Читать книгу A Small-Town Temptation - Terry Mclaughlin - Страница 9

CHARLIE IGNORED DAVID’S SCOWL as she dropped into one of his plush visitors’ chairs.

“Why don’t you ever make ‘coming in’ a question instead of a fact?” he asked.

“Because it saves time.”

He leaned back in his tall leather swivel chair and bounced the eraser end of a freshly sharpened pencil against his tidy desk calendar. The weak winter sun sneaking through the window behind him picked out strands of copper in his well-mannered chestnut hair, a head of hair that Charlie, with her out-of-control carrot curls, never ceased to envy. Just as she never ceased to envy the way his clothes neatly outlined his long, rangy frame, while hers simply buried what little there was of her figure.

Today he wore a dress shirt and tie, and she spied a new leather jacket hanging from the mirrored wall rack behind him. “Going somewhere?” she asked.

“Already been.” His expression brightened with the trace of a smile. “I stopped by that new hotel going up south of the marina—you know, Quinn’s job. He liked my sketches. He’s going to show them to the architect, see if he might be interested in using my design for the water feature near the entrance.”

Charlie didn’t respond to David’s smile with one of her own. Quinn was one of the busiest contractors in Carnelian Cove, a dour, hard-working man who probably didn’t appreciate David traipsing around his job site, artwork in hand.

Her brother cleared his throat, and then he flipped the pencil in his hand and drew a box around a calendar item. “And then I’ve got a business appointment.”

“Here?”

Obviously annoyed, he flicked an impatient glance in her direction. “This is a place of business.”

“Yeah. Right.” She tossed her chin at the jacket. “Where did you get that?”

“The city.” He took a deep breath and blew it out with a martyred sigh. “Is that why you barged in here? To comment on my wardrobe?”

Charlie shifted forward. “You loaned out two of our trucks this morning.”

He shrugged. “Earl called me at home last night and asked for them.”

And she’d just made sure Earl would never pull that stunt again. “How many times have I told you not to make a move without checking with Gus first?”

David jammed the pencil into a bristling mass of writing tools corralled in a slick chrome cup. “Gus isn’t the boss around here.”

“He’s the dispatcher, and when it comes to which truck goes where, and when, that’s more important than whose name is on whose check.”

“Damn it, Charlie—”

“Just shut up and listen, for once.” She came out of her chair, slapped her hands on his desk and leaned over him. “I let you declare yourself president of Keene Concrete because I hoped it would change your attitude. It’s time for you to start acting like you give a damn what happens to it.”

“Don’t you lecture me.”

“Someone’s got to.”

He clenched his jaw, and she knew he wouldn’t budge on this. Not today, anyway.

“Aw, hell.” She spun away and moved to the window to stare at the wide, gravel-coated yard. Outside, Buzz pulled beneath the batch plant to load his truck for the preschool playground job, and Lenny rumbled by in the transfer with sixteen yards of sand headed for Delores Fregoso’s riding arena.

“Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she said in a near whisper. “Don’t sabotage this. Please.”

“I’m not sabotaging anything. I’m trying to find a way for all of us to get what we want. All of us, Charlie. Not just you.”

She turned as he stood to pull his jacket off its hanger. “There are going to be some changes around here,” he said. “Whether you like them or not.”

TWO HOURS LATER, CHARLIE leaned back in her chair with a groan that morphed into a yawn. Time for another dose of caffeine. She tugged her coffee mug from under a stack of Department of Motor Vehicles forms and trudged toward the reception area. Around the corner, she heard a deep murmur followed by Gus’s wheezy chuckle. Someone was busy charming her dispatcher. Someone with a syrupy Southern drawl in his smooth, low-pitched voice.

That stranger, the guy who’d been staring at her in Earl’s gravel yard that morning. He leaned against the counter as if he’d been born with the laminate attached at the hip. His jeans were white at the seams, poised on the edge between ragged and stylish, his wool shirt faded enough to show some use but soft enough to advertise its pedigree. The outfit may have said everyday working guy, but she suspected the labels whispered weekend leisure wear.

He straightened and turned to face her, and she couldn’t help but stare at the flesh and blood embodiment of every bittersweet promise and mortifying low point in her brief and forgettable dating career. There was the lean-muscled build of that high school wrestler, the one who’d been such a perfect fit during a long, slow number at the homecoming dance—the one who’d lost his dinner all over her first formal gown. There was the wavy, dark blond hair of that sexy grad student, the one who’d whisked her away for her first taste of grown-up excitement—the one who’d ducked out in the middle of a double date, doubling her mortification. There were the dark blue, crinkle-cornered eyes of the man who’d been her first serious love affair, the one who’d said he was serious about her, too—the one who’d stood her up for Christmas dinner at her parents’ house four years ago.

And then the lean, sexy, blue-eyed stranger standing at her counter smiled, and his tanned skin stretched and molded in a wonderful combination of sharp cheekbones and square jaw and deeply carved grooves far too manly to pass for dimples. Okay, so the grooves were something new. And that look in his eyes that was making her stomach twist in a breath-robbing knot—no one’s eyes had ever looked at her in quite that way before. As if they were peeling away her clothes and counting every freckle on the skin underneath.

She hated it when guys made her stomach knot up. It gave her heartburn.

Gus gestured with his coffee mug. “This here’s Jackson Maguire, Charlie. He says he has an appointment with David.”

Jackson Maguire thrust his hand forward. “Call me Jack.”

She placed her hand in his, noting a healing nick on his thumb and the calluses rubbing against her palm. This was a man who used his hands for work, but the careful weight of his grip gave the impression of precise and practiced manners. An interesting man, this Call-Me-Jack Maguire. A man of intriguing contrasts and textures.

“Charlie Keene,” she said, and then she pulled her hand from his and shoved it into her pocket, where it would be safe.

“Do you know when David’s due back?” Gus asked her.

“He mentioned he had an appointment,” she said, “but all I know is that it was set for sometime after lunch.”

“I’m afraid I’m early,” said Jack. “Y’all just go about your business, now. Never mind me. Gus, here, is keeping me plenty entertained, in between all those phone calls he handles so well.”

Maguire winked at her. A slow burn kindled in her cheeks, and she knew she’d soon be wearing the same blush he’d seen on her that morning. She covered it with a nod and a shuffle to the coffeemaker.

“Pretty busy place here, even in the afternoon,” Maguire rambled on in his amiable way. “Trucks coming and going, steady as can be. I would have thought things might slow down some after the morning pours, especially in a town this size. I s’pose most of the traffic must involve gravel deliveries about this time of day.”

She couldn’t tell if he was simply making conversation or prying into her business affairs. There was something about the sly specificity of his questions—wrapped up in that “aw, shucks” delivery—that tickled the hairs on the back of her neck.

She turned with a shrug. “Some,” she said.

“Some.” His mouth turned up at one corner. “But not all.”

“Nope.”

Behind her, Gus sputtered through a strangled cough.

Maguire’s grooves deepened. “Now, that’s as concise, and yet at the same time, as eloquent an answer as I think I’ve ever heard.”

“And I imagine you’ve heard all kinds,” she said.

That crooked smile of his seemed to tweak and tease at each of his features before coming to rest in his eyes. Quite a trick. Her stomach was knotting up so tight she wondered if she’d be able to make it back to her office without getting a cramp.

David sauntered in through the office door. He took one look at Maguire, a second at Charlie, and his golfer’s tan faded several shades.

Charlie narrowed her eyes. “David?”

“David Keene?” asked Maguire, although it was obvious he already knew the answer.

At David’s hesitant and guilty-looking acknowledgment, Maguire extended his hand. “Jack Maguire,” he announced. And then he paused and flashed yet another grin in her direction. “From Continental Construction.”

Continental. Charlie’s mug clattered down on the counter, and coffee sloshed over the rim. Oh God oh God oh God.

Maguire tsked at the spilled coffee as he followed David through the doorway to the back offices.

That damn, cocky grin. The stomach-knotting trademark of the man who had appeared out of nowhere, the one who could get her juices flowing with his easy talk and his rough hands—the one who could hurt her more than any other man had ever hurt her in her life.

The hell he could.

Charlie snapped out of panic mode and strode down the hall after them. David’s business appointment was about to get his agenda adjusted.

JACK TOOK ONE OF THE visitors’ chairs in David Keene’s office and crossed an ankle over a knee. He figured he had about ten seconds before David’s sister came barging in.

Five seconds later the office door swung open so hard it bounced off the baseboard spring and closed behind her with a smack. His guess had been off. Charlie Keene moved fast when she was in a temper.

“Don’t let me disturb you,” she said as she dragged the other chair behind David’s desk—to the administrative side of the small room—and tucked it under an anemic-looking potted palm. “Go right ahead and discuss what it was you wanted to discuss. Just ignore the co-owner in the corner.”

She dropped into her seat and slouched with her arms folded across her nearly flat chest, a fraudulent smile thinning her lips.

David leaned back with a sigh. “You’ll have to forgive my sister, Jack. She tends to forget her manners when she walks through that door.”

Jack glanced at the woman glaring at him from her spot beneath the greenery. One scrawny frond brushed against her cheek, and she swatted it out of the way. “There’s nothing to forgive,” he said. “I’m perfectly capable of ignoring something, or someone, I’m told to ignore. Discretion is an important social skill, along with manners and the like.”

He hadn’t thought it was possible for Charlie’s expression to get any more hostile, but he’d guessed wrong about that, too.

He stifled a smile, figuring it would be like setting a torch to a short fuse. Except for his slight miscalculations about her temperament, so far Ms. Charlene Elizabeth Keene was living up to her reputation and his research. Which meant the rest of what he’d discovered was probably true—the lady had a clever enough brain and a strong enough back to carry most of the load at Keene Concrete.

He knew she was after Sawyer’s ready-mix company, too, scheming to ease her competitor into an early retirement and secure her company’s future in Carnelian Cove. Jack wondered how quickly she might blast through her family complications once she learned the purpose of this visit. Soon, he hoped. He relished the challenge of a tough, resourceful adversary.

Her brother cleared his throat, and Jack realized he’d been staring. David swiveled his chair a few degrees, attempting to cut Charlie out of the conversation. “I hope you had a nice trip north.”

“I did at that.” Jack nodded. “Enjoyed the scenery on the way in from the airport. Nice country you’ve got around here.” That was an understatement—the views were spectacular. Massive redwoods crowding the pavement’s edge, twisted cypress hugging cliffs dashed with sea spray. Mountains carpeted in thick forests and rolling pastures dotted with fat dairy cows. Rivers so clear he was tempted to pull over and toss in a lure.

“We like it.” David squeezed a pencil with white-knuckled fingers. “The tourists do, too. We get plenty of visitors. In the summer, when the weather gets nicer.”

Jack nodded. “That would bring ’em out, all right.”

Charlie shifted in her seat and rolled her eyes toward the ceiling. Jack had to give her points for keeping her mouth shut.

“I’m glad you could make it up here,” said David. “I was hoping you’d be able to check out the situation for yourself.”

“That’s why I’m here.” Jack gave him a wide smile. “To check out the situation.”

David sketched a zigzag in one corner of his desk blotter. “I hear you stopped by Sawyer’s yard this morning.”

“I did, yes.” Jack’s smile stayed in place. “Part of the situation, don’t you think?”

“But not an important one,” said David. “Well, not in a…What I mean is, he’s retiring, and…” He cleared his throat again. “There won’t be any competition around here once he does. Retire, I mean.”

“Continental’s not worried about a little competition,” said Charlie. She leaned forward, her hands on her knees. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Maguire?”

“Please,” said Jack as he leaned more comfortably against the back of his chair, “call me Jack.”

“In fact,” said Charlie, ignoring his request, “Continental doesn’t care which ready-mix outfit it buys. BayRock or Keene Concrete—it doesn’t matter at all, not in the end. It’s a buyer’s market here in Carnelian Cove, isn’t it, Mr. Maguire?”

Jack spread his hands. “It would sure be nice to think so, especially if a fellow were on a shopping trip.”

David sent his sister a murderous look. “Be that as it may, I’m sure Continental will want to consider getting the best value for its money in the Cove—in the local market.”

“The best value? The local market?” Charlie stood and shoved the palm frond out of her way. “If Continental buys Keene Concrete, Earl won’t be able to sell his outfit to anyone, and there go his retirement plans—everything he’s worked so hard for all these years. If Continental buys BayRock, it’ll cut the price of concrete below cost and bleed us into bankruptcy in a matter of months.”

She rested a hand on her brother’s shoulder. “Either way, Mr. Maguire’s bosses aren’t going to have any competition in Carnelian Cove.” She tilted her head to the side and leveled her dark gray eyes on Jack’s. “Isn’t that right, Mr. Maguire?”

“It’s Jack.” God almighty, going a round or two with this woman was going to be a whole lot of fun. Not to mention that the more he looked at her, the more he wanted to keep right on looking at her. She’d pulled off her cap, and that thick, springy hair seemed to wave and wind around her shoulders with a will of its own. Her wide mouth softened into a pillowy curve during those rare moments she wasn’t frowning or cursing or arguing. And the crackling intelligence in her smoky eyes made it difficult for him to tug his gaze from hers.

“Well now, David.” Jack set his foot on the ground and rose from his chair with a friendly smile. “I’d like that look at your operation you promised, if you don’t mind.”