From Temptation to Twins

by Barbara Dunlop

  “What makes you think you know anything about my character?”

  She bought herself some time by taking a bite of the pizza. It was heavenly. She didn’t want to insult him. He’d been a huge help today, as had Matt. But she didn’t trust him either. Nothing he did would come without strings attached.

  She composed an answer in her head. “I know you’re willing to put me out of business.”

  He shook his head. “I’m trying very hard not to do that.”

  “Pretend all you want, Caleb, but you’re threatening to close my road.”

  “I haven’t done it yet. And I don’t want to. I’ve told you that.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “What part don’t you believe?”

  “That you care anything about me. You want what you want, and you don’t care how you get it.”

  He stretched out his legs, leaning back in his chair. “Think that statement through, Jules.”

  “Don’t patronize me.” There was nothing wrong with her thought processes.

  He took a bite of his pizza and followed it up with a swallow of his soda.

  She hesitated for a minute, but then did the same. She was tired and she was hungry, and arguing with Caleb wasn’t going to get her anywhere. She let her gaze wander the room.

  Noah was talking with Matt, while Melissa seemed to be engrossed in something TJ was saying. Noah was playing it cool, but his attention kept flicking to Melissa. It was obvious he was attracted to her, but so far he hadn’t made any kind of a move. He was polite, but he didn’t flirt, and he didn’t seek her out.

  “Did you tell Melissa?” Caleb asked.

  “Tell her what?”

  He didn’t answer, and she turned to look at him. His expression made it clear where his thoughts had gone.

  Jules fought annoyance. Then she fought arousal.

  She bit down hard on the pizza. She wasn’t going to do this. They weren’t going to do this. Her tone was tart when she spoke. “Why would I tell her about something that never happened?”

  “I thought sisters shared things.”

  “Irrelevant information? No, we don’t share that.”

  “You can’t seriously pretend it never happened.”

  “Yes, I can.”

  That had been their deal. It had been crystal clear, and he’d agreed to it.

  “Okay,” he said, amusement in his voice.

  “This is what I mean about your character,” she said, feeling the need to fight. “You say one thing, and then you do the opposite.”

  “I’ve had a week to think about it.”

  “You’re exactly like your grandfather. A gentleman’s agreement, a handshake deal means nothing to you.”

  He lowered his voice. “You and I are not a couple of gentlemen, and we did a heck of a lot more than shake hands.”

  “You’re certainly not a gentleman.”

  “At least I’m honest.”

  She huffed out an exclamation of incredulity.

  “I can’t stop thinking about you, Jules.”

  “Can we just eat our pizza?” She hadn’t stopped thinking about him either. But she had to stop. She had to find a way to get back on an even keel. Too much depended on her keeping her distance from him.

  “Are you going to tell me it meant nothing to you?” he asked.

  She desperately wished she could. “It meant what it meant. It was a thing at a time and a place, and that’s that.”

  “I have no idea what you just said.”

  “I just told you to back off. A deal is a deal, and we made one, and I expect you to honor it.”

  “Circumstances change,” he said.

  She got to her feet. She couldn’t do this anymore.

  “Matt,” she said in a bright voice, walking toward him. “Thank you so much for helping today. I can’t believe how much work you guys got done.”

  “My pleasure,” he said.

  “It can’t have been a pleasure. It was eighty-five degrees out there.”

  “I’m happy to help out. I’ll be back tomorrow to finish.”

  “You don’t need to do that. You must have a lot of work at the marina.”

  Matt’s glance went past her shoulder, obviously looking for a signal from Caleb.

  “I insist,” Matt said smoothly. “We’re neighbors, after all.”

  Feeling suddenly uneasy, Jules glanced to TJ to find he was closely watching the exchange. She turned sideways to catch Caleb in her peripheral vision. There was an undercurrent in the room.

  She felt like she was missing something. She probably was. Nobody was this neighborly without an ulterior motive. Stopping by with a Bundt cake, sure, but reroofing a building?

  They all looked innocent, maybe too innocent.

  “It’ll save you a whole lot of money,” Noah said.

  “You’re such a huge help,” Melissa put in cheerfully.

  If there was an undercurrent, it was clear Melissa wasn’t picking up on it.

  “We can’t impose on you,” Jules said.

  Melissa moved to take her by the arm. “Why are you being so difficult?”

  “I’m not being difficult.” The real question was why Melissa was accepting their help so easily.

  “They’re going to finish our roof.”

  “They’re going to want something in return.” Jules moved her gaze to Caleb. “I don’t trust any of them.”

  Melissa frowned in reproach. “Now, that’s just rude.”

  “You’re looking for something that isn’t there,” Caleb said.

  “No strings attached,” Matt said.

  “All I did was bring pizza,” TJ said.

  “I should pay you for that.” Jules moved from Melissa, glancing around the room for her bag. She’d tossed it somewhere this morning.

  She felt Caleb’s arm slip under hers. “Stop,” he whispered in her ear.

  She paused. She took in the four other faces in the room. TJ looked affronted. Matt looked amused. Melissa seemed embarrassed, and even Noah looked surprised.

  She realized none of them knew about her and Caleb. None of them knew how precarious her hold on independence had become. None of them knew that with every second that passed he entwined himself more tightly into hers and Melissa’s lives.

  He might have promised not to cozy up to her sister, but he was still being extraordinarily nice to her. He seemed to think that if he did it in front of everyone, he wasn’t breaking his promise.

  Jules tried to remember their exact words when she’d agreed to the date. But she couldn’t. And she couldn’t hold him to something she didn’t remember for certain.

  She centered herself and decided it was best to let things slide. She’d regroup later.

  “Fine,” she told them all. “Thank you all very much. Your help is making a big difference.”

  Everybody smiled, and Jules forced herself to smile in return. But something terrible was going to happen. She could feel it in her bones.

  * * *

  “Are you saying you’re ready to pull the pin?” Matt asked Caleb.

  It was morning nearly two weeks later, and the two men were on the Whiskey Bay Marina pier where Matt had just finished a precharter inspection of one of his largest yachts, Orca’s Run.

  “Bernard has the paperwork ready for me to sign.”

  “But?” Matt seemed to spot something on the dock in front of him.

  He crouched down and pulled his multitool from the case on his belt.

  “Would you do it?” Caleb asked.

  He’d lain awake last night mapping the likely outcomes of his rescinding the Crab Shack’s easement. The lawyers, a protracted court case, Jules’s anger, her disappointm
ent, her eventual bankruptcy because she’d spend all her money fighting him.

  Why on earth did she have to be so stubborn?

  “I’d have done it already.” Matt tightened the bolts on a piece of stainless steel mooring hardware.

  “You would?” The answer surprised Caleb.

  Matt wasn’t a hard-nosed man. He was normally more compassionate than Caleb. TJ, now, TJ saw the world in dollar signs alone.

  “If all I cared about was my business.” Matt rose. “And I know how much you care about the Whiskey Bay Neo location.”

  Caleb gazed over the sparkling waves, wondering if he was being a fool. “I can’t bring myself to destroy her.”

  “You’ve given her options A, B and C.”

  “More than once.”

  “She knows the risks.”

  “I keep thinking there has to be an option D or an option E. There must be something I haven’t thought of that’ll break the impasse.”

  Matt’s mechanic Tasha Lowell approached along the dock. “I’ve signed off on Orca’s Run,” she said to Matt.

  “Tip-top shape?” Matt asked her. “It’s for a beachhead client from the Berlin show.”

  “I’m aware of that.”

  “The guy has contacts all over Europe. He has influence, and can send us dozens of new clients. We need this cruise to go off without a hitch.”

  She gazed at the sky, as if praying for strength. “I know that. That captain knows that. Everybody knows that.”

  “Is that sass?”

  “It’s an update,” she said.

  “It sounded like sass.”

  “Well, you’re stressing everybody out. Chef Morin was just yelling at the steward, something about Alaskan king crab. Poor kid nearly wet his pants.”

  Matt’s gaze went to the office building. “Do I need to—”

  “Gads, no,” Tasha said. “Stay out of the way.”

  Caleb couldn’t help enjoying the exchange. Tasha might be rough around the edges, but she was also smart and fearless. Caleb liked that.

  “I am the boss,” Matt said.

  Caleb couldn’t resist. “If you have to point that fact out, something’s not working for you.”

  He caught Tasha’s smirk. Her green eyes lit up, and he suddenly realized that under that baseball cap she was quite pretty.

  “You’re a girl,” he began, thinking this might be an opportunity to get some advice.

  She immediately seemed to take offense. “Excuse me?”

  He wasn’t quite sure where he’d gone wrong with the simple statement. “You’re female.”

  She widened her stance in her canvas, multipocketed work pants. “Your point?”

  Caleb didn’t know what he’d been thinking. Tasha wasn’t going to have any insight into how to handle Jules. The fact that he’d even thought of asking her showed how desperate he’d become.

  “Caleb is having woman trouble,” Matt said.

  Caleb shot his friend a glare. “You’re not helping.”

  Tasha pressed her lips together, as if she was holding back a retort.

  “It’s a business deal,” Caleb told Tasha, deciding since he’d come this far, he might as well give it a shot. “I’ve offered a reasonable compromise, but she’s set on mutual annihilation.”

  “My best guess? It’s not a good compromise. It favors you. You’re deluding yourself that it doesn’t, but she knows that it does.”

  Caleb took offense to the assessment. “It’s the only solution.”

  “Are you looking for my advice, or asking me the secret to changing a stubborn woman’s mind?”

  Matt laughed, and they both glared at him. He quickly turned the sound into a cough. “She’s got you pegged.”

  “We women aren’t stubborn,” Tasha said. “We’re smart. It just rattles you guys when we’re also self-interested. My guess is she’s right, but you don’t want to admit it.”

  Apparently having said her piece, Tasha turned her attention back to Matt. “Orca’s Run is mechanically sound. You should back off now and let everybody do their jobs.”

  She gave both men a nod.

  Caleb watched her walk away. “Well, that was...”

  “Emasculating? It happens to me all the time.”

  “I was thinking illuminating.”

  “You agreed with her?” Matt sounded surprised.

  “I agreed with what she said to you. You do tend to meddle sometimes.”

  “Ha. I agreed with what she said to you. It’s making you nuts that Jules is standing up to you.”

  Matt was wrong there. Caleb had no problem with someone standing up for their own business interests. What was frustrating him was his hesitation to stand up for his own because he had feelings for Jules.

  “I slept with her,” he said.

  Matt did a double take. “What?”

  Matt was a brilliant man and a good friend. Caleb knew he wasn’t going to be able to give Caleb decent advice unless Caleb was honest.

  “In San Francisco,” Caleb continued. “She made me promise to forget it happened, and I can’t get her out of my mind.”

  “Wow.”

  “That’s an understatement.”

  “She slept with you? Was it because of the earthquake?”

  “Are you asking if I took advantage of her vulnerability after she was terrified for her life?”

  Matt seemed to reconsider. “No. Of course not. You wouldn’t do something like that.”

  “She likes me. I mean, on some level, I know she must like me. She’s definitely attracted to me. And she hates that. She fights it tooth and nail. She’s really funny. And she’s really smart. And sassy. Unlike you, I like sassy. Sassy is sexy.”

  “I like sassy, too.”

  That caught Caleb’s attention. “Tasha?”

  Matt looked surprised. “No. Tasha’s...different. And we’re not talking about me. Are you falling for Jules?”

  Caleb reached out to brace his hand against a pillar. “I don’t know what I’m doing. If she was anybody else, I’d revoke the easement, meet her in court, drain her resources until she was willing to make a deal.”

  “But she’s not someone else.”

  “That’s my problem. I don’t want her to hate me. And I don’t want to destroy her. Deep down, I’m hoping for the Crab Shack to succeed. Beyond Jules, there would be a certain justice in that for her grandfather.”

  “Your family really did pull a number on the Parkers.”

  “According to Jules, it might be even worse than I thought.”

  “Yeah?”

  “My father.” Caleb hesitated to share too much of what Jules had told him. He didn’t care about his father’s reputation, but it wasn’t really his story to tell. “Let’s just say Roland Parker might have had a really good reason to throw the first punch.”

  “Why doesn’t that surprise me?”

  “Because you’ve met my father?”

  The wind blustered across the dock, and the line of gleaming white yachts bobbed against the bumpers, making hollow clunks on the incoming tide.

  “What are you going to do?” Matt asked.

  “I truly don’t know. I’d considered reasoning with Melissa.”

  “Melissa seems great.”

  “She’s the more reasonable of the two. But Jules warned me off, and I promised I wouldn’t try to co-opt Melissa.”

  “Why would you promise that?”

  “It was the only way to get Jules to come to San Francisco.”

  There was amusement in Matt’s tone. “You bargained away your best play to spend time with Jules?”

  “I did.” It was as simple as that.

  He’d wanted to be alone with Jules, but
it sure hadn’t worked out the way he’d expected.

  It had been better, so much better. It had been amazing. But the aftermath was killing him.

  Eight

  It wasn’t the first time Jules appreciated the pot lights along the trail from the Crab Shack to the house. It was nearly nine o’clock and full-on dark as she and Melissa made their way home. The sky was black, and the wind was coming up, a storm moving in from the Pacific.

  The distinctive sound of Noah’s pickup truck faded to nothing behind them as he turned off their access road and headed up to the highway. They’d been refinishing the wood floor today, and the work was heavy. Jules was tired, focusing on putting one foot in front of the other and wishing they had a proper bathtub at home. She’d give a lot for an hour-long soak before she fell into bed.

  Her mind went on a tangent to the giant tub at the hotel in San Francisco. But she quickly banished the memory. The last thing she wanted to think about was Caleb.

  “Did something happen when you visited Dad?” Melissa asked her.

  The question seemed to come out of the blue.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’ve been off. And I realize it’s since you got back. You’re a little blue and unhappy. Did he get inside your head?”

  “Nothing more than usual.” Jules didn’t want to consider the lingering memories of sleeping with Caleb might be affecting her. “Dad blames me for leading you astray.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  Jules linked her arm with Melissa’s. “Sometimes I wonder. If it wasn’t for me, would you be here?”

  Melissa could use her business degree in any number of industries. Jules was the one who’d become a chef. She was the one who’d spent hours as a teenager sitting inside the closed-down Crab Shack, musing on its possibilities. And she was the one who’d promised her grandfather they’d reopen.

  “I suppose you are the more passionate of the two of us.”

  The answer gave Jules pause. “Are you having second thoughts?”

  “No. Not second thoughts. But you have to admit, we’re in pretty deep financially. And lately you seem so tired.”

  “I’m not tired. Okay, I’m tired right now. But that’s from working on the floor all day long.”

  The trail became steeper as they approached their house.