Читать книгу Her Montana Millionaire - Crystal Green, Crystal Green - Страница 9

He’d bellied up to the wrong seat at the bar and poured out his soul to a weirdo.

Sure, she was beautiful in her body-hugging black dress while her hair—as fluid as fine, pale wine—tumbled over her shoulders, and her blue eyes bored into him, fringed by those sooty, batting lashes.

If he’d thought she was gorgeous this afternoon, when he’d wanted to rear-end her car out of pure frustration, he was wrong. Jinni Fairchild was exceptional, statuesque as a goddess.

Goddess? Man, he’d had too much tequila.

“I think it’s time for me to go,” he said, moving to get off the stool.

“Wonderful idea,” she said, latching on to his arm. “That pool room is quiet, I’ll bet.”

Her touch sizzled into his skin, even through his button-down shirt. He hadn’t been this attracted to a woman in… Damn. Forever.

Suddenly, sitting in an area where they didn’t have to yell at each other over music didn’t seem like such a bad notion. He led her over there, to the room where he’d been playing darts before deciding to get something stronger than beer at the bar, a place he could camp out and not talk to anyone.

But then he’d had the luck—good or bad, he didn’t know—to sit next to Jinni, the locker-room groupie.

He loosened his tie with his free hand, threading through the line dancers and leading her to the pool room. The music faded slightly as they sat at a table in the corner, under an old-fashioned scotch advertisement.

“Cantrell,” she said, leaning her elbows on the surface and cupping her chin in a palm. “Why does that name ring a few bells?”

Great. She wanted him to fire off more information. Hadn’t he talked too much already?

Yet somehow he found himself speaking. “Cantrell Enterprises. Or maybe you’ve put two and two together and realized my brother, Guy, is the so-called invisible man.”

Jinni coolly lifted an eyebrow, surprising Max with her lack of response toward Guy’s rumored situation.

“Don’t tell me,” she said. “You’re the same wunderkind Max Cantrell who keeps the state financially afloat with your business? I read an article about you in Forbes magazine last year. They said that you refused to be interviewed, that you’re somewhat of a recluse.”

Thank goodness she hadn’t pursued the subject of Guy. “I’m one and the same. And, yes, I like my privacy.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance.”

She slid a hand across the table, laying her fingers over his own. His skin heated from the contact.

Excellent. He was forty-three years old. Hadn’t he progressed beyond the fascinated giddiness of a teenager and his whacked-out hormones? Wasn’t he too mature to be getting excited over hand holding?

Evidently not.

He shifted in his chair when she started stroking his thumb. “See here, Jinni, I—”

“Relax, Max. I don’t bite.” Jinni smiled, brilliant white teeth making her seem as glamorous as a fifties movie star. “Not unless you want me to.”

The image of her moving down his body, her hair streaking over his chest as she nipped his skin, sent his brain into a tailspin.

She laughed. “I’m joking, of course. I didn’t mean to fry your circuits.”

Removing his hand from hers, Max tugged on his tie again. Hell, it was already looped halfway down to his belly. “You’re a real piece of work.”

“You say that as if you’re almost amused.”

Maybe he was. Maybe this vibrant, melting ice sculpture of a woman got to him in a way that wasn’t altogether unpleasant.

“I wasn’t so tickled today in the parking lot,” he said.

“I beat you to the spot, and that’s all she wrote.”

“And I told you earlier that we don’t drive like that here. Your style is too aggressive.”

Jinni leaned back in her chair, considering him with what seemed like a hungry grin. “It seems to me, Max Cantrell, that a lady doesn’t succeed with you unless she’s a bit…hmm, let’s think of a better word…assertive.”

He chuckled. Either Jinni Fairchild was a wishful thinker or she was a mind reader. Either way, she was right. The only time Max interacted with females was if they came to him, even if the scenario involved a near car crash.

He couldn’t bother with women, especially with Michael on the warpath. Especially with the way his ex-wife, Eloise, had played kick the can with his heart.

Jinni was watching him, her eyes sparkling like a wink of blue light in a diamond engagement ring. “Why don’t you tell me about your business?”

Phew. At least she knew when to back off.

But did he necessarily want her to?

“Are you intrigued by software?” he asked, realizing he’d left himself open to more insinuations with the whole “software” topic.

She pursed her lips, as if holding back the temptation to come back with a flirtatious pun. “I’m a collector of information. Tell me all about it.”

Disappointment settled in his gut. He’d been half looking forward to bantering the night away.

“Cantrell Enterprises got its start with software—business and some gaming—and we’re developing more. But I want to take it in another direction. We’re exploring virtual reality.” This time he was the one leaning on the table, spurred on by his subject. “You know, it never took off like it was supposed to when it was first introduced. The first VRs were uncomfortable, cumbersome. The sound resembled two tin cans tied together with string. Viewing quality left much to be desired. And there was a total lack of software. All in all, virtual reality was expensive and inaccessible, with no basics to support its success.”

He checked to see if Jinni had nodded off yet. Usually, people would tune out his intellectual computer-nerd talk after the first three seconds.

But Jinni’s head tilted, her eyes connected with his. “And that led to the downfall of virtual reality’s possibilities?”

“Yeah. That’s where we come in. I’m looking at ways to make VR more available to the average user. In fact,” he could feel a smile dominate his mouth, “my passion is to develop the female market.”

She angled her chin down, peeking at him from beneath her eyelashes. “I’d say, with a little more effort, you’ll corner it.”

He could live with a woman glancing at him like that.

No. Actually, he couldn’t. Michael would tear her apart before she could step both feet into their mansion.

Get the conversation back to comfortable ground, he thought. She’s way out of your league and you don’t want her to venture into yours.

“At any rate,” he continued, watching two ranch hands playing pool at the nearby threadbare table, “Cantrell Enterprises is working on virtual reality for the training arena: medical, industrial, cultural. And, of course, entertainment.”

He thought for certain that she was dying to say something about joysticks, but Jinni kept her silence, simply watching him.

During the ensuing pause, the men at the pool table started to argue, trading barbed words.

Jinni didn’t seem to mind them. “You fascinate me, Max,” she said, her voice low, smooth as the cream in a chocolate truffle.

His belly tightened. Someone found him interesting. And that someone was a woman whose legs stretched from here to China, whose bearing reminded him of Grace Kelly on acid. She was a potent combination of class and sex—and Max had never seen her equal.

No way she should be interested in a guy like him. A brain. A whiz kid who’d never really socialized with other people while growing up. No one had ever understood him. Not intellectually, at least.

Eloise had tried, for about an hour, and that’s how Michael had been conceived. But after she’d decided she needed to “find herself” in Tibet, she’d left him a single father, trying to figure out what he’d done wrong.

The arguing ranch hands were getting feistier, bumping chests like primates. Max protectively reached across the table toward Jinni out of instinct, and started to rise from his chair.

Ignoring the developing fight, Jinni followed suit, slipping her arm through his, fitting herself right against his side.

Damn, he shouldn’t want this. Shouldn’t need to be with a woman like Jinni. It wouldn’t work out, so why get into it?

“Let me see you home,” he said, guiding her away from the sound of a shattering beer bottle and toward the main bar, the hat and coatrack. He glanced over his shoulder to see the two ranch hands going at each other, while other cowboys herded into the pool room.

“Home?” Her voice rose over the loud music and shouts. “It’s early!”

She retrieved an item of clothing that resembled a cape. Typical. Dramatic, sophisticated.

And here he was, wearing a tie as a hangman’s noose.

“I thought…” he began.

“Don’t think,” she said as he helped her wrap the cape around herself. “Live.”

Live. He hadn’t really been doing that for years. Had he?

Maybe he could enjoy a lovely woman’s company, just for tonight. It’s not like Michael had to know.

He donned his own coat, then followed her out the door, hardly believing he was doing it.

Ha-ha, yes! Jinni Fairchild hadn’t lost her appeal. That’s right. She had Max Cantrell wrapped around her ring finger, and the night was young.

They hadn’t walked far in the cool air, only to a grass field where Max had laid down his coat, inviting her to sit on it. After they chatted about the spell of unseasonable weather and made calls home on his cell phone— Jinni wanted Val to know she’d be out late—he’d sat next to her, arms resting on his knees as he stared at the sky, stars spangling the clear blue like lost fairy dust.

“It’s good to finally see things clearly,” he said. “We had a raging wildfire before you came to town, and the smoke hindered visibility.”

“What do you know. Usually things heat up after I enter a place.”

She shouldn’t have said that. Dumb, stupid Jinni. Two people had died, as far as she knew. Wanda Cantrell and Morris Templeton.

She quickly added, “Is everyone safe?”

“Dee Dee Reingard’s and Old Man Jackson’s homes burned down. And no one knows where Jackson is. He’s gone missing, just like Guy.”

“What about the two bodies that were found?”

Max glanced at her, the slight wind mussing his hair. “My sister-in-law and her boy toy? The cops suspect my younger brother torched them, I think. But Guy hasn’t been around to deny his involvement with the fire. And then there’re those invisibility rumors started by Linda Fioretti, Guy’s fellow teacher. Everyone in town is buzzing about how they think my fool of a brother’s peeping in their windows or stealing socks from their dryers. But you know that much already, don’t you?”

“Yes.” Jinni wasn’t used to men who’d call her out, keep her honest. As a biographer, she tended to ask a lot of leading questions. Maybe Max would be more of a challenge than she’d first thought. “Does the sheriff think Guy murdered Wanda and Morris out of jealous rage?”

“That’s their story.” His jaw muscles twitched, his long fingers dug into his arms. “They don’t realize that Guy hasn’t a violent bone in his body. Sure, he’s scatterbrained and intense when it comes to anything scientific. We were both like that, even as kids. But Guy—” He clamped shut his mouth.

The Montana night enveloped them: pine needles scented the aimless drift of air, bringing with it the faint twang of country music from Joe’s Bar.

Jinni touched his shoulder, allowed her hand to brush down his biceps. There were some muscles under that shirt.

Whoo. She loved good arms.

“No wonder you were fishing for the worm tonight,” she said.

He shot her that miffed glance again.

“Drinking tequila, Max. It’s a colorful way of referring to that worm at the bottom of the bottle?”

“I don’t drink that much.”

“Really? You seem to handle liquor well.” She laughed. “What am I saying? You’re a big guy. I’m sure it takes a lot to affect you.”

“I walked into the bar affected,” he said, shaking his head. “And here I am, laying all this frustration on you. I should’ve just kept my trap shut about Michael, my business, Guy….”

There it was again, that slight trailing off at the end of his brother’s name, just like a mysterious parchment note where someone has written a horrifying phrase: “Something is outside my door, something is coming for me…” and the ink trails off into a tragic, last-breath squiggle down the page.

Having a brother suspected of murder must’ve been equally horrifying. Jinni could sympathize with Max; she knew firsthand what it was like to worry about a sibling.

He hadn’t shrugged off her hand on his arm—not yet—so she began to stroke back and forth with her index finger, feeling a line of sinew beneath the weave of his shirt.

He gave a short, seemingly bitter laugh. “I’m a terrible brother. I must be, because there’re times when I can’t help thinking that Guy might’ve done it.”

Jinni felt her eyes widen. Lord help her, but the biographer, the researcher, the curious monster within was screaming, “What a story! This is your next subject!”

She ignored the ambition, the excitement of catching on to an exclusive opportunity like Max Cantrell—a multimillionaire recluse who didn’t talk to the press.

Still, she couldn’t help asking, “What makes you think your brother could murder his wife and Morris Templeton?”

“Nothing. Just a doubt, a what-if.” He glanced at her. “Told you. I’m a terrible human being.”

Here he was, suffering a major philosophical dilemma while she sat next to him in a Dior ensemble. The juxtaposition couldn’t have been more ironic if she’d been the main character in a Kafka story.

She was as useless to Max as she was to Val, having no idea how to handle a situation more pressing than choosing between two soirees on the same night. But that’s what happened when you distanced yourself from emotion and concentrated on things that didn’t matter so much.

Life hurt much less that way.

Yet somehow Max Cantrell was forcing her to face the music. Face the child who’d been so afraid of her mother’s disappointment that she’d followed in her shallow footsteps.

“You’re not terrible,” was all she could think to say. “You wouldn’t be human if you didn’t have doubts.”

“Yeah, I suppose so. But I seem to have more than my share of trust issues. My brother, my son…”

Trailing off again. Jinni wondered whom he was cutting from the list. That ex-wife?

He lay back on the grass, arms tucked under his head as he closed his eyes. As he reclined, she trailed her fingers down his chest, letting them rest there, feeling his heart beat through her own skin. She watched him for a second, hoping he’d switch from Melancholy Max to a gear more befitting a lover’s sky.

She waited. Nothing happened.

“Welcome to my midlife crisis,” he said. “Can’t say I know how to handle one, either, but I’m pretty sure I wasn’t supposed to dump all my problems on my nemesis from the MonMart parking lot.”

“Hey,” said Jinni, finally taking her hand away and lying down next to him, using his coat as a blanket, “I’m all ears.”

And all worked up, truth to tell.

She listened to him breathe, his chest rising and falling, making her want to rest her head on him, seeing the world float up and down.

He turned his head in her direction. “You won’t know about hitting that midlife brick wall for a while.”

“You flatter me so.”

“You’re…?”

“Yes, forty. And not afraid to admit it.”

She hated her age. It made her want to sit on a park bench, pretending to feed the pigeons like a nice old maid should, and trip all the premenopausal women as they walked by.

“That’s right,” she continued. “Forty’s just a number.”

“You don’t look your age at all. I thought you were maybe thirty-five, thirty-six.”

She gasped, trying to ignore the pain of reality. Even her fake, delusional age was over the hill.

So, now that he probably thought her skin was crumbling to dust right before his eyes, what were the chances of him rolling over and planting a kiss on her? Probably nil.

Joy. Now she knew what all the average girls in school felt like. You know, the ones who were always the guys’ best friends, the ones who listened to the boys’ dating problems while slowly wilting away inside?

Bother with this. Jinni turned on her side, propping her head up with one hand while resting the other on her hip. Very come-hither. It had to work.

Make your move, honey.

Max just grinned at her. “You’ve turned out to be a good listener. I’m glad we met up tonight.”

Oh, brother. “Glad to help. Is there anything else you’d like to do?”

“You mean chat about? Nah. I’m all talked out.”

Okay. He wasn’t getting it, and as a result, she sure wasn’t getting it.

She decided to change tack, lowering her voice to hit-him-over-the-head-with-passion mode. Used only in emergency situations.

“Isn’t it romantic out here? The stars, the moon, the fact that we’re all alone?”

He made an uh-uh sound. Perfect. He’d bared his soul to her, but he couldn’t bare anything else?

Jinni flopped to her back again, losing hope. She didn’t have it anymore. Forty had sucked all the attractiveness out of her. Rumor had already shaped her into Granny Ankle-High-Nylons.

She was done for.

Once again, her gaze lingered over his length. The wingtip shoes, the crisp slacks, the stylish tie. Sigh.

Wait a second.

“Max?”

“Yeah.”

“Wouldn’t a Barbra Streisand song make the moment?”

She held her breath, hoping, praying….

“Bently likes her. Sometimes he’ll throw on one of her CDs, so I’ve got no choice but to listen.”

Bently? Who was Bently?

Ahh. Maybe this was the problem. Maybe Max wasn’t touching her because he was…confused. That would explain it.

Midlife crisis, indeed.

He jerked to a sitting position. “No.”

“No, what?”

“No, I’m not a Barbra Streisand fan. Because I think I know what you’re asking and… God, is that what you were asking?”

“Just wondering.”

He cursed.

“Hey, don’t revert to sailor speak just to prove your manhood.”

“I can’t believe you thought…”

Jinni sat upright, too. “And I can’t believe you think I look thirty-six!”

“You said you didn’t care about age.”

“I don’t.” She smoothed her hair, trying to seem glacial. “Age is immaterial.”

He cursed again, this time with a slight amount of mirth.

She was about to chide him for his course language, but the whole alpha talk bit was lighting her fire. She liked it when he showed some raw emotion.

Too bad he couldn’t extend some of that passion in her direction.

Once again she felt inadequate. So she did the only thing that could cheer her up—reminding herself that she was wanted.

“You remind me of Jordan Clifton,” she said.

“Who?”

Jinni smiled tolerantly at him. “The movie star with five films in the top ten list of worldwide grosses?”

Max shrugged, probably still smarting from the whole “gay” misunderstanding.

“Well, you’ve got the same dimpled chin. When we were engaged—”

“You were engaged to a movie star?”

“Three, actually. But when we were engaged…”

He wiped a hand over his face and slumped back down to his reclining position. “Incredible.”

Good, she’d gotten a rise out of him. Could she hope that his frustration stemmed from the slightest bit of male jealousy?

Jinni followed his lead, leaning over him. “You don’t want to hear about other men, do you?”

Her heart jumped when he took her chin between his index finger and thumb, pulling her toward him. Right next to his mouth.

“Quiet, Jinni. Why don’t you just be quiet.”

Now this was more like it.