Jeannie Watt Read online

“Sure looks like it, doesn’t it?” She lifted her shoulder eloquently and took another drink. This time she didn’t grimace.

  “Is it worth it?” he asked, having a hard time pulling his eyes away from her mouth. The beer had left a sheen of moisture on her lips and Matt imagined tasting those tiny droplets. One by one. With the tip of his tongue.

  “You want to hear the story?” Tara asked. “Decide for yourself?”

  “Yeah,” Matt said. “I wouldn’t mind.”

  “Then I’ll tell you,” she said without hesitation, and Matt had a feeling the alcohol was already going to her head. “Ryan’s family is originally from California. Martin bought the inn and moved here when Ryan was a junior in high school. He transplanted well. The girls were all nuts about him and it was a pretty sad day for the female populace when he graduated and headed off to college.”

  “Were you one of the sad ones?”

  Tara looked surprised. “No. I pretty much kept to myself back then.” The remark hung in the air for a moment, before she said, “I didn’t see Ryan again until we were both out of college and working in Elko. He was with an accounting firm and I was teaching at the community college. We met at a Christmas party. He was very, very charming, which I know now is his modus operandi. He told me he remembered me and that he’d heard I didn’t date. That wasn’t quite true, but…” Tara shrugged. “Anyway, he said he could change all that. I bet him he couldn’t….”

  The rest of Tara’s narrative went almost exactly as Matt had assumed it would. Tara had been the beautiful, but standoffish college teacher and Ryan the guy who decided he was man enough to scale her defenses. Which he did. It was only after he’d dropped his charming facade and scored in a rather self-centered style, as near as Matt could tell by reading between the lines, that Tara realized she’d been a notch on the bedpost, a challenge he couldn’t resist and nothing more.

  “I know what happened to me is probably not unusual,” Tara confessed when she was done, “but it shook my confidence. Broke my trust…hurt my pride.”

  The last words were so low and bitter, Matt had a hard time hearing them. Tara took one last drink and then set the beer aside. “Such is life.”

  She moved to the sink and pulled a paint encrusted brush out of the container of water, grimacing as she held it up. She poured dish soap on the bristles and began working it in.

  “Why does Somers still have it in for you?”

  Tara didn’t turn around, but her reply was quick and certain. “Because he got hit in the two places that hurt him most—his pride and his pocketbook. He came to see me a few weeks after our…encounter. He’d had too much to drink and he was ready for another go. I was not.”

  Matt waited. He’d really like to have a short go with Ryan himself.

  “He refused to back off, so I hit him.” She glanced over her shoulder, smiling. “I broke his nose.”

  Matt’s grinned back. He’d noticed the bump on Ryan’s classic profile. It pleased him to know Tara had put it there.

  Tara turned the faucet on and rinsed the brush. “He ran straight down to the sheriff’s office before the bleeding stopped to press charges and file for a restraining order. He said that he’d tried to break up with me weeks ago and that I wouldn’t take no for an answer and now I was getting violent.” She squeezed the excess water out of the bristles and reshaped them.

  “What happened?”

  “Nothing. I denied it and added a few claims of my own, like assault. And trespassing. There were no witnesses to anything. It was his word against mine, according to the judge. That really irritated Ryan. He couldn’t believe that my word held as much weight as his.” She laid the brush on the drain rack, then wiped her hands.

  “Go figure.”

  “Now, this might surprise you,” Tara said with a straight face, “but Ryan can be petulant and vindictive.”

  “No.”

  “Yes. He can. He needed revenge—I had disfigured and humiliated him, after all, and he couldn’t really tell anyone how it happened, so he decided to use his clout to get me fired from the college. But Jack found out what was going on—Ben is the registrar’s assistant at the college. And it just so happened that Ryan’s accounting firm did the books for the Owl Club Casino….”

  “I like where this is heading,” Matt murmured.

  “Long story short, Ryan’s firm ultimately kept the accounts, but lost Ryan.”

  “He got fired?”

  Tara nodded. “He’d been maneuvering to become a partner. Talk about a major blot on his employment record as well as a blow to his gigantic ego. Plus, Jack’s boss must have put the word out. Ryan couldn’t get a job anywhere to his liking. Martin finally had to bankroll him so that he could buy a small business here in Night Sky—not anywhere near the status of his old firm. In fact, it’s pretty darned Podunk. So now Ryan hates me and his dad hates me.”

  “But why doesn’t Ryan hold a grudge against Jack?”

  “He doesn’t know Jack was involved. I wouldn’t know if Nicky hadn’t been friends with one of the junior associates at the accounting firm. Very ‘hush, hush,’ but Nicky can get anyone to blab. Jack’s not a guy who looks for gratitude. It embarrasses him. He never said a word to me, before, during or after, so I’ve never said a word back. He just quietly saved my butt. He doesn’t know Ryan holds me responsible.” Her smile was humorless. “The thing that slays me is that Ryan’s ego is so big he honestly thinks he’s the victim in this.”

  She tilted her head then, her long braid sliding over her shoulder, reminding Matt of the day he’d run his fingers through her hair as he struggled to contain it in an elastic band. One of these days, he’d really like to undo that braid. Fill his hands with dark hair while he slowly showed Tara that not all men were self-centered, two-faced jerks.

  It wouldn’t happen. He wasn’t at a point in his life to let it happen. And then his gaze met hers. And he realized that she was thinking something along the same lines as him.

  For one long and very uncertain moment, they stared at each other, the atmosphere between them growing increasingly charged, until Tara swallowed and looked down.

  Matt studied her profile.

  Say something. “And that’s why Martin Somers keeps throwing roadblocks at you?”

  The question sounded forced, inane, but Tara didn’t seem to care.

  “That’s why,” she agreed in a slightly uneven voice. She started for the fridge. “Dinner might be a little late.”

  “We can go out to dinner,” Matt suggested. The air in the kitchen still seemed charged with possibility.

  “I don’t think so, Matt. I have stuff to do.”

  She pulled the fridge door open, apparently thinking the conversation was over. She was wrong.

  He pushed it shut. Tara’s eyes widened. “Matt…”

  He ignored her warning tone and settled his hands on her shoulders. “Tara, give yourself a break,” he said quietly. “Take a night off.”

  “Matt—” She abruptly broke off. Biting her lip, she frowned.

  “I don’t know what to do here,” she whispered, more to herself than to him, and Matt knew she wasn’t talking about dinner. She brought her hands up to rest on his upper arms and let out a breath as her head slumped forward to rest against his chest. He felt her inhale, then exhale again. He waited, his thumbs unconsciously smoothing over her delicate clavicles, his nerves humming.

  When she finally raised her head, she slid her hands from his arms up to his face. “Why don’t you kiss me?” she asked quietly.

  It was an invitation, not an inquiry. Matt’s blood pressure jolted up, but he forced himself to stay still.

  “Are you sure?”

  She smiled. “Of course not. I’m too cautious to be sure.”

  That was when Matt knew he’d lost the battle. He gently put his arms around her and pulled her close.

  Their lips met. Cautiously at first. Their tongues touched lightly and then Tara sighed as their mouths melded together.
It was the kiss Matt had wanted to give Tara since their first encounter in the parlor, the kiss she’d apparently been waiting for. Mutual, deep and hungry in every sense of the word.

  At first Matt did his best to hold himself in check, satisfying himself with running his fingers over her hair and down her back, lightly following the curve of her waist and skimming over the sides of her hips, telling himself he’d stop after just one more kiss.

  But there’s so much time to make up for….

  Tara made another small sound in her throat as Matt’s hands traveled slowly up her midsection to cup her breasts through the soft chambray of her shirt, his thumbs finding and lazily teasing her nipples through too many layers of fabric. It was a good sound, an encouraging sound, which Matt translated as an invitation to undo buttons.

  “Tara?” he asked as his lips left hers. He needed to get a grip here.

  “Shhh,” she murmured, reaching up to pull his mouth back down, opening her lips, drawing him in, putting all thoughts of getting a grip firmly out of his mind.

  He gave up on the buttons and pushed his hand up under her shirt, his fingers skimming over her incredibly smooth skin. He felt her shudder and then she buried her fingers in his hair, pressing her lower body against his.

  Definitely a woman he could get lost in. And the stunning thing was that he wanted to get lost in her. They were teetering on a brink, about to go over…

  He couldn’t do it.

  With a Herculean effort, Matt forced himself to pull back, to disengage his lustful body, engage his more logical brain. Logical brain seemed to be on hiatus, possibly due to lack of blood, but he sucked in a breath and gave it another try.

  He looked down into Tara’s beautiful face, his breathing still ridiculously uneven, and watched shifting emotions play over her features as she cautiously held his gaze. Confusion. Annoyance. Vulnerability rapidly masked by indifference.

  She read him well, made no move to pull him back down to her. When she finally spoke, her voice was low, slightly husky, and self-protectively sardonic. “You need to be going?”

  Matt grabbed the lifeline. “Yeah.”

  “Any particular reason?”

  But before he could answer, she asked, “You aren’t leaving for my own good or anything, are you?”

  “I think maybe I’m leaving for my own good.”

  Tara gave him a suspicious look.

  “You don’t want to get involved with me.” Just ask my ex-girlfriend.

  “Not even for one night?”

  A long beat of silence followed. “Is that all you’re looking for?” The thought irritated him. Maybe he was getting more attached to this woman than he’d realized.

  “Nothing more.” She seemed to think that would reassure him.

  Matt shook his head. He wouldn’t do a one-nighter with Tara, for myriad reasons, none of which he cared to single out and analyze at the moment. But if he had to, protectiveness would be number one. He wouldn’t start something that had the potential to do emotional damage to either of them, no matter what Tara wanted.

  “You don’t do casual?” She spoke with a forced indifference that told Matt exactly how hard it was for her to say the words.

  “There are times,” he admitted, “but frankly, in the long run, it isn’t very fulfilling.”

  “Voice of experience?”

  He nodded.

  “Then I guess you’re right,” she said coolly. “You should be going.”

  “Tara, maybe we should talk about this.”

  She shook her head, her expression stony, and he knew then how much his rejection had stung. A strong desire to make things better, to ease the hurt, slammed into him.

  “Please go.” The words fell like chips of ice. “We can talk tomorrow.”

  Matt headed for the door.

  The phone rang before he got there. He paused with his hand on the door handle as Tara picked up the receiver. She said hello, her eyes still on Matt, her expression still carefully impassive, and then her demeanor abruptly changed.

  At first he thought it was trouble, but after a few seconds, he realized it was Bidart, getting back to her about the cancelled reservation. She turned her back to him and Matt took that as a sign of dismissal. He pulled the door open and stepped out into the warm night air.

  A decent guy probably would have stayed to find out what happened with Bidart, but Matt was afraid of what else might happen if he stayed. His willpower was shaky enough as it was.

  He’d barely made it to the door.

  TARA FORCED HERSELF to concentrate on what Nate Bidart was saying—none of which seemed to be positive—and ignore the taillights turning out of her driveway, as well as the disappointment and shame burning deep inside of her. What did he find so lacking in her? She wanted to think it was the one-night stand proposal, but he’d withdrawn well before that.

  “Nothing personal, here, Miss Sullivan—” she forced herself to focus on Bidart’s voice “—but tell me straight. Is your establishment ready for business?”

  “It will be.”

  “That wasn’t the question.”

  No, it wasn’t. “Are you in Night Sky, by any chance?”

  “I’ll be leaving early tomorrow morning.”

  Tara went for broke. “Why don’t you stop by for a few minutes on your way out of town. At least then you can judge for yourself.”

  “I’m leaving at close to four a.m.” He paused and then said, “I can come by right now.”

  Tara glanced at her surroundings and then gave a fatalistic shrug. “I would appreciate it.”

  “All right. I’ll be there in twenty minutes.”

  He hung up without a goodbye. Matt had left without a goodbye. Kind of a theme here. Tara sank into a chair, pushing the loose hair back from her face. If she closed her eyes, she could still feel Matt’s mouth on hers. She opened her eyes. Plenty of time for that later. Right now she had to concentrate on Nate Bidart.

  Tara resisted the urge to tidy up. She got up and tossed the two beer bottles in the trash and then paced from room to room as she waited for Bidart. If nothing else, he’d get an honest look at the place, and at her.

  It was almost twenty minutes to the second when the car pulled into the drive and Tara wished for a wild moment that it was Matt coming back, that they hadn’t argued. She was still trying to figure out what they had argued about.

  When Bidart got out of his car, Tara’s first thought was that she’d expected someone taller, but as soon as she came face-to-face with him, she knew that this was not a man to be messed with—or easily cajoled, either. He resembled a bird of prey with his closely cropped gray hair and intense black eyes. And he looked tired. A hawk exhausted after a hunt. It must have been a rough few days negotiating business in Night Sky, Tara thought as she stepped back to let the man into her three-story work in progress. Well, the past few days hadn’t been that great for her, either.

  “Good evening,” she said. “I’m Tara Sullivan. Thanks for taking the time to drive over here.”

  “It was the least I could do under the circumstances.” He moved past her into the foyer with the air of a man who was doing his duty and wanted to get it over with as quickly as possible.

  Tara closed the door and watched as Bidart studied the room, taking in the stripped staircase, the gallons of paint sitting in the hallway, the sheet dropped over the hall valet, the hanging capped wires where a light fixture on back order was supposed to be.

  “Pardon my dust,” she said in an attempt to lighten the mood and was rewarded with a cool, unsmiling stare.

  Okay…we’ll keep things professional.

  “Well,” she said, “let’s start on the ground floor. I’ll show you what I have and what I plan to have done.”

  Tara conducted the tour briskly. She talked and Bidart listened as she took him through the house, laying the project out before him. He remained silent, giving no indication of what he was thinking as Tara showed him everything, ending the tour o
n the disastrously incomplete, stiflingly hot third floor.

  Bidart did a slow circuit of the large open room, taking in every detail, from the scarred floor and crumbling plaster walls to the cracked windowpane mended with tape.

  When he was done, he turned back to her and Tara had to force herself not to shift uncomfortably under his hard gaze. “Nothing personal here, Miss Sullivan, but this place is a disaster.”

  “You should have seen it a week ago.”

  “I can imagine.” His tone was not complimentary.

  “This floor is a work in progress. I thought you should see the entire house so you could understand what had been accomplished on the lower floors.”

  “I understand, but you’re still working under the gun on those lower floors, aren’t you?”

  “A bit.” There was no use denying the fact.

  Bidart pushed at a piece of broken wall plaster with the toe of his shoe. It left a trail in the dust.

  “If it was just me, I wouldn’t be too concerned. But this reservation isn’t for me. I made it for my mother and her two sisters.”

  “I see,” Tara said in a low voice.

  “My mother has always loved this house. Once she tried to buy it from your aunt.” His gaze traveled over the deeply disguised carved oak molding that framed the door. It had been painted at least a dozen times, but Tara knew what was underneath. She wondered if Nate knew, too, from the way he was studying it. “Your aunt wanted to keep it in the family.”

  “So do I,” Tara murmured. “Will you be attending the reunion?”

  “I have reservations at Somers Inn. I tried to get Mom to stay there, too, but she’d wanted to stay here. I have to tell you, I was under the impression the house was ready for business.”

  He gave the room one last critical inspection and then shook his head. “This isn’t going to work.”

  He started walking toward the stairs.

  “It could work.”

  Bidart stopped, surprised at Tara’s blunt statement.

  “The rooms will be ready, and, if you keep the reservation for your mother and aunts, you can stay here at no additional charge.”

  The offer was met by a very long silence and Tara felt her blood start to pound. Like saving a few bucks would be all that important to this man. Then, to her surprise, he came close to smiling. “Where?” he asked simply.