A Small-Town Homecoming

by Terry McLaughlin

  She swiped a speck of mud from her pencil-slim skirt and tugged at her coordinating shantung-silk jacket. “I wasn’t planning on stopping by. I heard the police were here this morning. And I’ve been around plenty of construction sites.”

  “Good. Then I won’t have to remind you to bring a hard hat. I don’t have one to spare.” He turned back to his level, squinted into the scope and gestured to a crew member holding a marker near a footing.

  She took another careful step closer. “Why was a patrol car here?”

  “Because I called to file a report.”

  “About what?”

  “Vandalism.”

  “What?”

  He paused and leisurely added a note to his clipboard, but the ripple of muscle along the edge of his jaw betrayed the effort he was making to control his anger. “Someone poured some sand in an oil filter.”

  “That sounds serious.”

  He flicked a frigid glance in her direction. “It is.”

  “What do you intend to do about it?”

  “Rent another backhoe until I can get mine fixed.”

  “I mean,” she said as she folded her arms across her chest, “what are you going to do about getting better security so this kind of thing won’t happen again?”

  “What do you mean, security?” He shifted closer and angled his head toward hers. “Are you suggesting I hire a guard?”

  She held her ground, though she could nearly feel the temper and heat pumping off him. “Pouring sand in an engine is a lot more serious than the typical mischief at a site like this. Things like graffiti or materials theft.”

  “I know what goes on at sites like this.”

  “It could happen again.”

  “I know that, too.”

  “Tell me,” she said sweetly, “is there anything you don’t know?”

  The corners of his mouth turned up in an unfriendly grin, and his gaze roamed over her features. “Plenty. Particularly about female architects.”

  “If I were you,” she said, recklessly following the shift in the argument, “I’d be in a big hurry to figure things out.”

  His eyes darkened. “What makes you think I’m not?”

  He bent again at the waist and squinted into the scope. Tess was proud of herself for not noticing the way the back of his jeans curved behind his tool belt.

  “Look, Quinn, I—”

  “If you don’t think I can handle this job, well, you’re entitled to your opinion.” He made an adjustment to the level and checked the scope again. “But you’re not the one who hired me to do it. And the woman who did hire me wants us to work together.”

  “Believe me, I’m aware of that.”

  “So work with me.”

  He shot one of his penetrating looks at her, the one that made her feel as though he could see deep inside her to that place where she hid all her doubts and insecurities. She detested that look, nearly as much as she detested the fact that he was right. She had to work with him.

  “Fine,” she said. “I’ll work with you. And I’ll expect the same. A phone call when there’s something—anything—to report.”

  He nodded solemnly. “You got it.”

  “Now, about the security—”

  “Already taken care of.” He called another instruction to the man with the marker. “I discussed it with Geneva.”

  His words stung like a slap. Tess tried not to show it, to keep her eyes on his, but she knew from the way his frown deepened that he’d noted her flinch.

  “Well,” she said when she’d recovered, “now you can discuss it with me.”

  “Look, Tess, this isn’t—”

  “Later. At my office. Five o’clock.” She turned on her soggy, muddy heel and walked away.

  STILL in a temper a quarter of an hour later, Tess shoved her way into her office and then swore when her Macho-Mex mocha sloshed over the edge of the cup. Chocolate spatters layered over the dusty red splotches on her slingbacks. “Aww, for cryin’ out—”

  The phone on her desk rang, and she carefully speed-walked to the back of the room, holding the coffee at arm’s length. “Roussel Designs, Tess Roussel speaking.”

  “You’ve obviously made it back to work,” Geneva said with a hint of sarcasm.

  “Not all my work is done in the office.” Tess set the cup on the desk and reached for a tissue to wipe her hand. “Thank you for returning my call.”

  “Anytime, dear.”

  Tess frowned as she toed off her shoes. Her grandmother didn’t sound all that upset by what had happened at Tidewaters that morning. Not that she wanted her grandmother to be upset—not unless she was upset with Quinn. Then she could erupt like a Fourth of July fireworks display and fire his nicely shaped ass. “I wanted to touch base with you about what happened at the site this morning.”

  “The vandalism,” Geneva said with a disgusted sigh.

  “Yes.” Tess tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and snatched another tissue from her apple-red dispenser. “I understand Quinn has already discussed everything with you.”

  “Yes, he has. It’s all terribly distressing, all the trouble and expense involved in setting things right. But he assures me there won’t be any delays. And he’s handled everything quite satisfactorily, with no need for your attention.”

  “He may not have needed it, but he got it.” Tess picked up one of her shoes and began to scrub at the stains. “Finding out from one of the shopkeepers downtown that the police had been called to Tidewaters got my attention pretty damn quick.”

  “Really, Tess, must you use that kind of language?”

  “I beg your pardon. Sorry.” She chipped a nail on her shoe heel and swore under her breath as she tossed the soiled, crumpled tissue toward her waste bin. The wad bounced off the rim and tumbled to the floor. This just wasn’t her day. “I tend to get upset when my job site is the scene of a criminal investigation, and I’m not notified.”

  “Although I appreciate your enthusiasm for this project,” Geneva said in a terrifyingly frigid tone, “I must remind you that Tidewaters belongs to me, not to you.”

  Tess stiffened and dropped the shoe. “Yes, Mémère.”

  “You may be my granddaughter, but you are also, where Tidewaters is concerned, my employee.”

  It was that fact, more than her grandmother’s scolding, that heated Tess’s cheeks with embarrassment and guilt. An angry phone call wasn’t the best way to display her professional abilities to her biggest client to date.

  She detested being caught making an error in judgment. She despised weakness, especially in herself, and she loathed the shriveling remorse that swamped her at times like this. That was why she worked so hard, took such care, fussed over the details. Stayed in control. There were fewer mistakes that way.

  She shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I want—I need—to be kept in the loop. I have to be a part of this, each step of it, all the way through. It’s not just the way I want it. It’s my job. And if I’m going to do a good job, I need to be informed about everything—all the progress and all the problems.”

  “I don’t suppose,” Geneva said, “it would do any good to ask you to be civil to Quinn when you discuss this with him.”

  “I can be civil.” Tess slowly sank into her chair. “I can be anything I want to be.”

  “Except punctual.”

  “Except that.” Her smile was faint. “But I’m working on it.”

  “Good. Now,” Geneva said with a brisk change of tone, “I have some unrelated news I think will please you.”

  “About Charlie’s wedding shower?” Tess had left an earlier phone message asking if she could host the party at Chandler House. Tess’s own house was too small for the event she had in mind, and Addie’s apartment was literally a hole in the wall behind her shop.

  “About her wedding,” Geneva said.

  “Her wedding?”

  “I’ve offered Maudie the opportunity to hold Charlie’s wedding here. There’s pl
enty of space in the garden, near the pergola.”

  “I’m sure she was thrilled. Charlie will be, too.” Tess swiveled in her chair and stared out her windows, seeing white chairs in neat lines and pastel ribbons twined with wisteria instead of the pale wisps of late-afternoon fog drifting across Main Street. “And that means the pressure’s on now. Charlie will have to choose a summer date.”

  “That’s what Maudie and I thought, too.”

  “She didn’t have a chance, not with you two plotting against her.” Tess grinned. “Besides, who wouldn’t want a wedding at Chandler House?”

  “My granddaughter, for one.”

  Tess released a silent sigh. They’d had this discussion before. “I never said I didn’t want to get married there.”

  “You never said you wanted to get married.”

  “There are things I need to do before I’m ready to think about it. And one of those things is finding a man I want to marry.”

  “Find one,” Geneva ordered as if she were instructing her gardener where to place a rosebush. “Before I get too old to dance at the reception.”

  Tess grinned. “Yes, Mémère.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  QUINN GUIDED his pickup to the curb outside Tess’s office door a few minutes before five o’clock and switched off the ignition. He sat in the cab for a moment, banking his temper. It had been a long, frustrating day, and there was plenty of it left—he still had to fix dinner, start a load of laundry and deal with Rosie. But first he had to go another round with the only woman he knew who could scramble his thoughts and senses until he forgot how much he wanted a drink.

  She’d been wearing a dark blue suit today, and something that made her smell like a bucket stuffed with flowers. Fresh, white flowers drooping with early-morning water drops, like those tiny, bell-shaped flowers sprouting up from a mass of fat, grassy green in the shade under Mrs. Brubaker’s maple tree.

  And pearls, for God’s sake. On the site. Dangling from her pretty pink ears and slipping and sliding between her breasts. With the rumble and clang of Trap’s excavator and the diesel stench of Wylie’s bulldozer failing to block the punches she’d landed on his senses.

  She sure knew how to push his buttons—coming to the job in that getup, distracting his crew, arguing with him in public, questioning his judgment. And crawling under his skin, making him so hard he’d had to keep bending over and peering through the level’s scope as if his life depended on what he could see across the footings.

  Once she’d left and he’d cooled off, he’d had to acknowledge her point. But the fact was, he’d owed Geneva a phone call. She was the client. The owner. He’d need to meet with her later, to discuss the details and negotiate the financing for the site’s security.

  Still, he supposed he should have called Tess.

  Which only pissed him off again.

  With a curse, he exited his truck. Rue Matson waved as she locked up her tiny gardening shop, and he nodded as he stepped up onto the curb. How someone could make a living selling birdseed and fancy shovels was a mystery. “Evening, Rue.”

  “It’s a pretty one, isn’t it?” She squinted at a faded blue sky dotted with dingy white clouds and then glanced at the flower boxes tucked below Tess’s three-sided office window. “Nearly as pretty as those arrangements. Tess sure knows how to put a planter together. There’s a trick to doing it right, you know.”

  “Is there?”

  “Oh, yes.” Rue rambled on in her friendly shopkeeper voice about color and texture and layers and a bunch of other things Quinn didn’t care about. But he had to admit, as he waved goodbye to Rue, that they were pretty planters. As sassy and colorful as the woman who’d planted them.

  And he had to admit, as he stalked through her door, that Tess had made her office space pretty, too. Not too fussy, not too plain. Not too much emphasis on the business, but enough drawings and models to give a quick impression of competence and skill. Just right, just the way an architect’s office should look. The woman had class.

  She was also sitting too close to Don Gladdings, who had pulled a visitor’s chair to Tess’s side of the desk. Don was taking advantage of his maneuver to lean over her shoulder and peer at something on her computer monitor, while she made her pitch for redrawing a section of his new car dealership. Clever phrases delivered with a subtle appeal to Don’s pride in his business—architectural design as ego gratification.

  Quinn wondered whether Don was enjoying that white-flower smell, too. He cleared his throat in an overly loud cough.

  Tess raised her eyes to Quinn’s, and his temper shifted into a lower gear, somewhere near basic agitation. Hard to stay ticked off at a woman who could aim a scorched-dagger glance while wearing ice-cool pearls.

  “I’ll be with you in a few minutes,” she said.

  Quinn grunted a response and tucked his hands into his pockets as he started a slow turn of the outer office area. It was a waste of energy staying angry about small, stupid things. There were far more important items needing far more of his energy at the moment. Rosie. Security at the job site. Scheduling around the equipment hassles.

  If Tess wanted to drag him down to her turf, to stage a showdown on her own territory, he could shrug it off. After all, it was a smart move. He’d have done the same, in her place.

  He sneaked a glance at her and watched her direct Don’s attention to some detail on her monitor with polish-slicked nails on the ends of long, ringless fingers. The lady had spunk.

  And talent to spare. Quinn paused to study her model of Tidewaters, once again admiring the blend of sleek lines and traditional charm, the clever use of space and the integration with the setting. Why she chose to squander her gifts on projects here in Carnelian Cove, he wasn’t quite sure.

  But he sure was glad she’d decided to stick around for a while.

  The realization rattled him. He waited for his feelings to sort themselves out and settle down inside, worried that this latest complicated thought might mess up the points he intended to make about this morning’s argument. Well, he’d find a way to shrug off this sneaky soft spot, too. When it came to Tess Roussel, he’d be wise keeping his edge.

  Besides, he didn’t know all that much about her. He’d heard she came from money on both sides, but from what he’d observed, she didn’t seem to have much of her own. There were nicer offices available in the Cove. And he knew—because curiosity had driven him past it one night—that she’d settled for one of the basic tract houses lining the streets in the newer section east of town. Her car was anything but basic, but it was an older model.

  Maybe she needed this job as much as he did. Maybe that explained the flicker of desperation he thought he’d detected behind that bewitching stare of hers.

  Don stood and dragged his chair back into place, and Tess walked him to her door. “Gotta watch out for this lady,” Don said as he passed Quinn. “She’ll have you wanting things you never knew you needed until she mentions them.”

  “But you do need them. And isn’t it nice to have someone fuss over all those details for you?” Tess gave Don a dazzling smile, and his face lit up in obvious agreement.

  Poor sucker.

  She waved goodbye to her customer, closed and locked her door, flipped the Open sign to Closed and turned to face Quinn. “Thanks for coming,” she said in her crisp, uptown voice. “Can I get you something to drink? Coffee?”

  “No. Thanks.”

  She gave the bottom of her shiny blue jacket a sharp tug in the habit he recognized as her down-to-business attitude adjustment. Moving to the scrawny counter suspended on the wall behind her desk, she poured something into a pretty cup painted with little purple flowers.

  “Only kids drink stuff like that,” he said as she added a ridiculous amount of sugar.

  “I have a sweet tooth.” She settled her hip against the desk’s edge and raised the cup to her lips. “And a metabolism that lets me indulge it.”

  He watched her full red lips pucker around
the cup rim, and his own system kicked up a notch. “You’d better make this fast,” he warned, “’cause I’ve got plans for this evening.”

  “Plans involving the security at the site?”

  “That’s right.”

  “What are you going to do, exactly?”

  He pulled his hands from his pockets so he could curl his fingers into fists. “You didn’t ask your grandmother?”

  “I’m asking you.” She blushed and lowered the cup to its saucer, and the china rattled as she set down the pieces. “Geneva Chandler may be my grandmother, but on this job she’s my boss.”

  “That’s a cozy arrangement.”

  “In case you haven’t noticed, she doesn’t play favorites.”

  “No, she doesn’t,” he said. “When it comes to business, she’s too smart to play any kind of game.”

  Her breath snagged with a tiny flinch, and he caught a glimpse of a shadowy flicker in her eyes—a brief softening that hinted at a vulnerability that intrigued him. And in the next moment, before he could guess at its cause, it was gone.

  He’d figured she didn’t have too many chinks in her armor. And now that he’d found one, he was sure to regret it. He preferred the straightforward Tess, the model-in-the-window version who could be relied on to keep her chin up and her talk on target.

  While he considered the flaws in his theory, he discovered they’d somehow shifted closer to each other during their conversation. Too close. He needed to take a step back, but he didn’t want to give any ground.

  He narrowed his eyes, daring her to make the first move, to retreat or…something else. But then her lips curled up at the edges, and he knew she wouldn’t give him the satisfaction. She crossed her arms beneath her breasts, one wrist brushing against him as she built her little barrier, staying within firing range while giving him a shot of her perfume.

  Potent stuff. He crammed his hands back into his pockets so he wouldn’t put them somewhere they didn’t belong.

  “There are two businesswomen in this deal,” she said. “You might have an easier time on this job if you remembered that fact.”

  “Believe me, that fact is a tough one to forget.”