by Mindy Klasky
She knew the Sartain Foundation was his heart and soul. Sure, he had financial advisors. She knew for a fact he’d paid off the mortgage on this house they were standing in. But for the past ten years, he’d taken pride in building the Foundation, pouring in every last penny he could manage, far above the limits suggested by his accountants. He wanted to help kids. He wanted to change their lives. And now it was going to cost him more than he’d ever imagined.
“Oh, Adam,” she said. “I’m sorry.” And she was. No one deserved to be betrayed the way he’d been. “It’s just that I thought…”
She felt like an idiot. What the hell had she been thinking? That she’d show up here, wearing ragged jeans and a torn sweatshirt, offering up a bottle of whisky like it could make everything better? Or worse, that she was some femme fatale who could convince him to change his mind by the power of alcohol and her sultry request alone?
Forget all that. She wanted to hug him. She wanted to fold her arms around him, to pull him close enough that she could ease the tension from his back. She wanted…
His smile was the old familiar one as he said, “I know exactly what you were thinking.”
God save her, if he did.
“You were thinking you’d ask a favor, based on all our years of friendship. You were thinking it was worth a try, even if it wasn’t likely to work out.”
“Well, when you put it like that, it sounds like I had one hell of a plan.”
He nodded toward the Macallan. “Go ahead,” he said. “Take the bottle home.”
She shook her head. “A gift’s a gift. And it sounds like you need it more now than ever.”
His gaze turned sharp. “I can’t walk away from the Reeves place now. It might be the last thing I can do for the Foundation, the only way to build the legacy I want. I don’t care what it takes, if I end up bankrupt at the end of this. I’m bidding on that farm for BUNT.”
She wasn’t surprised he was digging in. This was Adam Sartain she was talking to, after all. She made herself laugh. “Then take the Macallan. And every time you look at it, think about how I’m going to beat your ass at fundraising. Make sure you save a shot or two, for solace when Paws walks away with the deed.”
“Oh ho!” he said, and she loved the way his laugh filled the kitchen. “Those are fighting words!”
“That’s because I’m a fighter,” she said.
“I’ll drink to that.” The seal crackled as he pulled the cork, and the whisky gurgled with his generous pour. He held his wrist at a cocky angle as he offered her one of the glasses. “May the best man win.”
She touched her tumbler to his. “Best woman, you mean.”
The flash in his grey eyes sent spears to her belly. He had to have heard her catch her breath. He had to realize her pulse was suddenly racing through her fingertips, through every inch of her. But there was no way she’d let herself acknowledge those sensations, not where Adam Sartain was involved. He had put her dreams for the future in danger, and she was going to fight him tooth and nail until she got exactly what she wanted.
He grabbed the bottle and led the way into the family room. She followed before she’d even made a conscious choice to let her feet move. Without waiting for permission, she collapsed onto the couch, slipping her shoes off with her toes. She pulled her knees up to her chest and cradled her glass against her shins as Adam settled on the far end of the couch. He winced as he stretched his legs out in front of him.
“Hard game?” she asked.
“That missed catch yesterday,” he said darkly. He rotated his shoulders, stretching against an obvious twinge, and then he sipped the Macallan like it was medicine. “It won’t kill me.”
She knew when it was time to change the topic of conversation. And it was best to dig out one of the things they always shared, one of the standby questions that let her remember who she was, who he was, why they’d been friends for decades. If she pretended hard enough that everything was normal, that everything was the way it had always been, then maybe the crazy trembling feeling beneath her ribs would finally fade away. Because it felt a little like the stomach flu, and she didn’t want to live the rest of her life with that type of misery.
“So,” she said. “Tell me more about Florida. You weren’t breaking hearts this year. But I kept reading in the paper about Drew Marshall. Weren’t you the one who broke the news of his engagement to the press?”
He relaxed back against the couch. “Funny thing, that.”
And he started to tell her the story. She laughed when she was supposed to. She sipped her whisky while he entertained her. She accepted his offer of another healthy pour, more than she should have, but she didn’t want to give herself any reason to cut short the night and head back home.
But no matter how much she listened, how often she launched into her own entertaining stories, how many times she painted the orange and spice of the Scotch against the back of her throat, she couldn’t still the fluttering sensation around her heart.
~~~
“God,” Adam said, glancing at the clock on the DVR. It was 3:30 in the morning. If he’d guessed, he would have said it was a couple of minutes past midnight.
“You’re a bad influence on me, Mr. Sartain.” Haley leaned forward and put her glass on the coffee table with a tell-tale precision.
He looked back at the bottle of whisky. They had made a dent in it. He’d poured the first two glasses, but she’d had a heavy hand herself, pouring the third.
He reminded her, “I’m not the one who showed up bearing gifts.” He pushed himself to his feet. He wasn’t drunk—it took more than a few shots spread over several hours to do that. But he had to admit he was feeling the effects of the alcohol—wonderful effects, he thought, as he realized the throbbing in his side had faded to a dull ache.
He offered Haley a hand. “There you go,” he said, stepping back as he pulled her to her feet.
Either he pulled too hard, or she was a lot more unsteady than he was. In any case, she tumbled toward him. He just caught a look of surprise on her face, and then she was pressed against his chest, her arms wrapped around him like he was the last tree standing before she went hurtling off a cliff. “Oh!” she breathed, as he automatically clutched her close.
She smelled like Scotch. But she smelled like Ivory soap too, and there was something else, something warm and soft, like fresh-cut grass, rising from her hair. He lowered his head and took a deep breath, liking the scent of her.
She was soft in all the right places, and her head was just the right height to tuck into the hollow of his collar bone. He could feel the body beneath that shapeless sweatshirt; he could run his hands down her back and feel the lines of her bra.
His cock twitched, and he leaped back a full pace, barely keeping his arms extended to hold Haley upright. He was not giving in to his little head, not where Haley was concerned. She was his neighbor. She was his friend. They had over thirty years together, and he would be an asshole if he threw it out because of one night’s drinking.
“Let’s get you home,” he said, once he was certain his voice wouldn’t make a fool out of him.
He supported her forearms as she slipped her feet back into her shoes. He hooked his fingers against her elbow as he helped her down the hallway, making sure she stayed upright as he opened the lock on his front door. He tightened that grip as they walked through the grass, as dew soaked into the hem of his jeans, making the denim heavy.
She was silent as they walked up the steps to her front door, so quiet that he knew she had to have felt his cock move, had to have known he’d been ready to jump her bones, right there in the middle of his family room. Jesus God, he was ready to melt into the floorboard of her porch. A chorus of barks started inside her house, the deep, throaty challenge of Heathcliff, the excited baying of Darcy, and the chatter of the over-excited Killer, and he wondered if her dogs would tear him apart, limb from limb, if she gave them half a chance. He deserved it. Whatever they dished out, prote
cting their mistress, he deserved it.
She retrieved her key from her pocket without any trouble, but the lock wasn’t as cooperative. She stared at it, eyes narrowed, carefully placing her index finger as a guide. The key slipped on the brass, though, refusing to go in.
He let her try two more times, before he took it away from her. “I can get it,” she said, with the sort of precise dignity that let him know she never would.
“Let me pretend to be a gentleman,” he said. He got it on the first try, turning firmly. He knew better than to push the door open, if he didn’t want to be pelted by her over-excited mutts. Instead, he dropped the keyring into her waiting palm and watched as she returned it to her pocket.
“Thank you for a lovely evening,” she said, drawing herself up straight, all prim and proper.
He had to laugh. “Do you need any help?” He wanted her to say yes. He’d kill himself in the morning if she did.
She thought seriously for a long moment before she shook her head. “No,” she said. She folded one hand around the doorknob. “The dogs will make sure I’m okay.”
“It’s no problem,” he assured her, even though it was. Even though she might have just become the biggest problem of his life, bigger even than Jason Fucking Reiter.
She turned to face him, and he realized he was standing a hell of a lot closer to her than he should have been. His dick told him to close the distance, to close the deal altogether.
But Haley smiled up at him, her lips closed, her eyes all soft, like she was just waking up from a dream. She rested her palm against his jaw, her fingertips brushing the pulse point beneath his ear.
Down, boy. And he wasn’t thinking about any of her damn dogs.
“I think it might be,” she said. “A problem.” And then she took her hand away. Took it away, and it was everything he could do not to grab her fingers, not to grab her, not to push her back against the unlocked door and shove his hands beneath that crappy sweatshirt and find out if she was anywhere near as turned on as he was.
But she took a step back and let cool air wash between them. She raised her chin, like she was seven years old and refusing to king him in a game of checkers. She swallowed hard before she said, “I’m not going to let the farm go, Adam.”
He nodded. “I’m not either.”
He was stunned as hell when tears filled her eyes. “I’m serious. I’m not giving up, even if you did bring me taffy.”
“If it’ll make you feel better, I can eat half your candy. Like you just drank half my Scotch.”
She blinked. At least she didn’t look like she was going to start crying any more. “That was one hell of a gift I gave you.”
“It was one hell of a bribe. Too bad it didn’t work.”
She nodded slowly before she enunciated, “Go home. I have to get to bed. Tomorrow, Paws will start fundraising, so we can kick your ass when it comes to bidding on the farm.”
He didn’t have the heart to tell her she was slurring her words. “We’ll see about that. As you said earlier tonight, may the best person win.”
He didn’t feel like the best person as he watched her turn back to the door. He didn’t feel like a good person at all. Instead, he was a person who wanted to rip her clothes off, who wanted to bury his face against her soft skin, who wanted to breathe in that soap and shampoo scent as he figured out why it had taken him so many years to realize that Haley Thurman wasn’t just one of the guys.
But he made himself hold every muscle still as she let herself into her house, as she greeted her ecstatic dogs, as she blew him a saucy kiss before she shut the door. Or maybe that was just a sisterly kiss. How the hell was he supposed to know?
The grass was even wetter on the way back to his own lonely house.
CHAPTER 4
Two and a half weeks later, Haley looked around Club Joe, amazed at how the coffee shop had been transformed. In the past hour, the front counter where people usually ordered their gourmet coffees had been transformed into an extravagant landscape of sliced cakes and pies, with tempting brownies and cookies filling in the few empty spaces. The small tables scattered around the popular gathering spot had been converted to display spaces for some of the most elaborate desserts Haley had ever seen. There were towering coconut cakes, triple-layer caramel cakes, even a fresh-baked stack pie just like the one a local chef had used to win a reality TV show a few months back.
Haley turned to Kate and said with awe in her voice, “You’re amazing.”
Kate laughed. “It helps to know people who know people.”
Haley could only shake her head at the understatement. “So, are we ready to open the doors?”
“As ready as we’ll ever be.”
As Kate had planned the bake sale, she’d quickly discovered that health officials frowned on an animal shelter hosting a food event. Therefore, she’d called in all her markers, setting up the sale at one of the trendiest cafes in town.
And the tactic seemed to work. People were lined up outside; the queue stretched all the way down the block. A few people had brought their dogs, and many more wore T-shirts proudly emblazoned with pets. One woman sported a headband with cat ears, and she’d drawn whiskers across her cheeks.
Haley took one last look at the baked goods, and then she nodded to the Club Joe employees who staffed the door and the cash register. “All right, then! Let’s see what we can do!”
And that was the last complete sentence she strung together for almost two hours.
The crowd was amazing. Everyone had complimentary things to say about Paws for Love. Several people had adopted animals in the past. A lot more said they were going to stop by in the next week or so. A fish bowl set beside the register began to fill up with donations, and the staff was soon overwhelmed by sales of individual slices of delectable treats.
Kate’s real inspiration, though, had been in selling whole desserts—entire cakes and pies that buyers could take home for a special family dinner or a party. Paws had originally considered having the bake sale on a weeknight, trying to snag tired office workers who wanted a sugar boost before they completed the trek home, but Kate had realized that a weekend made more sense, lending a party air to make big bucks on the finest gourmet treats Raleigh could offer.
Haley was making a record of the entire event, snapping photos on her phone. At first, she tried for artistic angles, trying to catch the afternoon sunlight glinting on pastries, the shimmer of powdered sugar, the gleam of ganache. Soon, though, she was grabbing shots of the excited crowd. And then she didn’t have time to take any pictures at all, because she was pressed into service setting out more slices of pie, more cakes, more brownies. She even took a shift at the register, ringing up sales and tallying the proceeds.
By the time the event ended, the cafe looked like an army had rampaged through. Napkins littered the floor, and the trash cans were piled high with paper plates. Kate pulled the cash tray from the register and retreated to a table to count their earnings. Haley used the time to help Joe, the shop’s proprietor, wipe down the counters and tabletops, mop the floor, and shift all the chairs back to their usual places and put things in order for the expected morning rush.
“I don’t believe it,” Kate said, as Haley slid the last chair into place.
Bracing for bad news, Haley turned to her assistant. “What?”
“We just raised six thousand dollars.”
Six thousand dollars, for two hours of selling dessert.
Kate said, “If we did this every week…”
And that’s when reality came crashing down on Haley. They couldn’t run a bake sale every week. The bakers who’d donated wares today couldn’t be tapped for another gift for at least six months, probably a year. And six thousand dollars—while it was an amazing haul for a single fundraising event—wasn’t going to make a meaningful dent in the money they needed to buy the Reeves farm.
For the first time since she’d come up with her crazy plan, Haley really began to doubt if i
t was possible. And she’d never had a poker face. Kate could obviously read her disappointment from across the room.
“This is just a start,” Kate said, her voice warm with reassurance. “Things will snowball, you’ll see. The people who participated today will spread the word; they’ll let people know about everything else we have planned.”
“I know you’re right,” Haley said, purposely keeping her voice bright. After all, she was the executive director of Paws for Love. It was her job to keep her staff engaged and enthusiastic. Her voice only quavered a little as she said, “But maybe we do have to consider Pet Ownership University.”
Kate looked her straight in the eye. “Do I have to remind you? Two words: Missy Newton.”
Looking around the sparkling coffee shop, Haley had to admit that Kate was right. Missy Newton—and all the ignorant customers who bought her puppy mill dogs—was reason enough to run screaming for the hills at the thought of doing Pet Ownership University. And six thousand dollars was an excellent start.
Haley smiled. “Okay. You win.”
After that, it was easy to wrap things up. Kate gathered up the money, promising to make a night deposit at the shelter’s bank. Haley shook hands with Joe, thanking him again for letting them commandeer his shop. The rest of the staff collected their gear from the back room, including the various desserts they’d bought as personal rewards for a job well done.
As Haley walked to her car, she tried to shake away her exhaustion. She was a little astonished by how much the sale had taken out of her. When she keyed her ignition to life, the radio snapped on. As always, it was set to the AM sports station, the one that broadcast the Rockets’ games. Haley glanced at the clock, and she was surprised to realize it was already 7:30. The Rockets were in the top of the second inning in New York.
As she listened to the familiar patter of the announcers, Haley’s heart twisted a little in her chest. She’d avoided Adam since her unnerving attempt at getting him to back off of the Reeves deal. Part of her reaction was practical—he had enough to think about sorting out his financial disaster; he was overwhelmed by the inevitable frenzy as the press sank its teeth into the story. And part of her reaction was routine—he’d been on the road for the better part of the last two and a half weeks, and there were still four games before the Rockets came back home.