Romancing the Rival

by Kris Fletcher

  God, he hated it when his inner nice guy decided to step up.

  Chapter Seven

  Bree stumbled through the rest of the day in one of the weirdest disconnects she had ever known, her cerebrum scolding and wailing while her limbic system nodded in approval and her body purred like a just-fed kitten.

  God, she was a mess.

  Once she had come down off the cliff Spence had pushed her over—once she had snapped her eyes open and took in the familiar sights of her tiny office while a steady refrain of oh shit ran through her awareness—she took a deep breath and wobbled to the restroom, where she splashed enough water on her face to wash the makeup off the Joker. Then when she realized she was making Batman comparisons—she, who had never made it through an entire movie—she knew she was in deep trouble.

  Especially because, above the chorus of self-recrimination and disbelief pounding in her head, she kept hearing Spence’s whisper in her ear when he told her he’d see her that night. Was that before or after he’d kissed her good-bye? She wasn’t sure. The whole post ohmyGod moments were an indecipherable memory swirl of sensation and limpness, stirred with a drop of happy and the tiniest smidge of pain from the place where her back had pushed against a painted-over nail on the wall.

  Then the happy had faded and the pain from the nail had intensified and she’d found herself alone in her office, slumped across the filing cabinet like a rag doll, eying the door and praying no one would knock because it was going to take her a long time to get strength back in her legs.

  It was somewhere around midafternoon when the direction of her anger shifted from herself to Spence.

  He hadn’t forced anything. No, there was no denying that she had been more than willing to go along with everything he had done, with her and to her, and she was pretty sure that a couple of times, she had been the one to push things up a few notches on the desperation scale. She was amazed that he had been able to walk away when he had. Either the man had balls of steel or he had a lot more control than she did.

  And that bugged her like a sore tooth, alternately throbbing and stabbing for the rest of the day. He had seen her totally lose control. He had knowingly pushed her beyond her limits. And instead of getting as lost in the moment as she had—which would have turned the whole episode into a humiliating but kind-of-sort-of-awesome memory of That Time She Tossed Caution to the Wind—he had held on. Walked away.

  Played her.

  She wasn’t about to share details with anyone. But she was in over her head, and she knew it. Which meant there was only one possible way to spend the evening, and that was absolutely not with Spencer James.

  She picked up the phone and punched in Jenna’s number.

  “Hey. Can you come over tonight?”

  * * *

  Sitting around her two-seater table that evening, catching up with Jenna over Buddha bowls, Bree felt some of the raw edges inside her smoothing and softening. Jenna had been the talk of the town at one point in her life—actually, at about a dozen times, if not more—and rarely for reasons that even the most charitable onlooker would describe as good. Yet she had turned it all around, using the double whammy of a life-threatening accident and her ex-husband’s dumping of her to propel her onto a healthier path. She had finally finished her degree. She had started her own business. And she had found a guy who was perfect for her in every way, who just happened to be mayor of Calypso Falls. If Jenna could come back from years of wildness, surely Bree could recover from fifteen minutes of losing her marbles.

  At least, that was what she told herself.

  She soaked up the familiar jokes and laughter, grounding herself in her sister’s imitations of some of the stuffed shirts she’d already had to deal with during her adventures with Cole. Jenna had had plenty of practice wining and dining the rich and ridiculous during her trophy-wife days, but she had never viewed the whole process with as much glee as she exhibited now, puffing out her cheeks and making jokes about pretty women as she imitated one of the more idiotic fools she’d dealt with the previous evening.

  It was nice to know that Bree wasn’t the only one who had to deal with infuriating men.

  Bree’s phone beeped with an incoming text. She glanced at the display. Spence. Third time in the past hour.

  She hadn’t read any of the others. She wasn’t about to start now.

  She pushed her phone aside, burying it under a pile of paper napkins. Jenna caught the action and raised an eyebrow. It would have been annoying if Bree didn’t know that, thanks to the accident, Jenna was incapable of raising the brow on the left side of her face.

  “You’re certainly popular tonight.”

  Bree made a shooing motion with her hands. “Work stuff. Some people have no idea that there’s a time and a place for everything.”

  She congratulated herself on sticking to the spirit of the truth, if not the letter. Spence was on a task force that she was on only due to work. And he— she— they had definitely violated a few rules of time and place this afternoon.

  It would have been much easier to feel as if she was in the right if a ripple of leftover lust hadn’t chosen that moment to slide through her.

  She was sure she had managed to hide the moment, but something must have shown on her face. Because when she came back from a bathroom run a few minutes later, sure enough, Jenna had retrieved the phone from beneath the pile and was unashamedly staring at the screen.

  “Jenna! What the— God! Are we teenagers again? Give me that!”

  “Hey, it wasn’t totally snooping. You had a call. See?” Jenna handed it over, all innocence, then destroyed the effect by leering. “Though I’m pretty curious to know why Spence of all people is pestering you so much.”

  It wasn’t the words that had Bree on edge. It was the way Jenna twisted pestering to make it sound like something far more enjoyable.

  Or maybe Bree was simply projecting her own feelings onto her sister. A terrifying possibility, but absolutely logical.

  Gah. Sometimes life would be a lot easier if she could be as oblivious to human behavior as most people.

  “I told you. Work stuff.”

  “The forest thingie. Right. What’s got him so hot and bothered?”

  Bree was well aware that it was no accident her sister had used those words.

  “Get over yourself. We had a meeting today and he and I disagreed over one aspect of the proposal. He’s probably trying to apologize for being a stubborn idiot.”

  “Call me a skeptic, but I never saw him as the type to apologize repeatedly. Once, sure. But over and over? Nope.”

  Bree shrugged and reached for Jenna’s bowl. Instead, she was met by Jenna’s hand closing over her wrist.

  “You know, I certainly don’t have a problem with you replying to him. I mean, dinner is over, Mom isn’t here to lecture us about being polite at the table, and at the rate he’s going, it would make more sense to answer him and shut him up than to have him keep trying all night.” Jenna’s eyes narrowed. “Unless you’re trying to make a point. Or something.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Okay. Then answer him and get it over with, because I need to talk to you about something.”

  “What is it?” Every Big-Sister instinct Bree possessed immediately went on alert, but Jenna simply pointed to the phone.

  “Nope. Get rid of the pain first. I don’t want to be interrupted by a bunch of texts.”

  “You know, I could just turn the phone off.”

  Jenna grinned. “No, you can’t. You’re the oldest. You need to be immediately available to anyone at any time. Otherwise you start to twitch.”

  “I do not.” Which was the first total lie she had told all evening, so Bree figured she was allowed to use it.

  “Did you know that when you don’t tell the truth, your eyes get all big and innocent?” Jenna raised her glass of w
ine and saluted Bree. “Very cool, actually. Most people go the other way and get all squinty-eyed, but not you.”

  Bree huffed out her indignation, sent up a prayer that Spence hadn’t written anything blush-worthy, and scanned his texts.

  The good news was that they were all variations on the same theme: he was going to show up at her door this evening. And if she wasn’t home, he knew how to wait.

  The bad news was that the time he indicated as his ETA was in—she checked the time—about five minutes.

  Oh crap.

  “Problem?” Jenna asked. Honestly. Did her sisters have to be able to read everything in her face?

  She hit her voice mail, hoping against hope that he had changed his mind and had called to let her know that he wouldn’t be there after all. But even as the familiar announcement that she had a message sounded in one ear, her other was assailed by a very loud, very firm knock on her door.

  For the first time since moving in, Bree saw the appeal of a large apartment-block house where visitors had to be buzzed in.

  “Bree,” he called through the door. “I know you’re in there. I saw your car parked out front.”

  Jenna shot Bree a look that went from confusion to delight in the bat of her long eyelashes. “Hot damn,” she said with a grin. “I didn’t know I was going to get dinner theater.”

  “You’re not,” Bree whispered before calling out, “I have company, Spence. Go away.”

  “Nope.”

  Seriously?

  “I don’t want to talk to you.”

  “Yeah, but I want to hear what he has to say.” Jenna settled back in her chair and winked. “Because I have a feeling you were telling me a whopper, Breezy.”

  Bree sent a frantic glance at the door before refocusing on Jenna. “Only one little lie, okay?”

  “Which one? The part about it being a work thing? Or about you two having worked past that whole high school/public shriekfest?” Jenna smirked. “Though I might be wrong, but I’m getting the feeling that the second one might be more of an understatement than anything else.”

  “Would you shut up?” Bree rubbed her temples with her fingers. Think, think . . .

  “Is that one of your sisters?” Spence called.

  How did he know?

  Jenna, of course, jumped at the opening he’d provided. “Hi, Spence.” She waved toward the door, purely, Bree knew, to piss her off. “It’s Jenna. How ya doing?”

  “Not bad,” came the surprisingly cheery answer. “Better after I talk to Bree.”

  This was ridiculous. Had someone stuck her in the middle of some screwball comedy that should never have been made?

  “You know,” she called through the door, “this is verging on stalkerdom. You might want to see someone about that, Spence.”

  “If you’re worried, call the cops. No skin off my nose.”

  He would say that.

  Over at the table, Jenna had shifted. She sat up straighter, her phone in her upraised hand, all traces of joking wiped from her face.

  Should I? she mouthed.

  Oh great. Bree took a quick look at her options and saw that she had two: pretend nothing was wrong and hope Spence left of his own accord, which would leave Jenna worried and reluctant to go home, or let him in and show Jenna that there was nothing wrong.

  Whirling quickly before Jenna could catch any telltale flush creeping up her cheeks, Bree opened the door.

  * * *

  Judging from the flash of surprise in Spence’s eyes, Bree would lay money he hadn’t really expected her to see him. But he quickly slapped on his game face and nodded.

  “Evening.”

  She said nothing but glared at him so intensely that she was kind of surprised her glasses didn’t melt.

  “Can I come in?”

  Bree stood back from the door, gesturing him in. He seemed to immediately soak up the tiny bit of space remaining in her combo kitchen/living room, making it feel even more compact and cramped than it already was.

  Jenna waved from the table. “Hey, Spence. Long time no see.”

  “Same. How’s engaged life treating you?”

  “Utterly perfect,” she said with a grin, wiggling her ring finger in his direction. The diamond sparkled beneath the overhead lights.

  Over on the side, Bree leaned up against the stove and glowered.

  “You stalking my sister, Spence?” Jenna asked, her grin taking on a decidedly less than cheerful cast.

  “No.”

  “Good.” Jenna wiggled her finger again. “Cause I’d hate to have to use this diamond on your face.”

  Bree rolled her eyes. As visibly as possible, not that anyone seemed to be paying any attention to her, but still. They could at least pretend they weren’t talking about her while she stood right there.

  “Why are you here, Spence?”

  Not the smartest question to ask, really. If Spence gave the reason she suspected—that he’d come over to finish what they’d started in her office—then Jenna would never let her forget it.

  But she was willing to bet that even Spencer James had his limits.

  Sure enough, he shot a fast glance Jenna’s way. He frowned ever so slightly, as if debating with himself.

  Then he broke into a grin that had Bree regretting those last four bites of her Buddha bowl.

  “We never finished discussing that experiment you were describing.” His voice was all silky smooth, like he was trying to slide into her awareness. “I’m interested in seeing how it turns out.”

  “You didn’t need to come over here to find out. I’ll e-mail you with the details.”

  One eyebrow soared upright—and unlike with Jenna, Bree knew that Spence’s was completely deliberate.

  “That could take a long time to write out.”

  “I have dictation software.”

  The grin widened. “I’ll have to remember that.”

  Jenna, who had been watching them with her chin propped on her hand and an expression of rapt attentiveness, spoke up. “Fascinating as this is, you two do know you’re not fooling me one bit, right?”

  Oh God. Bree was doomed.

  “But even though this is more fun to watch than the latest episode of Modern Family, I think it might be a really good time for me to ask a question of my own. Spence.” She pointed a finger in his direction. “What’s your part in that committee that’s out to screw over our father?”

  * * *

  When Spence first took over the business from his father, he had assumed his biggest learning curve would be about the plants. It turned out that his biggest challenge was with his own species.

  People were tricky. Plants had their moments, no doubt about it. There were always going to be some that didn’t grow as tall or as full as predicted, always some that decided not to thrive in the place where Spence needed them. But to the best of his knowledge, there had never yet been a plant that set out to deliberately undermine, trip up, or humiliate anyone. Except, maybe, that one in Little Shop of Horrors.

  People were another story altogether. One that he wasn’t particularly fond of at the moment.

  Jenna had blindsided him. And the intense reading and research he’d done on body language after being screwed over by a number of suppliers who had apparently been robbing his dad for years made it easy for Spence to pick out the cold satisfaction in Jenna’s face. He had no idea why she’d bothered waving her Death Diamond around when her own intellect was so much more lethal.

  Bree, meanwhile, had gone completely blank. Like she was holding her breath so hard that she was on the verge of passing out, not physically, but definitely mentally. Like she was bracing herself for something that she knew she wasn’t going to like, no matter how he put it.

  “We’re not trying to screw anyone over, Jenna.” He took the empty chair, sin
ce Bree seemed to be bolted to the stove. “And the last I heard, you were taking out newspaper ads telling the entire town exactly what you thought of Rob, so I’m a little surprised that you’re bothered by a group that feels he lost the right to set up shop in Calypso Falls.”

  Bree’s posture went from granite to slate—still hard, still damaging, but a lot easier to work with.

  “My issues with him are my own.” Jenna was every inch the political spouse as she spoke. “But that doesn’t mean I have a problem with the work he’s doing. Or that I think he should be run out of town by a group of so-called concerned citizens.” Her smile was mocking. “After all, that particular pleasure should belong to our family.”

  If he’d ever wondered if the Elias family knew about how Rob had shafted Gord, this was all the answer he needed.

  “You’re welcome to come to a meeting anytime.” For the first time since Jenna dropped her bombshell, he turned directly to Bree. “You, too.”

  She squinted at him. Did she think he was joking? That wasn’t good. If she didn’t believe him on this, it was even less likely that she would believe that the real reason he’d come over tonight was because he needed to tell her about the committee.

  And then to finish what they had started, of course. He might want to have a clear conscience, but he hadn’t turned into Mr. Altruism overnight.

  “I hadn’t heard anything about this group.” Bree peeled herself away from the stove and reached for her wineglass, which Jenna rushed to refill.

  Neither of them invited Spence to join them.

  “It’s not incredibly complicated.” Spence shrugged. “The main focus is exactly what I said—to keep Rob from starting his new venture here in Calypso Falls. It’s not that people think the program itself is a bad idea. There’s none of the whole Not in My Backyard stuff happening. But people feel that it’s a little too—I don’t know. In your face, I guess. For Rob to be doing it here, I mean.”

  “Even though he was born and raised here? Even though his family is here?” Jenna lifted her hands, no doubt anticipating his point. “You’re right. He’s not at the top of anyone’s favorite list. But it still seems a bit much to organize and actively try to stick it to him, especially when he never did anything to the folks here in Calypso Falls.”