by Lisa Plumley
So she was really busting him here. “The production company hired my agency to get Heather’s TV special back on schedule,” Casey said. “I’m here to do that, by whatever means possible.”
“Are you going to fire people?”
He couldn’t lie. “If it’s necessary. Usually, it’s not.”
“Are you going to shut down production?”
“Near as I can tell, it’s already pretty much shut down. I’m hoping to put things back on track before Christmas. Way before Christmas. Way, way before Christmas.”
“I’m sure.” Kristen compressed her lips in a telltale gesture. Evidently, she was familiar with the problems on set. That meant he needed more information from her. But first . . .
“Are you going to ruin my sister’s career?”
She kept her chin high, but there was an undeniable note of vulnerability in her voice. Hearing it, Casey regarded her with real empathy. He didn’t have any brothers or sisters, but the concern in Kristen’s face was real. He wanted to reassure her.
“If that homemade sex tape couldn’t ruin your sister’s career when it came out last year,” he said, “I doubt I have a shot at it.”
“Really? How sensitive of you, to bring up Heather’s most public scandal to augment your case,” she said drily. “Are you always this subtle, or is today a special occasion?”
“I don’t see the point in tiptoeing around things.”
She nodded. Again, Casey had the impression that he and Kristen Miller were on the same wavelength—if not the same side.
“Have you seen it?” she asked.
Casey raised his eyebrows. “Your sister’s sex tape?”
She nodded. “It was all over the Internet. She sued to stop the retail DVD version from being released, but it didn’t work.” Kristen gave him a direct look. “Well?”
Reluctantly, Casey rose. “Maybe I should leave.”
“Oh, no.” Narrow-eyed, Kristen pointed at him. “You’re staying right here, where I can keep an eye on you.”
“I can’t.” With faux helplessness, Casey spread his arms. A Heather Miller holiday song started playing over the diner’s sound system, reminding him of his mission. “I have work to do. Set visits to conduct. Phone calls to make. I can’t do that here.”
“You can if I rent you a booth.” With a gotcha gleam in her eyes, Kristen jutted her chin toward a corner booth near the cash register. “Two hundred dollars a day.”
He widened his eyes. “Two hundred? No, thanks.”
“It’s cheaper than a commercial space. If you could find one. During the holidays, most of the Realtors in town close up shop. Theirs is a summer business, really. Tourist rentals.”
“Technically, I don’t need a commercial space. I can get everything I need on set, where I can keep an eye on Heather.”
Kristen crossed her arms. “You can’t get access to me.”
“I don’t need access to you.”
“You do if you want to make any headway with my sister.”
Thinking it over, Casey gazed at her. “I doubt it.”
“Okay. Fine. Find out the truth the hard way, if you want to.” Wearing the most carefree expression he’d seen on her so far, Kristen handed him a menu. “I’ll be back for your order. I’ve neglected my customers too long already.”
Then, before Casey could even formulate a new approach, Kristen swept aside his neglected pie-in-a-jar, offered him a cheerful look, and flounced away across her diner . . . leaving him experiencing several contradictory revelations all at once.
First, he was pretty sure she thought (wrongly) that she’d outmaneuvered him, because she was wearing the same ridiculously cocksure look she’d had on while offering him her famous pie.
Second, he didn’t think she knew how to negotiate, because she was supposed to have made a counteroffer just now. Duh.
And third . . . well, third was the most damning of them all. Because third, Casey realized that Kristen Miller possessed a curvy derrière that had the power to make a man lose his mind altogether. Most likely, she’d adorned it in red lace, too.
Red lace to match her bra. Red lace to make him wonder . . .
Exactly what other surprises did Kristen Miller have in store for him, if Casey stuck around long enough to uncover them?
Chapter 5
Galaxy Diner, Kismet, Michigan
T-minus 20.5 days until Christmas
A few minutes later, Kristen looped back around, capably and conscientiously taking an order from another customer.
Casey watched her and felt duly mesmerized. She was feisty, gutsy, and quick on her feet. She was cute, well liked, and respected (even if she didn’t recognize a full-blown blizzard when one was raging outside her diner). She was . . . interesting.
He felt almost sorry to have already gained the upper hand with her (even if she didn’t know it yet). But Casey couldn’t go all soppy and sentimental now. He had a job to do.
Despite Kristen’s concerns, he didn’t expect that job to hurt her sister. Typically, he pulled off his intercessions without upsetting anyone—quite the opposite, in fact. Usually, people were happy to have had Casey involved. Although Heather Miller did have some explaining to do about the half-baked story she’d fed him about her problematic “little sister.” When Casey talked to Heather again, he intended to clarify matters—and to make it clear that he wanted honesty from her in the future.
Having finished up her stint with her other customer, Kristen passed by again. She trailed her fingertips over the countertop, absently tracing its edge as though reassuring herself it was still there, intact and invulnerable and hers.
Casey could relate. “I feel the same way about my watch.”
Kristen stopped. She glanced at him quizzically.
“Possessive. And proud.” He nodded at her fingers, still resting on the countertop. “Sometimes I can’t help checking to make sure it’s still there, just like you’re doing.”
An inexplicable defiance passed over her face. She whisked away her fingers. But she didn’t disagree. So he went on.
“It’s not that I never owned a watch before.” He nodded at its polished face. Its heavy band anchored his wrist with its comforting, familiar weight. “But usually they . . . disappeared.”
Her mouth quirked in an almost smile. “Forgetful much?”
“I was being nice. I mean they were stolen.”
“Oh. Multiple times?” A frown. “I know you have muggers in the big city, but to be hit over and over again like that—”
Kismet really was Mayberry Redux. “I grew up in foster care,” Casey told her curtly. He was sorry he’d mentioned this at all. “Things had a way of going missing. All I’m saying is, your diner is pretty great.” He grinned, pointedly gesturing at her. “Even if it is run by an amateur extortionist who wants way more than market value for a simple booth rental.”
But he was too late with his joke. Kristen was already giving him The Look. The gooey-eyed, distressed, pitying look. The sad foster kid look. The look that stripped him of who he was and turned him into a latter-day Oliver Twist with a suit, a cell phone, and several years’ more experience under his belt.
He hated The Look. It made him feel combative.
“But hey . . . maybe you’re just into fondling Formica,” Casey joked, wishing he’d never said anything—wishing he’d never felt that weird moment of connectedness with her. “I’m not judging.”
To his relief, Kristen grinned. “Don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I wasn’t into it at first. But then I started dating Mr. Clean, and that guy is all about taking care of the Formica.” She waggled her brows. “If you know what I mean.”
Casey laughed. “Kinky.”
“You’d better believe it. Me and Mr. Clean . . . whew! Hot!”
Her gaze met his, full of sass and brashness . . . and also compassion. Damn it. But suddenly Casey didn’t mind so much.
Then Kristen leaned over, peered at his watch, and lig
htly touched her fingertips to his wrist. A jolt went through him.
Stunned, Casey stared at her. But she didn’t seem to realize that she’d somehow delivered several volts of . . . something to him. Her gaze was fixed on his watch—the most enduring token of his success so far and the most difficult for anyone to boost without his noticing—and he had an unencumbered view of her smooth cheeks, straight nose, and downcast eyes. Her mouth was surprisingly lush, he noticed, feeling drawn to it again.
She glanced up. “It’s a very nice watch.”
He felt stupidly as though she’d approved of him. All of him. Absolutely and wholeheartedly. But that was ludicrous.
He wasn’t his watch. Just like she wasn’t her pie.
All the same, Casey heard himself say, in a rough and gullible voice, “Thanks. I’d like to try more pie-in-a-jar, please.” He glanced at the menu. “Pumpkin, this time.”
It wasn’t breakfast. It wasn’t healthy. It wasn’t even what he’d intended to order. But Casey couldn’t help it.
“Pumpkin?” Her gaze tangled with his. She seemed to hold her breath. “I thought you didn’t like my pie.”
“Meh.” He gave a careless gesture. “It had promise.”
His surrender was all in his tone, and you’d better believe she heard it. He would have been disappointed if she hadn’t.
She grinned again. Looking at her smile, Casey felt like a hero. He’d made that happen. It was his biggest coup today.
“You realize, of course,” Kristen said as he was inwardly exulting to himself, “that this means I win.”
That’s where she was wrong. So wrong.
Casey exhaled, feeling the electricity between them zap away. And . . . gone. “You had to spoil the moment, didn’t you?”
She blinked. “What moment?”
She really didn’t feel that connection between them, he realized. It was probably just as well. He moved his arm, taking away both his watch and his defenseless wrist with its defenseless nerve endings and its defenseless bare skin.
Kristen Miller had a very arresting way of touching someone. Just now, with him, she hadn’t even been trying. How in the world would her touch have felt if she’d been trying to make him feel as if he’d die without more of her hands on him?
“You didn’t win,” Casey pointed out, “because I still didn’t agree to rent your outrageously overpriced booth.”
“You will,” Kristen sang out. “After the pie kicks in.”
“We’ll see about that.” Casey watched her gleefully scratch down pumpkin pie on her order pad. Out of lingering curiosity, he asked, “How come you asked if I’d seen Heather’s video?”
An enquiring look. “Have you?”
“If I hadn’t,” he hedged, hoping to keep his options open, “I’d be the only man in this hemisphere who’d resisted.”
Kristen’s mouth turned downward. She nodded. “Probably.”
“So . . . why ask?”
“Oh.” Cheerfully, she put the end of her pen in her mouth. She lightly bit down on it, then smiled and took it away. “Well, because I was curious. And because I was considering . . . you, and that question happens to be my own personal litmus test.”
Casey didn’t get it. “Litmus test for . . . ?”
“I thought you were cute,” she clarified. “But I make it a policy never to sleep with any man who’s seen that sex tape.”
And she thought he’d seen it.
Realizing that, Casey wanted to slap his own dumb, purposely misleading mouth. This was what he got for hedging his bets. Sometimes you really couldn’t have it both ways.
Not often. But sometimes.
“That seems kind of . . . limiting,” he said blithely.
“It’s called ‘having standards.’ You should try it.”
“I do. That’s why I don’t like pie.”
“You just ordered pie!”
They were back to this again. “I was trying to be open-minded.” I was feeling empathetic toward you, just like you were toward me. “But there must be other diners. Other pie—”
“There’s no other pie like my pie,” Kristen said assuredly. “And there’s no other diner with a booth for rent like my diner with my booth for rent. It’s a limited-time offer, too, so . . .”
“I’ll take it.” He did, after all, have her right where he wanted her. It was a classic reversal. Because he’d threatened to leave earlier, she’d felt compelled to make him stay. That’s why Kristen thought she was winning. “But only for one-fifty.”
“One seventy-five,” she countered, giving him a sneaking suspicion that she did know how to negotiate. A little. Maybe he was still underestimating her. “And you agree to eat a jar of pie at that table, in public, every day you’re here.”
“Hey.” With a pseudo frown, he patted his lean midsection. “Are you trying to fatten me up?”
Kristen laughed. “As if. They’re small jars.”
But there was a flicker of interest in her gaze as she followed his movements. She took in his suit, his shirt . . . and his physique, all in turn. She might as well have had X-ray vision, because that’s how exposed he felt under her attentive gaze.
He liked it. He liked confident women, and he liked her.
Maybe he wasn’t the only one who was interested in something more than a business proposition, Casey reasoned. Or maybe Kristen had intuited the presence of his black boxer briefs and was imagining what they looked like on him, even now.
After all, turnabout was fair play.
“And while you’re here, you have to do your best to pretend eating pie is a semi-orgasmic experience for you,” Kristen added, seeming more like a savvy marketer than a woman who was picturing Casey in his skivvies. Her eyes lit up again. “Like an in-person advertisement for my pie-ina-jar.”
He grinned. “Can I add ketchup?”
“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”
“Can I get you to show me around town so I don’t get lost?”
She seemed taken aback. She recovered quickly, with an offhanded wave. “If all you want are directions, I noticed about twenty people who were willing to be your own personal Sherpas just now. You don’t need me.”
“Maybe I want you.”
She gave him a forthright look. “If you do, you don’t have to pretend you might get lost without me. You can just say so.”
“I have a terrible sense of direction.”
“I’m not a human compass.”
“You’re going to feel bad if I get lost in a blizzard.”
Her smile dazzled him. “It wasn’t a blizzard.”
“Says you. I couldn’t see my hand in front of my face.”
“You just need to get out in the weather some more. Really get acclimated. Try snowshoeing. Or skiing. Or ice-skating. You could even take lessons! After a few hours, you’ll—”
“Be a mansicle. I’m not built for cold weather.”
She didn’t even pause to consider the potential double entendre contained in that sentence, much less crack another smile—the smile Casey suddenly craved. He was really slipping.
“The bottom line is, I’ve got too much to do to be a babysitter.” Kristen turned around, hung his order ticket, then scoured her diner with an assessing look. She returned her gaze to him. “No matter how handsome you look while asking.”
He couldn’t help preening. “Thanks.”
“Or how transparently obvious you are while doing it,” she added, dishing out a shrewd look. “I already told you—I’m not going to help you bring down my sister’s TV special. If you want to skulk around town digging up dirt on Heather—”
“That’s not my intention,” he said sharply, wondering why his usual charm seemed to malfunction around her. “I—”
“—you’ll have to do it with GPS. Or an old-timey map. Because I doubt anyone around here will help you with that.”
While Casey contemplated that potential setback, a momentary silence fell in the diner. Conversatio
ns nearby lapsed. Kristen appeared triumphant. Then, an instant later . . .
“I’ll help him,” someone said from behind Casey.
Kristen’s gaze swiveled to a spot over his shoulder. She spied the person who’d volunteered to offer guide services.
Another Christmas song kicked in over the sound system, reminding Casey that he was dealing with Christmas’s number one fan: Kristen. She wasn’t his soul mate. She couldn’t be. She’d willingly programmed “Last Christmas” by Wham! on her diner’s sound system. Any pairing between them was doomed.
But finding true love wasn’t his mission in Kismet. Working his magic on Heather’s problematic holiday TV special was.
So, ready to take the next necessary step in this job, Casey swiveled on his chair with his hand outstretched.
“Thanks!” he began, prepared to meet and enchant his new guide-about-town. “I—”
Abruptly, he recognized the person standing there.
The jovial greeting he’d planned stuttered to a stop.
“Aw, hell,” Casey grumbled instead. “It’s you.”
“You who?” Kristen asked, all sweetness and spice.
But Casey didn’t want to tell her. Because this Heather Miller job had just gotten one thousand percent more complicated, and he needed to regroup. Not because this job was happening at Christmastime. Not because Casey had a sudden-onset case of the hots for a certain diva pop star’s cute younger sister. And not because it was snowing outside.
This job had just gotten more complicated because Casey wasn’t the only troubleshooter in town. Apparently, the agency was double-dipping. Because Shane Maresca was in Kismet, too.
“You . . . you, apparently. Hi.” In lieu of Casey’s expected introduction, Kristen offered Shane a handshake. “Welcome to the Galaxy Diner.” She shot a puzzled glance at Casey. “I didn’t think Casey knew anyone in town. He’s lucky you’re here.”
Lucky. Ha. In the wake of that massive misstatement, Shane Maresca, pro that he was, managed to keep a straight face. Die-hard equanimity was a perennial in his bag of tricks.
“Pleased to meet you, Kristen,” he said. “I love your diner. Former fifties gas station, right?”
