by Maggie Wells
“Really? Because sex seems to be the only thing you’re truly interested in having with me.”
He couldn’t have hurt her more if he’d tried to cut out her heart with pinking shears. The fight flowed right out of her. Slumping against the door, she searched his face, but he only wore an infuriatingly blank expression. “How can you say that?”
“Easy.” Harley took a couple steps closer to her but remained out of reach. “What happens when I try to talk to you about the future?”
Her pulse tripped all over itself, but she fought down the urge to bolt. Pushing away from the door, she straightened her posture and held his gaze. “What about it?”
“You clam up.”
“I’ve got nothing to say,” she shot back. “I can’t talk about the future because I’m too busy trying to figure out today.”
“Stop running away from us.”
Her heart hurt. Actually hurt. Like maybe she was having some kind of coronary episode. Pressing her hand to her breastbone, she shook her head. “I can’t… You want too much from me.”
“I want so much because, to me, you are the Heart of Dixie, Delaney.” He glanced down as if to gather his strength, then drew a deep breath. “I bought Tarrington House. For you. For us.”
As much as she hated to prove Harley Cade right, Laney had to go with her gut on this one. She couldn’t quite trust her foolish heart to do the right thing. She was out the door, down the fire stairs, and halfway to her car before he could say another word.
Chapter 12
Harley blinked twice as he rounded the corner and eyeballed Tarrington House, certain the pre-dawn, pre-caffeine fog was playing tricks with his mind. But no, the vision in front of him was no mirage. The bright blue industrial Dumpster on the overgrown front lawn confirmed it. His eyes did not deceive him. There actually was a slightly worse-for-wear white BMW smack in the center of the circular drive.
He’d wager the last twenty-dollar bill in his wallet the car sat in the exact same spot her parents had parked it on the day they handed over the keys. He could even imagine the big red bow they’d probably stuck to the roof. He could picture the scene: spring sunshine illuminating the marvel of German engineering at the top of the arc. The spot was perfectly framed by Tarrington House’s massive columns. He could see dark-haired Delaney dashing down the red brick steps, the wide smile she’d worn the first day he’d spotted her at St. Patrick’s lighting her face.
He heaved a sigh as he wheeled the dusty truck into the drive. He hadn’t slept a wink since she left. Torn between righteous anger and utter humiliation, he’d tossed and turned. In the wee small hours, his heart aching with self-recrimination and her scent filling his nostrils, he stripped the sheets from his bed.
He shouldn’t have told her he’d bought the house like that. Fired it at her like a weapon.
Whether he was within his rights or not, it didn’t matter. Her emotions were all snarled up over the sale and the peripheral role she’d thought he was playing in this whole debacle. He'd launched his secret at her in a fit of wounded male pride, proving his life was becoming every bit as melodramatic as the Tennessee Williams plays his mama liked to drag him to whenever she thought he needed some classing up.
If only his mother knew how convoluted his real life had become.
He was pissed. A seething, simmering anger ignited low in his belly the minute he realized she’d seen the trucks parked in the drive and assumed he was the hired help. An hour or so spent in Brett Tarrington’s company hadn’t done anything to soothe his wounded pride. Delaney and her father both labored under the delusion that he was required to explain himself and his business decisions to them or to anyone. It galled him. Hell, any fool with half a brain, access to the Internet, and twenty bucks for a public records search could have found out who was behind Heart of Dixie Holdings. Delaney didn’t want to know, and her daddy was too far into his misery to notice anyone but himself. If Laney thought she was going to start a business of her own, she needed to get a damn sight better at doing her research.
No, she was happy to take the money and run. But she hadn’t run. At least, she hadn’t without trying to take one more look back. That was the part that cut him.
Letting loose a sigh he dredged from the depths of his being, he killed the engine and simply stared into the back window of her car. Drops of morning condensation framed the edges, but the defogger had done its job for the most part. He could see her clearly, her head turned toward the wide front door, her jaw stiff and her nose in the air. As usual.
Gripping the top of the wheel, he leaned in and pressed his mouth to his knuckles. It helped hold his anger in. Sort of. He’d done them a favor. Couldn’t she see past her own stubborn pride to acknowledge that he'd done what was best for everyone? He could have waited for the auction and most likely picked Tarrington House and all the property up at an even lower price, but he wasn’t willing to take such a chance. He’d heard whispers of someone planning to snatch the rambling old house up and turn it into a bed and breakfast. Over his dead body. This house was meant to be his.
This way, everyone got what they needed. Delaney’s father was mostly out of the hole he’d dug for himself and his family and Laney herself could stop worrying about juggling the bills and start looking toward her future. With him. In the kind of house he’d always dreamed about owning when he was growing up with concrete steps and cinder block walls. Now, he had acres of lush green lawn and columns which were more than merely decorative. He pulled himself and his mother out of subsidized housing by using his hands and his brains to forge the life he wanted. Even after he started making real money, he hadn’t squandered it buying any old house. Sure, he’d bought his mama the neat little ranch she’d fallen in love with the minute she saw the beautifully landscaped patio and made sure the place had every amenity she could possibly want before he let her move in. But when it came to finding the place he wanted to call home, he hadn’t been willing to settle.
Not permanently, anyway.
Harley had always considered his bay-front loft an investment more than a home. Now, he found himself thinking more and more about the waterfront development the mayor wanted. The renovation he’d done on the long-abandoned warehouse space had been featured in real estate magazines across the country. His own unit had been photographed and featured in the renovations section of Architectural Digest. It wasn’t the eco-friendly space the big man envisioned, but the design could be modified. Some features could be added or improved. Wetlands would sure be a heck of a lot more attractive than the cracked asphalt covering the abandoned dockyard now.
There might be something to the whole Earth-friendly housing thing. It simply wasn’t what he’d ever wanted for himself. He liked his condo fine. He slept there, occasionally ate there, but he never saw himself living there forever. The loft wasn’t the place for the kind of life he hoped to have. He wanted something with more permanence.
So he’d waited, knowing there were only a dozen or so properties that would fit the bill for him. He watched, knowing eventually he’d have a chance at one of them. It wasn’t his fault Delaney’s father was the first to fuck up. And he wasn’t about to apologize for being in the right place at the right time to do the right thing for everyone involved.
Holding tight to his conviction, he pulled his keys from the ignition and pushed the door open wide with his booted foot. Laney jumped a little but didn’t take off. By the time he reached her car door, she was staring straight ahead at the corner of the carriage house visible from this angle.
He didn’t wait for permission. He reached for her door handle and yanked it open. After all, she was on his turf now. She could either deal with him face-to-face or get the hell off his property. Stepping back, he gestured for her to exit the car. “You rethinking my idea for a plaque on the carriage house?”
She swung her legs from the car. It took a minute for him to realize she was wearing the same clothes she’d
had on the previous night. A shiver shook her long, lean body. She crossed her arms over her chest, but it was too late. He’d caught sight of her pebbled nipples pressing against the fabric of her shirt. The lacy bra he’d stripped off her lay forgotten on the passenger seat. She wet her lips, then glanced over her shoulder at the front door again.
“It’s solid mahogany, you know.” She hesitated for a second. “Hand-carved.”
“I know,” he replied, keeping his voice neutral.
“Of course you do,” she murmured, turning her face away again.
Harley hesitated, half afraid to extend an olive branch for fear she’d beat him with the damn thing. But when it came to Laney, he seemed to have an infinite capacity for punishment. “Do you want to come in?” He jangled the keys in his palm, his heart in his throat. “There’s coffee, and I’d like to ask about a few things.”
She bit her bottom lip, then shrugged as she let it go. “I’m not sure I’d be the one to ask. You’d probably have better luck with the Historical Society.”
He watched, transfixed, as color rushed back into the abused flesh. “You knew the door was solid mahogany,” he pointed out quietly.
A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “My great-aunt Trudy was awful proud of that door. Used to go on and on about the ‘ar-tee-san’ her daddy commissioned to make it.”
She met his eyes at long last and his heart dropped back into his chest. A determined gleam lit her dark eyes, but he saw no signs of anger or bitterness. Only heart-wrenching resignation. She hadn’t come to fight, but she hadn’t exactly come for him. Afraid if he allowed himself full reign he’d spill his heart out at her feet again, he restricted his word count to only what was necessary to keep her beside him. “It’s beautiful.”
Her smile widened fractionally. “Mama suspected Trudy and Mr. Abramson—he was the man who did the carving—had a torrid affair the summer he came to work at Tarrington House.”
Harley blinked, surprised she’d shared a bit of family lore with him. “The scandal,” he murmured.
“You don’t know the half of it. Mr. Abramson was a Yankee.” She paused for effect. “And of the Jewish persuasion,” she added in a genteelly mocking whisper.
“I’m appropriately shocked and appalled,” he replied with a grin that marked him a liar. “You said he worked here a whole summer? Did he do the work on the chair rails as well?”
This time, it was Laney’s turn to be taken aback. “Why, yes. Not many people notice those.”
He smiled down at her, his insides warming. “Not many people do what I do.” He gestured for her to precede him to the porch. “Please. It’s chilly out here, and there’s a coffee maker in there. I’ll make a cup of the sissy-boy coffee my foreman likes and you can tell me more of the secrets hidden in Tarrington House.”
The breath he’d been holding seeped from his lungs as Laney started toward the door. By the time he caught up with her, she was running her fingertips over the intricate scrollwork cut into the precious wood. Afraid she might change her mind, he chose a shiny new key from his ring and quickly went to work on the locks.
“When we’re doing a restoration, I like to get as much information on the place as I can,” he said in a rush. “Things other people might see as imperfections are the parts I think actually give an older home character.” The heavy door swung inward and he held out a hand, inviting her to go ahead of him. “Obviously, if something is rotting or crumbling, we fix or replace it, but we try not to take all of the...” He paused as they stepped into the black-and-white tiled foyer and let his gaze drink in his surroundings. “Life. There’s life in an old home.” Turning to face her, he waited until she met his gaze. “I don’t want to strip that away. I want to breathe fresh, new life into this place.”
“Harley, I—”
He pressed his fingertips to her lips to stop her. This crazy back-and-forth they’d been doing had gone on long enough. Too long. “We have to stop, Delaney.”
Her dark eyes widened, then went bright with panic. “No,” she said, forcing the word out from behind his fingers.
“Stop tearing each other down, I mean.” Lowering his hand, he took a step back and started to work the key from his ring. “I want us to build something together. A life together. You’re why I bought the house.” Finally he slid the key free and pressed the cool metal into her palm. “Here. It’s yours.”
Her fingers closed reflexively around his, but when he tried to pull away, she wouldn’t let go. “I, uh...” She stammered a little, then gave her head a helpless wag. “I want the same thing.”
He quirked a sardonic brow at the key trapped in their combined clutches. “I figured.”
“Not only the house, but the future.”
“You do?”
Her smile was shaky but genuine. As were the tears filling her eyes. “God, Harley,” she muttered, swiping at her eyes with her free hand. “You ever think maybe this might be a bit much?” He chuckled and took a step closer, but she held him off with a palm planted in the center of his chest. Then she ducked her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of midnight hair. “You know, most guys give a girl a ring.”
“I have one of those, too.”
Her head popped up. “You do?”
“Bought one the day after I saw you at the crawfish boil. I knew then I was done letting the line play out. I wanted to reel you in.”
She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the analogy. “Like a fish?”
He smirked, glad to have gotten a rise out of her. Tucking a hunk of heavenly hair over her shoulder, he smoothed his knuckles down her cheek. “More like a mermaid.”
“Better,” she conceded with a sniff.
Her fingers flexed and he instinctively pulled his hand away, afraid he’d permanently embedded the key into her delicate skin.
“I’m not ready for this, Harley.”
Her softly spoken words landed like a blow, but he didn’t double over. No point in trying to protect vital organs he’d already exposed. Bile rose in his throat, though, and he was about to make some caustic comment when she saved him from himself.
“Yet.” Opening her hand, she looked down at the key he’d given her. “I’m still working on...me.”
“You?” He asked the question mainly to buy time, because while this whole thing sounded like a rejection at first, he was starting to think maybe it wasn’t. “What do you mean?”
“I’m just....” She shrugged, then gave him a wan smile. “I’m only now getting started, and you’re about ten thousand steps ahead. I want to have more.” She frowned, then shook her head. “Have more to offer, I mean. To you.”
She stared straight into his eyes when she explained, and for a moment Harley was afraid his knees would go out from under him. Didn’t she know it made him feel like he’d won the damn lottery when she looked at him like that?
Clearing his throat of any embarrassing lumps of emotion, he returned her gaze with equal solemnity. “You’re everything I want.”
“But I want to be more,” she whispered. “For you, and for me.” She dropped the key he’d given her into the pocket of his work shirt, then rested both hands lightly on his chest. “I want to get my business up and running. I need to get the rest of this mess with the banks and the bills and my dad straightened out. As much as I appreciate the whole knight in shining armor thing, I can’t let you make everything all better.” This time he opened his mouth and she muzzled him. “I want you to be with me, not handle things for me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”
He nodded, but her reasoning sounded damn ridiculous to him. Particularly because it sounded like she was going to make him wait. “I don’t wanna wait.”
Laney smiled and a pearly-pink blush rose in her cheeks as she curled her fingers into her palm and let her hand fall to her side. She glanced down, those sooty lashes veiling her eyes as she made a slow inspection of the harlequin-patterned entryway. Without a
word, she turned and crossed to the wall behind the door. He watched as she squatted in front of a gouge in the oak wainscoting lining the entry walls.
“I did this.”
She spoke so quietly, he was compelled to move closer to be sure he caught her words. “You did?”
“With a pedal.”
“Pedal?” He frowned, wondering if she was talking about flowers or the kind you pushed with a foot. Either way, he couldn’t quite make out how either one of those could be responsible for the mark in the paneling.
She tucked a fingernail into the scratch and traced the length of the scar. “I had a new bike and it was so cool,” she said, a fond smile curving her lips. “Pink streamers on the handlebars and those little clickety-clackety plastic things on the spokes. I was out riding up and down the drive when it started raining. I didn’t want to stop, so I brought the bike inside.” She gestured to the large foyer with its sweeping staircase rising to one side. “I was doing pretty well until Anita—she was our cook—came in and yelled at me. I lost my balance as I was taking the turn and skidded. The pedal scraped the wall.”
Harley nodded as the pieces finally fell into place. “So, I’d say the spot stays.”
She beamed as she straightened to her full height. Her movements jerky and unsure, she offered him her hand. He took her chilled fingers in his, but made no move to pull her closer or cement his hold on her. Laney was making the moves at last. The right kinds of moves. He wasn’t about to screw up now.
His inaction paid off in spades when she laced her fingers tightly with his and moved in to lean against his arm. “Come on. Fix me a cup of sissy coffee and I’ll take you on the nickel tour.”
The nickel tour included such highlights as the spot where the uncomfortable floral couch held court in the parlor and a little borderline sexual stroking of the aforementioned chair rails in the dining room. She added in a dose of wild speculation about possible shenanigans between the very proper Miss Gertrude Tarrington and Mister Ephram Abramson, ar-tee-san, then gave Harley a peek into the coat closet where she supposedly spent seven minutes in heaven with Joe Bartlemas. She also confessed that she and Joe spent most of those minutes complaining about Mrs. Beecher, their seventh grade English teacher.