THE COMEBACK OF CON MACNEILL Page 5

  "Okay. Thanks. Put it…" He looked around.

  "I think I can find a space." She waited a two-beat pause. "Now."

  He grinned. So she was still steamed at him for cleaning her office. He could handle her annoyance. It made a welcome change after Lynn's false sympathy. Swiveling, he set his computer on the tabletop behind him and then held out his hand for the plate. "I'll take it."

  She gave it to him before taking up her perch on the desk, directly in front of the naked lady and watchful lions. Deliberately, Con turned his attention to his plate. If she wanted to watch him eat, that was her affair.

  He picked up the sandwich. Reassured by the sight of melted cheese and the scent of charcoal grilling, he took a bite.

  She waited a moment for his reaction. When he didn't say anything—his mouth was full—she shrugged and offered, "Grilled summer squash and portobello mushroom with Monterey Jack on sunflower bread."

  Con swallowed. "It's good."

  A rose blush swept from her jawline to the hair springing loose at her temples. He watched its spread, fascinated by her apparent pleasure at his simple compliment. Something trembled between them1 tangible as hunger, insubstantial as smoke.

  He cleared his throat.

  She looked away. "If you need time off, we can get along fine for a few days without you."

  So she'd overheard … something. Even irritated, Con found it hard not to admire her challenge. And impossible not to respond.

  "A few days like forever?" he asked dryly. Val met his eyes evenly, not denying it.

  "What is it about me that gets your goat, Dixie?"

  "Besides your apparent failure to remember my name?"

  He grinned.

  Val smiled back cautiously. Maybe if she were very direct with him he would back off and let her have her way? It wasn't as if he had any real stake in the place.

  "You're probably aware that my father and I don't see eye to eye on my running this place."

  "Yeah, I picked up on that."

  "Well, my needing this loan is like a great big I-told-you-so for him. Only he gets to keep telling me so, telling me how to run my business. Or rather, you do."

  "Have you considered that he's only trying to help?"

  Old memories, old resentments, flashed through Val's mind and tightened her chest. Her father's hands, pushing hers aside on a fishing pole. Her father's pencil, striking through the laboriously copied problems of her math homework. Her father's voice, rising over her frustration: Punkin', I'm only trying to help. You're not very good at this.

  "Oh, yes. He's always tried to help."

  "Some people would count themselves lucky to have family in a position to give them a hand. It's natural for parents to want what's right for their kids."

  Val tossed her head, making her silver hoops tinkle defiantly.

  "Well, wasn't I lucky, then? I had the right clothes, the right friends, the right schools, the right manners… And if I wouldn't marry the right husband they had all picked out for me, it must be because I was spoiled and ungrateful and lacking in mature judgment."

  She caught his quick, assessing glance at her fingers, curled around the lip of the desk. No rings. She never wore rings in the kitchen. She wondered about this girl—Lynn—he "used to be engaged to," the one he apparently wasn't going to see.

  He picked up the other half of his sandwich. "So, what happened to Mr. Right?"

  Nine years later Val could still feel that ballooning sense of panic, as if the expanding press of her parents' expectations could actually squeeze the air from her chest. She took a deep breath.

  "Oh, he went on to share his fabulous career with another lucky girl, and I ran away to New York." It was hard, even after all these years, to keep the bitterness from her voice.

  Con raised both eyebrows. "Alone?"

  She grinned. "Not on the back of somebody's Harley, if that's what you're asking. My aunt Naomi helped me. My father's oldest sister. I don't know which one of us made Daddy madder." She shrugged, trying to dislodge an old pain from her shoulders. "Me, I guess. For leaving."

  "But you came back."

  "Almost a year ago. When she died."

  "And left you this place."

  Val nodded in confirmation.

  "No kids of her own?"

  "Nope. There were men, I think. Not anyone from around here, though. She had her horses and her books. She played the organ at church. She was, I think, the most self-sufficient person I've known." Val met Con's eyes directly. "And the happiest."

  It was a line scratched in the dirt of the playground. A warning and a dare.

  Without hesitation, Con crossed it. "Most people can use some help from time to time. That doesn't make them weak."

  She lifted her chin. "No? And what does it make me, if I let you march in here, into my place, and start issuing orders?"

  "Smart?" he suggested.

  Unwillingly, Val laughed, torn between appreciation and annoyance.

  He set his plate on the floor, out of the way of his big, polished brown shoes, and reached behind him for his laptop computer.

  "I've been meaning to ask… What made you decide to turn that space by the counter over to retail sales?"

  She floundered briefly. "The marinades and spices and things?"

  He nodded, blue eyes watchful. She guessed he hadn't become a corporate shark by losing sight of his objectives. Or was she his prey? Had her personal confessions, like blood in the water, somehow drawn this new attack?

  "Well… I thought it would be nice to give people waiting to be seated something to look at, something to buy. Besides, there's no other place locally to get specialty items like that miso paste or the basmati rice."

  "Have you ever done a breakdown by item to see which are your best sellers?"

  "No. I do a quarterly inventory."

  He tapped one finger against a folder on the corner of his little table. "Got it here. Ever done a comparison by square foot on the profits of your retail space versus your restaurant space?"

  "I … no."

  "Okay." He typed something into his computer. Despite his casual acceptance, she still felt him circling just beyond her reach. "Is that what you're doing? Comparing the take from the shop and the restaurant?"

  "As much as I can. I don't have all the information yet, but I'd say at your present business volume, you ought to be showing more profit."

  If it was a strike, it missed its target. Val flicked her braid impatiently over her shoulder. "I hardly need a fancy Boston business consultant to tell me that."

  "Aunt Val?" a boyish voice asked hesitantly. Val's focus dissolved at the interruption. She turned her head. Mitchell Cross skulked in the doorway, his eight-year-old frame tall for his age and thin. Too thin, like his mother's.

  Val clamped a lid on her simmering annoyance and smiled. "Hey, Mitchell."

  "Hello," he mumbled politely, the way he'd been taught. He dropped his head to regard her from under his lashes, his shoulders slightly hunched.

  Val felt a familiar pang at her heart at Mitchell's cautious response. Mindful of her own special relationship with Naomi, she'd tried hard to bond with her godson in spite of her antipathy to his father. He was Annie's son. She'd seen the boy almost every day for the past year. And still he acted as if she might turn suddenly and bite him.

  Con's chair creaked as he shifted his too-big body on the too-small seat. She ignored him, making another effort to reach Mitchell.

  "What have you got there?"

  Stiffly, he proffered a sheet of paper. "Mom did that drawing you wanted. For next week's menu? And she told me to bring you the key."

  "Thanks, honey." Mindful of Con's quizzical gaze, she stopped herself from ruffling the boy's short, fair hair. Mitchell didn't like to be touched, anyway. "Can you hang it up for me?"

  "Sure."

  He sidled forward into the room, digging the key from the pocket of his neat khaki shorts. Con pulled in his long legs to let the boy pass. As
Mitchell stood on tiptoe to reach the hook above the filing cabinet, the man steadied him with one hand on his elbow.

  "Good job," he said quietly.

  Val was taken aback when Mitchell actually smiled shyly in response. "Thanks, Mr. MacNeill."

  Con jerked his head toward the sheet of paper in Val's hand. "That your mom's drawing?"

  "Uh-huh."

  "Can I see it?"

  He could have asked her for a look at the menu, Val thought. She would have shown it to him. Eventually. But she allowed Mitchell to take the typed sheet covered with Ann's delicate line drawings and hand it to Con, unwillingly intrigued by their interaction.

  His dark brows rose. "Very nice," he said. "Your mom does good work."

  Mitchell looked at the floor. "I guess. Thanks."

  Val liked that Con praised Ann to her son. Rob absorbed most of the adulation in town, like a fire sucking oxygen from a room.

  And then Con frowned and looked up from the menu. "Where are you getting your cheese from? The feta and provolone?"

  Her goodwill faded. Apparently nothing deflected the business consultant for long, not even a needy boy. "Poplar Farms. They have the best prices."

  "I know. I've called other distributors."

  She twitched her braid over her shoulder. "Checking up on me?"

  He met her gaze without apology. "Yes. The money has to be going somewhere."

  Mitchell scuffed his new hightops along the linoleum floor, bored with their adult conversation but too polite to say so.

  Con handed the new menu back to Val. "You find that book I told you about?" he asked the boy. "The castles one?"

  "Yeah." His throat moved as he swallowed. "It was cool." His next words rushed out, as if he'd been saving them up and couldn't contain them any longer. "Did you know they used to throw dead cows over the walls in a siege to make people sick?"

  Con nodded. "Or lime, to burn them. Or severed heads."

  "To gross them out. Yeah." Mitchell's grin was blinding. He caught himself, self-consciously ducking his head between his shoulders as if his enthusiasm might attract unwelcome attention. "I gotta go. Bye."

  "See you around," Con replied.

  Val blinked. "Well." She didn't know what to say. She was bewildered by Con's perception, his evident interest in her bony, unassuming godson. And astonished by Mitchell's brief response. "I didn't know you'd met Mitchell."

  Con shrugged casually. "He's been in a few times."

  "He talks to you."

  "Some."

  "About dead cows?"

  Another shrug. "I tried basketball, but he's more interested in knights and castles."

  "Real he-man talk."

  "Something like that."

  "I didn't know." She was still struggling to grasp how this Yankee stranger had broken through where all her patient efforts had failed.

  "Maybe he figured you weren't into dead cows," Con said dryly. "You being a vegetarian and all."

  Val summoned a weak smile, determined not to show how Mitchell's rejection hurt her. So what if Con had gotten closer to the boy in a few days than she had managed in the past year? The important thing was that Mitchell had found a friendly adult to talk with.

  Con leaned forward on his chair, his expression earnest. "Hey. I'm just somebody new to pal around with. The blood-and-gore stuff … it's a guy thing."

  His attempted reassurance eased the hollow feeling in the center of her chest. He was being … sweet. Not just kind to Mitchell, but nice to her. Val blinked fiercely. Well, shoot. It was just possible that she could like him.

  And that confused her.

  Val was used to knowing her emotions and acting on her instincts. Her survival had once depended on it. But she wondered now if either would be safe—or even possible—where Con MacNeill was concerned.

  His movement forward had put his chest warm and close to her knees, his head just below hers. She pressed her thighs together, fighting a ridiculous urge to run her fingertips over his closely shaven jaw, his long and stubborn chin. She could see the shadow of his beard just under his skin. What would it feel like? Against his darkened jaw, his mouth was sharply defined, the top lip disciplined, the lower one fascinatingly full. She wanted to rub her fingers over his jaw and test the textures of that mouth.

  It quirked. "Dixie?"

  "Mmm?"

  "You keep looking at me like that, one or the other of us is going to get ideas."

  Her blood drummed in her ears. Ideas. Oh, yes. Oh, heavens. She usually trusted her feelings. But these feelings were so new, so contradictory and so contrary to her best interests, she no longer trusted herself.

  "Would that be bad?" she asked.

  The cold blue eyes ignited so suddenly they exhausted all the oxygen in the room. Her breathing hitched.

  "Not bad," he rasped. "I'm willing to bet we'd be pretty damn good, in fact. But it wouldn't be smart."

  Val exhaled slowly. No. Not smart at all. "We can have ideas without acting on them."

  He laughed shortly. "Maybe."

  She lifted her chin. "What's that supposed to mean?"

  "It means don't send out signals, sweetheart, unless you want me to get the message. I'm not slow on the uptake, and I'm used to going after what I want."

  His confidence shook her. She admired honesty, but she wasn't ready for a man who was even more direct than she was. "I wasn't sending out signals."

  "Right."

  "I certainly would never get involved with a man I did business with, or one who had any kind of association with my father."

  He shrugged. "Whatever you say."

  She hadn't convinced him. She was having trouble convincing herself. "I'm not even interested in you," she insisted.

  His eyes narrowed. "No?"

  "Not in the slightest," she lied rashly.

  "Okay," he said.

  And then he leaned forward a little farther in his chair, cupped the back of her head with his hand and brought her mouth down to his.

  Not hard. His lips were firm and warm and knowledgeable. They pressed and hovered and pressed again, deliberately, experimentally, getting the angle and the pressure just right. He teased her with his taste, complex and inviting. When he withdrew, she ran her tongue over her own lips to catch his flavor. He made a sound deep in his throat and slanted his mouth to give her more. She accepted it greedily, opening, then seeking.

  Under her rising hunger, wonder swelled, ephemeral and shining as a child's soap bubble. Sensation shivered through her. Her curled hands left the cool edge of the desk and sought the hard curve of his shoulders, the column of his throat. As they kissed, harder, deeper, wider, her fingers burrowed beneath his loosened collar, discovering warm skin and rough hair. In the hollow below his strong jaw, his pulse hammered under her touch, and hers leapt in response.

  Her mind fogged. Her lungs constricted as she bent, as she fed. He gave her his breath, smoky from his mouth, warm from his lungs. She was hot. She was cold. Her nipples tightened under the soft cotton barriers of her bra, her T-shirt, her apron. She wished there wasn't so much clothing between them. She wished there wasn't so much space. She wanted to drag him out of his chair and up against her, hard, so she could feel his broad chest against her aching breasts, his muscled thighs hard against her thighs.

  He held her off. His fingers tightened in the hair at her nape as he stood. For a second, as his chest rose and fell with his breath and her heart pounded, she thought he would haul her into his arms. And then his grip released, and his arm fell away.

  Con stepped back, regarding her with satisfaction and intent, lazy sensuality. "Tell yourself you're not interested, if you want to, Dixie. But don't tell me."

  * * *

  Chapter 5

  «^»

  He must have been out of his mind. Nuts. Wacko.

  Con tightened his grip on the Jaguar's steering wheel. Pixilated, his mother would call it. What his brothers would say didn't bear thinking of.

  He guid
ed the sedan down Cutler's main drag, trying to make sense of the incident in Val's office yesterday. It wasn't like him to think with the bulge behind his buttonfly. Sean was the impulsive brother, Patrick the man of deep emotion. He, Con, was the cool and rational one.

  But Val Cutler had blown his cool.

  The street was nearly empty of traffic under the hot morning sun. Spotting a space at the curb right in front of Wild Thymes, Con pulled in.

  He expelled a frustrated breath. Even the memory of Val's hot mouth made his body respond in irrational, if predictable, ways. His blood heated. His chest got tight. When he'd kissed her, he'd been seized by the crazy desire to cushion her head against his shoulder and murmur rash promises into her scented hair.

  There was no logical explanation for it. No excuse except maybe temporary insanity.

  He did not get involved with clients. He did not intend to jeopardize a potentially lucrative contact by playing Cutler Family Feud. And no way was he pursuing a relationship with some Dixie debutante in need of an attitude adjustment.

  He jammed on the clutch, ignoring the car's deep groan. Even if Val would let him.

  Con sat for a moment with the key still in the ignition, battling unaccustomed regret. Fact was, he wasn't proud of his caustic comment following that absorbing kiss. The heat of his own response had caught him off guard. Jolted by the unruly lurch of his heart, the unanticipated ache of his loins, he'd spoken as much from self-defense as pride.

  And Val, damn his conceit to hell, had gone as pale as his plate. He'd been briefly, savagely glad he could get to her the way she got to him, and then ashamed. Bridget MacNeill had not raised her sons to score off women.

  But then, this woman had taken a few good shots at goal herself. While the air around them sizzled, she'd tipped back her head and stared down her elegant little nose at him.

  I wouldn't dream of telling you anything, Yankee, she'd said.

  He'd admired her recovery. And he'd wanted to haul her right back into his arms and kiss her again.

  She hadn't given him the chance. She'd hopped off her desk and marched from her office, leaving him with crumbs on his plate and a sharp-edged dissatisfaction.