“So, what’s it going to be? Are you more interested in lunch with Daisy or in seeing the land I’m planning to develop?”
“Why does it have to be an either/or proposition?” she asked.
He shrugged. “That’s just the way it is. This is a onetime-only offer. Take it or leave it.”
Jenna’s gaze clashed with his. “Then, unfortunately, I’ll have to leave it. It would be impolite to back out on lunch with your sister, now that I’ve already accepted. Besides, Tommy and Darcy have made plans as well. He wants her to see his boat.”
“Your choice,” Bobby said, standing up. “Enjoy the rest of your evening.”
“Hey,” Jenna called after him. “We need to talk.”
“We just did,” he pointed out.
“You know perfectly well what I mean.”
“Call Maggie. Maybe she’ll be able to squeeze you in later this month. My calendar’s booked pretty tight. All those other developers, you know.”
He heard Jenna’s gasp and hid a grin before turning back. “Yes?”
“I thought you weren’t seeing anyone yet?”
“I hadn’t intended to, but once you slipped through the door, I had no choice but to schedule the others. You’d be amazed how many people are anxious for a piece of this project.”
She frowned at him. “One o’clock,” she said tightly. “I’ll cut short my visit with your sister.”
He shook his head. “Not good enough. Noon’s my final offer.”
“Dammit, Bobby Spencer—”
“Careful,” he warned with a pointed look at Darcy. She’d been half-asleep, but her mother’s muttered curse had gotten her attention. She seemed almost as surprised by it as Bobby was.
Jenna sighed. “Noon. Where shall we meet?”
As far away from Daisy’s as possible, he thought. Aloud, he said, “Earlene’s. I’ll buy you both a sandwich before we head out on the tour.”
“Noon at Earlene’s,” Jenna agreed with obvious reluctance. “But I think you ought to be the one to call your sister and apologize for spoiling our plans.”
“Not a chance,” Bobby said fervently. He wasn’t going to listen to an hour-long lecture on his devious nature and lack of manners.
“I’m not sure you want her to hear my spin on this,” Jenna countered.
He frowned at that. “Fine. I’ll call and express your regrets.”
“My very deep regrets,” Jenna emphasized. “And do it tonight, before she spends a lot of time preparing lunch.”
“Whatever.” If it kept those two apart, at least for another day, he would wake his sister from a sound sleep and say whatever was necessary.
Unfortunately, he had a feeling he was only postponing the inevitable.
The conversation with Daisy went pretty much as Bobby had anticipated it would. She didn’t buy it for one single second that his offer to take Jenna on a tour of the riverfront property had been a magnanimous gesture.
“You’re trying to keep the two of us apart,” she had muttered sleepily. “Which only makes me wonder why.”
“Jenna is supposed to be here because she wants to land this contract. Don’t you imagine that ought to be her first priority?” he had retorted. “It’s unfair of you to try to distract her.”
Daisy’s response to that had been an unladylike snort of disbelief. Then she’d hung up on him.
Given all that, Bobby wasn’t the slightest bit surprised when he walked into Earlene’s to find his sister and Tommy settled into the same booth as Jenna and her daughter. If he was going to join them and prevent disaster, he was going to have to haul over a chair and sit in the aisle.
Or he could squeeze in beside Jenna, he concluded, studying the situation thoughtfully. Only problem with that was that he couldn’t be entirely sure which of them would regret the intimacy the most. Probably him. Jenna had an annoying ability to ignore his best attempts to rattle her. Still, it was worth the risk, just to see a quick flare of heat in her eyes.
“A bit crowded in here,” he noted with a pointed glance at Daisy as he nudged Jenna farther along the booth’s bench.
“I didn’t want Darcy and Tommy to miss out on the chance to spend some time together just because you’re sneaky,” Jenna said cheerfully. “I called Daisy this morning and suggested they join us.” She smiled at him sweetly. “You don’t mind, do you?”
“Whatever makes you happy,” he said, his own tone sour.
Daisy chuckled, though her expression quickly sobered when Bobby scowled at her.
Lunch went downhill after that. Daisy and Jenna kept up a nonstop barrage of talk about the plague that brothers could be on their lives.
“I’m going to remember every word of this,” Bobby told Daisy. “Tucker will find it fascinating, I’m sure. And you’ll eventually pay for every disparaging word you said about the two of us.”
This time his sister didn’t even try to hide her amusement. “Your threats have lost the power to scare me,” she told him loftily. “But I will leave you two alone now. Darcy, would you like to come home with Tommy and see his boat?”
Darcy nodded with the first evidence of animation she’d displayed all during the meal.
“Is that okay with you, Jenna?” Daisy asked.
“If you’re sure you don’t mind. I’ll be by in an hour or so to pick her up.”
Not if he had anything to say about it, Bobby vowed, at least not without him right by her side to make sure the conversation never veered into the kind of girltalk that would come back to haunt him.
“We’ll swing by when we’re finished with the tour,” he told Daisy. “If you’ve baked something by then, it will go a little way toward getting you off the hook.”
Daisy rolled her eyes. “Will chocolate chip cookies do?”
“As a down payment,” he told her.
When Daisy and the kids had gone, he turned and saw that Jenna was studying him with evident fascination.
“You know, for all that talk of Daisy’s about how annoying you and Tucker are, you’re really very close, aren’t you?”
Bobby was surprised she had to ask. He was even more startled by the genuinely envious note in her voice. “Of course. Aren’t you close to your brothers?”
Jenna shook her head. “Not really.”
“Why not?”
Her expression turned thoughtful and perhaps just a little wistful. “Maybe it was because after my mom died, I was the one sent away to boarding school, while they got to stay home with my dad. I resented it.”
Bobby tried to imagine Daisy’s reaction if King had tried such a thing with her. Daisy would have fought the move tooth and nail. She might have been her daddy’s meek, well-mannered angel most of the time, but Daisy did have a temper and she had taken it upon herself to play mother to Tucker and Bobby. She would never have permitted King to interfere with her self-assigned duty. If he’d actually managed to get her enrolled at a boarding school, Daisy would have turned right around and hiked home the next day, and that would have been that.
Not that King would have considered it in the first place. Keeping Daisy at home had made his life run more smoothly. She’d slipped into the role of hostess at Cedar Hill as if she’d been born to it. Never mind that she’d been barely in her teens at the time. How sad that Jenna hadn’t been given the same chance to carve out a niche for herself at home with her family.
Bobby regarded her sympathetically. “That must have been hard.”
“It was devastating,” she said simply. “Just when I needed the rest of my family the most, I became an outcast.”
“How’d you handle that?”
A faint smile touched her lips. “The same way every teenager gets even. I rebelled.”
Bobby had no difficulty at all envisioning the woman beside him staging a rebellion that would shake the rafters. Her audacious intrusion into the middle of his life testified to her inventiveness.
“What did you do?” he asked.
“Well,
there was the incident of the snake tattoo,” she said, her eyes twinkling mischievously.
The thought of a tattoo marring her soft, pale skin made him wince. But, then, curiosity got the better of him. Since no tattoo was visible, this raised some interesting possibilities.
“Where?” he asked, his gaze drawn to the faint curve of her breast exposed by the opening in her blouse.
She elbowed him sharply in the ribs. “Not there.”
He feigned an exaggerated sigh. “Too bad. I was hoping to sneak a peek.”
“You’re too late. It washed off.”
He regarded her with disappointment. “It was a fake?”
She chuckled. “Yep, but it did the job. My father almost had a nervous breakdown. Of course, that was nothing compared to the first time I brought home Nick Kennedy.”
“Your husband?”
“My ex-husband,” she stressed quickly. “His tattoo was real, as was the diamond stud in his ear.” She glanced pointedly at the one Bobby wore. “I’m pretty sure my father would have left the house and gone straight to his cardiologist’s, but he was terrified to leave the two of us alone for a minute.”
“But you ran off and married this Nick, anyway,” Bobby concluded. His gaze narrowed. “Because you were pregnant?”
Fortunately, she didn’t take offense at the blunt, personal question.
“I can see why you’d think that, but no. Darcy might have been a surprise, but for me, she was a happy surprise a full nine months after the wedding. And, in my father’s view, she’s probably the one good thing to come out of that time in my life. In my view, too, for that matter.”
“She seems like a handful,” Bobby noted, thinking of the green hair.
“You have no idea,” Jenna said fervently. “I’m actually hoping our stay in Trinity Harbor will work some magic on her and on our relationship. She’s more rebellious at nine than I was at sixteen. It’s scary. I’m beginning to understand what I put my father through.”
“You’re expecting a miracle in a couple of days?”
Jenna met his gaze evenly. “It’s going to take more than a couple of days to complete this waterfront project.”
Bobby’s heart began to thud dully. “You sound awfully confident about getting the job.”
“I am,” she said without hesitation. She met his gaze with an unflinching look.
Bobby admired the confidence, even if he felt he had to discourage it. “Jenna, this is not a done deal, not by any means,” he said, fighting to keep the panic from his voice.
“Of course not,” she agreed. “There are all those other developers pouring into town, right? The ones you told me about last night?”
“Exactly.”
“How many, precisely?”
Bobby’s gaze narrowed. “Why do you ask?”
“Just curious about the competition.”
“You’ve talked to Maggie, haven’t you? What did she tell you?”
Jenna grinned. “No appointments. No developers. You lied to me.”
Bobby was going to kill Maggie…or at the very least explain to her more clearly who her boss was. Not that that had ever impressed her before. This was what happened when you hired someone you used to baby-sit. The chain-of-command lines had long since been blurred.
“There will be more,” he insisted firmly. “I just hadn’t gotten around to telling Maggie to schedule the appointments.”
“Right,” Jenna agreed with undisguised amusement. “In that case, we’d better take that tour right now. I want to have my site plans finalized and on your desk before all that competition roars into town.”
“I thought you were just sticking around to make sure Tucker finds your missing carousel horse,” Bobby said glumly.
“Not entirely,” she said cheerfully. “I’m going to be a thorn in your side until you agree to give Pennington and Sons this contract.”
“Why would you work this hard for a company that, by your own admission, is run by men who’ve made you an outsider in your own family?”
She regarded him as if the answer were obvious. “To prove they made a mistake, of course.”
In that instant, Bobby knew that not only Jenna’s family, but he himself, were seriously guilty of misjudging her. Jenna might look like a pure temptress with little acumen for business, but she had the heart and soul of a shark. It was a frightening—albeit fascinating—discovery.
7
It was killing King that he hadn’t yet had a look at the woman who’d been inspired to send that carousel horse to stir up his son. Anyone with that kind of spunk would be perfect for Bobby, so King was prepared to do his part to get the relationship on solid ground, but he felt a little bit as if he were buying a pig in a poke. Still, the fact that she’d come back to town to keep up the pressure did impress him. King was more hopeful about Bobby’s future than he had been in some time.
Of course, it wouldn’t do to get overconfident. If Bobby thought King approved of this Jenna Kennedy, it would only add to his son’s determination to avoid her at all costs. Which meant King had to resort to sneakiness if he was going to wangle an introduction. It had to be casual, unplanned…or at least made to look that way.
The word at Earlene’s was that the woman’s daughter was visiting with Daisy and Tommy while Bobby showed Jenna the riverfront property he was planning to develop. Sooner or later, that meant that Jenna would show up at Daisy’s. If Bobby was still with her, so much the better. King could see for himself if all the reports were right and there was any spark of attraction to be fueled.
He didn’t hesitate for a single second before driving over to Daisy’s. After all, what was suspicious about a father dropping by to pay a visit to his very own daughter? How was he supposed to know she had company? It wasn’t like he kept his ear to the ground about everything in Trinity Harbor. Just the important stuff, such as what his kids were up to.
When King arrived at Daisy’s, he walked around the house in the direction of all the noise. Tommy and a kid with green hair were engaged in a heated exchange about the best color for that pitiful boat the boy had rescued from the river. Tommy turned to him eagerly.
“Grandpa King, tell her that the boat has to be blue. It can’t be pink,” he declared with indignation.
“Why not?” the girl asked.
Tommy rolled his eyes. “I’m a guy. Guys don’t have pink anything. Right, Grandpa King?”
King grinned at Tommy’s earnest expression. The fact that he was even debating the point with a child who’d colored her hair green demonstrated more tolerance than King would have displayed under the same circumstances. But he was being called on here for diplomacy and tact, which, unfortunately, weren’t his strong suits. He struggled for a suitable reply. No need to get on the wrong side of a girl who could one day wind up being his granddaughter. At the same time, he didn’t want to discourage a boy who was showing suitable respect for King’s opinion.
“Well, now, Tommy, pink is a mighty fine color,” King said, choosing his words carefully. “And there are plenty of places for which it’s well-suited.”
“See,” the girl said triumphantly.
Tommy scowled at her. “He didn’t say anything about the boat, Darcy.”
King bit back a grin. “That’s true. Now it seems to me that a boat ought to reflect the personality of its owner, just the way hair color might reflect the personality of the person choosing it,” he said with a pointed look at Darcy’s head. She watched him suspiciously, obviously waiting for the rest of what he had to say. “Green hair wouldn’t suit just anybody. It takes someone very special to carry it off.”
The girl’s face lit up. “Thank you.”
He patted her on the head. “You’re very welcome,” he said, and bypassed the pair to get to the back door before he could get drawn into any more tricky discussions.
Daisy met him with a broad grin. “Nice save.”
King shook his head. “Damn, why would any mama let her child do somethi
ng like that?”
“I don’t think Jenna allowed it exactly,” Daisy said. “In fact, I believe she had very firmly told Darcy that she could not dye her hair—unfortunately, she limited that to the original color under debate, which was purple.”
King chuckled and eyed the child outside with newfound respect. “Got her mother, did she?”
“Temporarily. I suspect Darcy held out hope that Jenna would force her to dye it back to its natural color. That didn’t happen, so now Darcy’s facing the consequences of having that hair of hers be the only thing about her that people react to.”
King nodded. “Clever move. I like this woman already.”
Daisy regarded him knowingly. “Which I imagine is precisely what brought you by. Did curiosity get the better of you, Daddy?”
King feigned indignation. “Since when can’t a father drop in to see his daughter?”
“That’s not the issue,” Daisy said, regarding him with blatant amusement. “It’s a matter of the timing. You knew Darcy was here and that Jenna would be by to get her, didn’t you?”
“I believe I heard something to that effect,” he admitted with what he hoped was just the right touch of nonchalance. He glanced toward the oven. “Also heard that you were baking chocolate chip cookies. You know I never could resist your cookies.”
“As flattering as that is,” Daisy said dryly, “I imagine the cookies are the last reason you showed up here. Still, the first batch will be out of the oven in a minute. Want some iced tea while you wait?”
“Sounds good,” King said, settling down at the kitchen table to see what information about Bobby’s relationship with Jenna he could pry out of Daisy. But first things first. He had to throw her off the scent.
He studied his daughter as she finished scooping dough onto another cookie sheet, then traded that one for the one in the oven. He’d never seen her looking so radiant. “You’re happy, aren’t you, girl?”
The beaming smile she turned on him was answer enough. “Happier than I’ve ever been,” she told him, leaning down to press a kiss to his cheek.
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