“Okay, then, I’ll back off,” he said, brushing a strand of hair back from her cheek. “But if things get tense between you two, remember that the offer’s on the table. I don’t want anything to come between you and Abby, okay? Promise me you’ll call me if you think that could happen.”
“I will,” she said. “I’m glad you came by.”
“Me, too. Is there anything else I can do for you? I’m still halfway decent with a paintbrush. I could help with the last of those rooms upstairs.”
He saw her struggling with herself. She was too bloody stubborn to admit she could use any help at all, even from him. Maybe especially from him. He leaned down and kissed her cheek. “Never mind. I know you want to do every single thing yourself. But that offer’s on the table, too, if you change your mind.”
“Thanks for understanding, Dad.” To his surprise, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. “Love you.”
“Right back at you,” he said. “You coming over for dinner tonight?”
“I might.”
“I should warn you that Caitlyn and Carrie have the measles.”
“Oh, my gosh, Abby must be beside herself.”
“She has Gram and me for backup.”
“Then you all have more than enough to do. I’ll skip dinner, but call me if any of you need anything.”
“Right,” he said. He was halfway down the walk when he called back, “By the way, I noticed that rhododendron in back of the porch could use trimming.”
To his surprise, Jess laughed. “I knew it. I knew you couldn’t get away from here without finding at least one thing to criticize.”
He silently cursed himself for speaking up. He tried to brush off the comment. “Hey, it’s only a bush. No big deal.”
Jess shook her head, her lips still twitching with amusement. “If you want to, bring your clippers over tomorrow and trim it yourself.”
It was part invitation, part challenge, but Mick felt as if his daughter had just opened the door a tiny crack to a real relationship. Now he just had to wiggle through without causing a ruckus that would send them back to square one.
Trace was feeling very pleased with himself over his strategy to keep Abby around where he could get to know her again. He had no idea what was going on in her life these days, but he’d noted the lack of a ring on her left hand about two seconds after he’d realized she was the woman in his office. Years ago he’d seen her with another man, seen an engagement ring on her finger, in fact, but that ring had been nowhere in sight yesterday. He had no idea why this mattered so much to him, but it did. Maybe he just wanted a chance to even the score, to get her all tied up in knots so he could abandon her the way she’d walked out on him. The prospect of payback did have a certain sweetness to it.
Then again, if he’d learned nothing else in that meeting, he’d discovered that she was a woman who could hold her own. She’d come in there prepared for battle and she’d handed over a sound financial proposal to back up her position. He wondered if Jess had any idea how lucky she was to have someone with that much business savvy in her corner.
Convincing the board to hold off on the foreclosure and to give the new management a chance to get the inn on solid ground had been relatively easy. Not that he intended to let Abby know that. He wanted her to be grateful that he’d fought the good fight on her sister’s behalf.
He walked into the Chesapeake Shores Yacht Club promptly at twelve-fifteen, expecting to find Abby waiting for him. He’d deliberately chosen the yacht club where they’d be seen by the town’s movers and shakers. Abby had always hated its pretentious atmosphere, which meant he’d have the upper hand.
A scan of the dining room showed she was nowhere in sight. Had she bailed on him, after all? The possibility rankled.
“Hey, Liz,” he greeted the hostess, who’d been in his high school class. “Any sign of Abby O’Brien?”
“It’s Abby Winters now,” she corrected him. “She called and said she was running late. Something about the twins getting sick. She’ll be here as soon as she can get here. She said to call her if you don’t feel like waiting.”
Trace winced at the mention of a married name and nearly groaned at the mention of twins. Maybe he’d gotten it all wrong after all. Maybe Abby wasn’t available. Maybe that was why she was so anxious to get back to New York. If so, he’d just gone out on a limb for nothing. Well, not for nothing. The inn did deserve a chance to make it, but he couldn’t deny that he’d had his own agenda.
He took the slip of paper that Liz held out with Abby’s number written on it. After dialing, he jotted down a takeout order for Liz as he waited for Abby to pick up. “Ask the kitchen to put a rush on this, would you?” he asked Liz, just as Abby finally answered. She sounded completely frazzled.
“Good, you’re still there,” he said, then announced, “I’ve ordered takeout. I’m on my way over.”
“Bad idea, Trace,” she protested. “I can be there in twenty minutes.”
“Which means I can just as easily be there in twenty minutes,” he reminded her.
“But it’s a little chaotic over here.”
“Then you need to stay put,” he said. “I’ve ordered the food. It’ll be ready in a few minutes and I’ll head on over. Tell your grandmother not to fix lunch. There’s plenty for her, too.”
“Why are you being so nice?”
“Because I’m a nice guy.”
“A nice guy wouldn’t be blackmailing me into staying in Chesapeake Shores.”
“I prefer to see it as protecting the bank’s investment,” he countered. “See you soon.”
Actually he was delighted by this turn of events. Ever since he’d seen Abby again, he’d wanted to check out the lay of the land, so to speak. What better way than to survey it for himself?
The last person Trace expected to find waiting for him when he reached Abby’s was her father. Mick was sitting on the top step, his expression forbidding, his seemingly deliberate positioning on that step pretty much blocking Trace’s path.
“Heard you were coming over,” Mick said, his tone not the least bit welcoming.
Trace held up the takeout bags. “I have a meeting with Abby. I brought lunch.”
Mick patted the step beside him. “Maybe you should sit down so you and I can have a talk before you get together with Abby.”
Just as Mick uttered the words, the screen door banged open. “Trace, you’re here!” Abby said with forced gaiety. “Come on inside.”
Mick scowled. “Trace and I were about to have a chat.”
Abby scowled at her father. “It can wait,” she said firmly.
Trace watched with interest, wondering how the test of wills would play out. To his amusement, it was Mick who finally backed down. He stood up and moved out of the way.
“Guess I’ll go over to the inn and deal with that overgrown rhododendron,” he muttered, picking up a pair of hedge clippers.
Abby faltered. “Does Jess know you’re coming?”
“It was her idea,” Mick assured her.
“Then it sounds like a great idea,” Abby enthused.
After watching Mick amble away, Trace turned to Abby. “Why do I have the feeling that you just saved me?”
“Because I did. He’s not happy about this little scheme of yours.”
“It’s not a scheme. It makes perfect financial sense,” he reiterated.
“Blah-
blah-blah,” she said. “We both know otherwise.”
Trace met her gaze and held it. “Do you really think I’d use Jess’s loan as a way to, what, get even with you? I thought we’d settled that the other day.”
“Not to my satisfaction,” she told him. “From what I hear, you’re trapped here for at least six months. Why not make my life miserable by trapping me here, too?”
“I’m not trapped. I made a deal with my father. This is a six-month trial run. Of course, I know the outcome will mean I leave and Laila will get the job she should have had all along, but my father’s optimistic things will work out differently.”
“Would you be here working at the bank if your dad hadn’t forced you into it?”
“He didn’t force me into it,” Trace said. “I agreed mostly to prove a point.”
“What point?”
“That my sister should be the one working there.”
She smiled. “By doing what? Failing miserably?”
“Not miserably,” he said. “Just look at the deal I struck with you. I’d say I proved myself with that.”
“We’re not going to agree on what’s going on here, are we?”
He shrugged. “Probably not.”
“Then let’s have lunch. Gram’s set the dining room table. She seems to think this meeting requires more formality, being strictly business and all.”
Trace chuckled. “Is she as ticked at me as your dad is?”
“Pretty much.”
“Then this should be fun,” Trace said, holding the door, then following her inside.
To Abby’s regret, Gram was nowhere in sight when they reached the dining room, and the table had only been set for two. Trace grinned when he saw it.
“Now, isn’t this an interesting turn of events?” he murmured. “Could it be that your grandmother’s matchmaking?”
“Absolutely not!” Abby said fiercely.
“Because you’re married? At least I assume with kids, there must be a husband in the picture.”
“There was,” she admitted, regretting the divorce for a fleeting moment, if only because she sensed the existence of a husband would get that wicked gleam out of Trace’s eyes.
“Separated? Divorced?” he asked, as he removed containers of chopped salad from the bags he’d brought. Without asking, he went about dishing the salad onto the formal, gold-trimmed china Gram had put on the table.
“Divorced,” she said, gritting her teeth against the personal turn the conversation was taking. “Look, we’re here to discuss the inn, not my life.”
“Just catching up,” he said, as he reached into a second bag and removed a container of what appeared to be the yacht club’s decadent chocolate mousse, one of Abby’s all-time favorite desserts. Sometimes that mousse had been the only way Trace or her family could lure her into that stuffy atmosphere. They’d even ladled an extra dollop of whipped cream onto the top, just the way she liked it.
She frowned as he set it in front of her place. How had he remembered that? And why had he bothered? Was this just another way to get to her, to throw her off-kilter right before he hit her with some other blow she wasn’t expecting?
She waited warily until he sat down, then asked, “What’s going on here, Trace?”
He regarded her innocently. “We were supposed to meet over lunch. I brought lunch. I don’t see anything sinister in that. In fact, I thought I was being downright considerate given that your kids are sick. Twins, right? I think that’s what Liz said.”
“Carrie and Caitlyn,” she said tightly, still not entirely trusting all this thoughtfulness. “They came down with the measles yesterday. In fact, they should be waking up soon from their naps, so we need to get our business out of the way. Did the board meet?”
“They did.”
“Don’t make me drag this out of you. Just tell me what they decided.”
“Everything remains in place, as long as you’re on board.”
Abby wasn’t sure why she’d been hoping for a reprieve. Maybe she’d thought that collectively the board might see through Trace’s scheme and overrule him. Obviously she hadn’t taken into account his persuasiveness or his determination.
Swallowing her desire to start another argument she wouldn’t win, she leveled a look at him. “How do you see this working? I do have a career, Trace, and it’s in New York. I can easily oversee all the expenditures from there, stay on top of payments and so on.”
He shook his head. “Not good enough. Come on, Abby, you know Jess. The second your back is turned, she’ll go right back to her impulsive spending, and you’ll be scrambling to cover for her.”
She regarded him earnestly. “I’ll make sure that doesn’t happen. You have my word on it.”
“Not good enough.”
She bristled at that. “Excuse me?”
“I’ve had some experience with how unreliable your word is, remember?”
“That’s ridiculous. It’s another situation entirely. And besides, I never gave you my word about anything ten years ago.”
“You told me you loved me. I took you seriously.”
“I did love you,” she said, frustrated by his determination to use old news to manipulate the present.
“And yet you vanished without so much as a goodbye, much less an explanation. I’m not taking any chances on that happening again, not until the bank feels comfortable that these loans are protected.”
“You mean until you feel comfortable,” she said. “It has nothing to do with what anyone at the bank needs. There’s plenty of cash in the inn’s account to cover expenses, and you know it. This is payback, pure and simple, Trace, and I resent it. You’re taking out our drama, if you want to call it that, on my sister. You know perfectly well she’ll pay back every penny of those loans. So does the bank. This is about you and me.”
“Is it really?” he said, his expression innocent.
“I had no idea you could be so vindictive and hateful.”
“Which just goes to prove that we never really knew each other at all, because I didn’t have any idea you were capable of being cruel and a coward.”
His words cut right through her. She knew she deserved them, because that was exactly what she had been, cruel and cowardly. That didn’t make it any easier to hear them or to have them coming back to haunt her all these years later.
She regarded him with bewilderment. “If you think so little of me, why on earth do you want me around here now?”
“Because you were always the most intriguing, infuriating person in Chesapeake Shores,” he said. “I figure your presence will keep the next few months from being boring.”
“So, what—I’m the mouse and you’re the big bad cat who gets to toy with me just for entertainment?”
“Something like that.”
She stood up, shaking with indignation. “You’re despicable,” she said, grabbing the crystal pitcher filled with ice water.
His gaze narrowed. “You really don’t want to do that,” he warned.
“Oh, but I do,” she countered, dumping the contents over his head. She gave him a considering look as he sat there drenched, his expression startled. Then she smiled in satisfaction. “Yep, that was exactly what I wanted to do.”
Then she whirled around and went upstairs to check on the girls. Pleased with her little demonstration of temper, she was taken aback when she heard his lau
ghter echoing after her.
She met Gram in the hallway.
“What’s going on?” her grandmother asked.
“I just dumped a pitcher of water over Trace’s head.”
Her grandmother’s eyes twinkled, but she fought to contain a grin. “Was that wise?”
Abby sighed. “Probably not, but it felt darn good.”
Thinking of how she—and perhaps even Jess—were likely to pay for it, though, made her just the tiniest bit nervous.
6
M aking himself at home, Trace wandered into the kitchen, found a dishtowel to mop up his face and sop some of the water from his shirt, then took another towel into the dining room to clean up the mess there. He regarded the dish of chocolate mousse with regret. It hadn’t exactly turned out to be the peace offering he’d intended it to be.
“Chocolate mousse? Abby’s favorite,” Nell O’Brien noted as she walked into the dining room and spotted it in his hand. “Nice touch, though I imagine suggesting the yacht club for your meeting was your idea of a power play. You know perfectly well she hates that place.”
He winced at the accuracy of her comment. “None of it worked out quite the way I’d planned,” he commented wryly.
“I don’t suppose she poured that pitcher of water over your head because you brought her dessert,” she said.
“No, I believe it had more to do with a few unflattering things I said to her.”
She shook her head. “You two act like you’re six and still on the playground. Go in the kitchen and take off your shirt. I’ll throw it into the dryer, and then maybe I’ll give you a few tips on handling my granddaughter.”
Trace frowned at her, not entirely trusting the seemingly magnanimous offer. Nell hadn’t been one of his biggest fans ten years ago. He couldn’t imagine why that would suddenly change.
The Inn at Eagle Point Page 9
