by Maria Luis
“Fortune’s Bay, you mean?” Daisy tilted her head, as though tossing the question around in her head. “Quaint, I guess. It’s small-town living at its finest. Everyone getting in each other’s business, the same twenty kids in every one of your classes.”
New Orleans, for as big as the city was, had felt small, cliquish. Reese had hated it. It hadn’t helped that the school you attended was dependent upon the size of your family’s wallet. Reese’s parents had never been well-off. His dad had worked on the oil rigs in the Gulf before ending up on permanent disability, and his mother had drilled away so many overtime hours as a nurse that he’d rarely seen her as a kid. His family had never been short on love, though. Fortunately for his parents’ wallets, he’d earned a scholarship to one of the top private schools in the city—and had promptly found himself on the outs of every social clique there was.
He didn’t have enough money.
He’d gone to public school from kindergarten to eighth grades, making him the odd duck out in high school.
He hadn’t been loud and boisterous, but rather quiet and self-contained.
Reese had always kept his emotions on lockdown—until now.
His fortune was self-made, and while Daisy wasn’t the type of woman to be swayed by dollar bills—no matter how much she liked to tease him otherwise—he knew that his financial state was no longer a strike against him. Not in the way that being poor had been.
If he’d learned nothing else in school, it was that being savvy was your best tool in life, which led him to the fact that . . .
Reese wasn’t the biggest talker, but he was a firm believer in letting actions speak louder than words. He wasn’t the kind of guy to force someone into a relationship that was unwanted. That kind of power trip wasn’t in his DNA, especially as he’d found himself on the receiving end of the wrong kind of attention while growing up.
No, he wasn’t a bully.
But he wanted Daisy Mae, and he refused to let her waltz away from his life without a fight.
She thought him insufferable? Then she was going to find herself meeting Gentleman Reese, starting now.
She believed he didn’t think she could handle more responsibilities? What brilliant timing, because he’d just made the purchase of a lifetime and he was willing to bet everything, his heart included, on her warming up to the job like a natural.
And if she changed her mind and realized that he wasn’t only a boss and friend to her, but someone she could potentially love as well? He wouldn’t dare utter a complaint, not when he could finally love her openly the way he’d wanted to do for years.
It was time to take a risk, a gamble, on the chance of everything going to hell in a handbasket.
Reese tipped his face up to soak in the warm, April sun. Then he dropped the bomb: “You think a family would feel like wanting to take a water taxi back and forth from Fortune’s Bay each day?”
Silence greeted him, interspersed with the whooshing of the palm trees in the breeze and the gentle lapping of the sea, casting its watery fingers over the crystallized sand. When she spoke, hesitation coated her voice like thick honey. “Reese.” He turned just in time to see her wet her bottom lip with her tongue. “What did you . . . what did you do?”
Feeling the absurd need to rub his hands together, he spun on his heel and started up the stone steps toward the house. Over his shoulder, he called out, “I’m putting you in charge.”
“Putting me in charge—” She broke off, and he could hear her shoes scrabbling over the stones to catch up to him.
One . . .
Two . . .
Reese bit back a grin. Slowed his pace so she could catch him.
Right on time—here we go . . .
Her hand linked around his arm and she threw her whole weight into pulling him to a stop.
He went willingly.
“Oh!”
One moment she was holding onto his arm, and in the next they were flying down toward concrete. He hooked an arm around her slim back, drawing her in toward his body, breaking her fall just before she would have crash-landed.
Reese took the reins on the crash-landing instead, his tailbone meeting stone with a dizzying crack! Or maybe that was the back of his skull making contact.
A curse exploded from his mouth, and then all he could see was Daisy.
The curtain of her auburn hair going every which way in complete disarray.
Her nearly black eyes blinking down on him.
And, oh man, but she was straddling him now, pressing her hands to his face, his temple, his neck, right over his pulse—like she was halfway expecting him to be a corpse.
“I’m alive,” he croaked. His hands found her waist because, well, he wasn’t dead, and he’d been imagining Daisy just like this for years now. Albeit, he probably could have done without the possible concussion.
Nothing says “manly” like blacking out from a fall.
“You’re barely alive.” Daisy shoved her fingers in his face. “How many am I holding up?”
Reese blinked. “Do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
He really needed to not take that offer seriously. Anything would get him in trouble. Anything would send her running for Fortune’s Bay and taking the first cab out of the town. Anything would mean she’d leave without giving him the chance to show how much he cared, how much he wanted her.
The swallow that worked its way down his throat felt like he’d made the mistake of swallowing serrated blades just for fun.
“Reese?”
Red and black and gray spots danced in his vision, as he muttered, “Aim those fingers at the stone for me . . . yeah, just like that. Okay, now flip it the bird.” She released a rough laugh, like she wanted to go for it but was too worried over him to really let loose. Still, she followed through—down they went, one by one, until only the middle remained, erect and proud. “You’re holding up just one finger,” he finally breathed out, “the only one that matters.”
Her middle finger met the rest, curled into a fist, and then she pressed her balled hand against his chest. Directly over his heart. “You could be bleeding internally and you’re having me give the ground the middle finger.” She shook her head like she couldn’t figure him out. “You’re ridiculous.”
Ridiculously in love.
Reese’s eyes squeezed shut, to stop the spinning and also because even in his head, that one-liner had sounded so ridiculously cheesy. “Do you think I’m insufferable?”
“What?”
If she hated him, he couldn’t imagine she’d still be straddling his waist—right? Reese settled a hand over her fist . . . just to see. Would she run away? It was probably too soon. Except that she was sitting on him. Technically, she’d made the first move.
Falling for your assistant was an idiotic move.
Yup, that was a no-brainer. But Reese had never done anything the easy way, and he wasn’t about to start now either. He tried again. “Insufferable. Do you find me insufferable?”
She shifted her weight to bring up her other hand, and then there she went with the fingers again. “How many, Harvey?” She brought them closer, until it was either go cross-eyed or take her hand in his.
He opted for the latter.
“You don’t get to flip me off,” he muttered, all too aware of her slim fingers wrapped up in his big hand. Desperation yanked at him, a silent demand for him to bring her fingers to his mouth and kiss the tip of each one. Prove to her that she’d mistaken insufferable for something else. Lust. Attraction. Need. Love.
And that’s when he felt it—the quiver in her thighs. Nerves, maybe. Want, hopefully. He skimmed his gaze up her body to zero in on her eyes, which had always fascinated him. So dark he could barely detect where her pupil began and her iris ended. So full of emotion that she could never wrangle into submission.
Daisy Mae was not a woman who knew how to hide her emotions, which was why finding her letter had been such a slap in the face. He could
have understood if she’d called him ambitious, maybe even reclusive. But insufferable? Reese was the opposite of that, in every way a person could be.
“Or you’ll do what?” Her voice came at him with the same nervous jitter as her hips gripping his waist.
I’ll kiss you.
It was right there, on the tip of his tongue, demanding to find its presence in the world, in the warm air between them.
Too soon. She needed time and he needed to think with the head on his shoulders and not the one south of his belt buckle.
He swept his hands over her thighs and then planted his palms on either side of his hips on the stone. Like he’d done it on accident. Like he hadn’t been watching her face acutely for any sort of reaction—which she gave him, tenfold.
Her lashes fluttered shut and her body followed his, however instinctual it was.
And then he put his queen into place, two spaces in front of her king, with the latter boxed in from any sort of escape. “Or else,” he drawled, “I’ll sell that house right there to the closest commercial broker.”
Check mate.
Chapter Six
Sell?
Daisy’s mouth fell open as her mind scrambled with only one thought on repeat: if he could sell the house that meant he had to have . . .
“You didn’t.”
“I did.”
Her hair whipped her in the face as she twisted around, still seated on top of him—oh my God, she needed to get off—to stare up at the Victorian. In the end, she had only the same two words: “You didn’t.”
“We can do this all day.”
Masculine hands landed on her hips. Reese was a big man with a build that spoke to the fact that he could snap wood in half with just his bare hands, and yet he lifted her off him so gently that she couldn’t stop her cheeks from warming at the contact.
You need to stop. Right now, this instant. No thinking about Reese as anyone but the man who indirectly pays your bills. Daisy had been down this path before, and dating Steve had been a nightmare from beginning to end.
She liked Reese. Yes, he was quiet—although not so much today, that was for sure—and, yes, he’d always treated her like she could conquer anything if she put her mind to it, but acting on an attraction with him was so many levels of bad decision-making, she couldn’t even name them all.
He set her on her feet like she was the finest of porcelain dolls, and then rose to his feet. Brushed his hands across his dirt-stained jeans. Lifted burly arms so he could let his head fall back into the cradle of his palms. Slowly, as though testing for potential damage, he rotated his head, side to side, up, down. He repeated it all another two times before exhaling with what had to be relief, as the tension lines bracketing his firm mouth softened.
Daisy’s heart squeezed at the thought of him in pain, and it was on the tip of her tongue to demand that they take the water taxi right back over to Fortune’s Bay.
Reese didn’t give her the chance.
He continued up the stone steps like their interlude had never taken place, his deep, rugged voice, calling out for her to follow him. She did, two steps at a time, determined to watch his back in case he wavered and she needed to catch him.
Just the thought of trying to save a nearly three-hundred-pound man from falling to his death made Daisy choke back a bout of laughter.
“You’re kidding, right? You really didn’t buy this place,” she said when they stopped a few feet from the front door of the house. To say that it was in good condition would be a lie—it hung from middle hinge only, softly swaying back and forth in the breeze, as if the ghosts of Shelter Island, of the house itself, couldn’t decide if they wanted to welcome in the living.
Daisy gulped a fistful of air as the tendrils of a shiver worked its way down her spine.
Like a medieval conqueror, Reese palmed the swinging door open and motioned for her to pass him. She did, and then promptly inhaled his scent and prayed it might settle her nerves.
He followed her into what was once an impressive foyer, the door behind him squealing closed. “I bought it.” He rounded her, his gaze locked on abandoned furniture: a red, fraying settee along the hallway, just below the staircase balustrade; a sun-kissed portrait on the wall, opposite a large window above the door, the man in the painting’s face appearing check-marked with age-old damage. “I want to fix it,” Reese added, then stopped at the base of the circular stairs to look her way. “Or should I say, I want you to fix it.”
“Me?” Awkward laughter climbed her throat. “I don’t fix things, Reese, I break things. You know that.”
“The printer doesn’t count.”
There he went again with that smile. The big one, the one she’d craved since he’d first given it to her like a finely wrapped birthday gift, just the other day. It was a struggle to find her voice—her head felt so muddled—and when she did, it emerged like she’d stayed up all night drinking. Rusty to its very core.
“I was kidding about the printer,” Reese said, one hand coming to rest on the cracked post. His shoulders bunched under his T-shirt, and it lifted from the hem of his jeans. Daisy’s breath caught at the thought of seeing skin—because man-abs were obviously scandalous—and she hung in that moment, halfway hoping she’d see if he had a happy trail . . . while the other half of her questioned her sanity.
She could not go down the wanting-her-boss path all over again.
Not gonna happen.
And then he blew all her plans to smithereens by smiling at her, the corners of his eyes crinkling with what she had a feeling was anticipation. He tapped the post with the base of his palm, once, twice, then made a show of looking around the foyer. Helplessly, she followed his lead, her gaze catching on the cracked stairs and the peeling, water-damaged wallpaper.
“You said that you wanted it to belong to a family,” he pointed out, humor lightening his voice. “Hell, you were pretty adamant about the property not becoming a B&B. Having second thoughts?”
“I-I…” Daisy set a hand to the base of her neck, and she literally felt the ball of fear work down her throat in a hard swallow. “I push papers, Reese. I never signed up for a trial run of HGTV.”
The wood beneath his shoes creaked as he sidestepped the post and gave a hesitant touch of his foot to the bottom stair. “Would that make us that couple—the one from Texas?”
He was going to kill her. She had no idea what sort of air he’d sniffed on the boat ride over from the mainland, but he was going to kill her. And, worst of all, she couldn’t even stop the blush from taking over—on her face, on her neck, on her chest. This, this, was why she’d failed as a comedian.
Stage fright at its finest.
Here she was wanting to be bold and take charge of the situation like she did when she sat behind her desk, and yet she sounded like a simpering miss straight from the regency romance novels she’d devoured in her teens and early twenties.
“They’re married,” she said. Right, go for the obvious.
“We’re partners,” came his confident response as he continued his way up the stairwell, testing each step above him before giving it his full weight.
If he fell straight through and earned himself another head-thwacking, she figured he deserved it at this point.
“I’m your assistant!” she called up at his back. His jeans clung to his muscular thighs, his T-shirt to his broad back. He didn’t even turn around to acknowledge her.
“Are you coming to see your new project?”
Yup, it was going to happen. She was going to murder him. Right here, right now.
She eyed the precarious staircase. Okay, so maybe not right here, right now. She’d wait. Daisy spun around, her eyes landing on a tall-back, Victorian-era chair by the entry to another room. Perfect. Three steps took her to it. Spinning on her heel, she bent her knees and—
“Mae?”
She heard, rather than saw, the wood on the second floor creak as he leaned down to check on her. Bad timing, as usual.
For the second time in no more than thirty minutes, Daisy found herself on her butt.
One second she was noting the high color of her cheeks in the mirror on the wall, opposite the chair, and in the next, she was butt-down, arms squeezed down by her sides, legs bent over the sides, as the seat of the chair, well, bottomed out.
Deep, rumbly laughter echoed in the two-story entryway. It enveloped her like a warm blanket and soothed her nerves like a hot toddy on a crisp, winter day.
Tipping her head back, it met the back of the chair—which didn’t do her any favors, if the mirror was anything to go by.
She looked like a ventriloquist doll, her neck quirked at an odd angle and her legs all over the place. And still Reese laughed. Jerk.
“You could ask if I need help!” she shouted up at him. Body wriggling, she did her best to dig herself free. Hopeless, utterly hopeless. “Reese!”
“You wanted this house.”
She bit back an outraged howl. “Someone else, Reese. I said that some family deserved to own this home.”
As he meandered back down the steps, arms hugging the wall as a precaution, he drawled, “I may have taken you literally.”
Daisy didn’t know whether to laugh or to cry. “Men.”
Really, it was the only possible reason she was contorted like a stuffed doll. Men were the bane of her existence, all of them. Including Reese Harvey.
His heavy combat boots hit the first-floor landing, and it took him only one step to be right there in front of her. He sank down on his haunches, his dark eyes roving over her body. “Looks like you got yourself in a predicament, Mae.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Help me out.”
“Can you move your hands?”
She tried, she really did. But with her arms bent to her sides, locked in by excess layers of baffling that stuck up this way and that, all she managed to do was flap her wrists around and do some finger-waving. “Barely.”