by Tami Hoag
Was she playing some kind of game with him? If he decided to reconsider using her client in the Van Bryant campaign, would she suddenly find the time to go out with him?
He wouldn’t do that. He would not compromise his professional integrity to get a date even if she did have the sexiest eyebrows in the upper Midwest.
Alec slid behind the wheel of his BMW, disgusted with his cynical train of thought. Not every woman wanted to use him as a rung on the professional ladder, he reminded himself. He should be ashamed for being so suspicious. Kelsie Connors was as far removed from Vena DiMarlo as Minnesota was from Mars.
Of course, he had reason to be suspicious, he thought as he started the car and headed north toward the suburb of Minnetonka. He could remember with painful clarity how completely Vena had fooled him. She’d seen him coming a mile away—a generous guy in a position to get her a big break in modeling, a guy with a decided weakness for lovely ladies in need.
McKnight in shining armor, he thought and scowled.
Vena had taken gross advantage of his weakness, using him to get her break. Personally he thought she’d missed her calling. She was the consummate actress. But modeling was less work. That was Vena; she took as much as she could get for the least amount of effort.
At least she hadn’t managed to totally corrupt his attitude toward women. He was wiser, warier, but he was no misogynist. He hadn’t been tempted into any long-term relationship since Vena, but that was because he was enjoying his second chance at bachelorhood. He was enjoying keeping his own schedule, keeping his town house the way he liked it—immaculate—he liked going out when he wanted and with whom he wanted.
Which brought him back to Kelsie Connors. His attraction to her had been instantaneous, and it has grown stronger despite her seeming reluctance—or, perhaps, because of it. Whichever it was, he certainly wasn’t going to let it stand in his way, he thought, grinning as he drove toward home.
There were three things Alec McKnight had never been able to resist: A mystery, a challenge, and a pretty lady in distress. Kelsie Connors qualified on all counts. He’d find a way to get around her “no dating” rule, and he’d be doing her a favor. By the sound of things, she needed rescuing, and he was just the McKnight for the job.
Back in Eden Prairie, Kelsie pulled another waffle out of the iron and scolded herself for thinking about Alec. If he’d ridden up the front steps on a white charger, she couldn’t have gone out with him. She was just too busy.
“Mom? Mom. Mom!” Elizabeth finally yanked on her mother’s sleeve. “You’re waffling a potholder!”
“What?” Kelsie snapped out of her trance.
Black smoke rolled out of the waffle iron. With a little gasp she pulled the thing open and peeled the smoldering potholder off the iron with a fork.
One more thing to add to her list of things to do. One more reason to add to her list of reasons she couldn’t go out with Alec McKnight. She had to clean the melted fabric shreds out of the waffle iron.
Heaving a sigh, she slid down on her chair and stared at her waffle. She had no appetite for it. The only thing she would have considered appetizing was a pound of Fanny Farmer chocolates. Or Godiva chocolates. Or a big stack of plain Hershey bars. A waffle held no magic for her this morning. The only thing that made her gag it down was the thought of how much it had cost to make it. Bisquick didn’t grow on trees. There was probably a penny’s worth of electricity spent, too, and a new potholder would set her back a buck and a half. It all added up.
She watched Jeff sop up half a quart of syrup with his waffle. He ate with great enthusiasm, savoring every spongy little square, pausing only to gulp down some milk every so often. Elizabeth, on the other hand, had picked her breakfast apart until it resembled a pile of crumbled foam rubber.
“Are you going to eat that or just torment it some more?” Kelsie asked.
Elizabeth took a guilty bite and said nothing.
“You’d better get a move on if you’re going to be ready to go by the time your dad gets here.”
“If he gets here,” Elizabeth muttered, earning herself a furious glare from her mother.
Kelsie glanced at her son. Jeffrey was busy sneaking toast crusts to the cats under the table.
Neither of her children had any illusions about their father. They knew Jack was undependable, that he took little or no interest in their lives most of the time. But Jeffrey still had hope. He wanted very badly for his father to love him and want him and want to do all the father-son things other kids’ dads did. It would never happen, Kelsie knew, but she didn’t have the heart to burst Jeffrey’s bubble. It was like letting him believe in Santa Claus. Sooner or later he would find out for himself, and she’d be there to help ease the hurt. In the meantime, it was the unwritten rule that Elizabeth not make derogatory remarks about Jack in front of her brother.
“I’m not going,” Elizabeth said more loudly.
Jeffrey’s head popped up above the table again. “Come on, Lizbeth, it’ll be neat. Dad said we’re gonna help him look for deer tracks in the woods so he’ll know where to go hunting.” He stared at his sister with his big brown eyes filled with a certain kind of vulnerability, as if he were afraid his sister’s defection would somehow jinx the rare afternoon with their father.
Elizabeth wouldn’t meet his gaze. “Julie asked me to go to the mall with her. You go with Dad and have a good time.”
“We will,” he replied in a tone of voice that was meant to convince himself as much as the others.
Jack was late, as usual. Every time it happened, Kelsie told herself that the next time she wouldn’t waste the energy it took to be furious with him, but she never held herself to it. Every time she ended up replaying their dismal failure of a marriage over in her memory while she waited for him to show up.
He’d been cocky and self-assured when she’d married him. They had both been too young. She had believed he would channel that cockiness into something positive, that it would grow into pride and invite respect as he worked his way up in his father’s contracting business. Instead, it had grown into overbearing arrogance.
In her more philosophical moments, Kelsie thought it was sad that such a bright young man had turned out to be so detestable. He was going to end up lonely, with an empty life. Today was not one of those philsophical days, however. She mentally called him every name she could think of as she sat on the couch going through her files and watching her son pretend to play with Transformers on the living room floor as he waited with one hopeful eye trained on the picture window.
Finally a maroon Corvette pulled up at the curb. Jeffrey was out the door and down the sidewalk in a flash.
She deserved a chocolate fix after this morning, Kelsie decided, leaning back against the storm door as her ex-husband drove away with their son. It had been a long time since she’d given in to her compulsion. She’d been proud of her self-control, but a person could take only so much. Her limit had been reached. Now she could almost taste the chocolate. She sighed in resignation and ran a hand through her already mussed hair as a black BMW pulled up to the curb.
A boy of about fifteen with spiky brown hair climbed out of the backseat. From the front passenger seat emerged a small, dark-haired older woman wearing a white sweatshirt with the words CLEAN AND MEAN stamped in black across the front. Probably relatives of one of the neighbors, Kelsie thought, straightening to open her door. Then the car’s driver emerged.
With wind-riffled dark hair.
And to-die-for blue eyes.
And a grin that could have helped him sell snow mobiles to desert nomads.
Alec McKnight rounded the hood of his car, his gaze locked on Kelsie’s. She felt all her energy drain right down from the top of her head to her feet, as if someone had just poured a bucket of warm water over her. Sweet heaven, he’d stopped grinning, and she was still losing control. He was thinking about smiling, though, she could tell, and that was almost as bad. The idea played and tugged at his lips, te
asing her mercilessly.
He seemed to be getting more handsome every time she saw him, she thought, feeling dazed and amazed. Old jeans hugged him in all the most interesting places. He wore battered sneakers and a sapphire-blue sweatshirt. Boundless, restless energy carried him across her lawn with the long, unconsciously elegant stride of a dancer.
Oddly it was the first time Kelsie had taken much notice of his build. He was six feet tall, no more; lean but athletic-looking with square shoulders that stopped short of being wide. Then his smile flashed, bright and brilliant, and Kelsie was incapable of noticing anything else.
“Hi,” he said, stopping at the bottom of the steps.
One syllable. Those eyes, that smile, and just one syllable combined in a way that suggested intimacy. With one word he could make a woman feel as if she’d shared the night with him.
Kelsie groaned under her breath. She had to break eye contact or run the risk of promising him anything. She hadn’t expected to see him again, but he was here, and she felt such a soaring joy inside that it terrified her.
“Hi,” she said, glancing away, her gaze falling on the two people rummaging through the trunk of Alec’s car. “What are you doing here, Alec?”
“I’m here to rescue you.” Grinning, he swung an arm in the direction of the car. “I’ve brought reinforcements. Alice is taking the house, Miles is taking the lawn, and I am taking you out tonight.”
FOUR
“ALEC!” KELSIE SAID with a gasp, pressing her body back against the storm door. “You can’t bring a cleaning lady in here; my house is a mess!”
Alec’s straight dark brows knitted together in confusion. “Kelsie, that’s what cleaning ladies do. There wouldn’t be much point in bringing a cleaning lady over if your house was already clean.”
“Men!” Kelsie muttered under her breath. Their minds seemed to have a completely foreign mode of operation. “I haven’t had time to do any kind of housework for a week. What is this woman going to think of me?”
Alec shook his head and smiled. “She’ll think you’re a lady with two jobs and two kids to take care of. It’s not as if she’s never come into a household in that situation before. It’s not as if she’s going to think you’re a slob or anything.”
He peeled Kelsie away from the door and let himself in, mentally eating his words. A basket of laundry had been dumped on the couch in the living room. Some kind of dangerous-looking electronic monsters were scattered on the floor. A messy stack of stuffed manila file folders was piled on a coffee table thick with dust. There were five pair of shoes abandoned behind a recliner in front of him and a mound of Naughty Nighties lingerie on the seat of an old rocker across the room. Near the TV a small magazine rack had been overturned.
Trying to overcome the sudden dizziness the sight of a horrendous mess always brought on, Alec leaned back against a table cluttered with mail. A gray cat bolted from under the far end of the table, upending a sorry-looking potted plant. Dirt scattered across the tan carpet as the plant keeled over. From its cage in the dining room, an enormous blue parrot shrieked and said, “Damn!”
Kelsie could have died of embarrassment, not so much because of the state of her house—her house was usually a mess—but because Alec was seeing it. Only very good friends and door-to-door salespeople saw her house in its natural state. Alec didn’t fall into either category.
Just what category did he fit in, Kelsie asked herself. Dangerous was the word that came to mind, though she wasn’t certain why. Just because he wanted to go out with her didn’t make him a candidate for the ten-most-wanted list.
How about the one-most-wanted list?
Before she could blush at the thought, she forced herself to wonder where he found so many clothes that exactly matched the incredible deep blue shade of his eyes. Did he choose them for that reason, or was it unconscious?
“Alice Bigelow,” came a voice from beside her.
Kelsie looked down at the woman, startled and dismayed. She wished a hole would magically appear that she could disappear into, but smiled valiantly. “Kelsie Connors.”
“Nice to meet you,” Alice said, coming farther into the room armed with a bucket full of the tools of her trade. She held up a bowl brush as she headed down the hall. “I like to start with the bathroom.”
“Alec,” Kelsie said under her breath. “I can’t believe you brought a cleaning woman to my house. You hardly know me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said pleasantly, having recovered from his initial shock. “I know that’s something most guys don’t try until the third or fourth date, but I was afraid we wouldn’t even have a first date—”
“You got that right,” she said, bending down to right her ailing dieffenbachia. She scooped dirt off the carpet and patted it around the base of the plant. “I can’t go out with you, Alec.”
“Ah!” He held up one finger. “You said you were too busy to go out with me. If all your housework gets done, you won’t be too busy.”
She gave him a smug look as she shoved the pile of shoes under the recliner. “I still can’t go out with you. My daughter has a baby sitting job tonight, and my son isn’t old enough to stay home alone.”
Alec shrugged. “So get a sitter.”
“Ha! That shows how much you know.” Kelsie shook her head as she rounded up Jeffrey’s Transformers. “It is a proven fact that baby sitters cannot be had for a Saturday night with less than forty-eight hours’ notice.”
He frowned. “They’re that hard to come by?”
“They’re practically on the endangered species list.” Even as she told him this, her traitorous mind was rattling off options. Jeff could spend the evening with their neighbor, Thor, who loved kids. Or he could possibly stay with his best friend, Brent, if Brent’s mother didn’t mind.
Alec briefly considered the possibility of taking Kelsie’s son along, but dismissed it. The company of a nine-year-old boy was not likely to make for a fun date. He wanted Kelsie all to himself anyway.
She thought she’d won the battle. He could see it in her eyes. Kelsie was just going to have to learn Alec McKnight did not give up easily. He’d been described as having the determination and drive of a bulldozer, qualities he never hesitated to use—supplemented with a generous dose of charm—to get what he wanted.
“Can I use your phone?” he asked, trying to look perfectly innocent.
“Sure. It’s somewhere behind you, under the mail.” Kelsie tipped up the magazine rack, stuffing three months’ worth of magazines into it, keeping one eye on Alec as he made his call.
He really wasn’t handsome, she thought, contradicting her earlier impression. He was… appealing … interesting… dangerous. There was that word again. The sunlight coming through the picture window fell on his dark brown hair, bringing out deep red highlights.
“Hello, Natalie?” He grinned, looking down, absently sorting Kelsie’s mail into neat stacks. Kelsie had the fanciful idea as she watched him that his flash of white teeth could affect a woman even over the phone lines. “It’s your dear, devoted cousin, Alec. Remember that huge favor you owe me?”
Kelsie’s jaw dropped. He was getting a babysitter! Now what was she supposed to do?
Before he could ask the big question, she dashed across the room and made a grab for the phone. With two fingers, Alec lifted the chunky white instrument out of her reach as he returned the smug look she’d shot him moments before.
Disgusted, Kelsie leaned back against the brown tweed recliner, glowering at Alec as he made the arrangements for his cousin to sit with Jeffrey for the evening. When he hung up, she asked, “Did it ever occur to you that I just may not want to go out with you?”
Alec shook his head as he advanced on her, his gaze holding her motionless as a smile made his lips twitch. “Nope,” he said, corralling her against the chair with an arm on either side of her. “Not once. But then, I’m an optimist. Can you look me in the eye and tell me you really don’t want to go out with me?”
/> Was that supposed to be a joke? She could hardly look into his direct, warm, blue velvet gaze without promising she’d follow him to the ends of the earth! And, darn him, he knew it. He was using his best asset to an unfair advantage. She wanted to wipe that charming smile off his face by denying any attraction to him, but, when it came right down to it, she couldn’t.
“You don’t play fair,” she muttered.
Alec gave her a slow, Cheshire cat smile. “How do you feel about Chinese?”
She swallowed hard as she glanced down. His body was deliciously close to pressing against hers. How many times in the past two days had she felt her own body reacting to this man’s nearness? More than was safe to recall.
“Chinese?” she echoed. “As a language or a cuisine?”
“Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouch!” Kelsie winced as she gingerly applied makeup to the discolored area around her left eye. “How’s this look, honey?” she asked her son, who stood scowling in the bathroom doorway.
“Looks like a black eye with a lot of goop on it.”
Kelsie checked the mirror again. He was right. She hadn’t managed to hide the problem, and if she added another layer of cover-up, she was going to look like a geisha girl. Disgusted, she grabbed a tissue and started wiping the stuff off. “Ouch! Ouch, ouch, ouch!”
“Why don’t you just stay home?” Jeff suggested.
Kelsie felt a stab of guilt at her son’s remark. It wasn’t the first stab of guilt she’d felt since she’d given in to Alec’s dinner invitation, and it wouldn’t be the last. With her workweeks so hectic, she always made a special effort to save time on the weekends for the kids. She especially tried to spend time with Jeff after an outing with his father, because he often came home moody.
