THE COMEBACK OF CON MACNEILL

by Virginia Kantra

  "Well, I'll have to talk to your father about that. Though this MacNeill fellow did catch one little bookkeeping error I was happy to take care of."

  Rob patted his pockets absently, like a man searching for a smoke, and then held out a folded sheet of white paper.

  Val regarded it as if it might metamorphose suddenly into a snake or a gun. "What is it?"

  Rob chuckled. "You never did want anything that was good for you, did you, princess?"

  She met his gaze flatly, deciding then and there that whatever her father was up to, Rob had never been on her side.

  "Go ahead," he urged her. "Take it."

  Val unfolded the paper cautiously. It was an adjusted bank statement for the restaurant's operating account, dated today. She skipped the long columns of amounts and references, going straight for the account summary information.

  Her heart stopped. She had money.

  She read the balance again, her heart beginning to slam against her ribs. She had money. She hadn't made a mistake. Her thoughts scattered in all directions like rainbow candies bouncing on the floor. Money enough to pay her bills and fix the clogged drain in the storage room. Money—maybe—to offer Ann part-time work.

  The paper trembled in her grip. She clutched it tightly, as if her good fortune could somehow fly away, trying not to betray her relief and surprise in front of Rob. "Nice of you to bring it by. Thanks."

  "I thought I'd save your tame accountant the trip."

  She wanted to protest that Con wasn't her anything. Certainly not tamed. But the evidence was in her hands. She had money. And whatever Rob might claim, she suspected she had Con MacNeill to thank for it.

  The sharp Yankee businessman she thought she knew could have brought her the news himself, waving her adjusted statement like a trophy or brandishing it like a whip. Instead, Con had pressed the vice president in charge of the proof department into service as his errand boy.

  To humiliate Rob? Val wondered. Or to send some kind of message to her? Don't mess with me, I'm a consultant. An absurd bubble of laughter rose in her throat. Oh, Lord, what could she possibly say to him now?

  All too clearly, her last words rang in her ears. Don't hurry back.

  Val winced.

  * * *

  Chapter 6

  «^»

  Not a damn thing to do in a one-bank town on a Sunday afternoon, Con reflected. At least in Boston the bars would be open.

  He stood on the porch of Magnolia House Restaurant, watching two kids argue over a tricycle and a fat puppy stalk something through freshly mowed grass. Con scratched his jaw with one thumb. Maybe he shouldn't have turned down Patrick's invitation to Sunday dinner, after all.

  Of all Con's close family, he was closest to his older brother Patrick. He genuinely liked his surgeon sister-in-law, a pretty woman with a mind as sharp as one of her scalpels. But since the firing, he was too aware he'd let his family down. He wasn't in the mood for Kate's perceptive questions or Patrick's unspoken sympathy. He wasn't sure he could stand all that newlywed domestic bliss stuff, either.

  The bigger kid won the tricycle war, and the little one ran bawling into the house. A screen door slammed. The puppy caught a grasshopper and ate it. The whole scene felt familiar and uncomfortable, like outgrown hightops. Like the neighborhood he'd been so eager to escape, like the past he'd left behind.

  He'd already made his duty calls before he left his motel, doing his best to respond reassuringly to his mother's questions and his father's silence. The new job was interesting, he told them. He'd actually gotten phone calls from two potential consulting clients, and he had a lead on a job in Boston. He'd see them Friday night after the interview.

  Unless he didn't get the job, Con thought, in which case a bar somewhere had a hell of a lot more appeal than his mother's kitchen table. Con didn't relish facing another evening of his parents' unvoiced disappointment with their brilliant son's career.

  It had been a relief to call his brother Sean, on the road with a construction crew in Fuquay Varina. Sean was still sleeping off his Saturday night, and cursed Con sleepily before hanging up.

  His duty almost done, Con had driven twenty miles to attend a Catholic Sunday service and then backtracked into Cutler for food. The motel where he was staying ran more to vending machines than room service. Magnolia House, on the outskirts of town, was as high in salt and price as it was in charm. After fifteen minutes waiting for a coffee refill, Con had paid his tab and stalked out.

  Val could make a killing in this town if she opened her place for breakfast.

  In his mind, she lifted her chin, gray eyes glinting with challenge. I'm not changing my menu to suit you.

  Fine by him. He didn't need her breakfast. He didn't need any part of her.

  Restless and reluctant to return to his motel room, he'd read the paper on the veranda, watching a rumba line of blue-haired ladies shuffle in and out of the restaurant's doors. Now he stood, watching the puppy throw up on the sidewalk as if that were the high point of his day. Hell, maybe it was.

  A white Honda Prelude, seven years old and powdered with red dust, rumbled onto the lazy street. Con watched idly as it slowed in front of the restaurant. The engine was cut. A car door slammed.

  Into the sunshine swung Val Cutler. Long silver earrings tangled with the wild glory of her hair. A bright turquoise tank top shouted the attractions underneath. Her sandaled feet beat a parade rhythm on the concrete walk, and her smile glowed like carnival lights on the midway.

  Well, well. Con grinned. Things were looking up. Whether or not he planned on a whirl, the circus had come to town.

  Val squinted against the bright afternoon sunlight. The deep eaves and sheltering rail of Magnolia House created a backwater of shade. The splash of Con's white T-shirt swam in the cool recesses of the porch. Only the strong, smooth shape of his torso and the gleam of his teeth were clearly visible.

  Like a shark's.

  His voice emerged from the shadows. "What are you doing here?"

  Val set one foot on the porch steps. So he was going to be difficult. No doubt it was annoyance that bumped up her heart rate, irritation that pumped heat to her cheeks.

  "Looking for you."

  He lifted an eyebrow. "You still use bloodhounds in the South?"

  "The telephone, actually. I figured you'd either be here or at Arlene's, so I called and…" She was talking too much, she realized, mortified. "I came to invite you on a picnic."

  He glided to the top of the steps and leaned against the supporting column of the porch. She had a very nice view of his chest.

  "A picnic?" he repeated.

  "Yes. You know, lemonade, watermelon, ants?"

  He shifted a degree. "Yeah, I've heard of them. What happened to 'not interested'?"

  Nerves jittered under her skin. She pushed impatiently at her hair. "Look, I'm not suggesting we roll around together on a blanket on the riverbank. It's just lunch, all right?"

  He strolled down a step, so that her eyes were level with his chin. "Why?"

  She didn't back down. "Why, what?"

  "Why lunch?"

  "Well, I … thought maybe I owed you a meal. Sort of as a thank-you for what you did on Friday."

  His expression was unreadable. "My rates are usually a little higher than a sandwich."

  "Then you're out of luck. That's my best offer."

  "I'll take it." His blue eyes met hers directly, and her breath caught at the complicit humor in his gaze. A shiver of attraction ran up her spine. "Hey, I said I wasn't cheap. That doesn't mean I'm not easy."

  Not easy, Val thought. Hard. Hard-muscled and tough-minded. Difficult for an easygoing Southern girl to understand and nearly impossible to resist.

  She blushed. "Great," she said brightly. Too brightly. "Shall we go?"

  He sauntered off the porch. Val preceded him down the short brick walk, conscious of his effortless, long-limbed gait behind her.

  At the passenger door of her car, Con paused. "W
e could take my car."

  Val smiled at him across the white roof baking in the sun. "But I know where we're going. And the cooler's in my trunk."

  She observed his quick mental calculation before he shrugged and squeezed into her car. A lot of guys had trouble being driven by a woman, she thought. His knees bumped her dashboard. Although maybe this one simply needed more room than her little car could accommodate. She adjusted the front seat.

  "What do you drive?" she asked, to test her theory.

  "A 1972 Jaguar sedan." The year meant nothing to her, but she recognized Jaguar. He added, a shade defensively, "It's a very well-manufactured car. Mechanically, nothing can touch it."

  Val grinned as she pulled away from the curb. "Well, you'd better hope nothing goes wrong with it while you're down here. Because no mechanic in Cutler will touch it."

  She thought he stiffened, and then he laughed. "Tell me about it. Half the time I can't afford the repairs, anyway. I poured two quarts of oil down her throat from Philadelphia to Petersburg."

  She glanced at him sideways. "Impulse buy?" she asked demurely.

  "More like a girlfriend substitute."

  "Excuse me?"

  "High maintenance and heavy commitment," he explained.

  She sniffed to cover her laughter. "It does seem like an irrational attachment for a logical, conservative consultant."

  He shrugged. "It's a toy. You know, 'the guy who dies with the most toys wins'?"

  A frisson of disquiet ran up the backs of her arms. "Oh, yes. I know. My father's a collector."

  "What does he collect?"

  "Anything he can put on display. New cars and clothes, old wine and silver." Deliberately, she kept her voice light to hide old hurts. "His wife. His daughter."

  "Yeah, well, my collection never got that far." She signaled her turn, sneaking another look at his hard profile. "Never married?"

  "Nope."

  She thought of that phone call she'd overheard in her office. "Engaged?"

  "Once."

  His stubborn privacy challenged her. She steered the car through a tunnel of trees down a winding drive dappled with sunshine. The crunch of gravel, the scent of earth and mold, rose through the open windows.

  "And what happened to your fiancée?"

  "Did I murder her, you mean?"

  She bit her lip to cover her smile. "Well, did you?"

  "No. She dumped me for somebody else. Some guy with a job and a pedigree. They're getting married pretty soon."

  Sylvia Cutler always told her daughter that her prying would get her into trouble one day. "Oops. I'm sorry."

  The canopy of trees parted to reveal the sky, and the drive opened into a parking lot.

  "Don't be. I'm not."

  "Oh, but you must be."

  "Who says?"

  Val spied a shaded spot under a cottonwood tree and turned into it. "Well, if you loved her…"

  "Save the sympathy, Dixie. We didn't love each other. Not the way you mean."

  "Then why get engaged?"

  "I don't know. Why does anybody get engaged?"

  She cut the engine. The sudden quiet reminded her they were alone. She swallowed past her constricted throat.

  "Don't ask me. According to my aunt Naomi, a woman purchases the security of marriage with her name, her privacy and her career."

  "Is that what you think?"

  Uncomfortable with the turn of the conversation, Val shrugged, her hand still on the keys. "It sounded pretty plausible when I was seventeen. Tell me again why you were getting married?"

  His brief grin gleamed in the shadowed interior of the car. "Because my ex-fiancée was a prize. And I like to win."

  Val snorted. "And she accepted you because…?"

  "I had some money and enough prospects to appeal to her. Plus, she may have figured that since she was lowering herself to marry me I'd be grateful enough to do as I was told."

  "She didn't know you very well," Val observed.

  "No. Maybe we both had our eyes opened."

  Silence dragged between them. Inside the car, the air grew warm and close. Val sucked her lungs full of lulling, drugging heat, feeling the faint prickle of perspiration on her upper lip. The backs of her thighs stuck to her seat.

  But then, she wasn't the only one affected. Con MacNeill's blue eyes looked anything but cold.

  To break the rising tension, Val glanced out her window, scanning the empty parking lot. Where were the Sunday fishermen, the picnicking families? Even a few kids using the beach would be nice. She'd wanted neutral ground to make her peace with MacNeill. She hadn't counted on finding herself alone in a deserted area with a large man she'd known less than a week.

  She cleared her throat. "What kind of prospects? What exactly did you do back in Boston?"

  If Con observed her nervousness or understood its cause, he didn't remark on it. "I worked for a venture capitalist group." She must have looked blank, because he explained, "I obtained funding for smaller companies. Software firms, mostly."

  "That sounds…"

  "Boring?" he suggested.

  She laughed and swung open her door, ignoring the faint suctioning sound as her legs unpeeled from the vinyl seat.

  "Lucrative," she amended. "And you had the satisfaction of helping other businesses."

  He came around to the back of the car to help her unload the trunk. "When I wasn't taking them over, yeah."

  She hefted the cooler. "Gee, thanks for reminding me,"

  He grinned and took it from her. "Anytime, Dixie. Get the blanket."

  The trunk door slammed, loud against the stillness. Val was reminded again how isolated they were. She didn't take risks with men, not since that April night her senior year of high school. She bit the inside of her cheek.

  Beside her, Con waited, his right arm corded with the weight of the heavy cooler. He was wearing a white T-shirt and jeans. The comb tracks still showed in his hair. Out of his buttoned shirts and pleated khakis, he looked even more like what he was, an attractive, dangerous male from a tougher town than Cutler, North Carolina.

  And yet none of Val's feminine antennae quivered when she looked at him. Not with caution, anyway.

  She nodded toward a break in the trees. "The path's over there."

  "Lead the way."

  The sandy track was rutted with rain and hedged with ferns and poison ivy. They emerged from the green cocoon onto the soft bank of the Six Forks River. Cattails, kudzu and leaning pines encircled an amphitheater of water and sand. Val shook out the quilt to create a ringside seat on the river and knelt beside the cooler.

  "I hope you're hungry."

  "Tempt me," he invited, dropping to the blanket beside her.

  She glanced over at him, uncertain if she'd imagined the teasing insinuation in his voice. Lord have mercy, but he tempted her. His drying hair fell over his forehead, softening the aggressive angles of nose and jaw. His long body stretched out within reach of her hand. When did the man find time to work out? He was all muscle, from his powerful chest to his solid abdomen to his denim-covered thighs. She caught herself staring and hastily dropped her gaze. He had big feet, she noticed.

  "Peppers, basil and mozzarella on whole wheat." She cleared her throat, disliking the husky quality of her own voice. "Or there's tuna."

  He raised his eyebrows. "Tuna?"

  "Seafood isn't meat." She busied herself unpacking the cooler, aware she was offering him more than a sandwich. Would he gloat, as her father always gloated when she conceded a point? "Actually, I've been toying with the idea of trying out one or two fish entrées on the menu. Just to see how they do. Maybe some poultry."

  "Turkey?" Con asked dryly.

  Relief made her smile. "Maybe I can live with turkey." His disciplined mouth curved. Heavens, he was attractive when he smiled. She wanted to tease him, to see his expression warm and his cool blue eyes ignite. She wanted to play with fire.

  And because she knew that this time following her instincts could g
et her badly burned, she swallowed and looked away.

  She wanted a drink. Something cool, to restore her composure. Her hands hovered over the picnic things before settling on the thermos jug of lemonade. "Can I pour you some?"

  "Thanks." He leaned back on his elbows, watching her from beneath half-closed lids.

  A freshening breeze rippled the water and set the cattails dancing. She felt the air lift the springing hair at her temples, but she still felt warm. Hot and close. Ice cubes rattled in the jug.

  Con's large, warm hands closed around her slippery ones. He sat up, steadying the thermos and rescuing the plastic cup from her anxious grasp. Settling the lemonade on the grass beside the blanket, he twined his fingers with hers. Her breath stalled. The sight of his fingers parting and twisting with hers, her small, competent hand so completely engulfed by his, made her breasts feel full and her bones feel hollow.

  The memory of her own words came back to mock her. I'm not suggesting we roll around together on a blanket on the riverbank. She ought to pull away. She told herself she couldn't afford this complication, didn't want to explore this attraction.

  "I'm getting ideas again, Dixie," he warned.

  Heaven help her, so was she.

  Her attention was fixed by that hard mouth, by the slight roughness bracketing the corners and the sensual curve of his lower lip. He drew on their joined hands, pulling her into his heat. Her body bent over his reclining one. She needed air. His breath slipped over her cheek and touched her mouth, and her lips parted to take him in.

  He angled his head, kissing the tip of her chin instead. Surprised, she opened her eyes, and then closed them as his mouth cruised the curve of her jaw to the pulse point under her ear. Heat bolted through her. Con's sound of masculine satisfaction against her skin raised all the little hairs along the back of her neck and across her shoulders. She could feel the frantic beat of her heart under his lips and in their joined hands and lower, deeper, in her body.

  Oh, no. Oh, my.

  A smart woman lives to please herself, Aunt Naomi had said. But what if what pleased her was a tall, commanding Yankee with ice blue eyes and heated kisses?

  "MacNeill."