“I can tell it’s a man, young lady. What are you trying to hide? Are you involved with someone? Is it serious? Why haven’t your father and I met him?”
“Mother, I only met him myself yesterday.”
Her mother’s eyes widened. “You only met this man yesterday, and he’s already leaving clothes lying around your house?”
“It is not what it seems.”
Katherine Marshall looked at her skeptically. “Are you quite sure?”
“Now you sound disappointed, Mother. Are you that anxious to be rid of me?”
“I am not anxious to be rid of you. I would like to see you settle down with some nice, sensible young man who could take care of you.”
The description certainly fit Tate, but Victoria was not about to get her mother’s hopes up. Given the slightest provocation, her mother was capable of planning maneuvers that would terrify and subdue an entire company of marines, much less a lone IRS agent. “I do not need someone to take care of me. I have a home—”
“Such as it is.”
Victoria shot her a reproachful glance. “I have a business—”
“Which you run like a front yard lemonade stand.”
“And I have my friends—”
“Who are all nuttier than you are.”
“Mother, I’m so glad you are on my side.”
Katherine Marshall beamed at her, ignoring her sarcastic tone. “You should be dear. But I won’t be around forever, and I’d like to know there’s someone who’ll look after you and keep you out of mischief when I’m gone.”
“You’re healthier than I am, so I don’t think that’s something we need to worry about today. Now could we drop this subject and get over to the shop? You may be missing a sale.”
“Oh, dear. Of course, you’re right.” She put the jacket back on the chair. “But Victoria, I want you to promise me that you’ll bring this young man of yours over to meet your father and me.”
“Mother, I solemnly swear that if this man ever becomes my young man, you and Dad will be the first to hear. Just so you know, though, you will not have the power of a veto.” Not that that was likely, she thought dryly.
When they pulled into the driveway at the shop a few minutes later, the young man in question was pacing around the barn much to her amazement and dismay. His very neat and very flattering navy pin-striped suit looked totally out of place in the rural setting. Victoria wondered curiously if he even owned a pair of blue jeans. Then she caught sight of the mud caked on his expensive leather shoes and winced. If Tate planned to keep up these visits, he obviously needed to get a new, more practical wardrobe before he destroyed the one he had.
“Is that the young man?” Katherine Marshall hissed, as her daughter opened the car door and got out. Victoria rolled her eyes heavenward. These were not the circumstances she’d had in mind for a second meeting with Tate McAndrews.
“Do you always show up for work an hour late?” he was demanding irritably, a scowl on his handsome face.
“I have an ‘in’ with the owner,” she responded tartly, as she unlocked the door and stalked inside.
“That is no way to—”
“Run a business,” Katherine Marshall chimed in. “I’ve been telling her that very thing myself. Hello. I’m Victoria’s mother.”
She held out her hand and waited expectantly. Tate took it, then looked in amazement from this trim, tidy woman with the firm handshake and no-nonsense style to Victoria in another one of her outrageous getups. He’d never have believed it. This woman seemed perfectly…normal. She would never keep her bills in shopping bags.
“Tate McAndrews,” he told her. “I’m from—”
“Tate is a friend from Cincinnati,” Victoria interrupted quickly, shooting him a warning glance. “I’m surprised to see you again so soon.”
“I needed to talk to you about—”
“Dinner.”
“Oh, is Victoria making you dinner tonight, Tate?” Katherine Marshall asked cheerfully. “How lovely. Why don’t the two of you drop by the house for dessert?”
“Mother!”
“We’d love to, Mrs. Marshall.”
“Are you out of your mind?” Victoria snapped at him, marching into the back room with Tate trailing after her.
“What’s wrong with you? I was just trying to be polite.”
“Don’t you realize that if we go over there for dessert tonight, my mother will have the church reserved by next weekend? She already thinks we’re involved,” she told him, her brows lifting significantly. “That’s in capital letters, by the way.”
“Involved?” Tate repeated, his expression completely baffled. “You mean…?” His eyes widened as the implication finally registered. “Why on earth would she think that?”
“Your jacket.”
“My jacket?” Tate was getting that spinning sensation in his head again.
“You left it in the kitchen. My mother, the protector of my virtue, found it there this morning. She’s assumed the worst.”
Tate burst out laughing. He couldn’t help it. “You’re kidding!”
“I do not kid about matters such as marriage and murder, particularly when they’re my own.”
“Can we expect to find your father on the front porch with a shotgun?”
Victoria gave him a withering glance. “Okay,” she warned. “Make fun of me. But I’m telling you, before you know it, that woman in there is going to have you marching down the aisle.”
“I’m a total stranger.”
“She doesn’t know that.”
“She would not try to marry her daughter off to someone she doesn’t even know.”
“Tate, my mother may seem quiet and unassuming to you, but in her heart lurks the soul of a desperate matchmaker.”
“Why should she be desperate? You’re hardly over the hill.”
“Thanks. But she seems to think I have all the characteristics of a woman who’s going to spend her whole life in trouble up to her eyebrows without some man to protect her.”
“That thought has crossed my mind, too.”
“See what I mean?” she said triumphantly. “You’re two of a kind. Once she finds that out, you and I will have no further say in this. You might as well go back to Cincinnati and start picking out silver patterns.”
“Actually, I saw one out front I thought was rather nice,” he taunted.
Victoria groaned and buried her head in her arms. “I don’t believe this.”
Tate was watching her closely, and something in the vulnerable curve of her neck got to him. Tentatively, he ran his fingers along the soft, tender skin. “I don’t believe it, either,” he said huskily.
She gazed up at him with luminous blue eyes and wondered why on earth she’d been putting up such a fuss. It wasn’t as though Tate was some disgustingly ugly, boring toad. He was a handsome prince, if ever she’d seen one, but he was so blasted unsuitable. He would never pick daisies with her or wade barefoot in a stream or ride a merry-go-round, at least not without thinking twice about it.
He leaned down and brushed a soft kiss across her lips, igniting a flame that first flickered weakly, then burst into a glorious heat. “Oh,” she sighed softly, as his lips captured hers again, this time more hungrily. Only their mouths touched, but it was a possessive branding.
Then, just when Victoria started seeing an entire kaleidoscope of colors, Tate stood up, his expression thoroughly confused and somewhat horrified. “I’m sorry.”
“Why?” she asked curiously.
“I shouldn’t have done that.”
“Didn’t you enjoy it?” For some reason, she couldn’t resist teasing him. She knew exactly why he was so disturbed. His behavior had been both unpredictable and, from what she suspected about IRS regulations, unprofessional. Tate McAndrews did not strike her as the type to bend, much less break, the rules.
“Of course, I enjoyed it.”
“Well, then?”
“It’s just not…”
“That’s not the point.”
“Don’t you ever do anything because it feels right at the moment?”
“Of course,” he said stiffly, thinking of the majority of his relationships. They were all built on a flimsy base of such moments without a single solid thread to hold them together. That had never bothered him before. Why did it suddenly seem so shallow and unfulfilling?
“That’s encouraging,” Victoria was saying cheerfully.
“Is it? I’m not so sure,” he said honestly.
“Tate, why did you come here today?”
“I needed to ask you a question about your tax return.”
“Couldn’t you have called?”
He looked at her oddly. “I suppose so.”
“Why didn’t you?”
He appeared genuinely puzzled. “I’m not sure.”
Victoria patted his arm. “That’s okay. Don’t worry about it. Why don’t you sit down, and I’ll bring you a nice cup of tea, and we can discuss my taxes to your heart’s content?”
Suddenly the idea of discussing taxes with Victoria bored him to tears. What he really wanted was to kiss her again and, quite probably, again.
“I think I’d better be going.”
“But you just got here.”
“No,” he corrected. “You just got here. I’ve been here over an hour, and now I have to get back to work.”
“But you haven’t asked me any questions yet.”
“I’ll ask them over dinner.”
Victoria’s eyes widened. “You’re still planning to come for dinner?”
“Of course.” He grinned at her. “And for dessert with your parents.”
“Maybe it would be better if I wrote a letter to the IRS and told them to forget about the 15,593.”
“And twelve cents,” he reminded her. “Uh-uh. It’s too late.”
She moaned. “I was afraid of that.”
Tate leaned down and brushed a kiss across her forehead. “See you later.”
Victoria nodded.
“And try not to get in any more trouble.”
She nodded again as he walked through the door into the front of the shop. As she heard him laughing with her mother, Victoria sighed. “Why do I have the feeling I’m already in so much trouble it would take Indiana Jones and Superman to get me out?”
Chapter Four
Victoria had just stepped out of the bathtub when she heard the doorbell ring. She glanced at the clock as she padded across the bedroom to peer out the front window. It was six o’clock on the dot. Of course, Tate McAndrews would never be late. He’d probably arrived in the world precisely nine months to the second after his conception. Right now he was pacing impatiently outside, a frown wrinkling his very attractive brow as he stopped to test each board that creaked under his weight. She had a feeling she was in for another one of his lectures, this one a double-barreled poke at both her house and her tardiness.
Victoria knew that punctuality was considered a socially desirable trait, and she really meant to try harder to attain it, but events always conspired against her. Tonight, for example, she’d gotten home right on time, despite another afternoon shower that had turned the driveway at the shop into a sea of mud that had almost trapped her mother’s car. She’d planned to fix a plain, but hearty stew and some homemade buttermilk biscuits for dinner, take a leisurely, fragrant bubble bath and find the perfect outfit for this absurd date Tate had trapped her into.
But as she’d started to dice the onions and chop the carrots, she’d glanced out the kitchen window and seen this glorious rainbow that disappeared right over the crest of the hill. She couldn’t resist trying to find the end of it. By the time she’d run barefoot through the damp grass to the far side of the hill and back again, her schedule was all out of kilter…as usual.
She threw open the bedroom window and leaned out. “Come on in,” she called down cheerfully. “The door’s open.”
Horrified by such a casual announcement indicating an absolute lack of concern for her own safety, Tate’s gaze flew up and encountered those dancing blue eyes and a considerable amount of bare white flesh shimmering with droplets of water. His stern retort on the dangers of leaving her front door unlocked died on his lips as his heart lurched crazily. This woman’s unabashed innocence was far more provocative than any planned seduction he’d ever encountered. How could she possible not know the effect she’d have leaning out that window with a blue towel precariously draped around her and that red halo of hair spilling over her creamy shoulders? Yet he knew with absolute certainty that she had no idea that she was even capable of provoking a very masculine response in him. It was one of her more charming traits.
Some of her other habits were… He tried to think of a kind description and couldn’t. Infuriating was the first word that came to mind. Maybe also baffling or irresponsible, he thought, his anger returning. Like leaving her door unlocked as though the entire world were trustworthy. Didn’t she read the newspapers?
“I’ll be down in a minute,” she promised, and Tate swallowed his irritation and resigned himself to a half hour—minimum—of waiting. He should have known her lateness this morning hadn’t been an exception. A woman like Victoria would never be on time. He was probably lucky she was even home.
He walked in the front door and debated where he should wait. Poking his head in what he’d decided yesterday was the living room, he glanced again at the disreputable and uncomfortable looking sofa and promptly opted for the kitchen, where he’d expected to find all sorts of tantalizing smells coming from the oven and from pots simmering on the stove. A woman who prided herself on offering all sorts of delicacies to her customers would surely cook a spectacular dinner. His mouth had been watering all afternoon.
Instead of finding a gourmet feast, however, the only hints of dinner preparations were a diced onion and a bunch of partially chopped carrots scattered across a cutting board on the counter. The air was filled only with the sweet scent of lilacs and something else he couldn’t quite identify. It smelled faintly fishy. He sniffed and his nose wrinkled in dismay. What on earth was it? Not dinner, he hoped.
He heard a soft, appealing meow and felt something nudging his ankles hopefully. A puff of gray fur wound itself between his legs. There was another meow, this one louder and definitely more demanding.
“Hey, old guy, are you starving, too?” he inquired, before suddenly realizing that the subtle odor had been that of cat food. “You can’t be, you old fake. You’ve obviously been fed. Don’t try to trick me into giving you a second dinner.”
Lancelot, apparently sensing that he was wasting his friendliness, gave Tate a haughty look of disgust and walked away, his tail switching. Tate chuckled at the cat’s indignant departure. Victoria and Lancelot were obviously two of a kind.
“If you don’t mind, you could finish chopping the carrots.” Victoria’s musical voice drifted down to him. He had a feeling she could talk a man into chopping down trees. Carrots were no problem at all. “I won’t be long.”
Lured by the sound of that voice, Tate wandered out to the front of the stairs. “Anything else?”
“There are some potatoes around somewhere. You could try to find them and peel them.”
“Do I get any clues?”
“About what?”
“Where they might be.”
“They might be in the refrigerator,” she suggested, as Tate started toward the kitchen again. “Wait. No. I think I put them in the pantry.” He paused and waited. “On second thought, try under the sink.”
He rolled his eyes heavenward and sighed. “Are the potatoes important?”
“Of course. I’m making a stew. It probably won’t be very good, though. It should have been simmering for the last hour.”
“What happened? Did you get held up at the shop?”
“N
o. I got home right on time, but there was this rainbow….” Her voice trailed off as Tate groaned and returned to the kitchen, reminding himself for the fiftieth time since yesterday that this woman was obviously not his type.
“So, why are you here, McAndrews?” he muttered under his breath. His pulse speeded up as an image of her scantily clad body flitted through his mind. He scowled. “That’s a lousy answer.”
He yanked open the refrigerator door and looked for the potatoes. He tried the pantry next, then checked the cabinet under the sink. He gave up, then accidentally found them when he opened the back door to let Lancelot out. They were sitting on the steps. He shrugged resignedly. “It’s as good a place as any, I suppose.”
By the time Victoria finally got downstairs, he had finished with the carrots and peeled the potatoes. The finished product didn’t look quite right to him, but what did he know about peeling things? Apparently not much, judging from the quirk of amusement that tilted Victoria’s soft, coral lips when she saw them. His earlier desire to sweep her straight into his arms returned with a nearly uncontrollable urgency, startling him into a subdued silence as he simply stared at her.
“You don’t spend a lot of time in the kitchen, do you?” she said dryly, as she unceremoniously plopped his efforts into a huge pot, added some water, onions and already browned beef that she’d plucked from the refrigerator. Then she liberally sprinkled dibs and dabs of various spices over the top, her brow puckered in concentration.
“It shows?”
“It shows,” she confirmed, glancing over at him. “Who fixes your meals for you?”
“I go out a lot.”
“What about breakfast? Are you any better at that?”
“Not much.”
“Then what…?” Her voice trailed off as he began to grin. “Never mind.”
“I eat cereal,” he informed her, as her cheeks turned decidedly pink. “At home.”
“Oh,” she said softly, an unfortunate tone of relief in her voice. He was still grinning…openly chuckling, in fact.
For the first time since he’d arrived, Victoria took a really good look at Tate. He was wearing the same shirt and suit pants he’d had on this morning. Even his tie was right in place, and his shoes had been polished to a high gloss without a trace left of this morning’s muddy excursion around her barn. He had rolled up his sleeves to attack the potatoes and carrots, but that was the only concession to comfort he’d made.
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