by A. C. Arthur
“My name is Grayson Taylor,” he told her. “I own this building.”
“Oh,” she’d said, taking another step back as if she was afraid he’d reach out and touch her again.
Gray frowned.
“I’m just stopping by to take a look around as I’ll be selling the building hopefully in the next couple of months.”
“Christmas is next month,” the little girl holding tightly to the woman’s hand told him matter-of-factly.
He nodded. “Yes. It is.”
She was a cute little girl, with an intense stare that shouldn’t have unnerved him, but just like touching the woman had, it did.
“Even though the sales probably won’t be official until after the first of the year, I need to do a walk-through before then. I’ll send my lawyers a report and they’ll get started with the listing. If you don’t mind, could you show me around?” he asked, returning his gaze to the woman.
His question was met with immediate silence and after a few seconds she shook her head. “I’m rehearsing with the children. We’re just getting started with regularly scheduled rehearsals and the play is in four weeks. They have school during the day. We only have the weekends and an hour and a half in the evenings to rehearse.”
Gray presumed she was telling him “no.” That wasn’t a word women usually used with him, but his ego wasn’t bruised. This was business after all.
“Fine. I’ll wait until the rehearsal is finished,” he said. “Can I sit over here?”
There were chairs scattered about the spacious room, some lined directly in front of the small stage, where he suspected they were rehearsing their little play.
“You can watch me be Scrooge,” a boy wearing a frizzy white wig and an oversize black tuxedo jacket with tails told him.
He’d stepped away from the woman and her entourage and motioned for Gray to follow him. Admiring the child’s initiative, Gray walked behind him, leaving the still-leery gaze of the woman behind.
She didn’t say another word, but moved across the room and gave instructions for the children to resume their places and continue. The little girl who had been holding her hand still stood right beside her, but the child peeked back at Gray more than once. She had questions, he thought. Who was he? Why was he here and what did that possibly mean for them? He’d stared into her pensive eyes and felt the urge to answer all her questions in a way that would make her stop looking at him with such sincere inquisitiveness. It was the strangest thought he’d ever had, especially since Gray wasn’t known to get caught up in anyone’s emotions about anything.
He was the strongest of the Taylor sextuplets, the first one to be born on that humid July evening thirty years ago. His brothers and sisters all shared his birthday, but none of them had ever shared the weight of being the first baby born of the first set of multiples in the town of Temptation. That had been his title for the first seven years of his life—“the first born of the first Temptation sextuplets.” The Taylors of Temptation was what they’d named the reality show that featured his parents as they brought home their six bundles of joy and lived in the huge blue-and-white Victorian with the river at its back. As Gray recalled, the show would have been more aptly named if it had been called Terror of the Taylors instead.
“Do you like Christmas?”
He was yanked from his thoughts by the soft voice of the little girl who had been sneaking glances at him. Her hair was dark and long, brushing past her shoulders with red bows at the end of each ponytail. She wore jeans and a red-and-white striped sweater. Her boots had black-and-white polka dots.
“I don’t know,” he replied. “Do you like Christmas?”
She nodded and said, “Yes. I do. So does my mother.”
As she said those words Gray nodded. “Is your mother up there directing the play?”
“Yes. Her name is Morgan Hill. She’s a teacher, too.”
“You’re not supposed to talk to strangers,” a little boy said as he came up beside the girl and pulled on her arm.
She jerked away. “He’s not a stranger. His name is Grayson Taylor and he owns this building.”
Gray didn’t like the stoic way in which she’d mimicked his previous words.
“We don’t know him, so he’s a stranger,” the boy, who looked a little like the girl, said. “I’m gonna tell Mama.”
Gray almost smiled, but he felt his forehead drawing into a frown instead. Twins?
“No need to tell,” he declared. “How about we all go up front and sit with your mother? That way she’ll know where you both are.”
It would also give Gray a chance to ask a few questions about the building. From the looks of the outside, he didn’t think he’d get much for the building itself, but the land might be worth something. Between the sale of this building, the hospital and the house, the total should be a good chunk to split between the six of them. Not that Gray needed the money. His vision and the talented people he’d hired to work at Gray Technologies had made him a rich man years ago. No, any money that came from the properties would be what the Taylor sextuplets thought of as their father’s payment for destroying their lives all those years ago.
“Mama, he wants to sit with you,” the little girl said when they’d come to a stop next to the chair where her mother sat.
Morgan looked up from her clipboard and then hastily stood. “Oh, I apologize,” she said. “I hope they weren’t bothering you.”
Now it was Gray’s turn to simply stare. She was very pretty, he thought, as if he hadn’t noticed that before. Her skin was smooth and unmarred by any cosmetics. Gray was used to seeing more glamorous women, from the ones he worked with to the ones trying to get into his bed. High heels, tight dresses, heavily made-up faces and beaming smiles—that’s what he was used to.
Morgan was looking at him like she couldn’t decide whether to curse him out or be cordial to him. The look, coupled with the stubborn lift of her chin and the set of her shoulders, tugged at something deep inside him. Glancing away was not an option.
“He doesn’t know if he likes Christmas, Mama,” the little girl said.
“She’s always telling,” the boy added with a shake of his head.
“Hush,” Morgan told them.
“Ms. Hill! Ms. Hill! Ethan forgot what to say,” another child’s voice exclaimed.
“I did not! I’m imposizing. That’s what actors do,” the boy in the white wig—who Gray now knew was named Ethan—argued.
“The word is improvising, Ethan, and I’d prefer if you just repeated what’s written in the script,” Morgan replied.
She’d moved quickly, heading to the stage where the two arguing children stood. She spoke in a voice that was much calmer than he suspected she was feeling. She guided the children to where she wanted them to stand on the stage and spoke the lines she wanted them to repeat, all while Ethan looked as if he had other, more exciting things to do.
“He thinks he knows everything,” the little girl told Gray.
She’d scooted onto one of the chairs by then.
“Be quiet, Lily. Mama’s gonna show Ethan who’s the boss,” the boy told her.
“I think he’s the boss,” Lily said to her brother and they both looked up to Gray.
He was just about to speak—to say what, Gray wasn’t totally sure—when the lights suddenly went out. Screams were immediate and should have been expected since Gray didn’t think there was anyone in this room over the age of six or seven, besides him and Morgan.
“Stay calm,” he heard Morgan say over the growing chaos of children’s voices. “It’s probably just a blown fuse again. I’ll take care of it.”
Gray slipped his phone from his jacket pocket and turned on the flashlight app, but when he attempted to take a step toward the stage, he found his moves hampered. Gray was six-two and
he weighed two hundred and thirty-five pounds, which consisted of mostly muscle thanks to the ten to twelve hours a week he spent at the gym. Last year he’d run in the 5K marathon to fight diabetes and finished in under fifteen minutes, so there should have been no problem with him walking across this room to assist Morgan in whatever was going on. Except for the two sets of arms that had wrapped tightly around each of his thighs, holding him down like weights.
Chapter 2
“Here’s the fuse box,” Morgan stated about two seconds before Gray’s hands brushed over hers.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said, moving her hand to the side.
“You don’t know anything about this building,” she snapped. Her hand was still warm from where he’d touched her and Morgan rubbed it against her thigh as if she thought that would erase her reaction to his touch.
He was holding his phone, with its glaring light, pointed toward the fuse box, but Morgan could see the shadow of his face as he turned to look at her.
“I own this building,” he replied.
Morgan huffed. “That doesn’t mean you know your way around it, or how much it means to the people of this town,” she quipped.
It was really hot in here. They were in the basement and Morgan tried to take a step back, but there was only a wall behind her. To her right was a door that led to the crawl space. To her left, the wall with the fuse box. Directly in front of her, the man with the flashlight and delicious-smelling cologne.
“But I do know how to turn on,” he began, still watching her and, if she wasn’t mistaken, moving a step closer.
Morgan tried to shift to the side, but she stumbled on some cords that were lying on the floor and ended up against his chest, again. The light from the phone wavered as his hands dropped to her shoulders, sliding down slowly as he kept her from falling. Embarrassed and irritated by the heat that had spread quickly from the hand that he’d touched moments ago to the rest of her body, Morgan tried to pull away from him. She slammed her back into the wall.
He shone the light in her face at that point, then looked at her as if he was going to...no, he wasn’t, Morgan thought quickly. He wouldn’t dare.
“It’s the last circuit breaker,” she said, hastily pointing over his shoulder. “That’s the one that usually blows. It’s been doing that for the past couple of months. Harry said he was going to look at it, but he hasn’t had a chance.”
Harry Reed owned the hardware store and worked part-time at his family’s B and B. He also did handiwork around the town in his spare time, for which Morgan knew a lot of people were very grateful.
Now Grayson looked confused, which was just fine because that’s exactly how Morgan was feeling.
“You just open the box and—”
He backed away from her and said, “I know how to flip the circuit breakers and turn on the lights.”
The phone’s flashlight moved and she could see him opening the box now.
“You’re right,” he told her as he began flipping the first breaker off and then on. “I don’t know about this building, but I do know about fuse boxes. Turn everything off and hopefully, when you turn it back on...” He let his voice trail off as that last fuse clicked off and then...
“All power is restored,” he said the moment the tight hallway they’d been standing in was once again illuminated.
Behind him, the kids who they couldn’t leave in the dark room alone cheered.
“Great,” Morgan replied. “Thank you.”
She let out a whoosh of breath as she hurriedly slipped past him. It was a weird move, she knew, as she flattened against one wall and shimmied around the spot where he still stood, but Morgan didn’t care. She simply needed to get out of that corner with him.
“That was fun,” Ethan said immediately as she approached. “Can we do it again?”
“I’m hungry, Ms. Hill,” Daisy Lynn added with a baleful look.
Morgan had a headache.
She looked at her watch and let out a sigh. “It’s almost time for your parents to pick you up anyway. So let’s get back upstairs and clean up our props. We’ll rehearse again tomorrow after Sunday services,” she told them.
She led the group up the basement steps and through the double doors. When they’d come down moments ago Morgan had instructed them to hold hands and onto the railing. This time, since the lights were on and probably because Morgan’s thoughts were somewhere else, she hadn’t instructed them to do the same. The lights were brighter in the upstairs hallways and the children ran to the main hall, where they’d been rehearsing. She was walking and thinking about him, but somehow completely forgetting that she’d left Grayson Taylor down in the basement.
“Considering running away before giving me the tour of the place?” he said from behind her.
“What?” Morgan said as she spun around to face him. Her feet almost twisted as she did, but luckily she was able to right herself. Why had she become so clumsy around this man? “I’m not running anywhere. I have to tend to the children first,” she told him.
He nodded, but didn’t seem to believe her. That irritated Morgan and her headache throbbed more insistently.
“Look,” she said with a sigh, “I may not be the right person to give you this tour. I’m pretty attached to this building. And to the hospital, since I was born there. That means I’m going to be pretty irritated when you knock down the buildings or sell them off to some developer who’ll knock them down to build a strip mall or some other big-city franchise that we don’t need around here.”
Damn. She hadn’t meant to say all that, at least not to his face. He slipped his hands into the front pockets of his pants and watched as she wondered what to say next. Nothing about her personal feelings, she decided. Temptation was her home. These buildings, the landmarks and the people all meant something to her. She understood that it would be difficult for outsiders to understand that connection, but Grayson Taylor wasn’t an outsider. At least, he shouldn’t have been.
“Millie Randall works with the chamber of commerce. Her office is in city hall. She’ll be the better person to show you around. They open Monday at nine,” she said with finality and turned to walk away.
“It’s not my intention to knock anything down,” he told her. “I plan for a quick sale.”
“That’s your business, Mr. Taylor,” she replied without turning to face him.
“I’m not your enemy,” he said when he’d easily caught up with her.
“And you’re not a friend,” she replied. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go.”
She did have to go. The children were waiting for her. Their parents would arrive soon and she needed to clean up the hall and then get Lily and Jack home to feed them dinner. She did not have time to hang around at the community center with the man who could single-handedly take the building away from them. She definitely did not have to like how he looked and smelled, and damn, how it felt whenever he touched her. No, she didn’t and wouldn’t like any of that. Morgan promised herself she would not.
* * *
Gray ran fast and hard across the field of crisp frost-tipped grass. The air was cool and the sky a dull gray. The scents of nearby animals and the sounds of early-morning farm life wafted all around. This wasn’t the NordicTrack he used in his home gym, or the three-mile track that looped around the top level of the condo building where he lived. Gray ran on either of those on a daily basis. When he was out of town on business, the five-star hotels where he stayed always had state-of-the-art gyms with top-of-the-line equipment, including pools where he could indulge in slow leisurely laps to relax his muscles after a hard workout.
The brochure on the table in the room had called it the Owner’s Suite, but to him, it looked like a top floor had been added to an old horse’s stable.
Gray had been out for more
than an hour and he was sure he’d run well over five miles by now and seen more grassy hills and fog-covered mountaintops than he had in all his life. It would have been a breathtaking view for someone who didn’t prefer the city life of bright lights, fast cars and hot women.
The latter, Gray thought as he made his way back to the portion of the Haystack Farm & Resort he’d rented, was what had him up at the crack of dawn. A hot woman camouflaged in a baggy running suit and surrounded by a circus of kids. He’d thought about her all night long. To the point where what sounded to him like someone strangling a rooster woke him just before he’d embarrassed himself with only the second wet dream of his life.
His feet crunched over the graveled walkway that led to the stables and Gray slowed down to a brisk walk. Stretching his arms above his head as he continued to move, he inhaled deeply and exhaled quickly, hoping the immediate slaps of cool air would erase the memories. All of them.
It didn’t work. As he approached the steps Gray stopped. He did a series of three quick squats, then lowered his back leg and began stretching. She wasn’t tall, he thought as he switched legs, his hands resting on his thigh as he lunged. Five feet and two or three inches tall, tops. She wasn’t built, either. Her clothes had been loose but Gray had always been able to spot a great female body. Hers was tight, compact, curvy in all the right places and trim in the others. She had intelligent eyes and a stubborn chin. Her hair was short, styled but not overdone. Her face was cute, not gorgeous, but stick-in-the-mind pretty.
Gray sighed and stood up straight. He put his hands on his hips and let his head fall back as he looked up to the sky. No clouds, no sun, just a blanket of slate. Only one day in this small town and he missed Miami already.
He ran up the steps and let himself into the loft suite that carried the faint smell of the air fresheners that were plugged into every electrical socket in the space, and the earthier scents of hay and horseflesh. There were no five-star hotels in Temptation. Only two bed-and-breakfasts and this fully functional farm, which also billed itself as a resort. There were no televisions, either. No internet connection and no phones. The signal on his cell was weak, but the electrical outlets worked well enough so at least they kept his phone and tablet charged.
