Daisy's Secret Billionaire

by Francesca Lane

  On the one hand, he wasn’t here for romance. Had too much on his mind to give a woman his full attention anyway. On the other, ever since he spotted her on that ladder—and then later on the beach—Jake had found himself captivated by the petite woman who, at every turn, seemed to want to beat him up.

  He grinned. He could offer her an olive branch in the form of a piping hot cup of coffee …

  A masculine voice carried into the house from somewhere outside. Jake pulled himself away from the westward window toward the sounds of work and voices. He saw them through the window. Daisy was stepping into her mother’s house through the deck, her so-called handyman following her inside.

  Jake licked his top row of teeth, wondering. As far as he knew, she had not yet dealt with the city and their requirements for removing the red tag status of her home. If she were to be found trampling around inside, the powers that be wouldn’t be so happy about it. Just might fine her.

  He drained his coffee cup, and on his way out of the house, left it on a corner table. He slipped his feet into a pair of suede and canvas boat shoes and stepped outside. Someone had to warn Daisy about the predicament she was putting herself—and Rafael—in. His shoulder tensed as he approached them. Who was he kidding? That guy could get arrested for all he cared.

  “So anyway,” Daisy was saying, “if Serge could be here early Friday morning, then I could leave the house open all—”

  Jake stood in the doorway of Daisy’s home, his arms folded at his chest. “Hello, roomie.”

  Daisy’s expression darkened. “Did you want something?”

  He flicked a glance at the guy by her side. Was standing pretty close for a handyman. “I’m headed over to the planning office.” It was a lie, but she didn’t have to know that. “Figured I’d offer to check in on your permit situation.”

  She shook her head. “Not necessary.”

  Jake opened his mouth to respond when Rafael cut in, completely ignoring him. He touched Daisy’s shoulder, his hand lingering. “I’ll give my brother your message. I have to stop by a job in town, but I will return.” Rafael cast a warning glance at Jake before hopping off the porch.

  After Rafael drove away, Daisy pivoted. Even with her face tipped upward, her chin barely reached the top of his chest. “You feeling really good about yourself right now?”

  “What did I do?”

  “Oh, come off it, Jake. I saw you giving Rafael the evil eye. What’s that all about?”

  He chuckled. “The evil eye? Like a cartoon character?”

  She fumed.

  He looked down at her through squinting eyes and wagged his pointer finger at her. “Wait. There. Okay, I got it.”

  “Got what?”

  “You just gave me the evil eye.” He cracked up. “Now I know what you were referring to.”

  She grabbed his finger and gave it a hard twist.

  “Ouch!” Jake pulled his hand away, shaking it in the air. “You’re brutal.”

  She stared at him, her chest rising and falling. A millimeter of a smile showing up, briefly, on her face. “I’ve got work to do.”

  Her words sobered him. She was right. Her mother’s house appeared to have escaped fairly unscathed by the fire, but he could tell by the condition of the place that it likely had far needier matters hiding beneath its not-so-sunny facade. The plumbing and wiring was probably at least as old as Wren, unless she and her husband built the place, which he doubted.

  She’d been watching him in silence and Jake had to force himself not to reach over and graze her cheek with a brush of his hand. He was used to women clinging to him, of randomly showing up, dressed to kill. Daisy, though, was different. To her, he was still the jerk kid next door who, apparently, ignored her for years.

  Jake planted his feet firmly instead. “Sorry to have interrupted your … work.”

  “That supposed to be an apology?”

  It was supposed to be … Apparently, though, he couldn’t even get an apology right. He took a step back, his mouth grim. “Sorry.” Then Jake turned, hopped over the rail onto the sand below, and headed back into his own mess of a house.

  Daisy yawned. Though it was barely after noon, she had been up since sunrise planning her strategy and implementing it the best she could. After meeting with Rafael this morning, followed by that annoying exchange with Jake, she headed to the planning department to discuss the ridiculous red tag left on her door.

  The woman at the counter peered over the counter at her like a school principal at an elementary school child. No way was this planning department counter regulation height. Daisy stretched herself up on her tiptoes, noticing the tug on her calf muscles. Surely there was some kind of accessibility regulation against this treatment …

  The clerk, whose name tag read Mel, had the longest nails Daisy had ever seen. She shuffled through a stack of papers with her fingers tilted backward, those claws slicing the air. She stopped on a document and slid it out of the stack with the pads of her fingers. “Found it.”

  Daisy’s breath hitched.

  The woman pursed her lips, deep gouges forming around her mouth. She tapped the file with those curved nails as if it would help her better understand the document in front of her.

  “Says here that the exterior siding isn’t regulation.”

  Daisy frowned. “Okay.”

  The woman snapped a look up. “You can’t live in it until it’s fixed.”

  “I see.” She didn’t really, but a warning in her gut kept her from crossing the line with this woman. “What is the process for having the red tag removed?”

  “I just said it. You need to fix it.”

  Daisy nodded. “Yes, of course. So I guess my question is, once the siding has been replaced, do I come here and ask for an inspector to come by and approve the work?”

  The woman sighed, her neck sinking into her shoulders. “First, your contractor will need to apply for the permit by submitting the plans. Once it has been approved, and the work has been done, he can let our office know.”

  She went silent.

  Daisy swallowed. “And so it’s at that point that someone will come out to inspect the work, right?”

  “Right.” The woman tossed the file into a drawer and looked over Daisy’s shoulder at the next person in line.

  Daisy stayed put. “Before I go, can you tell me who it was that came out and inspected the house in the first place?”

  The woman reached for the file, pursing her lips as she looked it over. “Doesn’t say, but it looks like they’re getting somebody out there today. You can ask him when he gets there. Next!”

  An hour later, Daisy stood high up her mother’s ladder. From what she’d gathered, there was nothing at all wrong with the eaves of the home. Curls of dried paint dripped from them, which further proved to her that those boards had been on the home a long, long time. Probably original.

  The crunch of tires on the drive alerted her. From this side, she couldn’t see who had driven up. For all she knew it was a tourist using her driveway to turn around. Still, she tensed. It could also be that inspector the woman at the planning department mentioned.

  A man’s voice interrupted her concentration. “Well, hullo there.”

  She turned, bumping the bill of her hat on a fascia board. “Can I help you?”

  The man at the foot of her ladder peered up at her through round spectacles. With his starched white-collared shirt, pocket protector, and short cropped hair that stuck up like fence posts, he reminded her of an animated character.

  “I’m here to take a look at the work that’s being done on your wall here.”

  Daisy frowned. “Who are you?”

  “Jon Carnes. With city planning.”

  “About that … I just came from there and was told that a permit had to be applied for first.”

  “That’s true information.”

  Daisy leaned her hands on the top rung. “My, uh, contractor is working on it, well, he will be soon.” She didn’t w
ant to outright lie.

  He chuckled. “You know, you’re much too young and pretty to be up there on that ladder. Why don’t you hop down here and we’ll go over the process, hm?”

  Daisy was about to tell him where he could stick his process when she noticed Jake coming around the side of the house. If this inspector was a friend of his, she very well might not be able to hold her tongue much longer.

  Carnes spun on his rubber heels. “Well, if it ain’t Jake Morelli.” He chuckled louder this time. “I suppose you’ve come over here to save the damsel. You’d better get her down from there before she hurts herself.”

  “Hello, Jon.” Jake lifted his chin in Daisy’s direction before swinging it back in the inspector’s direction. He was holding a small plastic-wrapped plate. “I was just stopping by to see if my neighbor here would like this sandwich I made.”

  Carnes’s brows lifted so high Daisy thought his hair might slide off his head. He opened his mouth but slapped it shut again. After their verbal sparring of the morning, she didn’t particularly want to accept anything from Jake. But then again, he had just shut down Mr. Inspector’s derogatory mouth. Why not be grateful?

  “Thank you, Jake. I am pretty hungry—how’d you know?”

  He grinned up at her. “A hunch.”

  Carnes interjected himself into the mix. “I’ve got another appointment to get to. See that your contractor gets that permit application in soon.” He shoved his notepad back into the pocket in his shirt, nodded at Jake, then trudged off.

  When he’d gone, Jake held the ladder as Daisy climbed down. She jumped onto the deck from two rungs up.

  “You have a thing with ladders, don’t you?” Jake quipped.

  “Maybe I was up there planning on where to put the turret.”

  He laughed and handed her the sandwich. “Good one. Hope you like turkey.”

  She tilted her head, eyeing him. It would be so easy to turn that statement around …

  He laughed again and pointed at her. “Don’t say it.”

  This time, she couldn’t help but laugh at him. She plunked herself onto a little patch of sand and dug into the sandwich, thankful for sustenance. With each bite, she felt tension ebbing away.

  Jake stood nearby, looking out to sea, seemingly at ease. She tilted up her face until the sun warmed her cheeks. Then she shaded her eyes. “You really didn’t mean to bring this out to me, did you?”

  Slowly, he brought his gaze to her. “Maybe.” In a moment of perfect timing, his stomach growled.

  She swallowed another bite, nursing a smile. “Really is good.”

  “You’re enjoying this.”

  “I am.”

  He swiveled around, leaning a hip against the wall of the house. “Fine. I will admit that I made that sandwich for myself.”

  “Really.”

  He pushed off the house. “When I saw that guy drive up, I knew there’d be trouble. He’s been around since I was a kid.” Jake paused, then lowered his voice, which nearly sounded like a growl. “Never could stand that guy’s arrogance.”

  Daisy sobered. She’d come here thinking she would fix things up and be on her way. But the wheels of Colibri had memories, apparently. That and governmental red tape, just like the big city. Dread trickled through her. “Thank you,” she said, simply. At this moment, he wasn’t the jerk teenager who made her feel small and invisible, but the neighbor who was being, well, neighborly. She appreciated that.

  “I have a confession to make.”

  “I can’t wait.”

  “There’s this memory I have, though it’s pretty watery.” Jake darted his gaze out to the sea, his eyes shifting, as if uncomfortable. He swung it back to her. “Daisy, did you ask me out once?”

  Her appetite disappeared. Daisy dropped the rest of the sandwich onto a napkin, her cheeks suddenly blazing. She had imagined this moment for years, only she would be gorgeous and rich and really, really nice. He’d be fat. Poor. Maybe even have a bald spot. Boy, would he be sorry when he realized he could have had … her!

  Instead, he was still hot. She was still short. And she felt downright ornery.

  He continued. “I turned you down, didn’t I?”

  Sometimes facing a terrible memory was a way of weakening its power. She exhaled. “Yeah, Jake, you did. I asked you to take me to my freshman dance.”

  He frowned, the whole of it marring his beautiful face. “What did I say?”

  “You said, ‘No thanks.’”

  He winced. “Ouch. I was an—”

  “Yes. You were.”

  Jake groaned a sigh. He lowered himself onto the deck next to her and turned, looking fully into her eyes. “I’m the one who missed out. I’m sorry I did that to you, Daisy.”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “Doesn’t make me any less of a jerk.”

  She slid a glance at him. “Apologizing about it does, though.”

  They sat next to each other for a few minutes, staring at the sea, both caught up in their own heads. After some time had passed, Jake said, “May I ask you a question?”

  His voice yanked her out of her musings.

  His eyes steadied on hers. “Why isn’t your mother’s insurance company handling all of this for you?”

  Daisy broke eye contact with him. She picked up the sandwich again and took the last bite of it, the events of the past few weeks settling on her shoulders. She sighed. “Not using any. My mother made the decision a while ago to drop the coverage to the bare minimum. She also raised the deductible to an outrageous sum. She’s petrified that they’ll raise the rates even higher if I were to call them.” She shrugged and swung her gaze up to meet his. “Thought I could come out here and just take care of it myself, but I guess that’s not working out as expected.”

  A range of emotions passed across his face, but Daisy didn’t care if she’d shocked him. She came to do a job, and though she had hit some bumps along the way, she had no thought of giving up now.

  He squatted down on his haunches, the strength in his quads apparent. She nearly lost her ability to breathe.

  “Tell you what,” he said, face-to-face with her now. “Let me apply for the permit for you. I’ll draw up some plans and stop over there in the morning. Won’t leave until they hand it to me.”

  Man, how she needed some water. She licked her lips, aware of him watching her. “Why would you do that, Jake?”

  He quirked a smile at her. “Maybe ’cause I’m sick of looking at this broken-down place.”

  Daisy narrowed her eyes and laughed. “Fine. You win. I’ll take you up on that!” Then she gave him a playful shove on his shoulder and watched him tumble backwards onto the sand.

  Four

  The next morning, Jake stood in line at the city planning office thinking about Daisy. When he’d learned about her predicament with insurance—brought on by her mother’s decisions—instinct wanted to chastise her in one breath and scoop her up in his arms the next. Of all the crazy things. She was actually trying to fix up the place and deal with the city herself. Well, with the help of that pretty-boy handyman she’d hired.

  Jake wanted to roll his eyes, but considering he was inside a government office waiting his turn, he controlled himself. That and the fact that he was a grown man. His mind reflected back on Daisy eating that sandwich he’d brought her, her expression a mix between crestfallen and pride. When she’d told him her story, he felt ill-equipped to walk that tightrope of emotion and unable to take that first step. But then she had gifted him with a wide-eyed gaze, probably the first time he had seen her let down her guard since they had become … reacquainted.

  And he couldn’t help her fast enough.

  The person in front of him moved away from the counter and he stepped up.

  “Jake Morelli!” the clerk said. “How’re you doing, handsome?”

  He grinned. “Never been better, Mel. Nice to see you again.”

  The woman dropped her pen on the counter and walked around it.
Jake had been to the planning office many times with his father, and in this case, it was good to see that some things never changed.

  “Oh you are a sight for sore eyes!” Mel hugged him hard against her full chest, squeezing the air right out of his lungs. As a kid, he was no match for Mel’s powerful embrace, his face often landing awkwardly in her cleavage. Embarrassed him to no end back then, although he vaguely remembered bragging about it later as a teenager.

  When she released him, he chuckled. “You look exactly the same, Mel. And your hugs haven’t changed much either.”

  She was on her way back to her desk when she stopped short. “Much? You want me to hug you again?”

  Silence fell between them and she broke out in that belly laugh of hers. He watched her take her place behind the counter, slip on her reading glasses, still sighing from laughter.

  “Now,” she said, “what can I help you with? You adding on to your parents’ old place, God rest their souls?” She made the sign of the cross on herself.

  “I’m not here for myself, Mel, but for my neighbor.”

  She scrutinized him. “Your neighbor?”

  “Yes. Wren Mcafee owns the house next door and the place experienced a fire not long ago. Are you aware of it?”

  “My, yes. I read about that in the paper. If you’re here for her, then she must’ve survived that stroke. My goodness! That was sad to hear about.”

  He pushed aside his personal feelings about Wren. “Yes, yes, she did. Her daughter Daisy is in town, trying to get the place fixed up, but she needs a permit for some exterior siding. Can you help us out?” He slid an application in front of her.

  Mel sighed and placed one arm on top of the other on the counter. “Now what’re you doing working on such an itty-bitty project? Didn’t I read somewhere that you’re in the big time now? That you’ve got your own company down in the City of Angels, and you’re building skyscrapers and all kinds of state-of-the-art buildings?”

  He smiled at her, glad that’s all she’d read. “Never too busy to help a … friend.”