In Like Flynn

by Dorien Kelly

  Once Flynn was inside, she ushered him to the living room and motioned at the couch, which she noticed was stacked with her to-be-read pile of books. “Why don’t you move some stuff and have a seat? I’ll be ready in just a sec.”

  For the first time, the Irishman seemed out of place. He waved the bunch of tulips. “It’d be best if I stood.”

  She paused. “That makes sense. Are those for my sister?”

  “No, you, actually. I was hoping to persuade you to call a truce.”

  The old adage about being wary of Greeks bearing gifts could stretch to one Irishman, as well. Besides, the last time a guy had given her flowers was senior prom, and that had been a nasty-looking glob of dehydrated pink carnations with polyester lace, the presentation of which her boyfriend deludedly thought entitled him to sex in the back of his father’s Monte Carlo.

  Flynn, however, had no Monte Carlo, so she accepted the flowers. One plump lavender petal quivered beneath her fingertip.

  “They’re beautiful. Let me find something to put them in.”

  “And about the truce?”

  Annie opened the door to the breakfront that held the vintage china she’d picked up at secondhand shops. In the back rested a sleek Orrefors crystal vase, only slightly chipped on one edge.

  “A truce…” She didn’t need to be overtly hostile toward him to keep control of this pub death march. In fact, she wasn’t exactly sure why she didn’t like him. Polite yet distant would do the job. God knew she’d experienced enough of that routine in her life that she should be able to produce a decent facsimile. “I guess I’m game if you are.”

  “Agreed.”

  Annie waited for something resembling relief to settle over her, but it wasn’t quite there. She remained ticked off at life in general, tired of being ticked off and without the first clue how to change—all of which made her want to explode.

  Crystal in one hand and flowers in the other, she closed the china cabinet door with her elbow. Flynn followed her to the kitchen, but lingered in the doorway.

  “All those are…?”

  She briefly looked over her shoulder to see what he was looking at. “Salt-and-pepper shakers,” she said, giving the array on her counter a distracted glance. Weird, but she seldom noticed them anymore. “I collect them.”

  “That, I’d figured.”

  She filled the vase and settled the flowers inside, and Flynn asked about the closest market and other incidentals helpful to a guy in a new place.

  Annie answered, but a glut of other words pushed at her chest, making it hurt to breathe. She bagged the beans, snagged her parents’ anniversary gift from its perch on her kitchen table and tucked the veggies on top of the basket. The need to let loose grew stronger.

  This was like one of those nightmares where she did something freakishly inappropriate, such as dancing naked in the middle of a management meeting. In her dreams she couldn’t stop herself from stripping down, and right now she couldn’t manage to shut up.

  She turned to face Flynn. “I, uh…I…”

  His brows rose marginally. “There’s something you’re wanting to say?”

  Such a casual guy. So perfectly collected, while she was a perfect mess. She settled the basket back on the table.

  “Okay, I thought I could dodge the big issues for one night, but I’ve decided it’s unhealthy. So here goes…I didn’t want you to come to dinner, but not nearly as much as I didn’t want you to come to Ann Arbor at all. I know none of this is your fault, but Hal’s pub idea came at a rotten time for me, personally, and I really wish the whole mess would disappear. But it’s not going to, is it?”

  She didn’t wait for him to answer. Instead, she got the rest out so maybe she could inhale again. “Tomorrow, when we get to the office, I’ll take the lead. When Hal asks questions, I’ll answer. I need this first pub together, fast and right. This afternoon, I’ve been developing a list of potential designers and suppliers. I already have a time line set up and ideas for the chain’s theme. While you’re here, all you need to do is sit back and relax.”

  “Theme, you say? You’ve been busy,” he commented in a neutral voice.

  “Just doing what I do best.”

  “And you’re telling me to do nothing for the money Hal’s paying me?”

  “It’s not such a bad deal, is it?”

  He said nothing, which she could have taken as agreement, except that she didn’t quite trust the curve of his mouth. It was too one-sided to be a smile.

  “Should I take your silence as a yes?” she asked.

  Slowly, the curve stretched its way to the other side of his face. “Do you never relax, Annie Rutherford? It’s a Sunday, and I’m about to sit down to dinner with your family and friends. Tomorrow will be here soon enough.” He took the gift basket from the table. “Are you ready?”

  “I think the question’s more whether you’re ready to run the gauntlet tonight,” she replied as she plucked her purse and keys from the counter.

  Flynn laughed. “And here I thought I already had.”

  Okay, so he had evasion down to an art form. Annie followed him through the living room and to the front door. And as she did, she swore this was the very last time that she’d chase Daniel Flynn’s tail.

  AS THEY WOVE THEIR WAY through what Annie told him was the University of Michigan’s central campus, Daniel attempted to recover from the shock of seeing her home. Was there nothing the woman didn’t collect? He’d been barraged by books, clocks and countless pieces of china in the first room, then stopped dead in the kitchen door.

  Daniel had his belongings pared down to the essentials—a filled bookcase in his flat above the pub, his laptop, a fiddle he didn’t dare lose—or his mam would kill him—and an old BMW motorcycle under a tarp in a shed behind his brother James’s home.

  It suffocated him, the thought of all of Annie’s things. And made him dread the sight of her sister’s house, too. If they possessed some genetic predisposition to clutter, he’d be first at the cocktails and last to finish his after-dinner drink.

  Annie pulled into the drive of a three-story house that was a female’s fantasy of wood cutwork and folly. Daniel steeled himself—he was clearly fated for a death by claustrophobia. He gathered the two bottles of wine he’d brought—one for Elizabeth and one for the anniversary couple. Perhaps they’d not be missing one if he drank it now.

  He looked over at Annie. Frowning, she switched off the car, closed her eyes, then drew a slow breath.

  So it wasn’t polite to be watching as her breasts rose beneath the skimming fit of her pale blue top. Neither was it customary for him to be so damn interested. Ah, but he was. Subtlety appealed to him in a way that obviousness never would. And Annie Rutherford was subtly delicious right down to her freckles, if also totally mad.

  He’d come all this way to do what Hal Donovan had asked, and he’d come as a friend. To give less than his whole effort was an insult, which Ms. Annie should already know. That she’d hold him to a lesser standard than she would herself smacked of insult, too, damn her.

  Her eyes opened.

  “Ready?” she asked.

  Daniel realized he was still staring dead-on at her breasts, no matter where his mind had wandered. And she hadn’t mistaken his gaze.

  He cleared his throat. “Your parents’ names are…?”

  “Alison and Max,” she replied, eyes narrowed.

  “Fine names.”

  She glared at him for a moment more, clearly debating the merits of an argument over his point of focus. He had to admit to disappointment when she simply said, “Okay. Let’s go.”

  And so they did. They were the first there, and Daniel was vastly relieved to find that the interior of Elizabeth Rutherford’s house had far more to do with Asian understatement than with Annie’s bric-a-brac. He was left without time to wonder where the Asian aesthetic played in because the sisters did share one trait in common—a love of bossing others about.

  Elizabeth put Anni
e through her paces in the gourmet kitchen. And in what Daniel could only perceive as a case of manure making its way downhill, without so much as a please, Annie ordered him off to the living room to set up the bar. Which was, after all, what he knew best, she’d added.

  Her assumption was partially true, at least. He also knew that he gained most in life by watching before speaking and there was a bloody lot to be watching here. Once the bar was set, Daniel poured himself a mineral water, added a couple of ice cubes for company, then settled on a sleek ivory-colored sofa and waited for the show to begin.

  He hadn’t long to wait, for the Rutherford sisters seemed to have reached a cooking crisis.

  “Do the beans still have some snap to them?” he heard Elizabeth ask over the clatter of pots in the kitchen.

  “Yes.”

  “A little or a lot?”

  “Hey, it’s not like I sit around and quantify the amount of snap in a bean.”

  Daniel smiled. He could picture the eye roll that had accompanied Annie’s words.

  “If it’s just a little, they’ll be limp by the time they’re served. They can hold in the warming drawer only so long.”

  “Wow, Beans 101, courtesy of Ms. Phi Beta Kappa. Why don’t you try one for yourself if you don’t trust me?”

  After a moment’s silence he heard a resigned sigh. “They’ll have to do.”

  “You know I don’t like to cook, especially for Mom and Dad.”

  “You need to cut them some slack. They’re not as difficult as you make them out to be.”

  “It kind of depends where you are in the pecking order, doesn’t it? I think I’ll go make myself a drink.”

  She was quick on her feet, Ms. Annie. Daniel scarcely had the time to look occupied with the magazine he grabbed from the end table before she appeared.

  She gave him a wary hello as she came into the room. “Just getting my mind to a better place,” she said as she poured a glass of wine. “Especially since my body’s about to sit through another endless discussion of Edo period art.”

  “Edo?”

  “Japanese,” she said after a sip. “My mom’s an art historian. Dad’s an economist. His specialty’s the Pacific Rim. They both teach at U of M.”

  “Ah,” Daniel said for lack of anything better. She was giving the news as if it were bleak, and he had no idea why. He shifted on the sofa, which was a complete triumph of style over comfort.

  “Just don’t expect any sports chat,” she said as she sat opposite him. He hadn’t noticed earlier, but she had pretty, slender legs, with a sprinkling of freckles, too.

  He looked up to catch her scowling at him. Again.

  “You really have to stop doing that.”

  “Doing what?” he asked, just for the pleasure of increasing her annoyance, which seemed only sporting considering the way she’d worked herself under his skin. He knew what he’d been doing, though it was more involuntary than he cared to admit.

  “Stop looking at me.”

  “You’ve got a lot of rules,” he said, after stringing out the moment with a sip of water.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Earlier you told me I’m not to think or speak my mind, and now I’m not to look at you. You’ve taken care of free will, best I can see. Might you have any rules regarding the beat of my heart or how often I’m to breathe?”

  She stared into her wineglass. “I—I didn’t mean it that way. I’m just setting out the parameters of our relationship.”

  He allowed himself a smile. “Relationship? Scary word, that.”

  His comment gained her full attention. Her color rose, as did her voice. “Work relationship, okay?”

  Just then, the front door chimed.

  “Could you get that, Annie?” her sister called from the other room.

  She stood and shot him one last frosty gray glare. “We’ll finish this later.”

  “Can’t wait,” Daniel said, though he dreaded to think how many more rules Annie Rutherford would have manufactured by then.

  5

  MONDAY DAWNED WITH something damn close to the crow of a cock.

  After moaning “Would you shut up?” in the general direction of her neighbors, Annie crawled from bed. Four more hours of sleep might have made her passably human, but it wasn’t to be. The same stress that had messed with her sleep still rode her hard.

  Like it or not, she had to face the indignity that had been last night’s dinner. She had to accept that Flynn, with his charm and surprising knowledge of Kyoto—her mother’s favorite city—had been the hit of the party. And Annie had been invisible.

  Worse than invisible, actually. When Elizabeth tried to turn the conversation to Annie’s new assignment, it had become obvious that her parents had only a sketchy concept of what she actually did for a living. She knew they lived in an academic haze, but dammit, that had hurt.

  Flynn, of all people, had come to her rescue, distracting everyone with a tale about long-dead royal assassins and the warning issued by the squeaking “nightingale” floor in Kyoto’s Imperial Palace.

  If she were a good person, she’d probably have felt gratitude. Since all she ended up feeling was grumpy and incredibly low, Annie figured she remained a few reincarnations off from good.

  She showered, dressed, messed with her makeup and then packed her pub research into her briefcase. By the time she made it to her car, she was as close to running late as she’d ever been.

  She was at the corner stop sign waiting for traffic to clear, when in the rearview mirror she saw Flynn strolling down the sidewalk toward her. He stopped at the passenger side, which made her feel duty bound to lower the window.

  The Irishman braced his hand on the roof of the car and leaned closer to her. Annie caught the faint scent of cigarettes on him and was unhealthily gleeful at this first sign of human frailty.

  “Good morning,” he said.

  “Good morning,” she replied, recalling her vow to be polite yet distant with the guy. “You might as well get in. If you don’t, you’ll be late.”

  “Late for what?”

  “Work.”

  “But we’re not meeting with Hal till nine.”

  “So?”

  He glanced at the digital clock on her dashboard. “It’s not yet eight-twenty.”

  “You should always be in the office before eight-thirty. Otherwise, you’ll make us look bad.”

  His smile rolled out slow and easy, capturing Annie.

  “Ah, so this is another of your rules?” he asked.

  “It’s not a rule, it’s—”

  “A parameter.”

  “Funny.” She began to raise her window, hoping to chop off at least one of his fingers.

  A car horn sounded from behind them, which distracted her from maiming Flynn. Annie checked her mirror again. It was Mei in her shiny green little Beetle. Garth, too. She couldn’t believe that he’d abandoned his eco-friendlier-than-thou standards and gotten into a car. Maybe he’d taken pity on Mei, who couldn’t be walking comfortably this morning.

  Mei beeped again, impatient chick that she was. Flynn turned and gave a friendly wave.

  “So do you want a ride?” Annie fired at him before he decided to bond with the pair.

  “A ride?” The Irishman grinned, which, considering her tone of voice, surprised her. “I’m thinking I might.”

  “Then hurry up and get in.”

  She moved her briefcase to the back seat, and he climbed in. Once he was buckled, Annie watched for a break in traffic, then zipped out in front of a delivery truck. The truck’s driver blasted on his horn, and Flynn braced his hands on the dashboard, muttering something that definitely wasn’t in English.

  “Sorry, in a hurry,” she said to the guy in the truck, not that he could hear. To Flynn she added, “What language was that?”

  “Irish. I was saying my last prayers. I’ve felt safer in a Manhattan cab.”

  She smiled in spite of herself. “Thanks.”

  He laug
hed. “And truly now, thank you for the dinner. It’s an interesting group of friends your parents have.”

  “You’re welcome,” she said in a tone that she hoped equaled “topic dead.”

  Flynn took the hint. To fill the silence, Annie fiddled with the radio, searching for a drive-time show that actually played music instead of commercials. When she accepted that she was flat out of luck, she switched it off.

  They were nearly to the public parking structure by headquarters when he spoke again. “It was brilliant hearing you speak Japanese last night.”

  She’d give him points for tenacity. “It’s no big deal. I learned out of self-preservation. We lived there for two years.”

  The warmth of his gaze settled on her long before he spoke. “You undervalue yourself, Annie Rutherford.”

  Her heart did an odd little flutter.

  “I doubt it,” she said as she wheeled into a parking spot. By the time she’d turned off the car and pulled the keys from the ignition, Flynn was around to her side of the car, opening the door for her. While she stepped out, he opened the back door and retrieved her briefcase. She took it from him.

  As their hands brushed, she felt another small skip of the heart, which left her unthrilled. Since she’d already tanked at the “polite” part of the Flynn control plan, damned if she’d let “distant” die, too.

  Over the sound of the car doors closing, Annie heard a greeting coming her way.

  “And here I thought chivalry was dead,” Sasha called as she came from the line of parked cars opposite them. Once she’d joined them, she checked out Flynn with frank appreciation.

  Annie dredged up her last drop of polite. “Daniel Flynn, this is Sasha Donovan. Sasha, Daniel. Your grandfather’s hired him to work on the pub launch.”

  She watched as the two shook hands and exchanged small talk. They looked so right, somehow. Sasha, with her willowy shape and dramatic features, was the kind of woman made for a guy like Flynn. They’d marry, be superbreeders and have yet another generation of mind-blowingly gorgeous humans who made Annie’s sort feel as though they were a less-evolved species. She wasn’t so much jealous as resigned.

  They made their way out of the parking structure and turned left, toward Main Street.