Keeping Company (11 page)

Dylan was dubious. The look of absolute shock on Jayne’s face was enough to make anyone skeptical. But Alaina had her lovely chin set at that angle he recognized as mule-quality stubbornness, and there was a strange light in her eyes. She looked very determined and very vulnerable, as if she really needed to have him believe in her ability to make a stupid potato salad. His heart ached a little at that look. He had to fight to keep from wrapping his arms around her.

He was falling for her like a ton of bricks. The realization had roused him from a fitful sleep before dawn. He had sat bolt upright amid tangled
sheets, his body shining with a film of cold sweat. He wasn’t just physically attracted to Alaina Montgomery. There was that rare extra something to this feeling. Either he was coming down with a stomach virus, or he was falling for Alaina “I’m a career woman” Montgomery. A woman who couldn’t even make potato salad.

“I’ll do it,” she said. The words sounded ominously like a threat.

“If it’s no trouble,” Dylan said tenderly, lifting a hand to rub at a smudge of black paint on her cheek.

“It’s no trouble at all,” Alaina murmured, her gaze still locked on his as the pad of his thumb moved in lazy circles near the corner of her mouth.

This is weird
, she thought. That wavelength of awareness was buzzing between them again even though this was hardly a romantic moment. She doubted the discussion of potato salad moved even the most domestic of women to passion.

“Alaina turned loose in a kitchen?” Jayne mumbled, winding her hands in the tails of her shirt. “Sounds like big-time trouble to me.”

“Don’t you have to go ride your llamas or something?” Alaina asked with a pointed look.

“You don’t ride llamas.”

“Then whatever it is one does with llamas—shouldn’t you be doing it, Jayne Emilia?”

Jayne winced and bent over the porch swing to gather up her nail polish and the enormous canvas bag she called a purse. “Okay, I can take a hint. You don’t have to resort to middle-name calling.” She waved to them as she backed toward the steps. “Y’all have fun at the picnic tomorrow. Alaina, call me if you change your mind about Knute.”

Alaina rolled her eyes.

Dylan turned toward her with a strangely fierce expression. “Who’s Knute?”

Alaina bent to pick up her palette and brush again, a slow smile tugging at her lips. That was certainly an interesting timbre in his voice. “Knute Grabowski? Just a friend,” she said nonchalantly. “He’s … big in the lumber business. It’s nothing, really.”

Dylan frowned, scratching his chest absently. A lumber baron. He didn’t like the sound of that.

Without giving his actions much forethought, he reached out, turned Alaina around, and pulled her into his arms. Whether she opened her mouth out of surprise or to protest he never found out, because he took full advantage of the situation to kiss the cotton anklets off her.

His lips settled firmly against her lips, and his tongue swept against hers with lazy familiarity. Holy Hannah, she tasted good! Warm and sweet and more than a little willing. She twisted in his arms, not to escape but to get closer. Her arms crept up around his neck, the action lifting her full breasts up and rubbing them against his bare chest.

Dylan groaned his pleasure. He let one hand slide down the supple curve of her back to her hip, caressing her through her khaki walking shorts. He pulled her closer, nestling her against the cradle of his maleness.

Her brain devoid of reason or that famous control of hers, Alaina melted against him. It seemed all he had to do was touch her, and she was transformed from a rational, practical person to a featherheaded ninny.

When he finally lifted his head, she looked up at him, dazed. Dylan Harrison had just kissed her senseless on her front porch in front of God and everybody. Two teenagers biking past had stopped by her curb to watch.

“What was that for?” she asked weakly.

Careful what you say, Harrison, you’re going to blow it
, he warned himself. Alaina claimed she wasn’t interested in anything other than a phony relationship. If he even hinted at what kissing her meant to him, she was going to hand him his walking papers.

He grinned wickedly and tapped a finger against the tip of her patrician nose. “Practice. We want to be convincing, don’t we?”

Yes, but who was he trying to convince now? she wondered.

“Nice painting,” he said as he sauntered toward the steps. “A dog with a horn. I like it.”

He just managed to dodge the paintbrush that sailed at his head.

“See you tomorrow, Princess,” he said with a chuckle.

Alaina wasn’t sure what she had imagined a bar and bait shop would look like, but the reality was a pleasant surprise. Dylan’s was a tidy-looking place with weathered gray siding decorated with all manner of seagoing paraphernalia. Fishnets were draped artistically between life rings and anchors. The signboard swinging above the main door on an iron bracket read simply
DYLAN’S BAR AND BAIT SHOP
in jaunty blue letters. There was a wooden tub beside the entrance overflowing with fuchsia petunias. The building had been constructed right on a pier in Anastasia’s thriving
marina district, an area that was buzzing with activity on this perfect fall morning.

Slinging her purse over her shoulder, Alaina scooped her container of potato salad off the front seat of her car and headed for the bar—peeling the deli price tag off as she went. It wasn’t as if she hadn’t tried to make the damn stuff herself, she reflected as she rolled the gummed tag into a little ball and tucked it beneath a petunia in the tub beside the door. The current state of her kitchen was a testament to the fact that she had indeed made a valiant if unsuccessful effort. The taste of defeat was still bitter in her mouth.

She took a deep breath before stepping inside, trying to still the jittering nerves in her belly. What did she have to be nervous about? She was going to meet Dylan’s employees and his children. They were going on a nice, simple picnic. As far as social occasions went, she’d handled a lot tougher gigs than this one.

The interior of the bar was much like the exterior—weathered gray boards and a fishing motif. She had half-expected mismatched chairs and battered tables crowded with hulking, smelly
fishermen. What she found were neatly kept, relatively new furnishings, a floor clean enough to eat off, and a handsome bar area with shelves of bottles behind it. A door at the far end of the room had the words
BAIT SHOP
stenciled on the glass, obviously leading to the second, less appetizing half of the business.

Dylan sat behind the bar, a blue T-shirt with the place’s logo on it spanning his chest and broad shoulders. He was bent over the keyboard of a personal computer, tapping keys as he spoke with a stocky man dressed in jeans and a Windbreaker.

“I think a tax-deferred annuity is the answer, Miguel,” he said. “Precious metals can be lucrative, but they can be risky too. I’ve got a bad feeling about the gold market right now.”

“If you think this is best, my friend,” Miguel said in broken English, nodding his dark head.

“I’ll take care of it first thing Monday.”

“Tax-deferred annuities?” Alaina questioned when Miguel had gone. “I thought all a person could get in a place like this was rotgut whiskey and chopped-up fish.”

“Caught in the act,” Dylan said with a rather
sheepish grin on his wide mouth. “Um … I used to work for Drexel-Barnhart,” he said almost apologetically as he pulled his wire-rimmed reading glasses off and rubbed the bridge of his nose.

Alaina’s brows rose at the name of the prestigious investment firm. Dylan Harrison of the hula girl tie and high-top sneakers working for a button-down-collar, gray-flannel-suit place like Drexel-Barnhart? It was difficult—no, impossible—to believe.

“I had shorter hair then,” he said, as if that would clear everything up.

A wry smile lifted the corner of Alaina’s mouth. “Unpretentious, unambitious, unmaterialistic Dylan Harrison at Drexel-Barnhart?”

“That was before I saw the light,” he said in a superior tone.

If he was so enlightened, then what was he doing discussing annuities with Miguel? she wondered. It looked to her as if Dylan wasn’t completely reformed of his yuppie ways. The look she slanted him told him as much.

“I do a little on the side now, just for friends,”
he explained defensively as he shut down his computer, uncomfortable with the topic and with Alaina’s sharp-eyed scrutiny. Rising from his chair, he spied the container in her hands. “That the potato salad?”

She nodded, still trying to recover from the shock of discovering Dylan was a closet investment counselor.

“Did you have any trouble with it?”

“No, not a bit.” That girl behind the deli counter had just scooped it right out, no problem, she thought. There had been a tense moment deciding between the kind with hard-boiled eggs and the kind with shredded carrots, but other than that the mission had gone smoothly.

“Let’s get it in the cooler,” Dylan said, motioning for her to follow him, “then we can load up the boat. Everyone should be here soon.”

“Boat?” Alaina questioned weakly as Dylan rounded the corner of the bar and took the plastic container from her suddenly numb fingers. “What boat?”

He peeked inside the dish and made a face of surprised approval. “My boat. The
Tardis
.”

“You never said anything about a boat.”

“Didn’t I?” He shrugged. “Oh, well.”

Oh, well?

Dylan gave her a curious look. “You’ve been on a boat before, haven’t you, Princess?”

“Sure,” she managed, scraping up a bare ounce of bravado. “Of course I’ve been on a boat.”

She’d been on a boat. Once. On Lake Michigan with stepfather number two, Harold the ball-bearing manufacturer. She couldn’t remember which aspect had been the worst—Harold, the seasickness, or the sun poisoning.

“The picnic is on the boat,” Dylan explained.

He led her out a side door to a wide area of the pier that was shaded this time of day. Round white tables with collapsed blue umbrellas nestled against the side of the building, waiting for customers and a romantic sunset.

Dylan knelt down beside an enormous brown cooler and tucked the potato salad inside. “We’ll go up the coast a ways to this little cove, drop anchor, eat, and fish. It’s a nice, relaxing way to spend the day.”

“Who minds the bar?” Alaina asked, strongly
considering volunteering for the task. “What if someone comes in and wants to order up a beer or some T-bills or something?”

“We’re closed for the day. It’s kind of hard to have an employee picnic if half the employees are working. That’s the beauty of being unmaterialistic,” he said smugly, spreading his arms in an expansive shrug. “It doesn’t matter to me if I miss a day’s profits.”

Alaina rolled her eyes. The boat tied up alongside the dock caught her attention. The
Tardis
. She was no expert, but it looked pretty sharp to her. It looked as if Dylan could afford to miss a day’s profits. She would have commented on this if she hadn’t been so dismayed at the prospect of spending the day on the deck of the gleaming craft.

Dylan studied Alaina’s pallor with interest. She was looking at the
Tardis
as if it were a sea monster that might just swallow her whole. It seemed the invincible woman had a chink in her armor. Rather than finding it disappointing, he found it oddly endearing. Gently he asked,
“Alaina, you’re not worried about going out in the boat, are you?”

“Of course not,” she said, tipping her chin up and fighting the urge to gag as the smell of fish wafted down from the area where the commercial boats were moored. “It’s just that—that—the life jacket will clash with my outfit. You should have warned me.”

“I don’t think you’ll offend too many people,” Dylan said dryly. He eyed what she was wearing—a silky pink tank top and a trendy pair of tan jodhpurs. A slow, sexy smile spread across his mouth. “Alai-na, you’re wearing fuch-sia,” he singsonged, reaching out to run his forefinger just under the strap of the blouse. His voice dropped a velvety octave as his gaze locked on hers. “It’s very pretty. Did you wear this just for me?”

Alaina’s normally nimble tongue stumbled on her answer, giving her away almost as surely as her blush did. She managed a lame “No,” but Dylan obviously didn’t buy it. That she came up with an answer at all was a minor miracle considering the alarming rush of feelings the languid caress of his fingertip had brought on. He dragged it
lazily up and down along the strap of her blouse, coming alarmingly close to the upper swell of her left breast.

It irked her that she hadn’t been able to smoothly deny his assumption—almost as badly as it irked that she had indeed chosen the silky tank top with Dylan’s unusual color preference in mind. It wasn’t like her to dress to please a man. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out why she had done so today.

Dylan realized he was grinning like an idiot. He didn’t care. Alaina had dressed to please him. Never mind that her outfit would have been more appropriate for a Ralph Lauren fashion shoot. Never mind that she was there ostensibly as part of their deal. The more he saw of Alaina, the less he thought about the mundane practicality of their arrangement. That may not have been wise, but it was the truth.