by Gaelen Foley
“Here we go,” Harry said. “You ready?”
“Let’s do this! Cheese.”
Click. A moment later, he checked the screen and smiled with pride. “There’s the money shot. What do you think?” He showed her the picture, and Bea fell silent, amazed.
Wow. She couldn’t believe how happy they looked together, but there was the proof right on the screen. Joy shone in her eyes, and Harry looked stoked, almost possessive, with his arm wrapped around her.
They glanced at each other, both startled by a sudden sense of wonder. Because that looked like a picture of two people who simply belonged together.
And who might already be a little in love.
But that’s impossible, she thought with a gulp as Harry gazed at her. He captured her chin gently between his thumb and forefinger, and before she could formulate a response, he leaned down and kissed her.
She went motionless as his lips caressed hers with dreamy, sensuous warmth.
“I’m sorry,” he whispered seconds later, an inch from her lips. “I’ve been wanting to do that since yesterday afternoon.”
“Don’t be. I have, too,” she confessed, barely audible.
He glanced into her eyes with mild surprise; a soft smile curved his lips. Then he slid his fingers from under her chin to cup the side of her neck, and he kissed her again, more deeply.
Bea couldn’t resist, had no desire to try. She slipped her arms around him, yielding with eager need to the stroke of his tongue as it parted her lips. He wrapped his right arm around her waist and pulled her closer; she kissed him back, but the dizzying thrill of finally getting to taste him mixed with a heart-pounding sense of precariousness.
Harry seemed to know exactly what he was doing as he finessed her into a private corner of the terrace where shadows cloaked them from the nearby crowd. Bea went willingly, leaning back a moment later against a cool, pleasantly scratchy wall below the stone stairs, weak-kneed, while Harry kissed her soundly.
She stroked his hard, warm chest, grasped his wide shoulders, and couldn’t get enough of the man in those wild first few minutes. She nearly lost herself in the swirling expertise of his tongue—but finally managed to press a hand to his chest, signaling him to stop.
Harry paused and pulled back, panting just a little; a hard glitter of desire in his eyes, he looked at her in question.
“Is this a game, Harry?” she whispered, chest heaving. “Just tell me.”
The question appeared to take him aback—and to pain him. “I don’t know any games that feel this good.”
It did feel good. Incredible, actually.
It was then that she grabbed him and kissed him with reckless impatience. As she pulled him to her, she couldn’t believe she had ever wanted to make him go away. Right now, she wanted him exactly where he was. Wanted him so badly it ached all the way down to her toes.
He returned to claim her lips in one ravenous lunge, then took command. His fingers raked through her hair while his thumb glided up and down her cheek. His mouth slanted over hers. Pulse pounding, Bea gave herself over to the wave of sheer lush sensation, as her fear, suspicion, and worry over all the unknowns splintered into shards. The raw imperative of passion took over.
He pressed himself against her; she could feel the hardness of his body as she was deliciously trapped between his want and the wall behind her. His hands, warm and sure, moved from her waist to begin exploring her curves in the darkness. She clung to him as his urgent kisses consumed her. The world disappeared, and she melted into bliss. Only when the echo of silence seeped back into their awareness did they pause.
The music had stopped. The crowd was applauding, and Bea was breathless, fevered, her head spinning from his kisses, his touch. He stepped back, and they exchanged a dazzled stare.
Suddenly, a cold wind swept across the terrace, blowing the illuminated canopy that hovered over the band into wild, flapping disarray. It billowed through her dress and riffled his black hair.
They looked at each other again, startled and flushed, laughing self-consciously at the interruption. The crowd, warmed by heat lamps and liquor, simply hooted and cheered at the delightfully frightening scene while waiters and busboys attempted to keep napkins and tablecloths, empty wineglasses and bread baskets from floating away.
“Whew,” Harry said, drawing her close once more.
Bea moved into his embrace, seeking his warmth again all too gladly. She was trembling a little, intensely aware of him, now more than ever. Her mouth watered at the firmness of his sculpted chest and lean abs against her body, his strong arms around her.
For a moment, he seemed to be debating with himself, his lips lingering at her hairline. Then he lowered his head to whisper, “Hey.”
“Yeah?” With a little shiver of delight at the feel of his lips now skimming the curve of her ear, she almost couldn’t find her voice.
“Do you want to get out of here?” he breathed.
Bea bit her lip at his too-tempting proposition. She didn’t dare say yes—but her body refused to let her say no. She just looked at him, torn, wanting.
Harry’s eyes glimmered with knowing, discreet anticipation. He seemed to understand. Without a word, he threaded his fingers through hers and escorted her off the terrace and back out through the restaurant.
In the lobby, they briefly parted ways. While Harry went out to wait under the portico for the valet to fetch his car—which, on the drive here, he’d informed her was officially named Ruby—Bea excused herself to visit the ladies’ room.
There, she checked her makeup and readied herself with a tremble of excitement for the naughty twist this night was taking. She headed back outside a few minutes later, heart pounding as she crossed the lobby toward the double front doors of gleaming wood.
When she grasped the handle and pulled open one of the silent, heavy doors, she was surprised to spot Harry outside talking with Vanessa under the glow of the ponderous iron chandelier.
Neither noticed her as she slipped out. Their voices were low, but Bea overheard their conversation as she approached.
“I didn’t want to ruin Daddy’s good mood back in the dining room by bringing it up in front of him, but I wanted to tell you before you left tonight that I bumped into that awful woman your boss has been dating—Tammy Reese, is it?”
What? Bea froze at the name. Harry never mentioned that his boss was dating Tammy Reese. She could almost hear the giggle of her lavender-scented nemesis at this revelation.
“Ms. Reese told me all about Culpeper’s plans for that farm,” Vanessa continued, while Bea hung back in the shadow of the pillared doorway, listening. “Honestly, Harry. I know it always falls to you to save the poor Neanderthal from himself, but don’t let Curt make an even bigger fool of himself than he already has. Opening up his own resort just to spite my father? It’s absurd.”
Resort? Bea drew in her breath as the puzzle pieces slammed into place. That was what Harry and his boss meant to do with her farm?
A kneejerk reaction of automatic fury filled her at the thought of the home she loved and all the crops she’d worked to grow being torn down.
“Culpeper is either drunk or delusional if he thinks he can just throw up a successful golf resort overnight. It took my father decades to build all this.”
Fuming, Bea moved out of the shadows just then and marched toward them. “Sorry to interrupt,” she said with a glower. “What’s all this about turning that farm into a resort?”
Harry froze at her approach. He stood, hands on his hips, as if deciding how to spin it.
Vanessa didn’t give him the chance. “Oh, it’s nothing, dear. Just some silly old rivalry that’s been going between my father and Harry’s employer since their Harvard days.”
“Is that right?” She glared at Harry.
Vanessa seemed unable to resist sharing the tale. “Mr. Culpeper was escorted out of Silver Oaks a few nights ago for acting ungentlemanly toward me, shall we say. He has a vulgar fascina
tion with us younger women.” Vanessa feigned a shudder, apparently unaware of how her own father had been ogling Bea in the dining room. “Now the silly fellow thinks to take revenge for being banished from our place by building his own little private club just outside Harmony Falls.”
“Oh, really?” Bea folded her arms across her chest. Hot, heart-thumping anger had at least warded off the chill.
Vanessa’s eyes gleamed with mockery. “I hear he’s trying to buy some poor family’s farm for the project. I suppose he can grab whoever’s ass he pleases there, if he succeeds. But we both know travel and leisure is not his expertise.” She directed her next words to Harry. “Why don’t you just send him to sensitivity training? You heard Daddy say he’ll allow him back if he promises to behave—and apologizes to me. I can hardly wait to watch him grovel.”
Both women looked expectantly at Harry, but he had gone silent. His face was taut and somber as he avoided Bea’s gaze, glaring at Vanessa like he wanted to strangle her.
Just then, the Porsche announced itself, the approaching rumble of its engine filling the tense silence as the valet slowed to a halt beneath the lighted portico.
“Well! I shan’t keep you,” Vanessa said. “Take care of yourself, Riley. I’m sure we’ll speak again. Ms. Palmer,” she added, then tossed her scarf again as she pivoted, strutting back inside.
“You’re a piece of work,” Bea murmured to Harry as she walked past him. She got into the car as soon as it stopped. “Take me home,” she added, then slammed the door shut behind her.
Harry stood there for a second, right where she’d left him, then he went around to the driver’s side and tipped the valet.
Trembling with wrath at her own foolishness more than anything else, Bea stared at the dashboard, gripping the wristlet in her lap.
When Harry swung himself into the driver’s seat and pulled his door shut, he looked at her uncertainly. Still flabbergasted by his devious machinations, she just let out a low scoff of disgusted disbelief, shaking her head.
“Beatrice—”
“Don’t bother,” she said coldly. “I already know. It’s just business.”
He inhaled sharply through his nostrils, paused, then put the car in gear, pulling out of the parking lot, and onto the long, serpentine lane that meandered through the romantically lit resort.
Bea stared straight ahead the whole way home in suffocating silence. Harry sped through the forest, saying nothing. It seemed being exposed like that had muzzled even his silver tongue. Bea wasn’t sure if his silence made her glad or even angrier. No matter what he might’ve said, there was no excuse for what he’d been about to do.
Make love to her with his fingers crossed behind his back?
“So, you thought you’d screw me and then really screw me, huh?” she taunted, looking askance at him.
He pressed his lips together, as if he didn’t trust himself to give a civil answer. What could he really say now that the rest of the story had come out?
He had known this information all along, of course, and had carefully kept it hidden. Yet Tammy, hell, even Vanessa Montclair knew about Culpeper’s plans for her farm. Only Bea and her grandparents had been kept in the dark.
How tactfully he’d put it at the Knickpoint. “I’m not at liberty to disclose that information at this stage of the game.”
That’s all this was to him: a game.
That’s all she was to him. And like a fool, she had let herself start believing this was a real date.
Of course not. It was just another item for his expense account. A business dinner, little more to him than a tax deduction—and he’d nearly had her for dessert.
Cursing herself, Bea clenched her jaw in humiliation. God, why had she ever agreed to this? She felt like such a fool, making out with him in a dark corner, when this whole night was just another strategy, as her better sense had warned.
She couldn’t believe she had sat there at dinner telling him her whole life story. Like a total rube.
As anger started softening to hurt, pride alone helped her hold back the tears that stung behind her eyelids.
They crossed the antique covered bridge and zipped past her farm stand that sat dark and shuttered for the night. Harry zoomed down Clover Highway and then crept through town, past the coffee shop, the ice cream parlor, the theater. Everything was closed up for the night by now.
Only the police station had any lights on, sharing a corner of the old redbrick courthouse. It reminded her of Mike’s refusal to believe that Bea would jump into the sack with a guy on the first date.
If only she’d have listened. Then they rolled out the other end of town and headed on toward the farm.
Finally, as they bumped up the dirt drive to the farmhouse, Bea went over everything in her head one last time, and could no longer keep her mouth shut.
“That’s what this was all about? A stupid vendetta?” she nearly shouted.
“The offer was more than fair,” he said, calmly, matter-of-factly.
“You stroll into my life, all high and mighty—”
“A buyer is at liberty to do what he wants with any purchased property, provided it’s in compliance with zoning laws.”
“—trying to bamboozle me—”
“Bea, come on—”
“You’d have torn out my farm, my pap’s life’s work, changed the whole nature of our town to some snooty— All for the sake of a petty rivalry, s-some pissing contest between two rich guys?”
Harry growled as he pulled Ruby in to park.
“And you! You lie to me the first time we meet. Refuse to tell me key pieces of information. Like Tammy Reese is dating your boss?”
Colby and Dodd moseyed up to the parked car, sat lazily, and watched. A light flicked on inside the farmhouse.
Bea trembled with anger. “She must’ve finally realized she was never going to get anywhere with me, so they sent you in to deal with me instead. Handsome Mr. Smooth. The perfect weapon, sent to mess with my head. And con me into giving up my life’s dream.”
“You’re not the only one with dreams, Bea,” he said in a hollow tone, apparently getting sick of just sitting there and taking it.
“I guess not,” she shot back. “Because you’re sure as hell after something, aren’t you? The question is, what? That’s the one piece of the puzzle still missing. So, like I asked you before, what’s in it for you, Harry?”
He was mute, focused on his hands wrapped around the steering wheel in front of him.
“Big bonus? Promotion? A nice raise? Yeah. That’s what I thought.” He sent her a dark look, but Bea found herself laughing harshly now at the absurdity of the whole ordeal, at her own gullibility. “Man, you are something. Sitting in the kitchen with my grandma. Weaseling your way in with my friends. What a lucky break you got to save my life. Boy, that just fell right into place for you, didn’t it?”
“You’re welcome,” he muttered.
“God, I can’t believe I almost slept with you.”
He took the keys out of the ignition, turned toward her. “Is it my turn yet?”
“Nope!” she barked. “Here I was, thinking you were some good guy. And all the while you were playing me—”
“No, I wasn’t!” he roared without warning, suddenly furious right back at her. “I was bending over backwards to try to help you here, Bea.”
“Oh, please.”
“When a person offers you a hundred thousand dollars just to be nice, they are not out to get you, they’re throwing you a lifeline.”
She shook her head impatiently, refusing to listen to more lies. “And that speech you gave me back at the restaurant, about how I helped you? Wow. Did your marketing department write that script for you, or did you make it up yourself? Admit it, you’ll say anything to get what you want, won’t you, Harry? Just a silver-tongued charmer.”
Harry rubbed his eyes with one hand. She could tell he was reaching a limit, but she kept pushing, furious that she had let him in past her
defenses.
“You know I’m broke, you know I’m powerless here, already working around the clock as it is. But here you come, with your big wad of cash, trying to take advantage—”
“Damn it, I was trying to hand you a sensible way out!” he finally snapped. “Because, let’s be honest, Bea—we both know you’ve bitten off way more than you can chew with this farm.”
“Excuse me?”
“You have no funding, you have no concrete plan—don’t bullshit me! You’re deluding yourself,” he yelled, sounding nearly as domineering and expert as her dad. “Three hundred acres is more than you can handle—”
“Don’t you dare say that to me,” she hissed, staring at him in the darkness, outraged at the lecture. It was bad enough her parents obviously thought she was bound for failure.
Bad enough that, deep down, it was her own worst fear.
She was not about to sit there and take it from a man who apparently would’ve seduced her to get his way. All the while, the past whispered insidiously in her head. “You’re a curse, Beatrice Palmer. You ruin everything you touch…”
She refused to listen.
“I am not giving up,” she said, “no matter what you or anyone else says. I’m going to make it work. You’ll see. Nobody believes in me, I realize that. But I’m going to prove them all wrong, and shove those goddam veggies down their throats.”
“Look. I didn’t mean that as harsh as it sounded—”
“But I’ll tell you what I’m not going to do,” she interrupted, ignoring his back-pedaling. “I am not going to be a pawn in the middle of this little battle of the titans. This place means too much to me, do you understand? Boss Hogg and Ascot Man can both go to hell. And, as far as I’m concerned, Harrison Riley—so can you.”
“Beatrice, wait,” he implored her as she started to get out of the car. “I get why you’re angry. And I’m sorry. But would you please listen for a minute?”
“Fine. Talk. Though I know now not to believe half of what you say.”