Business or Pleasure? (7 page)

Alec blinked. He was tired, but not that tired. After a sleepless night and half a day thinking about it, hadn't he'd already
decided that he was going to put a stop to this…this
thing
that was brewing between him and Daisy? There
was
something brewing, he couldn't deny that any longer. But he also couldn't deny that she was all wrong for him. Dead wrong.

She was the kind of woman a man brought home to meet the parents, the kind of woman who made a man willing to talk about kitchen remodels and the thread count of his sheets, the kind of woman who inspired a man to start thinking about forever.

In short, she was exactly the kind of woman he'd been avoiding all his adult life.

He must have made some kind of noise because Daisy turned around, and when she saw him her smile faded and her laughter turned into a small choking sound. She leaned back against the counter and gripped the receiver tight enough to make her fingers turn white. “I have to go,” she said into the phone, never taking her eyes off him. “The boss is back.”

The boss.

She'd said the words flatly, putting a distance between them that he'd never felt before. In that moment he knew last night had changed everything. Never again could they be just two people who liked each other and worked well together. Not now that he knew what she tasted like, what she felt like in his arms, what sweet, murmured sounds she made when they were so close he couldn't tell where she ended and he began.

Unfortunately, he thought as he struggled to scatter the images that were popping into his mind, he couldn't let anything happen. Among other things, she was the settling-down type and he really,
really
wasn't. He was a rat in rat's clothing, pretending to be nothing else but a man who liked to have a good
time until the good times ended. It was all he was capable of and he'd always known it.

No, the thing to do here, he thought with a lingering sense of regret, was to try to keep a professional distance. The only thing he wondered now was if she was thinking the same thing.

“Hello, Alec,” she said stiffly as she hung up the phone.

Okay, she was thinking the same thing. “Hello, Daisy,” he said, and knew he was flirting with disaster as he walked toward the small kitchen. “Did you sleep well?”

A light flush spread across the smooth skin of her cheeks. “Like the dead, but I guess you already knew that considering the, uh,
state
I was in when you poured me into bed.” She looked down at the floor. “I apologize for that, by the way.”

“No need. Happens to the best of us.” He reached past her to close a cabinet door she'd left open, then caught a whiff of the enticing fragrance he'd come to think of as Eau de Daisy.

Uh-oh.

For a moment it seemed like they'd both stopped breathing. He knew right then that if he didn't move away, he wasn't going to be able to resist kissing her—and he also knew that kissing her would definitely mess up that whole “professional distance” thing he'd just cooked up.

But he couldn't seem to move.

All he could think about was feeling her soft skin beneath his hands, of tasting her again, of hearing her make that little sound of pleasure he'd heard last night. He turned his head toward her and knew he was a fool and then…

She stepped gracefully away and left the kitchen and didn't stop until she was standing behind one of the large
oak tables in the main room. “All our office stuff came today. I've almost got the computers hooked up,” she said brightly.

Alec took a deep breath and leaned back against the edge of the counter she'd just abandoned and managed to say, “That's good,” as he took a long look at her. Her eyes were downcast, her dark hair was tumbling over her shoulders in a curtain of curls, and even from that distance he could see that her hands trembled slightly as she slipped on her glasses.

Sunlight poured into the room through the French doors, and Alec watched as dust motes floated around in the beam of bright light that spread across the table in front of Daisy. And that's when he noticed for the first time that the furniture had been reorganized. Instead of being side by side, two of the tables faced each other from across the broad expanse of room and the third was set up smack in the center of them.

“Who moved the furniture?” he asked.

Daisy didn't look up. She was far too busy scooting her office supplies around on the tabletop. “I did.”

For some reason it irritated him that she clearly wanted as much physical distance between them as possible. And the simple fact that she was acting like he suddenly had the plague made him want to bait her when the smart thing to do would be to just let things lie. “Are we going to install an intercom so we can talk to each other?”

She looked up, her dark eyes full of fire. “I thought you'd enjoy a little privacy for your phone calls.”

“Hmm,” he said as he walked toward her, never taking his eyes off her. “What if I don't want any privacy?”

“Well, maybe,” she said, and he saw the light in her eyes flicker a bit, “maybe I want some privacy, then.”

When he reached her desk, he put his hands down in the center of it and leaned forward until he was so close, he could see her pulse pounding at her throat and feel her warm, sweet breath on his face. Danger signals went off in his head, loud and insistent, but he ignored them. “So you can talk to Tom?”

Predictably, she blushed a deeper shade of pink. He'd never noticed how damn cute that blush was. “Tom or…whoever,” she said, then changed the subject abruptly. “Everything should be working now except our Internet connection. Bill and I should have that fixed by the time we start work Monday morning.”

“Who's Bill?”
And who's Tom? And, Lord, why do I care so much?

“You know him. He's the desk clerk here. And he also works for the island's freight delivery company.” She smiled a bit, apparently forgetting to be mad at him for the moment. “Did you know everyone on this island holds down a couple of jobs? Even the local pastor works at the grocery store during the week and—”

“Would you like to have dinner tonight?”

Her smile flat-lined as she lowered herself into her chair and stared at him in silence. In truth, he couldn't believe he'd asked her, either. Not when he'd just decided to minimize their contact to keep from making a mistake he'd regret.

“With you?” she asked, her voice tinged with skepticism.

“Of course, with me. Who else would I mean?”

“I don't know. Sometimes you…” She shook her head and opened up her laptop. “Never mind. I don't want to have dinner with you.” Then she started to tap away on her keyboard like a woodpecker.

Let it go, he thought as he straightened and gazed down
at her.
It's for the best.
But then his curiosity—or was it pride?—got the better of him so he asked, “Why?”

Tappity-tap-tap.
“Because.”

He smiled. “Care to elaborate?”

Tappity-tappity-tap.
“I have plans.”

“I see,” he said, and resisted asking what he really wanted to know.
Where? With who? And when will you be back?
Lord, he was losing his mind.

She stopped typing long enough to glance at her watch. “I'm sorry, Alec. I have to go.”

He glanced at the clock on the wall, noted that it was two o'clock, then asked the question he had no right to ask. “When will you be back?”

“You sure are nosy today,” she said as she gathered up her things.

“And you sure are mysterious.”

When she opened the front door, the clanging of the harbor's buoys slipped into the room. “Let's just say you shouldn't wait up. Have a nice night, Alec.”

Alec frowned. How was he supposed to have a nice night when she was going to be out God-knew-where with God-knew-who until God-knew-when? And how was he supposed to have a nice night when he was all alone with his realization that what he really wanted was to be with her?

“You, too,” he called out as the door closed behind her. But anybody with a decent sense of hearing should have been able to tell that he didn't really mean it at all.

D
aisy could still hear the tone of Alec's husky, sexy voice as she pushed away her half-eaten sandwich and smiled at her lunch date, Virginia Baldwin.

“Anyway,” Daisy said with a shrug, “I don't think I'm cut out for the whole dating game. I guess I just never developed any of those girly-girl qualities I would need to be good at it.”

Virginia reached out across the red-checked table and patted Daisy's hand. “Small wonder, considering you lost your mother so young. I'm sure your father did his best,” she added. “But there's no way anyone could expect him to have taught you all the things you needed to know.”

Daisy smiled at the older woman and fiddled with her iced tea, a little embarrassed that she'd unloaded so much on Virginia who was, after all, a Mackenzie client. The thing
was, though, for Daisy, Virginia had already become much more than a client. She was more like a kindly old aunt—although Daisy had still been careful to leave out all the little details concerning Alec when she'd confided that she was in a bit of funk today.

“Sometimes it feels like I'm invisible to the opposite sex,” Daisy said. “Which is probably because I look like a librarian.” She smiled as she pushed her reading glasses further up her nose. “But it doesn't make any difference. Even if I looked like a pinup girl, everything I know about meeting and attracting a man could almost fill a Dixie cup.”

And last night had only served to prove that all over again.

“There's nothing wrong with how you look,” Virginia said as she reached out impulsively and tucked a curl behind Daisy's ear.

The gesture reminded Daisy so much of her own mother, she went all soft inside. “I'm sorry, Virginia. We were getting together to talk about the project, and here I've been yammering—”

“Not at all,” the older woman said with a wave of her bejeweled hand. “I wanted to spend some time with you and that's exactly what we're doing. Now,” she said as she chewed on one perfect, oval fingernail and looked at Daisy appraisingly, “I have an idea.”

Something about the gleam in Virginia's eye made Daisy a little uneasy. “An idea about the project?”

“No, no,” she said as she gestured to the waitress and scribbled in the air with an invisible pen. “An idea for you. What you need is a good old-fashioned makeover. Hair, makeup, manicure. The works. And we've got some wonderful designer boutiques on Bayside Avenue, so we can give
your closet a makeover, too,” she said as she signed the bill with a flourish. “In one afternoon, we'll banish your blues and give you the confidence boost you obviously need to see how irresistible you are.”

“Oh, I don't think—” Daisy began, but stopped in mid-protest. How great would it be to feel honest-to-God feminine for once in her life? Wouldn't it be empowering to have men twist their necks around to look at her as she walked by? And wouldn't it be thrilling to feel as though she had what it took to be a woman who was pursued by men?

The answer to all of those was a resounding yes. Plus, there was a tiny seed of evil in her that wanted Alec to see that beneath this capable, practical, unremarkable exterior there had always been a bimbo-in-training. If only he'd known.

Filled with an energy borne of new purpose, Daisy took off her glasses and smiled at her friend. “Let's do it.”

 

Walking in heels like these was strictly a job for professionals, Daisy concluded as she picked her way down the pockmarked sidewalk, her hands full of shopping bags acquired during an afternoon spent in Paloma's finest shops. She looked down in an effort to keep from tipping over like a top-heavy doll, saw her toes, and was shocked all over again when she saw that her toenails were painted that bright, bright crimson that Virginia's manicurist had said was called Matador Red before she'd trilled
ay-ay-ay
like a flamenco dancer and applied it.

But a pedicure wasn't all Daisy had done.

At the urging of Virginia—and courtesy of the dozens of cell phone calls her friend had made to manicurists, hair
dressers, dress shops, shoe stores and an establishment that made Victoria's Secret look like they sold granny gowns—Daisy had done it all. And all of it, right down to the last lipstick, had been Virginia's treat. Daisy smiled when she remembered Virginia waving away her protests, saying, “I've always wished I had a daughter I could spoil rotten. Now I feel like I do.”

The sun was long gone from the streets of Paloma, and the evening crowds were starting to emerge from hotels and houses and boats to make their way toward restaurants and bars and cafés. Daisy looked to her left and caught a glimpse of herself in the window of a dimly lit bar and had to remind herself again that what she saw really was her own reflection.

Her heels were very trendy, strappy and high. Her silky, light-blue skirt was tiny but gorgeous and exposed her legs to midthigh, making them look so long she almost didn't recognize them as her own. A sleeveless cashmere shell in the same color as the skirt fit her like a glove except that it was pulled tight across her normally normal-size breasts, which had been increased by one size courtesy of her new lingerie.

Daisy stopped to peer in the window and touched her hair self-consciously. It was still dark, still curly, but now it had a certain unkempt, just-rolled-out-of-bed look that made her feel like she should yank a brush through it to bring it under control. And the salon had provided not only a manicurist and a hairstylist, but a makeup artist who'd done a perfect but subtle job. Of course, when she tried to do it herself with all the same products tomorrow, she'd probably end up looking like Howdy Doody. But so what? Even if it was only for just one night, feeling like Cinderella for a while was worth it.

A quick glance at the huge clock mounted atop the main
mast of a ship-shaped restaurant called
Pitcairn
was all it took to let her know her makeover had taken much longer than she'd anticipated. Maybe she could just grab a bite to eat here, she thought as she eyed a couple emerging from the restaurant hand in hand. She hated eating alone, but she was starving. And it wasn't as if she had plans or anything, in spite of what she'd told Alec earlier. Another white lie—but hey, at the time she'd have said almost anything to get out of having to sit across the table from him all night and pretend she wasn't still suffering from a terminal case of puppy love.

Daisy's stomach growled. Oh, what the hell, she thought and then she slipped inside and asked for a table for one.

She ignored the snotty look the barely legal hostess cast her way and followed the girl's chirpy little voice when she said over her shoulder, “Follow me, ma'am.”

Ma'am?
Good heavens, did she really look that old? A little deflated by the thought, Daisy nevertheless followed in the girl's wake and took a seat at a small table, dropping her bags on the floor as she did.

“Enjoy your dinner,” the teenager said with syrup in her tone before she flounced away.

Daisy smoothed the napkin over her lap as she took in the restaurant's Polynesian theme. From the bamboo chairs to the lush foliage to the sarongs on the waitresses, this place had South Seas written all over it. She twisted around in her chair and moved a heavy branch of a rubber plant to get a better look at the unusual sunken bar…and looked right into Alec's amused gaze.

“Big plans, huh?” he asked, grinning like the devil.

Her heart hammered in her chest as her body went simultaneously hot and cold. “My plans are for after dinner,” she
lied, then let the branch snap back into place and turned around. She must be jinxed. There was no other explanation for how the last person she wanted to see in the world had been seated two feet away from her.

The plant rustled behind her. “Are your after dinner plans as exciting as your dinner plans?”

Daisy closed her eyes and counted to ten. When she got to fifteen, she turned around and smiled into his handsome face and his gorgeous indigo eyes. “I'll tell you all about it when I get home in the morning. How's that?”

If she'd expected a snappy response, she didn't get it. Instead, his eyes darkened as they roamed over her face, then his inspection moved southward where he lingered briefly on the deep vee of her cashmere sweater. When he looked up into her eyes again, his amusement was history.

“My God,” he said finally. “What did you do?”

Embarrassment flared first, followed quickly by anger. Like the naïve fool that she was, she'd thought for one heady moment that he might notice the changes she'd made today and give her an actual compliment. “Thanks a lot, Alec,” she said tersely and turned back around.

“No, no,” she heard him protest from behind the heavy rubber plant. “You just…” She heard him sigh, heard his chair scrape against the worn hardwood floors, then she flushed hotly when he appeared beside her table.

Of its own volition, her hand went to her hair to smooth it. But she needn't have bothered because he wasn't looking at her hair. He was giving her a once over so thorough it sent her blood zooming through her from fingertips to toes.

“You look great,” he said when his gaze returned to her face. “Really, really amazing.”

“Right,” she scoffed and opened up the menu to hide her face which was burning with a spicy brew of resentment and mortification.

Another chair scraped and she snuck a peek just in time to see Alec taking a seat across from her. The tip of his index finger appeared at the top of her menu and he lowered it until he could see her clearly. “Looks like you had a busy afternoon,” he said with a smile she couldn't quite read.

“Well, it takes time to turn a sow's ear into a silk purse.” She didn't even try to keep the sarcasm out of her voice.

“I already told you I thought you looked great,” he said and reached for the wine list the hostess had left behind. “Stop fishing.”

Maybe she was fishing, she thought as she pretended to read the menu. And so what? Even though she didn't want anything from Alec anymore, didn't she deserve a few compliments after years of feeling like just another Doric column at Mackenzie Architectural?

“I don't remember asking you to join me,” she said, feeling cranky and wanting to take it out on him.

“You didn't have to. I knew you wanted me to sit here.”

“Oh? And how did you know that?”

He shot her a serene smile. “I could tell by the way you were playing hard to get.”

She bit back a scathing response when she saw the waitress approaching. The woman looked so familiar, Daisy found herself squinting in the dim light to try to place her. Daisy was saved the trouble, though, when the woman smiled broadly and said, “Hey, hi! You're Mrs. Baldwin's friend. I see you've got one of your new outfits on.”

Ah, the dress shop. “Yes, I do,” Daisy said, and when Alec
looked up, his eyes filled with interest, she smoothed the soft cashmere against her stomach self-consciously. “Thanks again for your help today.”

“My pleasure,” the salesclerk/waitress said. “Did you know Mrs. Baldwin is here, too?” She gestured toward the front of the restaurant. “Right over there with that handsome husband of hers. But I see you've got that covered, too.” She gave a not-so-discreet little jerk of her head in Alec's direction.

A little shiver of pleasure wiggled up Daisy's spine at the thought of being able to call him her one and only. Then reality crept back in. “He's not my husband,” she told the woman. “He's my boss.”

“Lucky you,” the waitress said, shooting Alec an appreciative glance.

In return, he flashed her a brilliant smile that he'd probably been using since the cradle to unhinge women of all ages. In any case, it completely undid the poor waitress for a minute before she snapped out of it and remembered what she did for a living. “Oh,” she said as she lifted up the bottle of wine she'd been holding and showed it to Alec. “I almost forgot. Compliments of the Baldwins.”

While Daisy turned toward the Baldwins and acknowledged the gift with a smile and a little wave, the waitress opened the bottle. After Alec sampled it, he nodded his approval.

“I was going to say we should thank them on our way out,” he said as the waitress filled their glasses. “But it appears we'll be saved the trip.”

Daisy turned her head to follow his gaze and saw the Baldwins headed their way.

“Hello, you two,” Virginia said in a sing-song voice as they approached. She leaned down and gave Daisy a kiss on the cheek. “You look stunning.”

“That's what I told her,” Alec said. “But she didn't believe me.”

Joseph laughed. “Tell her again. Women need to hear the good stuff a couple of times before it sinks in.”

Alec looked over at her, his smile soft, his eyes deep pools of blue. “I'll give that a try, sir.”

Oh, Lord, she thought as she melted into that gentle smile that threatened to melt her hard-won protective core.
Mustn't be alone with him. Not for a moment.
“Would you two like to join us?” Daisy asked, pasting on a smile she didn't feel. “We'd love it, wouldn't we, Alec?” she asked and dared him with narrowed eyes to dispute her claim.

Alec considered the question. He wanted to say, “Actually, no. That would completely ruin my evening. And with you suddenly looking like you just stepped off a runway, I find it particularly inconvenient, thank you.” But, instead, he mechanically repeated her, “We'd love it.”

“That's so sweet of you,” Virginia said as she reached out and patted his hand in that grandmotherly way he'd only ever seen in the movies. “But we're just on our way out. Enjoy your dinner, you two.”

And with that, Alec's favorite clients departed and he found himself blissfully alone with his very flustered and very beautiful former assistant.