to take on whatever needed to be accomplished.
Kristy frowned. Here came the hard part. “Well, we don’t have maids yet and probably won’t for another week or two, so for the moment all those duties are going to fall to the two of us.” She paused, not sure how this was going to go, and regarded him seriously. “Are you up to that?” Because if not, he was not the man for the job, after all.
“Absolutely.” Looking ready for action, Harry put the cap back on his water bottle. “What do you need me to do today?”
Kristy rose and escorted him out, past the reservation desk to the center of the lodge. “Well, as you can see the lobby, club room, kitchen and dining room are in fine shape. So is the exterior of the hotel now, and all the cottages, and the apartment on the second floor of the south side of the building where my daughters and I reside. But all four wings of guest rooms are in need of a lot of TLC,” she warned, knowing he was in for a shock there. “We only need one wing for the conference next week, but all twenty-five rooms have got to be stripped and cleaned and put back together again, before next Wednesday. Actually, Tuesday, since the guests will be arriving Wednesday before noon, and we don’t want to still be doing any of that when they get here.”
“Sounds doable,” Harry said. “Where would you like me to begin?”
“I’d like you to take down all the draperies in the rooms. They’re going to need to be laundered. And the same goes for all the bed linens, including blankets and bedspreads.” Still not entirely sure that Harry wasn’t going to change his mind and bolt when he grasped the gargantuan task ahead, Kristy led him down a short hall to the big laundry room, where a half-dozen large commercial washers and dryers lined the walls. Kristy made her way over to a canvas cart. “You can put the linens in this and then bring them back here, and begin washing them.”
“Which rooms will I be stripping?” Harry asked, as he pushed the cart out into the hall.
“One hundred to one twenty-five. I’ll be working in the same wing. I’m going to start on the bathrooms.” Kristy handed him the maid’s set of room keys.
“Right-o, madam.”
Kristy stopped in her tracks, figuring they might as well get this cleared up right now. “And, Harry?”
He paused. “Yes, madam?”
“You’ve got to start calling me by my first name,” she insisted.
“Oh. Right. Kristy.” He smiled at her. She smiled back. He began pushing the linen cart again as the front door of the lobby swung open and Connor Templeton walked in. He was dressed as he had been earlier that morning, in a T-shirt and jeans. Kristy’s shoulders tensed, even as her heart took a little leap. She should not be so glad to see him. Particularly after the way they had parted a few hours ago….
Harry looked at her, the polite, formal butler again. “Would you like me to see what the gentleman wants, mad—er, Kristy?”
She shook her head. “I’ll handle Mr. Templeton.” She pointed in the direction of the north wing. “You go ahead and get started.”
Kristy crossed the lobby. Unsure whether it was excitement or annoyance speeding up her pulse, she noted dryly, “Like a bad penny, you keep turning up.”
“Ha, ha.” Smoky-gray eyes twinkling, he strode over to her. Before she could do anything to stop him, he curved a possessive hand about her elbow and leaned over to kiss her cheek in that casual Southern style of greeting he favored. Kristy knew it didn’t mean anything—Connor probably kissed dozens of female cheeks in the course of a single day as he said hello to women he knew—but she couldn’t keep her face from tingling at the soft-as-a-butterfly touch of his lips. Or keep from thinking how those same lips had felt—so sure and so right—over hers the night before, as they had ended the evening in a way that had felt anything but casual.
“So? What’s going on around here today?” Connor asked, as he stepped back.
“We’re working.” Or about to start, Kristy amended silently. “What did you need?”
Connor looked deep into her eyes. “I thought maybe we could go for coffee,” he suggested softly.
And darned if she didn’t want to forget everything and just go. “I don’t have time for that.” She had a business to run, even if it was a fledgling operation at the moment.
Some emotion she couldn’t quite identify flickered in Connor’s face. Kristy didn’t know why, but suddenly she felt as if she were in the midst of some sort of test. A test she was destined to fail.
“Why not?” he asked, still holding her gaze.
“Because,” Kristy continued, attempting to insert some levity into the conversation, “I’m getting ready for a group of insurance agents and their spouses.”
Connor shrugged his shoulders. “That’s not until next week.” For him, that was light years away.
It didn’t matter, Kristy thought, beginning to feel completely overwhelmed again. She turned and headed for the reservations desk. To her chagrin, Connor was right behind her.
“I have a lot to do between now and then,” she told him bluntly.
“Such as…?”
His sympathetic attitude invited confession. And right now Kristy needed someone to unburden herself to. “Clean rooms, do something about the ratty-looking carpet in the one-hundred wing, see if I can’t get a crew in to paint the hallway. Polish everything until it gleams. Wash windows. Scrub down bathrooms that haven’t been touched in over six months. Need I go on?” Feeling as if she was wasting time standing there gabbing—or flirting—with him, she yanked open the drawer where all the room keys were kept. Grabbing the old-fashioned master key ring for the north wing, with all twenty-five keys on it, she brought it out and clipped it to the belt loop of her shorts.
As if he had all the time in the world, Connor lounged against the polished wooden counter. “Sounds like you have your hands full.”
Kristy shot him a wry look. “Gee. You think?”
He straightened. “What would you like me to do?”
Stop standing there as if you were my white knight, riding in to the rescue, she thought. But not about to say that, she brushed past him purposefully and headed
for the end of the reservations desk. “Besides leave me alone and stop badgering me about selling the resort?”
He followed her through the swinging wooden door that separated guests from the check-in clerk. “I won’t say another word,” he promised as he caught up and fell into step beside her.
Kristy narrowed her eyes at him. If she didn’t know better, she would think she wasn’t hearing right.
“I’m serious, Kristy,” Connor insisted softly. He reached out and gently clasped her upper arm, stopping her headlong flight. “I’d like to help you.”
She folded her arms and regarded him skeptically. “Why?”
Once again the agenda he wasn’t quite willing to reveal to her—in its entirety, anyway—became part of their conversation. Connor rubbed his chin and sent her a playful grin. “Because I’m trying to get on your good side?”
Telling herself she was not going to get involved with a man who deliberately kept things from her—hadn’t she already done that once, with disastrous results?—Kristy responded, “Not possible.”
He merely smiled, looking every bit as determined to have his way in this as she was to have hers.
Which brought them to another subject Kristy knew they had to discuss. “Also, while we are on the subject of you helping me out…”
“Yes?” Connor said, giving her his full attention.
Kristy regarded him grimly. “I appreciate you sending out your personal mechanic to look at my minivan, Connor, but it really wasn’t necessary for you to go to all that trouble.”
He paused, his demeanor abruptly serious. “Was he able to get it running?” he asked protectively.
Telling herself all the while that she most definitely did not need Connor watching over and taking care of her and the girls like some guardian angel, Kristy nodded, and didn’t bother to mask her relief about that. “It turned out to be a loose wire,” she explained. “And something about the distributor cap not being on quite as tight as it should have been. That doesn’t usually happen.” She paused, eyeing Connor carefully. “You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”
Connor looked even more uncomfortable.
“I mean, I’d hate to think you would sabotage my vehicle just so you could come charging to the rescue this morning.”
His forehead creased. “I did not show up this morning just to rescue you,” he stated indignantly.
Put that way, Kristy could almost—almost—believe him. Just as she also believed he had very much enjoyed aiding her, nevertheless. “Then why did you?” she demanded, still feeling a little piqued about his timing and his call to his mechanic, and a lot attracted to him. Too much so for comfort, she noted inwardly, as she took another step back, away from him.
“I came for the same reason I’m here now,” Connor explained patiently, his gray eyes taking on a new, ardent gleam. “I wanted to ask you out on a date.”
CONNOR COULD SEE his invitation was going over like a lead balloon. But that didn’t mean he would give up. And if she thought she could irritate him into leaving, she was wrong. For one thing, he had a job to do here, and Connor hadn’t gotten to be a commercial real estate tycoon by leaving tasks undone. Hence he had to make good on his promise to Skip and get close enough to Kristy Neumeyer to find out just what it was they could offer her so that she would sell them her property. And then everyone else in the consortium he and Skip had put together would get what they wanted, also. Connor had to protect her from her obnoxious neighbor, Bruce Fitts. And there were other things he wanted to do, too, such as be a friend and soundingboard to her as she dealt with the problems she was having with her twins. And last but not least, he wanted to take her out on a date. For purely personal—not business—reasons.
He wanted to take her in his arms and kiss her again. Heck, he wanted to do more than that—he wanted to make love to her. But he couldn’t contemplate either option until they knew each other a little better. And to know each other, they had to spend time together. Something Kristy was doing her best to avoid.
She angled her chin at him icily. “I don’t date.”
Connor stepped closer until they were standing toe to toe. “Why not?” he demanded.
The soft edges of Kristy’s lips turned up in a complacent smile. “No time.”
Silence fell between them as Connor thought about that. As he continued to study her—and the various paths he could take to make her wrong about that, after all—she smirked up at him. “You don’t believe me, do you?”
He didn’t think he liked the look in Kristy’s eyes. It guaranteed trouble. At his expense. Feeling as if he was in the midst of a romantic comedy about to happen, he said, “I believe you could do anything you set your mind to.” And it was true. He did. Including save this aging resort, if he and Skip couldn’t convince her to do otherwise.
“Well—” Kristy smiled at him merrily “—right now, I’m off to clean twenty-five toilets, so unless you care to join me…”
Obviously, she expected him to turn tail and run.
Had it been anyone else throwing down that gauntlet, he probably would have.
But it wasn’t.
With that sassy look of hers and that sassy tone, she had dared him not to leave, and no way was Connor letting her have the upper hand in this blossoming romance of theirs. If that was indeed what it was. Right now he wasn’t sure. It felt more like a rivalry.
The only difference being he’d never had the hots for a rival the way he had the hots for Kristy Neumeyer.
Keeping his own game plan to himself, he lifted an arm and gestured broadly. “Not the most scintillating invitation I’ve ever had, but lead the way.”
For a second Kristy looked taken aback, as if she couldn’t believe he was actually going to agree. Then her cheeks pinkened, her chin lifted defiantly and she gave him a challenging smile. Pivoting sharply on her heel, she marched away. Connor fell into step behind her, appreciating the determined sway of her hips beneath the rumpled cotton shorts. And her pert knees and lightly suntanned legs peeking out from beneath the hem were pretty fine, too. And then there were her breasts, Connor thought, as Kristy stopped at the supply room and walked in. She might think the oversize man’s work shirt she was wearing overtop of her clinging white T-shirt disguised them, but Connor could see the softly rounded curves, as easily as he could see her slender feminine hands and graceful neck, her trim waist and provocative hips. She might not realize it, but she had a body made for loving. And a heart, too…
Kristy picked up a pair of heavy-duty rubber gloves, a scrubber sponge and a big can of powdered disinfectant cleanser. She looked at him smugly. “I think this is your cue to exit,” she said dryly.
“When the work begins?” Connor countered, in the same know-it-all tone. “No way.”
She began to look frustrated. And annoyed that her plan wasn’t working. “You can’t just be a passive participant here and stand around and watch me work my tail off, Connor,” she pointed out irritably. “If you’re going to hang around, you’re going to have to help.”
“I get the picture,” he stated matter-of-factly, beginning to realize how much fun it was going to be to get under her skin.
“Going or staying, Mr. Templeton?” She pushed the words through tightly gritted teeth.
Connor’s smile broadened all the more. “Staying,” he said.
Looking peeved rather than pleased by his valor, she slapped the gloves, sponge and cleanser into his hands. “Okay. It’s your adventure. Just remember, you signed up for this,” she said, as she led the way back out of the storeroom and down the hall to the north wing of the lodge.
Connor caught a glimpse of Harry Bowles in room 100, stripping linens off a bed, as they swept by. “We’ll go down to the other end of the hall,” Kristy said.
She led the way to room 125 and unlocked the door. Connor’s eyes widened as he got a good look at the interior. It needed a lot of TLC. The walls needed painting, the carpet was worn and scuzzy
and the bathroom… Connor swore silently to himself. He’d never seen anything as disgusting in his entire life. “What,” he asked, physically recoiling as he pointed to the orange-and-black streaks inside the commode and around the tub, “is that?”
“Rust and mold,” Kristy replied sweetly. Her eyebrows climbed higher. “Don’t tell me you’ve never seen either.”
What could he say? He hadn’t. But then he’d had servants to clean when he was growing up, and his mother had advised him to hire a housekeeper as soon as he moved out on his own. Which Connor, who had no earthly desire to clean toilets himself—never mind toilets other people had used!—had promptly done.
Kristy was still looking at him, a lot more victoriously now that she’d made her point. “Well, put your rubber gloves on,” she said with a let’s-get-on-with-this tone, “and I’ll walk you through it.”
She wasn’t the only one who could be stubborn and irascible, Connor thought. He looked down at her earnestly. “I thought you’d show me.” He paused to flash her a crocodile grin. “Me being a novice and all.”
“No need for that,” she replied airily. “I’ll talk you through it. Unless—” she batted her eyelashes at him coquettishly “—you’d like to get out while the going’s good and run along home or wherever it is you spend your days?”
Connor knew when he was being challenged. He also knew what Kristy didn’t—that he never backed down from one. Or let anyone intimate, through word or deed, that he was a gutless wonder. His eyes holding hers, he inched on one rubber glove, then the other. He drew in a deep, determined breath. “Let’s go, then,” he commanded, with the same inflection he would have used to say “Saddle up!”
Pretty color swept Kristy’s face. Her wicked grin widened, and Connor had the sharp sensation she was close to bursting into laughter. “The first thing you do is lift the lid.”
Ugh. She really was going to go through with this. Keeping his face expressionless, Connor picked up the lid with two fingers and pulled it away from the ceramic bowl. Unfortunately, in his eagerness to be done with that nasty bit of business, he let it go a little too quickly and it slammed against the back of the toilet.
Taking Over the Tycoon Page 6
