Kitabı oku: «The Man for Maggie», sayfa 3

He glanced at his notes and her sketches and took a few more measurements. “I think that’s it. I’ll redraw these plans to scale and have the estimate ready by tomorrow afternoon.”

“When will you be able to start?”

“If you decide to go ahead, I can get some of the materials delivered this week and we should be able to begin on Monday.”

“Perfect.” She had complete confidence that he’d quote a fair price and she’d already made up her mind to hire him. After all, he needed her as much as she needed him. But it would look more professional if she waited till she saw the estimate before she offered him the job.

She gathered her papers and glanced up at the hall clock. The morning had flown by. Nick had patiently listened to all her ideas and made suggestions when he thought something else would work better. Such as his suggestion for expanding the bathroom. And best of all, he didn’t seem to think she was completely crazy for doing this.

“Would you like to stay for lunch? I have stuff for sandwiches and there’s lots of fruit for dessert.”

He glanced at his watch and at the notes on his clipboard and she fully expected him to say no. Then he looked at her and smiled that heartbreaker smile of his. “Sure. Why not?”

NICK RAN WATER into the ancient pedestal sink in the bathroom and picked up a bar of purple soap. Obviously one of Maggie’s creations. He sniffed it suspiciously. Too flowery for his liking but it was all he could find.

Staying for lunch was probably a bad idea, he thought as he dried his hands on a bright red towel. Mixing business with pleasure always seemed to land him in a tight spot.

On the other hand, why shouldn’t he stay? Maggie’s refreshingly off-the-wall conversation made him laugh, and God knew he didn’t usually do a lot of that. She was easy on the eyes and he couldn’t remember the last time he’d had lunch with a beautiful woman who wasn’t trying to use her looks to get her hooks into him.

He’d also lost count of the number of women who thought he had access to the Durrance fortunes, and who quickly hit the road when they found he didn’t. Either Maggie didn’t care about the money or she didn’t know about it. For now, either option worked.

He found her standing at the kitchen counter, assembling two enormous sandwiches. “Can I help?”

“Sure. There’s a pitcher of lemonade in the fridge and glasses in the far cupboard.”

He grabbed the glasses and opened the fridge. One shelf was completely filled with labeled plastic containers.

Oatmeal Cleanser.

Banana-Honey Anti-Aging Mask.

Cream of Wheat Body Scrub.

Cream of Wheat? Oh, man. She really was something.

He closed the fridge door, his amusement tempered by pangs of guilt. Ten years ago this neighborhood had been filled with run-down old houses like this one. Thanks to the town council’s ambitious program to attract tourists, most of the houses had been restored to their original elegance. Many were still private residences but others had been converted into antique shops, art galleries and cafés. Renovating an old house in this posh neighborhood was a good investment but no matter how he looked at it, converting it into a food-based beauty parlor was the craziest thing he’d ever heard.

It’s none of your business, Durrance. She’s an adult and she can do whatever she wants with her money. He hated having anyone meddle in his life and he wasn’t about to meddle in anyone else’s. Although, he was curious how she thought she could make a living at this. And asking a few questions didn’t make him a busybody.

He poured the lemonade into the two glasses. “Have you ever heard of one these kinds of spas before? I mean, one that uses fruit and stuff to make…you know…stuff?”

“I’ve seen them in the city, but I knew Collingwood Station didn’t have one. That’s what makes it such a good idea.”

Interesting logic. “So you really think a natural spa will work here?”

“I’m sure of it,” she said, adding sliced tomatoes and carrot sticks to each plate. “Everyone likes to be pampered and to feel they’re doing something good for their bodies.”

“You’re probably right.” And if she wasn’t, well, it was no concern of his.

“Besides, I have a way with people. I think this town is a perfect place for the kind of makeovers I do.” She set the plates on the table.

After she sat, he took a seat and he raised his glass of lemonade. “Here’s to a prosperous business venture.”

She clinked her glass against his and smiled like Mona Lisa. “And to a successful makeover. I mean, renovation.”

Chapter Four

Nick was helping clear away the lunch dishes and wishing he could find an excuse to spend the rest of the afternoon at Maggie’s place when the annoying sound of Allison’s voice drifted down the hallway.

“Hello-o? Anyone home?”

The impromptu visit seemed to take Maggie by surprise. “Allison?” she called. “I’m in the kitchen.”

“Does she come here often?” he asked quietly.

“No, and she always calls first. Maybe she wants to see you.”

He couldn’t tell if she was serious or not and didn’t have time to ask before Allison sashayed into the room.

“Oh, Nick. This is a nice surprise.”

Right. As if she hadn’t noticed his truck parked in front of the house all morning. So why the pretense?

Maggie slid the plates onto a stack in the cupboard and closed the door. “Nick’s been working on an estimate for renovations I need. He has some great ideas.”

“That’s nice. When do you start?”

Allison’s attempt at small talk didn’t fool Nick for a minute. “We’re not sure.” She definitely wanted something. Information?

“Where are the kids?” Maggie asked.

“John’s taken the afternoon off and they’ve gone to the children’s zoo. He feels it’s important that he spend quality time with them.”

“That’s so sweet.” Maggie glanced at him. “Don’t you think?”

“Yeah. Sweet.”

“I received Leslie’s wedding invitation yesterday,” Allison said.

There it was—the motive for this unexpected visit. He leaned against the counter and crossed his arms. “Even I’ve been invited to witness the event, if you can imagine.” And he now had one more reason not to go.

Maggie folded her dish towel and hung it up. “Leslie’s your sister, right?”

He nodded, wondering how she knew that.

“When’s the wedding?”

“Three weeks from Saturday.”

Allison bestowed one of her smug glances on him. “She’s asked me and Candice Bentley-Ferguson to be her bridesmaids. The subject of who you’ll be taking to the wedding came up.”

For once, he wished he wasn’t always right about these things. First he had his mother hounding him, now Leslie and Allison. Didn’t these women have anything better to do?

“Candice’s divorce was finalized last week and I know for a fact that she doesn’t have a date yet. You used to have a thing for Candice, as I recall.”

Give me a break! That had been in the ninth grade. One make-out session at Billy Jean What’s-her-name’s birthday party was hardly “a thing.”

Allison gave him a cool cat-that-stole-cream smile. “Candice said she’d go with you since you don’t have a date.”

How in hell did they know whether or not he had a date? “I hadn’t wanted to rush things but I’d planned to ask Maggie to go with me.”

Maggie’s beautiful brown eyes popped open wide. “Me?”

“Why not? It’ll give you a chance to…”

He stopped himself before he said, “wear those pearls.” Their earlier conversation about the pearls had been fun, even a little flirtatious, and Allison’s radar would detect that in a nanosecond. “It’ll give you a chance to meet some of Collingwood Station’s upper crust. Definitely a chance to improve your social standing.” As soon as he said that, he wished he hadn’t.

Allison gave him a steely glare.

“Thank you!” Maggie said. “I love weddings and I’d love to meet your family.” Her quick acceptance was a little surprising, especially after his unnecessary remark about her social standing, but at least he was off the hook with Candice.

“Then it’s settled.”

He could tell Allison wasn’t buying any of this and he felt as though he needed to do something to convince her that he’d really been planning to ask Maggie. So he moved closer to Maggie and casually draped an arm around her shoulders.

Big mistake.

It was one thing to go out of his way to provoke Allison but he didn’t need to get this close to Maggie to do it.

Who knew she’d be the perfect height? Just tall enough that when they danced together at Leslie’s wedding, her head would tuck nicely under his chin. She’d smell like strawberries and cream, and look up at him with those chocolatey eyes and when she spoke, that amazing voice would be for his ears only.

Definitely something to look forward to, but not a good idea to be thinking those things in front of Allison, who would be on the phone to his sister the minute she got home.

“I should go,” he said. “I just need to run upstairs to check the attic for insulation. Do you have a stepladder?”

“I haven’t seen one. I have a flashlight, if that’ll help.” She ducked out from under his arm and retrieved it from the cupboard under the sink.

“Thanks. I’ll be right back.” With any luck, Allison would be gone by then.

He took the stairs two at a time. The opening to the attic was in the hallway ceiling. He’d have to stand on something to reach it.

A kitchen chair?

No way was he going back downstairs. There had to be something upstairs.

Maggie’s bedroom was to the right. The bed was neatly made but otherwise the room looked as though it’d been hit by a cyclone. Two suitcases, a stack of hat boxes and a couple of cardboard cartons took up most of the floor space. The top of an old dressing table was cluttered with hats and hairbrushes and jewelry, including the string of pearls.

He resisted the temptation to investigate further, except to see that the only chair in the room was an old wicker rocker heaped with clothes.

The two other bedrooms appeared to function as storage space and an office, judging by the books and papers strewn everywhere. He moved into the room to retrieve her office chair and couldn’t resist taking a look at what she was working on. It stopped him dead in his tracks.

“I’ll be damned.” Then he grabbed the chair and headed out the door, grinning like a fool.

MAGGIE WOULD MUCH RATHER have gone upstairs with Nick than be in the kitchen, listening to Allison’s chatter about Leslie’s wedding and how it would be the event of the summer. She was relieved to finally hear Nick’s footsteps on the stairs. When he walked into the kitchen to return the flashlight and say goodbye, his eyes held an odd combination of amusement and uncertainty.

“Gotta run,” he said. “I’ll drop off the estimate as soon as it’s ready. Allison, it’s been a pleasure, as always.”

“You’re leaving?” Allison seemed to forget all about the wedding. “I’ll walk out with you. See you later, Maggie.”

Maggie wondered if “later” meant the next time Nick was here.

He tucked his clipboard under his arm and headed out the front door, with Allison close behind. Less than a minute later, she heard his truck pull away. Apparently he didn’t want to listen to Allison’s chatter any more than she did.

Maggie was just glad they were gone. A jumble of emotions had her all aflutter and she needed time to sort them out.

Nick had asked her to be his date to his sister’s wedding!

She knew better than to let the invitation send her spirits soaring, but she couldn’t keep the bounce out of her step as she gathered her folders and sketches and sprinted up the stairs.

She felt like a teenager again, daydreaming about being asked to the prom by the coolest guy in school. Or the hottest, depending a person’s perspective!

Yet, she needed to be realistic. Nick had invited her to the wedding so he could get out of taking someone named Candice and possibly to annoy Allison and his family. Not because he wanted to spend an evening with her. Besides, a man who was interested in a woman “that way” wouldn’t give her a fruit basket. His gift had been funny and sweet, but about as far from romantic as a gift could get. And right after he’d asked her to the wedding—and she’d said yes—he’d suddenly been in a big hurry to leave.

Best not delude herself about Nick’s intentions. Still, she’d learn a lot about him when she met his family. Nick Durrance deserved to be happy. Once he started working here, she’d have plenty of opportunities to help him find that happiness. She had a good feeling about that.

Until she reached the doorway of her office.

No!

She slammed the folders onto the bed.

No, no, no, no, no!

The yearbooks she’d been poring over last night were still lying on the floor. All of them open to the pages with Nick’s pictures.

Had he come in here when he’d come up to check the insulation in the attic? He’d given her that odd look when he’d come downstairs. She’d thought it had something to do with Allison’s endless talking, but what if…

Frantically she looked around for the access to the attic, relieved to see that it was in the hallway near the top of the stairs. He would have opened the hatch, looked inside and gone back downstairs. Nick didn’t seem the type to snoop, and he would have had no reason to go any farther.

She returned to the office, gathered up the books and slipped the first one into place on the bookshelf.

How had he reached the access to the attic?

She went back into the hallway and took another look. He was tall but he wasn’t that tall. He hadn’t had a stepladder with him, which meant he must have stood on a chair.

Her desk chair.

Which meant he would have had to step right over the yearbooks to get it.

Oh, Maggie. You are such an airhead.

Everything that everyone had ever said about her was true. She rushed into things without thinking them through and she was flighty and impulsive. Of course, none of those things had anything to do with leaving the stupid yearbooks lying on the floor when she knew Nick was coming to inspect the house. That was beyond flighty. That was the dumbest thing she’d ever done.

Okay, so making a pair of wings out of an old patio umbrella and trying to fly off the roof of Aunt Margaret’s garage had probably been the dumbest, but she’d only been eight years old. Now she was an adult.

What must Nick have thought when he’d seen his entire high-school history spread out on her office floor?

Oh, Maggie. You’ve really done it this time.

She cast a glance at the ceiling. “Aunt Margaret, I can’t believe you let me do this. You always used to tell me to put my things away when I was finished with them. Why didn’t you say something?”

She shoved the other three yearbooks onto the shelf.

Aunt Margaret’s laughter filled the room.

“This is not funny.” Ugh. Dead people had such a sick sense of humor.

Maggie looked around the room and tried to remember why she’d come up here, but all she could think about was what Nick might have been thinking.

“Darn. I really want to go to that wedding with him. What if he changes his mind?” But if she expected an answer, she’d have to wait for Aunt Margaret to stop laughing first.

As for Nick, she decided there was only one way to find out how he felt.

Ask him.

NICK SAT at the drafting table in his office, trying to focus on the floor plan and the list of materials he’d need, but concentrating on Maggie’s renovations was difficult when all he could think about was Maggie.

Why on earth would she have been looking at those yearbooks?

He tried to remember if he even owned copies. If he did, he hadn’t seen them in years.

He definitely liked the idea that she’d been looking at them though. It meant she had more than a passing interest in him.

So?

So…he didn’t know why that mattered but he still liked the idea. On the other hand, what if Allison had put her up to this? Was he really such a bad person that Allison Peters had to turn up and make his life miserable? Maybe he’d stored up a bunch of bad karma and now it was payback time.

Right. That sounded like something Maggie would say.

He knew how his family would react to him taking someone so unorthodox to the wedding. He indulged himself in a sly grin. Yes, sirree. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was actually looking forward to a family function. But would Maggie survive a formal encounter with the Durrance family? She could always tell them their horoscopes, he thought with amusement. That alone would be worth the price of admission.

His conscience kicked him in the gut. Ticking off his family was not a good reason for asking a woman to go out with him. Especially Maggie.

He didn’t know why but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But the sooner you finish this estimate, he reminded himself, the sooner you’ll get to see her again.

He was busy punching numbers into his calculator when Brent Borden, his longtime friend and only employee, came in and tossed a roll of blueprints on the top of the filing cabinet. “Hey, boss. How’s it going?”

“Good. I’m working up an estimate for Miss Meadowcroft’s remodeling job.”

“Sure hope we get that one. She sounds like a hot little number, from what everyone’s saying.”

“Yeah, well, she wants to turn her house into a spa, and there’s a very good chance that Durrance Construction will get the job.”

“All right! We can use the work, and here’s hoping Miss Meadowcroft will be spending lots of time on the job with us.”

Nick glared at him. “She lives there, so I think it’s safe to say that she’ll be around. And it’ll help to remember that she’s a client.”

Brent’s eyes went wide, then he burst out laughing. “I see,” he drawled. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Man, you have never given a damn if someone hustled a pretty girl on the job site. I seem to recall that when we were hired to work at the massage parlor—”

Jeez. Nick should know by now that past mistakes always came back to bite him on the butt. “Maggie Meadowcroft isn’t running a massage parlor. Her house is in a respectable neighborhood and she’s a very nice woman—”

Brent was still laughing. “You sly dog. You’ve already put the moves on her!” He held up a hand and Nick reluctantly met his friend’s high-five.

“Let me guess,” Brent speculated. “A little pizza. A lot of beer. Wham, bam, thank you—”

“Hang on a minute. You got this all wrong.” He might as well spill it, since Brent would hear about it sooner or later. “I haven’t gone out with her. I just asked her to go to my sister’s wedding.”

Brent let out a long, low whistle. “You invited her to meet your family? Man. Either she’s really special or you really have it in for her.”

Nick sighed. “If I didn’t have a date, Leslie and Allison were going to line me up with one.”

Brent stopped laughing. “Allison?”

“Allison Peters,” Nick said. “From high school. Remember?”

“Uh, yeah.” Brent made a face that pretty much summed up Nick’s feelings about that whole fiasco. “What about her?”

“She lives next door to Maggie, and she’s my sister’s bridesmaid and she just happened to drop by Maggie’s this morning with the news that Candice Bentley-Ferguson is newly divorced and once again hot to trot. Oh, and did I mention, also one of my sister’s bridesmaids? What was I supposed to do? Let myself get lassoed into taking her?”

“Quite the dilemma. Which you resolved by asking the new ‘client’ to go with you?”

Wiseass. It’s not as though Brent had never gotten himself into a jam. “Okay,” he agreed. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But you know my family. And Allison. What I was I supposed to do? Let them set me up with Candice?”

“Uh, no. You could have said, ‘Gee, thanks for the offer, but I already have a date.’ End of story.”

Nick sighed again, heavier this time. “Yeah, well, I guess I wasn’t thinking too clearly.”

“No kidding.” Brent put on that annoying squinty-eyed expression every time he thought deeply about something. “Unless you really wanted to ask Maggie all along.”

Best to let that comment slide, Nick thought.

Brent seemed to have other ideas. “So? Did you want to?”

“Maybe.” Although after the trouble with the masseuse, he should have learned his lesson. Never mix business with pleasure.

Brent grinned. A huge, oh-man-I-can’t-believe-you-finally-fell-for-somebody grin. “This woman’s really that special?”

“Sort of. No. I don’t know.” He thought about her zany hair and the rejuvenating face gunk. The crazy talk about ghosts and horoscopes. The makeover business. The yearbooks. Special wasn’t exactly the right word. “I don’t think so.”

Brent rolled his eyes. “Very convincing.”

Nick really wanted this conversation to end. “Since when did you become Mr. Analytical? I asked her to the wedding. She accepted. We’re going. End of story. It’ll be fine.”

“Fine? Since when is it ‘fine’ to take a makeup artist to a Durrance family function?”

Nick sighed. “I don’t know. Allison didn’t like the idea. My family really won’t like it, but what can I say? What’s done is done.”

“Freud would have had a field day with your family.”

“Freud wouldn’t have lasted five minutes with those women.”