“Why didn’t you tell me that you wanted to buy the property?” She sounded annoyed.
“I was too busy convincing you I wasn’t an ax murderer.” And controlling my lust. He was amazed at how much he wanted her. Helping her on with her coat had been like foreplay, at least for him. Obviously not for her.
“What do you do for a living?”
He took it as a good sign that she was asking personal questions. “I do renovation and restoration of houses.”
“Then why don’t you have some sort of sign painted on your truck?” That seemed to irritate her, too, as if she resented not being able to identify his job without asking.
“Don’t need to in Big Knob. Since Abe Danbury retired, I’m the only guy who does that kind of thing. If anybody needs work done on their house, they call me.” He tried to think of ways to make his job sound more interesting. “I was just asked to build a fold-out sex bench.”
She stumbled while stepping up to the curb and he grabbed her arm, glad for the chance to play hero.
Instead of thanking him, she stared at him as if he were some kind of pervert. “What did you say?”
“I’m building a sex bench. It will fold out of the wall when needed, and go back in when it’s not.” He waited for the glow of desire to light her eyes, but nothing was happening. “See, it’s better than a chair, because it’s made specifically for—”
“Okay, okay. I get the idea.” She sounded completely turned off. “Let’s have breakfast.”
He was so confused. Twenty-four hours ago a discussion of a sex bench with any available woman in town would have led to her requesting a similar bench plus a demonstration of how it worked. He might need to reconsider his approach now that he looked less like a movie star and more like an extra.
At least she couldn’t fault him on manners. He opened the door of the Hob Knob and let her go in first. She moaned softly as the scent of fresh cinnamon rolls and coffee rolled over them. That little moan was enough to fill his brain with X-rated thoughts and jack up his already excited penis.
He had to cool it, though, because he was about to face Abe’s wife Madeline, who waitressed weekday mornings at the Hob Knob. He’d apprenticed himself to Abe ten years ago when Abe had been close to retirement. While Abe had taught Sean all he knew about restoring houses, Madeline had taken every opportunity to lecture Sean about the evils of sex before marriage.
About a year ago he’d stopped sleeping with every woman who asked him, which meant he and Madeline got along much better. She and Abe were the closest thing to family Sean had, and Madeline would be very curious about why he was buying breakfast for the new girl in town.
“By the way, I’m paying for my own breakfast,” Maggie said.
Well, that settled that.
Maggie was dizzy with hunger and it seemed she’d come to the right place to do something about it. A plump, white-haired woman who radiated comfort showed them to a table by a window where red-checked curtains were tied back with white rickrack. Cream was on the table and coffee was poured the minute they sat down. The waitress didn’t even ask, just poured.
Sean’s description of fluffy scrambled eggs and cinnamon rolls had made such a vivid impression that Maggie ordered them without opening the menu. Sean did the same. Belatedly Maggie remembered she hadn’t asked for separate checks. Oh, well. She had a company credit card, so she could pay for both. H.G. wouldn’t care so long as she brought home the goods.
Maybe she’d looked as hungry as she felt, because the cinnamon rolls appeared seconds later. They were huge, the kind that required a fork and copious napkins. Maggie dug in with a sigh of pleasure.
“Was I right about the rolls?” Sean asked.
“Mm.” Her mouth full, Maggie nodded. She was too busy wolfing down the roll to make conversation. Nothing had ever tasted this good to her, and she’d had some five-star meals thanks to H.G. when she’d first hired on at SaveALot, back when he’d had more faith in her potential. Recently those invitations had dwindled.
While she ate, Sean tilted his head toward a table across the room. “Those two guys? Jeff’s the owner of the Big Knobian Bar and Hank’s a mechanic over at the gas station. Horn dogs, both of them. If either one of them asks you out, say no.”
She nodded, not wanting to stop eating in order to explain that she wouldn’t be dating anyone on this trip, horn dog or not.
“And over in the corner is Johnny, who manages the Knobby Nook. He may look harmless, but I wouldn’t want him dating my sister, if I had a sister.”
She nodded again. Very strange, that Sean would be so intent on warning her about the guys in the diner as if they’d be ready to pounce on her at any minute. They’d given her a casual glance when she’d arrived, but not a one had acted particularly interested. Long ago she’d accepted the fact that she wasn’t the kind of woman who elicited wolf whistles and hot stares.
As she was polishing off the roll, the eggs arrived paired up with fragrant hash browns and two strips of crispy bacon.
The waitress balanced the plates on one arm and held the coffee carafe in her other hand. She’d obviously been at this a long time. “Another cinnamon roll?” she asked as she poured more coffee.
Maggie swallowed the bite she’d been savoring. “Yes, please. Somebody should franchise those rolls.” She was already thinking there should be a cinnamon roll concession at every SaveALot in the country.
The waitress laughed. “I’ll tell Joe, but don’t hold your breath. He hates big business. He and Sherry moved here to get away from that kind of thing.”
“Oh.” Maggie decided she might not want to mention why she was in town to either Joe or Sherry. They might cut off her supply of cinnamon rolls.
“Madeline, I’d like you to meet Maggie Grady,” Sean said. “Maggie, this is Madeline Danbury. I apprenticed with her husband Abe a few years back. Abe’s also our mayor here in Big Knob.”
“And doesn’t he love the job,” Madeline said. “Nice to meet you, Maggie. You here for long?”
“A few days.”
Madeline nodded. “Staying with Sean?”
“No! I mean, uh, I’m staying…um, that is, I haven’t—”
“We have an extra room you could use,” Madeline said. “There aren’t any hotels or motels anywhere close.”
“Sean mentioned that.” Maggie thought quickly. She’d hoped to get some housing help from Denise, but Denise obviously had a quick temper and was prone to revenge plots. Maggie decided she might do better with the woman who was in good with Joe and Sherry, keeper of the cinnamon rolls. “I’d be happy to pay rent,” she said.
“Don’t be silly. The room’s going to waste. Our son’s married and living in Indianapolis. Sean stayed with us for a while, but his extracurricular activities forced me to ask him to get his own place.”
Maggie glanced over at Sean, who was turning red. “Boys will be boys,” Maggie said, but she had trouble picturing this particular guy with his funny-looking glasses and his double chin cutting a swath through the female population.
Of course, looks weren’t everything. Maybe he was an exceptional lover disguised as a nerd without a clue. That thought gave her a twinge of sexual desire, but it was a controllable twinge.
“Fortunately he’s not like that anymore.” Madeline patted Sean on the shoulder. “He’s reformed the last year or so. I think he’s saving himself for the right woman.”
Sean looked embarrassed. “I’ve been concentrating on work, is all.”
“Which is good.” Madeline peered at him. “But I’ve been meaning to ask ever since you came in this morning, why are you wearing those glasses?”
“They’re temporary. For some reason my eyes aren’t focusing right, and a friend loaned me these. It’s probably eyestrain. It’ll go away.”
So he hadn’t worn glasses all his life. That made the lover boy image a little easier for Maggie to imagine. When he was younger he’d probably been in better physical shape, too, and ma
ybe he’d had a different barber.
“Eyestrain?” Madeline didn’t look convinced. “That doesn’t seem right, somehow. I can’t imagine how your eyes would suddenly go bad.” Then she gasped and clapped a hand over her mouth.
Sean stared at her. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Madeline blushed and looked away. “Excuse me. I need to check on my other customers.” She started to leave the table.
Sean caught her arm. “Hey, Madeline, you can’t gasp like that and not tell me why.”
“I most certainly can. It’s too embarrassing to say out loud.”
“What is?”
She leaned down and whispered in his ear.
Sean let out a bark of laughter. “Trust me, that’s not the problem.”
“You wouldn’t tell me even if it was! I don’t know which is worse, the way you were carrying on before, or what you’re up to now.” Her color high, Madeline bustled away.
Sean laughed again and shook his head.
He looked good when he laughed, Maggie thought. And she was dying of curiosity as to what Madeline had said to him. She waited, hoping he’d explain.
Instead he picked up his coffee mug and drained it. Then he glanced out the window, obviously still struggling with his amusement. “It’s raining again.”
“You’re not going to tell me what she said, are you?”
He looked at her, laughter brimming in his green eyes. “Probably shouldn’t.”
“Come on.”
“She thinks my eye problem is related to the sort of activity that will make you go blind.”
“Omigod.” Maggie couldn’t help laughing with him. “Nobody thinks that anymore.”
“She does. I respect the hell out of her, but she’s very conservative. According to her, nobody should have sex until they’re married. She used to get so upset with me.”
“I take it you were on the wild side.”
“Wild by Madeline’s standards, anyway.”
She still had trouble imagining it, but not as much trouble as before. He did have great eyes and a good smile. “But Madeline said you’ve changed.”
“Yeah. It was all just sex, which got old. I wanted…well, never mind. TMI, right?”
“No problem.” Maggie’s suspicion that he was a great lover increased, which gave her a stronger twinge of lust. She repressed it. She didn’t need lustful twinges right now. What she needed was to buy this land and get out of Big Knob.
In the meantime, though, she had another cinnamon roll on order and she’d received no call regarding the property’s owner. If she and Sean would be in the Hob Knob a while longer, they could use another topic of conversation besides sex. Only one thing came to mind.
“I assume you plan to develop the property, as well,” she said.
“Not exactly.”
She looked at him in surprise. “Surely you weren’t planning to renovate that dilapidated wreck of a house?”
A shadow passed over his face and was gone. “I thought I’d try.”
“Didn’t you see that old movie, The Money Pit? That’s what that monstrosity would be. It’s been sitting vacant for years, according to Denise.”
“I know.” He twirled his mug back and forth between his hands. They looked capable, adept at reshaping a house and giving it new life.
“I suppose you’d welcome the challenge.” She thought about the spooky old house she’d seen this morning.
“I would, as a matter of fact. It has potential.”
“And then what? Sell it?” She couldn’t imagine what a single guy like Sean would want with a renovated Victorian that had to be at least twenty-five-hundred square feet.
“No, I thought I’d live in it.”
“Really? You and what army?”
“I hadn’t gone that far in my thinking. I figured the house had to come first. Then I’d worry about the rest.”
“A wife and kids.” She could see that. He’d be the sort to help his kids build a tree house, and he could fix things around the house for his wife. If he happened to be good in bed, too, then he was excellent husband material. Maybe that explained the interest of the women in town.
He seemed uncomfortable with her wife and kids comment. “I don’t know. Like I said, the house had to be the first step. Maybe you’re right that it’ll suck me dry and I’ll have to unload it.”
She leaned forward. “Count on it, Sean. This isn’t a sensible move on your part. That thing could have structural problems, dry rot, faulty wiring, plumbing hassles, you name it.”
“You sound as if you know something about that.”
She threw her hands up. “Don’t I ever! My parents live in a firetrap like that. It’s not a Victorian. It’s a two-flat brick albatross in Chicago that was built in the eighteen-nineties. They don’t have the money to fix it, but they refuse to go anywhere else. I have to hope they don’t die in their bed someday.”
“Maybe they’re attached to it.”
“Sure they are. I can’t pry them out with a crowbar, and I’ve quit trying. But you’re not attached to this place yet. Let me do you a favor and buy that property so my company can bulldoze that house. Let SaveALot save you from the biggest mistake of your life.”
He was silent for a moment. “What if I found you some other property that was just as good? Maybe something out by Deep Lake.”
“According to Denise, that’s mostly state land out there. What’s available is marshy and not suitable for building on. That’s the beauty of this plan. If I nab the abandoned property, MegaMart won’t be able to put up a competing store anywhere nearby.”
A muscle twitched in his jaw. “I don’t want you to have it.”
“Why not?” The minute she asked the question, she didn’t want to know the answer. It would complicate things.
“I grew up in that house.”
Sure enough, she didn’t want to know that. And there was no way she could un-know it, now. If she took that place away from him, she’d be stomping on his dream. If only she could convince him it wasn’t a dream worth having.
Chapter Six
Sean hadn’t meant to admit any sentimental attachment to the house. That made him vulnerable, and he already felt damned vulnerable with his newly acquired bad eyesight, bad hair and double chin. He wanted to impress Maggie, not make her feel sorry for him.
When compassion filled her blue eyes, he hurried to repair the damage he’d done. “That’s only a small part of the reason I want to restore the property, though.”
“But I get it,” she said. “I grew up in the two-flat in Chicago, and I would love to make it look nice again, although I’ve never personally seen it looking good. It was already a wreck when they bought it.”
“The Victorian was going downhill, too, but I’ve always had this image of what it could look like. My father—” He stopped himself from letting more personal information leak out. She didn’t have to know his father had been a dreamer who’d promised to restore the property to its former elegance. In the end, he hadn’t even been able to keep up the mortgage payments.
Many people in town still remembered that Patrick Madigan had left town the day after his family was evicted from the old house. Sean had spent years convincing everyone that he didn’t give a damn what his father had done. If he wanted to buy the property and restore it, so what? He just hated to see a piece of architectural history disappear.
“I do understand the impulse,” Maggie said. “Really I do. But are you honestly prepared to devote years to some old building?”
He couldn’t figure out how to explain his dedication to the house without sounding like an idiot, so he fell back on another argument. “It’s not only the house. It’s easily the best location in town. From the back you get a great view of Big Knob.”
“I know. I walked back there. And you’re right, somebody should be taking advantage of that besides the kids turning it into a make-out spot.”
He sighed. “Yeah, I know they do that
. I—” He paused as Dorcas and Ambrose came into the diner looking perky as hell.
They spoke to Madeline, who brought them over to a table right next to Sean and Maggie. Sean didn’t think that was an accident. He’d bet they’d been looking for him all over town so they could get a first-hand view of their handiwork.
He shouldn’t be upset with them. They’d only done what he’d asked, but he wished they’d given him more warning about their program. He should have asked for references before he jumped into this deal. He should have allowed himself to think about it longer, should have asked a lot more questions about how everything worked. He should have asked if they were planning to shrink his dick, for crying out loud.
And the timing sucked. Right when he needed to charm the pants off a woman, he didn’t have the goods. He could so easily save his property if he looked the way he used to. No woman had been able to resist him before, and Maggie would have been no different.
“Why, Sean!” Dorcas pretended that she’d just realized they were seated close to each other. “What a nice surprise.”
He had no choice but to greet them politely and introduce Maggie. Of course Dorcas asked what had brought her to town, even though she probably knew damned well.
“Business,” Maggie said.
Maggie was no fool, Sean thought. She’d already discovered that not everyone was in favor of her plan. Come to think of it, the property would have to be rezoned. Sean might be able to drum up some support for blocking the rezoning request. But that would be a last resort. He’d rather talk her out of it the old-fashioned way, while they were both naked.
“What kind of business?” Ambrose sounded as eager as a Chamber of Commerce representative, like he had no idea what was going on.
Sean made a mental note that Dorcas and Ambrose were sneakier than they looked.
Maggie still seemed wary. “I work for SaveALot.”
“Is there a SaveALot around here?” Dorcas asked. “I don’t remember seeing one.”
“Not yet,” Maggie said. “I’m scouting locations.”
Over Hexed (The Hex Series Book 1) Page 6