by Maggie Wells
“Wine?”
She drew a steadying breath and looked up at their server with a polite smile, then turned to him, her eyes wide with exaggerated innocence. “I don’t know. Do you usually order wine at your business lunches?”
He rolled his eyes. “I usually have my business lunches sitting on a tailgate.”
Laney blinked, purposefully keeping her expression solemn. “Yes, but do you drink wine while sitting on the tailgate?”
She caught a flash of annoyance flickering across his features, but within seconds, he settled into his usual good-old-boy amusement. “We’ll take a bottle of Boone’s Farm Strawberry Hill, if you have it. If not, we’ll settle for the Russian River Pinot Gris.”
Laney couldn’t help but fall for his charm. Just a little. “You know, I’m half hoping they have the Boone’s,” she confided. “But that’s more for cutting class on a warm spring day.”
“And?” he prompted. “The beach?”
“Sometimes.” A small smile played at the corners of her mouth. Then she picked a fond memory she was sure would drive him crazy. “Tommy Preston’s daddy had a place on Bayou Sara.”
He leaned in. “And did you go out there alone with him?”
She let the smile turn coy as she dipped her head to study the menu. “Sometimes.” If she wasn’t mistaken, the sound she heard was something like a low growl.
“Tommy Preston was a wuss.”
Laney rewarded his jealous muttering with a laugh. Running the pad of her finger over the edge of the menu, she played paper-cut Russian roulette and baited the bear of a man across from her. “I hear he’s made partner in his daddy’s law firm.”
Harley glared at the heavy cardstock. “I suppose I should warn you, I don’t discuss business over meals.”
Feeling as if the trap she’d set had snapped shut around her, she scowled at him. “You don’t? But you were the one who suggested lunch.”
He settled back in his chair and smiled his choirboy smile. “I’ve made no secret of wanting to have lunch with you.”
She gaped at him for a second then closed her mouth, her jaw tightening as fire burned in her gut. “So this was a ploy to get me to eat lunch with you?”
Their server approached with the wine and Harley held up one hand to stave off Laney’s protests until both their glasses were filled.
“Are you ready to order, Harley?” the young woman asked.
He bobbed a nod at Laney, then smiled up at the young woman. “I think we should go ahead, Kaci. Ms. Tarrington has an agenda.”
Delaney shot him a slitty-eyed glare, then promptly ordered the flounder grenoblaise—the most expensive entrée on the menu. Harley chuckled and requested a steak salad for himself. Their server faded into the darkness and Laney shot him a sharp glare.
“Come here often, Harley?”
“Often enough,” he said with a negligent shrug. Then he lifted his glass in a toast. “To successful negotiations?” he asked, quirking a brow in challenge.
She touched the rim of her goblet to his, but her throat felt like she’d already chewed up the glass and swallowed it. “Successful negotiations.”
After they’d both taken a sip, she placed her glass on the table, folding her hands neatly in front of her, and tilted her head at the perfect angle to convey polite interest. Her mama had trained her well. She was the epitome of well-bred Southern womanhood. And she would get what she came for. Even if she had to play his games.
“So, what would you like to talk about, if we’re not going to discuss business?” she asked primly.
“You. Me.” He shifted forward in his seat, mirroring her position. “What movies you’ve watched lately, your favorite flavor of ice cream, and whether or not we can ever get past this...this thing that keeps holding us back.”
“There is no us.”
“I want there to be an us.”
Suddenly, the ground glass in her stomach was replaced by heavy warmth. For a split second, Laney wondered if she might be bleeding to death internally. Could he be so clueless? Did he truly have no idea how badly he’d hurt her? How she’d wished he’d been there in those horrible days, weeks, and months she sat with her dying mother, and held her hand? Did he think she could forget how easily he’d walked away?
She looked to the side, willing the tears searing her eyes and clogging her throat to go away. When she thought she could manage it, she turned back and met his gaze directly. “I told you, I don’t have the time or the energy for this. I asked you to stop.”
“And I did.”
“No, you didn’t.”
“You said you didn’t want flowers or presents, so I stopped sending flowers and presents. You didn’t want to fight, but I’m not the one arguing here,” he pointed out.
“You still called.”
“You didn’t say I shouldn’t.”
“I didn’t know I had to give you a list,” she shot back.
“I never said I would stop caring for you. Never once did I say I’d give up on you.” He stared deep into her eyes. “You called me, Delaney. I told you once you called, we’d be going all in.”
“That’s not why I called you!” A note of anguish rang through in her tone.
She watched as Harley’s easy congeniality hardened into a mask of cool resignation. He signaled their waitress as she rushed past, simultaneously rising from his seat. “Kaci, sweetheart, would you mind sending our food on up when it’s ready?”
“Sure. No problem.”
The waitress scurried off and Harley tugged at his cuffs, clearly impatient with everything—his gorgeous suit, their aborted lunch date…her. “We’re going to finish this meeting in my office.”
Laney startled at the announcement, her jaw dropping as he plucked her portfolio from the table and tucked it under his arm. He gathered up the wine bottle and both glasses and took two steps toward the front of the restaurant, then paused to look back at her.
“You wanted a meeting? This is your meeting. Come on.”
She scrambled after him, her too-high heels slapping the painted concrete floor. “Where are you.... What are you—”
Past the hostess station he hooked a right, taking them away from the main entrance and stopping in front of a door marked “Private.” “Do you mind?” he asked, nodding to the handle.
Laney gripped the handle and twisted, throwing a little hip into it to get the heavy steel to budge. “Your office?”
“Upstairs.”
He took said stairs two at a time. Undaunted by the pace he set, she click-clacked to keep up with him. “You keep an office downtown?”
“I deal with the city a lot. It’s convenient to home and most of the sites we work. The building was cheap,” he added as he nodded to the second steel door on the upper landing.
“You own the building,” she concluded, coming to a halt beside him.
“Yes.”
Her eyebrows rose of their own volition as the puzzle pieces began to fall into place. “And the restaurant downstairs?”
He shrugged. “Tommy was looking for a backer, and I was hungry.”
Tommy. He was talking about Tommy Delacroix, the hottest chef east of New Orleans. He was also the biggest Cooks Network star at the moment, having scooped up the southern cuisine crown when Paula Deen dropped it. Harley Cade owned the stairwell they were standing in, wore cufflinks, and hobnobbed with celebrities like Tommy Delacroix.
“You were hungry,” she repeated, disbelief dripping from each syllable.
“Do you mind getting the door?” He nodded again to the fire door in front of him. “I know it’s not very gentlemanly of me, but I have my hands full.”
In shock, she pushed the handle down and gave it a jerk. This one swung far more freely, throwing her the rest of the way off balance.
Harley caught the door with his foot and used the breadth of his body to quell her wayward momentum. Her hand flew to his chest. Her pervy s
ubconscious took the opportunity to revel in its muscular contours before her brain clicked into gear again. This time, she did tug at the seams of her dress as she threw her shoulders back. “Thank you.”
“No, thank you,” he replied, a smug smile curving his mouth. “Been at least two weeks since I was felt up like a teenage girl.”
She opened her mouth to retort, but he nodded for her to precede him.
“Go on, or we’ll never get anywhere with this.”
Laney took a steadying breath and refrained from thinking about all the very non-business-related places she wanted him to take her. She knew coming in she would have to hold strong. Not so much against Harley’s reputed killer instincts, but in terms of curbing the visceral reaction to being this close to him. She needed to be focused. Keep her eyes on the prize. And for God’s sake, she had to stop thinking about how badly she wanted to feel him up. In every possible way.
Chapter 5
Harley led the way into his office, and for the first time since his crew chief handed over the keys to the renovated loft, he took a moment to look around, wondering how Delaney would see it. There were no walls. Hell, there was seldom anyone there but him. He’d set up desks and drafting tables for various project managers. They only came in during the day if they required a surface larger than a clipboard and smoother than a hunk of cardboard flattened on the bed of a truck. Every one of the desks and tables were covered. Blueprints, project plans, checklists, and swatch books. There were before, during, and after photos tacked to strips of cork, and messy timelines scrawled on white boards bearing the marks of past projects.
Laney hung back, but the moment she saw him turn to look for her, she sprang to life. Back straight, chin up, and her gaze set on something beyond him, she strode into the room as if she owned the space.
He quickly turned away so she wouldn’t catch his smile. She was using her runway model strut. He loved that one. It ranked right up there with her spoiled rich girl pout and the ice queen stare. She never simply walked through the door. No, she swept in like a rogue breeze. Her very presence stirred the air and his senses, proving exactly how dangerous a game he’d been playing. But he was done messing around. The phone call he’d made to his attorneys would either make or break him. But he didn’t see wooing Laney as a gamble so much as a calculated risk.
She could cut him off at the knees without batting an eyelash. He knew she was capable of it. And she’d known he’d tried to make a date out of her request for a meeting. He’d warned her he would. She called him and said she needed his help. As far as he was concerned, all promises to leave her alone were null and void. He needed to tread carefully, though. The next phase of this project was going to take delicacy and finesse. Two things he hadn’t been blessed with at birth. But he was a man who proved to be quick at acquiring new skills. He hoped when the time came, he’d be up to the task. In the meantime, he would play the game, wait for her opening gambit, and figure out what direction to go from there.
“We rescued the bar downstairs from an old hotel after Katrina.” He strolled through the room as if he wasn’t about to walk a very high tightrope. Maybe she was falling for it. For all she knew, he had a whole closet full of thousand dollar suits like the one currently making him feel as if he were trussed up like a prize hog. He waved the wine bottle in the direction of a series of photos blown up and framed. “Those are pictures of the house in Holmby Hills. Jack Benny lived there.”
“Who?”
He stopped and pivoted in her direction. “Seriously?”
She tossed her head, but her glorious hair was pinned up in some kind of boring businesswoman knot so the effect wasn’t quite what it should have been. “I’m not as old as some people.”
He snorted and plunked the bottle down atop a stack of building code guidelines. “I’m two years older than you, not ten, and I know who Jack Benny was.”
Her eyes narrowed and her chin came up. She knew he was lying. Damn it.
“Okay, fine, my mom told me who he was, but the guy was famous back in the day,” he admitted.
“Uh-huh.”
A small, smug smile played at the corners of her mouth as she turned to look at the photos. He took the opportunity to drink in the sight of that creamy expanse of skin again. She might not have been the original designer, but whoever was certainly had a woman like Delaney in mind when they dreamed it up. The fabric flowed over her subtle curves like rich red wine. She was slender, but perfectly shaped—high, surprisingly full breasts, tapered waist, rounded hips, and legs that went on and on. The patrician figure she’d inherited from the Tarrington side coupled with her mother’s dark Creole coloring were a potent combination. But he had to wait her out. She’d come to him for a reason, and as much as he wanted to think she’d finally come to her senses and accepted she was meant to be his, he doubted there’d been any such epiphany. She wanted, or needed, money. It was obvious from her reluctance to move directly to the point.
“Guess who the neighbors are,” he prompted as he placed the glasses on the edge of the massive desk his mother unearthed at an antique auction.
She cast a teasing glance over her shoulder. “Ben and Jerry?”
He rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows they’re in Vermont.”
Laney burst out laughing, her arms falling to her sides in surrender as she whirled to face him. “Really? Everyone knows?”
He shrugged and patted his stomach as he flashed her a mile-wide grin. “Anyone who enjoys eating as much as I do.”
She laughed again and he felt like he’d pulled up fifty-year-old shag to find Madagascar ebony wood floors beneath.
“Though, I admit I’m more of a pastry guy than ice cream.”
“But you wouldn’t turn the ice cream down.”
“Never.”
“I bet you were hell on your mother’s grocery bill,” she teased. “Good thing she was such a great cook.”
Laney’s eyes widened, and she snapped her mouth shut with an audible click. Her ears turned a violent shade of pink. A peachy flush crept up her neck. She knew his mother was a wonder in the kitchen because she used to cook lunch for her and two hundred of her snottiest friends every school day until the day Laney was handed a diploma.
For one moment, because he wasn’t anything close to a saint, he basked in her discomfort. A part of him, the part who felt like his pants were high waters and his cuffs too short, thought she wouldn’t show up today. Of course, the part of him that ripped the past out of houses and chunked it into industrial dumpsters sneered at those ancient insecurities. She wanted something from him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t after his heart. Or even his body.
In a voice so shaky he hardly recognized it, Delaney Tarrington had requested a lunch meeting. To discuss a business proposition. Because the girl born with the silver spoon was broke, and the kid whose mom was the lunch lady was holding bags of Monopoly money.
He didn’t feel any need to rescue her from her faux pas. Laney was one of those women born to skate through the most awkward of social situations. She’d make it through this one without his assistance. Eventually. Knowing he could throw her so far off-kilter never ceased to amaze and delight him. He’d been known to intimidate most men with his size and sometimes his demeanor, but women usually loved him. Most of the time, all he had to do was smile in their general direction and they latched onto him like static cling. Except Delaney. Maybe that was why he was so enthralled with her. Maybe it was because she so obviously wanted him, too, but for some weird reason, seemed determined to deny it until her dying day.
“Yes, my mother is an excellent cook, though she doesn’t do much of it anymore.” He smirked and pulled the portfolio from under his arm “I guess you could say she got burnt out on it.”
The joke earned a groan from her, but the worry lingered in her eyes, telling him whatever she wanted from him was serious. And imperative enough to make her swallow a shot of the ninety-proof pride she ke
pt bottled up inside her.
She’d slept with him after having a few too many glasses of cheap champagne one night, but this was the first time Laney had volunteered to share a meal with him. He’d spent a small fortune trying to entice her, but to no avail. Yet here she was, here they were, and he meant to make the most of his time with her. Even if his coat was cutting him snug across the shoulders and the tie he’d knotted no more than thirty minutes earlier felt like a noose.
Picking up one of the glasses, he thrust Laney’s back into her hand. She took the wine reflexively. “I didn’t mean to—”
Not caring if he came across as rude or impertinent or any of the other adjectives Laney and her sort had applied to him over the years, he cut her off with a brusque wave and flipped open the portfolio. “Hugh Hefner was the neighbor I was talking about. The Playboy mansion is on the same street,” he said as if they’d never stumbled into the awkward pit of their shared past.
“I was going to present—”
He shook his head. “I can read.”
He regretted his snide tone almost immediately. The proposal was neatly typed, her pitch both professional and earnest. He scanned the itemized column of numbers on the second page and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud when he got to the sum total of her requested investment.
In the weeks since he’d returned to town, he’d formed a clearer picture of the things Delaney had been dealing with since he rolled out of her bed and strolled out of her apartment. He’d been so damn sure once he had her, he’d be able to keep her. He’d flip the tables, try to shift the balance of power. He simply hadn’t known her world had turned upside down. It wasn’t difficult to mark the toll the past six months had taken on her. To see the woman she was now, and how very different she was from the spoiled girl he’d left behind. No, he couldn’t laugh at the little bit of seed money she needed to get a toe-hold in the world. He’d been in the exact same spot once.