Prelude to a Wedding (The Wedding Series Book 1)

Bette tried to ignore the strange frisson of relief and disappointment that touched through her.

  A kid at heart. She believed he’d spoken no more than the absolute truth, and that relieved her. Because that meant the odd undercurrent of attraction would soon wither. Dependability, solidity, maturity—those were the attributes she valued. Someone who would work through the difficulties in life as she did, someone who anticipated them and prepared for them. Certainly not someone who admitted to being—bragged about being—a kid at heart.

  So why are you disappointed? asked a voice inside her.

  To quiet it, she asked, “How did you get to know Mama Artemis and Ardith?”

  “I did a job for them back when I was starting out. In fact, before I’d set up the business.”

  “What kind of job?”

  Paul gestured widely to the room around them. “Appraising.” For the first time Bette noticed one wall was decorated with assorted wooden game boards, the colors mellowed and softened by age. On a shelf along the opposite wall resided arrangements of old-fashioned toys, a teddy bear appearing to pull a wagon bearing two dolls, a wooden sled next to ancient-looking skates, a hoop and stick.

  “The toys? You appraised these toys?”

  “These and a whole lot more. This collection’s the tip of the iceberg.”

  “Did they bring all these things with them when they came to America?” She wondered again about the origins of Mama Artemis and her family. Not Poland; she’d heard no trace of her grandfather’s speech in Ardith’s voice.

  “No way. Mama Artemis had just been widowed and didn’t have much anyway, but she left everything behind except the clothes on her back and her two children. She came to Chicago because she had a cousin she could live with at first, though I guess it got pretty crowded.”

  Bette’s lips curved. She could hear her grandfather’s rich, deep tones and exotic accent, recounting with pride each step his family had taken toward the American Dream. As if it were a bedtime story, he would tell her again and again, each movement forward in education or position or savings.

  “So Mama Artemis started looking around for a job . . .” Paul went on.

  Like Mama Artemis, Bette’s grandparents had lived with relatives at first. How proudly he had recounted to her how soon they had rented a whole apartment for themselves. Then came moves to a better neighborhood, a bigger apartment. He would say over and over how proud he was of his daughter—Bette’s mother—who had graduated from high school and married a man who owned his own home. She remembered how her grandfather beamed the day she’d graduated from college, and how two years later, sick as he was, he had made her sit on his hospital bed and tell him every detail of the ceremony that entitled her to the initials M.B.A.

  “Are you with me?”

  Paul Monroe’s touch on her wrist was fleeting, but left behind a tingle of warmth.

  “What? Oh. Yes, I’m with you.” She wasn’t surprised to discover that one level of her mind really had absorbed what he said. Many times in business she’d blessed her dual-track mind. “You were saying Mama Artemis went to work as a housekeeper for this eccentric old man.”

  “Yeah, and it turned out he had this terrific collection of toys and games and dolls he’d put together bit by bit for decades. When he died, he left it all to Mama Artemis.”

  “And that’s where you came in? How did you get her as a client?”

  “I didn’t. At least not if you mean going out and pursuing the account. I hadn’t even set up in business at that point. I’d been working for this insurance company—a rising young executive, they said. I hated it.”

  He said it so cheerfully she could almost doubt he meant it. “Then why’d you do it? Did you plan that as a springboard to establishing your own appraising business?”

  “I used it as a springboard to paying my rent,” he said dryly. “I drifted into insurance after college.”

  “You majored in business?”

  “No. History. Probably the only history major who never considered going on to law school.” The sharp note was so at odds with his usual tone that she wondered if she imagined it. Especially when he continued easily, “But that might be because I didn’t intend to be a history major. I just liked history. A quarter before graduation, I looked at my courses and figured I lacked one class each to major in psych and history, and I liked the history offering better that spring, so there I was—a history major.”

  Bette shook her head, thinking of her own carefully considered selections, each a plotted step along the road to owning her own business, each a piece in the foundation on which to build her future.

  He took her gesture another way. “Go ahead and shake your head. You probably already know what I discovered—there aren’t any want ads in the Sunday paper for history grads.” He shrugged. “That’s where insurance came in.”

  “And then Mama Artemis?” she prompted.

  He grinned. “I lucked into that. I’d fallen into being sort of a troubleshooter for the insurance company, getting appraisals for unusual stuff nobody else wanted to bother with. Not the real antiques, but nostalgia items and some really oddball collections. It was an excuse to get out of the nine-to-five rut at the office, so I took courses, read a lot, asked questions. A friend of a friend told Mama Artemis about me, and she asked me to help. I was too stupid to know what I’d gotten myself into until I stood waist-deep in one of the finest collections in the country. It was worth a fortune.” He gestured to the surroundings. “More than enough to set up a successful restaurant on the Near North Side.”

  “So you helped Mama Artemis sell off some of the collection to finance the restaurant?”

  “You mean as a dealer? No.” His hands and face had stiffened and his words were crisp. Bette contemplated this new aspect of Paul Monroe with something more than surprise. But just as suddenly he was his easy, amused self once more. “You just ran smack-dab into my hobbyhorse. I don’t think appraisers should be dealers, and vice versa. If nothing else, somebody telling you your Great-Aunt Gertie’s vase is worth $22.50 when that same person’s in the market to buy it poses one hell of a conflict of interest. Most folks who do both are honest, but why go dangling temptation out there like a carrot?”

  “And Mama Artemis’s inheritance was worth considerably more than $22.50?”

  He grinned at her dryness. “Considerably more. Even with a string of zeros. I tell you, I spent the first few months scrambling around trying to figure out exactly how over my head I was. By the end of it, Mama had her restaurant, I had enough contacts to get out of insurance, a couple dozen collectors and several museums had acquired rare finds and the people of Chicago had the opportunity to enjoy some great cooking.”

  Bette looked at Paul and considered how different his approach to business—to life itself—was from hers. He talked of drifting, luck, happenstance and scrambling. She lived by planning, forethought, diligence and persevering.

  What bothered her was, despite all that, she couldn’t resist smiling back at him.

  Ardith’s arrival made Bette jump a little at the realization that she and Paul had been smiling foolishly at each other. It must have been contagious, because Ardith wore the same kind of smile as she set platters of steaming, aromatic food on the table, fussed with their arrangement, then exhorted Paul and Bette to enjoy their meal.

  They did. Both the food and the conversation.

  Bette surprised herself. She seldom dived into food like this—and never during a business meal. She found herself using a business trick of drawing out her companion by asking questions. But she knew the difference between obligatory questions and a true desire to know. She’d never laughed as much as she did at Paul’s accounts of his hair-raising childhood exploits. And she’d never felt so disinclined to move away from the brush of arms and legs that occurred in the tiny booth.

  Replete, and with an additional sensation of content, she sat back. “You’ve lived a charmed life, Paul Monroe.”

  He co
nsidered that as he examined his half-full water glass. Maybe he had lived a charmed life. He had good friends, a good business. He’d benefited from a good mind and good education. And family...Well, he couldn’t deny the strains and differences, but the bottom line was that he loved them and they loved him—with one exception. And he’d fought his way clear of that one exception’s influence years ago, so he had freedom, too. What else could anybody need?

  Without conscious thought, his gaze went to Bette’s face.

  Her smile pleased him at a level he couldn’t explain. More than the way her lips curved—although that was nice, too—he liked the way her cheeks and eyebrows lifted, providing a new showcase for her deep blue eyes. Even more, he liked knowing he had lured the smile into the light. It was a shame to keep that spark locked up behind the dusty seriousness she seemed to think necessary. The challenge appealed to him.

  He wanted to see her laugh again. Here, in the soft shadows of their corner.

  “You sound just like Michael,” he said.

  “Michael? Your brother?”

  “No. Friend. Michael Dickinson, Grady Roberts and I were college roommates.” He told her about finding fungus growing in the closet at the end of sophomore year and, though she wrinkled her nose in distaste, she laughed. Laughter looked even better on her than a smile.

  “By the time Tris came we had quite a reputation.”

  “Tris? Your sister?”

  “Nope. Wrong again.” He recognized the flick of annoyance. Bette didn’t like being wrong, and especially not twice.

  “But you do have a sister.”

  “How can you be so sure—oh, of course, Ardith. Yeah, I have a sister, but Judi’s in college now. She’s eleven years younger than me. Tris Donlin’s my cousin. Her freshman year the three of us—Grady, Michael and I—were seniors, and we all hung around together.”

  “It sounds as if you had a wonderful childhood.”

  “Had? You look like you think I’m still going through it.” He laughed, but he noted the startled look in her eyes, as if he’d caught her at something not totally polite.

  “I’m sorry, I—”

  “It’s all right, I was kidding.” He had to cut her off. He didn’t want a repeat of the tone she’d used to describe his work as child’s play; he didn’t want a repeat of the feeling. Better, much better, to turn the conversation.

  “Of course everything wasn’t roses, you know. At one time I thought the only answer was to get away. I wanted nothing to do with my family.” He kept words and tone light, consciously pushing aside the jumble of those old feelings threatening to rise again. Why had he brought this up?

  “About sixteen or seventeen? I think every kid goes through that stage, don’t you?”

  “I must have been an early developer, then, because I was twelve and a half.”

  “Twelve?” She cocked her head and her hair swung, exposing the side of her neck in a most distracting way. She pursed her lips—an even greater distraction—and said in ponderous tones, “A manifestation of sibling rivalry, perhaps, since you were displaced by your younger sister?”

  He shook his head, but more at his own thoughts than at her words. “Nah, I’d gone through that the year before. But I guess it was about being displaced in a way.”

  He shifted, and felt the rub of her elbow against his jacket, the sensation translating directly to a prickling along his skin.

  “What happened, Paul?”

  Her voice, quiet and soft, lured him.

  “We’d just moved. Only across town but a world away to a kid. My grandfather had retired. Not because he wanted to kick back and relax or anything, but because the doctors gave an order he couldn’t refuse.” He tried to fight stronger feelings with ironic humor. He wasn’t sure it worked. “Given the choice of dying or going to Palm Springs, he took Palm Springs. But that didn’t mean he gave up the reins. Not Walter Wilson Mulholland.”

  Not a man who’d spent his whole life dictating. Not a man whose only communication with his grandson had come in the form of orders. Sit erect. Take your elbows off the table. Straighten your shoulders. Wear a shirt and tie for dinner at my table.

  Not the man who bad talked in front of Paul as if he didn’t exist. The boy needs a haircut. The boy needs discipline. James, if you and Nancy won’t send him away to school, at least stop babying the boy.

  Paul propped his elbows on the table and picked up his wine glass, concentrating on the feel of its smooth, warm surface between his palms.

  “He named Dad head of the firm in his place and ordered us to move into the big house on the lake where Mom had been brought up. She didn’t want to go, either.”

  He remembered sitting on the stairs of the little suburban house he’d been born in, out of sight, listening to his parents.

  Jim, we have a home here.

  We’ll make a home there, honey.

  I don’t want to go back to that house, Jim. Don’t you see what’s happening?

  Shh, there’s nothing to cry about, honey. This is a great move up for us.

  “But Walter Mulholland said it was more appropriate for our new standing in the community. And nobody disobeyed him.” Certainly not James Monroe. “Big, dark furniture and drapes that looked petrified. The only noise was the hall clock. God, I hated it.”

  His own vehemence discomfited him.

  Without looking at Bette, he produced a deprecating grin. “I guess I missed our old place. The neighborhood, my friends.”

  He remembered the tidy little house not far from the railroad tracks. His mother had baked cookies and helped him grow a tomato patch each summer. His father had taken the train into the city every day, and home every night.

  “We used to play baseball together, Dad and I. He’d been a pro. He had a tough time growing up. His folks were really poor, and baseball was his only real fun. He got through college on baseball scholarships and he started law school during off-seasons from the minors. He loves the game.”

  In the drawn-out twilights of summer, his father had coached the Little League team or they’d just thrown the ball back and forth, an endless pendulum connecting father and son. He could still feel the lung-bursting pride at his pals’ awe that James Monroe had been a pro baseball player, a gifted fielder who’d reached the highest level of minor leagues and come this close to being in the majors.

  Until he married Nancy Mulholland and went to work in Walter Mulholland’s law firm.

  “He still has his glove,” he told Bette, turning his wine glass around and around, “but when he took over the firm, he didn’t have time for that sort of thing anymore. And Mom was busy with Judi and the move and the new house. I was a little at loose ends. When Walter Mulholland returned for his version of a state visit late that summer, it all came to a head.”

  Paul consciously eased the muscles in his shoulder.

  “Walter Wilson Mulholland never bought the theory about letting people ‘find themselves,’ ” he continued. He listened to himself critically. Light irony, that was the appropriate tone. “He knew what everyone should do with his life and how to achieve it—and he didn’t mince words saying so.”

  “That can be a sign of caring,” said Bette. “That someone wants only the best for the people he loves.”

  “Maybe.” He conceded the point because he didn’t want to have to consider how little he believed it. “But with him it was more force of habit. He was born and bred to be a despot.” He saw the quick frown that pleated Bette’s brows. Sympathy? Or disapproval? Not liking either possibility, he forged on. “When he started diagramming my life, I didn’t care for the grand design, so I ran away, complete with bedroll, clean underwear and seven dollars and thirty-four cents.”

  Two decades later he could still remember dinner that night—a formal meal with several strangers joining them at the big, polished table. He could still hear the stern, upright old man proclaiming that he’d decided that Paul would become a litigator. He could hear the deep, determined
voice of his mother’s father detailing exactly where Paul would fit into the firm’s roster fifteen years in the future. And each step of his life over the next two decades. The right prep school. The right university. The right law school. The right marriage. The right family. The right address. All selected by Walter Wilson Mulholland.

  Paul had never liked his grandfather. That night he’d started hating him.

  He’d slipped out of the house while the guests enjoyed after-dinner drinks. He’d headed for the old neighborhood. He couldn’t even remember which friend he’d intended to go to, but he’d ended up in front of his old house, standing in the cold, chilled rain that can bring a preview of fall to an Illinois summer and realizing his home now belonged to another family.

  “Dad found me around midnight.”

  His father’s arms had hugged him so tightly it hurt a little, but it had been a good hurt. Even as he spoke now he could feel again his father’s jacket shoulder under his cheek, smell the scent of his after-shave. His father’s hands had been shaking slightly as they tightened a blanket around Paul’s damp shoulders.

  “I thought he would skin me alive. Instead, he talked.”

  Then and now he’d have preferred being skinned alive. He could still hear the words.

  Paul, what in the world got into you to run away?

  I’m not going to do what that old man tells me, even if he is my grandfather.

  Your grandfather is providing you opportunities most boys never have, never even dream of. An education, a profession, a position in life.

  I don’t want them. I don’t want anything he’d give me.

  You can’t say that, yet. You’re only a boy. You can’t know what you’ll want when you grow—.

  He made us move. Mom didn’t want to move. I heard her.

  He thought it best. Your mother’s always had these things, so she doesn’t know what it means to be without—

  And he made you take that big job.

  No. No, he didn’t make me. I wanted that, Paul.

  “He said that when I grew up, I’d understand. That being an adult meant making choices, and that meant leaving some things behind.”

  Someday, when you’re grown-up, when you’re married and have children of your own, you’ll understand, Paul.

  He didn’t have to grow up to understand. He’d understood then. His father had made a choice to follow Walter Mulholland’s rules, and what he’d left behind were twilight games of catch with his son.

  He couldn’t blame his father; he’d been poor a long time and now he had a chance for money and position, not only for himself but for his family. But he could blame Walter Mulholland.

  He blinked away the memories and looked at Bette. Her eyes were wide and solemn, with another emotion deep in them that he couldn’t read. The flicker of the candles’ flames added a mysterious light. He felt his heartbeat accelerate as if in delayed reaction to some tremendous danger.

  He picked up his glass and tilted the cool, clear liquid into his mouth. It didn’t completely ease the dryness. “That’s when I realized I didn’t want to be a grown-up. I preferred to stay a kid.”

  When she blinked, he felt as if he’d been cut off from a source of warmth and light. Her left hand rested on the table between them, the fingers long and pale against the forest-green cloth. He wanted to cover it with his own, to give the connection that he thought had grown between them a physical expression.

  She lowered her eyelashes a second time, and he sensed withdrawal. Maybe his own.

  He quirked a grin at her, manufacturing the mischief. “Especially those next few weeks. Mom was terrific. I even got her to let me play hooky from school the first week and go to a Cubs’ game.”

  “What a fiend. Scare them to death, then weasel special treatment out of them.” Bette made a tsking sound with her tongue. “It sounds as if you have a wonderful family.”

  He met her deep blue eyes again, and saw recognition there. He considered his family ties—Mom, Dad, Judi, Tris, other cousins, aunts and uncles. Not perfect, and sometimes the ties chafed, but...“I do.”

  “Although your younger sister . . .” Bette gave an exaggerated shudder. “That poor soul.”

  He knew what she was doing, skirting away from the serious turn their conversation had taken, and he gladly cooperated. What had gotten into him to spill all this? Not his style, not his style at all.

  He snorted in disbelief. ‘Judi, a poor soul? Not on your life.” Then suspicion narrowed his eyes. “Why would you say that?”

  “To have you as an older brother,” she said promptly. “I have an older brother myself, and I know what instruments of teasing torture they can be, but you—” She shivered again. “It must have been a nightmare for the poor girl.”

  “Hey!”

  She laughed, and he let the sound, low and rippling, wash over him. The pleasure of that sound could become addictive. That, and the look in her eyes, as if she were surprised he’d drawn the amusement out of her, and perhaps secretly rather pleased, too.

  “So, tell me about your family,” he invited, sliding his right hand over her left. He did it on impulse, a casual gesture that somehow didn’t feel casual. Her skin was soft and warm against his. “I bet you’re the oldest of twelve, responsible for all the little ’uns since you were barely able to toddle yourself. No, wait. That’s right, you said you have an older brother. So you must be the oldest girl. And you grew up in the country, and spent summers at the local swimming hole.”

  She shook her head with another laugh. “Not even close. I grew up in the decidedly un-country atmosphere of the near western suburbs—mostly Oak Park. I’m the younger of two, and mildly coddled. My parents worked hard enough to take early retirement a couple years ago and move permanently to Arizona where they’d had a house for years. And they still worry about their little girl being ‘all alone.’ ”

  Paul looked at her, and felt a twinge of protectiveness deep within him. He could sympathize with her parents. For all her self-reliance, he didn’t like the idea of Bette Wharton being without a strong shoulder to rely on—a friend, a partner.

  Then it occurred to him that she might already have that, and the possibility brought a twist to his stomach that came too fast and too strong to pretend it was anything but jealousy. God. That wasn’t a reasonable reaction. What did he care whether she had someone or not? He certainly wasn’t auditioning for the role of strong shoulder in anyone’s life.

  He sat back, sliding his fingers away from hers under the pretext of placing his napkin on the table.

  Bette, too, straightened and moved away. Although the warmth of his touch still lingered on her skin, it didn’t take a body language expert to read good-night.

  She made a show of checking her watch. “This has been lovely, Paul. Thank you. I hope you have an opportunity to check those files, and give me a call in the morning.” She gathered her purse, flashed him a smile and prepared to slide out of the booth.

  “Where do you think you're going?”

  If he hadn’t said it with such blank astonishment, she would have been irked by the Neanderthal implication.

  “Home. It’s late.”

  “Fine. I’m driving you.”

  “That isn’t necessary. I can catch a cab to the train station and the line goes right near my house." That was true; the commuter railroad line ran no more than five blocks from her home in a western suburb, though the nearest station was a couple miles from the house she rented. She’d have to try to rouse a cab, not always an easy task at night in the suburbs.

  “I bet roads go right near your house, too. I’m driving you.”

  Protests did no good. Not even when she logically pointed out that since he’d said he lived north of the city, along the lake in Evanston, and she lived west, it would be a long drive home for him. By the time he’d wrangled with Ardith over whether or not he would pay for their meal, then they’d said their good-nights, found a cab and reached the lot where he'd parked
his car, she’d about given up.

  He held open the car door for her, then went around to the driver’s side. Clicking home the seat belt and starting the car with smooth efficiency, he remained silent. She knew little about cars, but this one struck her as sleekly unpretentious. It seemed old enough to be well broken in and new enough to boast all the amenities.

  “Paul—”

  He slanted her a quick, quelling look. “I’m driving you home.”

  A flicker of irritation made her grimace at him. “I intended to ask if you wanted to know where I live.”

  The car rolled up to a red light at a deserted intersection, and he turned to her. She could see the amusement back in his eyes. “Sorry. Maybe I jumped to a conclusion. It was just that the previous twenty-three sentences you’d started all ended with junk about taking a train. Obviously, a totally unwarranted assumption on my part this time.”

  “Totally unwarranted,” she agreed. As the light turned green and he eased the car forward, she saw his smile in profile and tried to ignore an answering twitch of her lips.

  “So now that I’ve apologized, are you going to tell me where you live, or do you want me to start picking spots at random?”

  “That could be an interesting experiment.”

  He nodded. “Although I do know it’s west, so that trims out a third of the Chicago suburbs. And with the hint that it’s near a commuter railroad, that eliminates about a third of that third. So, I figure it shouldn’t take more than a month or so to find the right one.”

  She gave in to the laughter bubbling up in her. “All right! I live in Elmhurst. Take the Eisenhower Expressway. A month’s too long on the road for me!”

  “It would be a long time between showers, but it would give me a chance to get to know you.”

  Meeting his look for a moment, she thought his eyes held a glint not entirely deviltry or reflected streetlights. She looked away, and they drove in silence until they reached the expressway and headed west.

  “Tell me more about your family,” he said. “How about your older brother? Where is he?”

  “Married, two children, living in Minneapolis.”

  “So you’re an aunt!”

  “Two times an aunt. Ron and Claire have a two-year-old son, Ron, Jr., and they just had a little girl, Abby, last month.”

  He sighed. “I wish my sister was old enough to have kids. Or maybe I should say old enough to have kids without making Mom and Dad crazy. I’ve always wanted to be an uncle.”

  “An uncle? Why?”

  “It seems like the perfect setup. Uncles—and aunts—have all the fun without the responsibilities. You don’t have to live up to anyone’s expectations of the perfect parent. No diaper changing, no worrying about childhood diseases, no sweating out death-defying escapades, no grounding them because they stayed out too late, no wondering if the roads’ll ever be safe again with a sixteen-year-old maniac on the streets, no birds-and-bees talks, no college tuition.”

  “Sounds to me as if you’re speaking from first-hand experience.”

  He quirked an eyebrow at her—questioning, but already primed to share her amusement.

  “As if you’re remembering your own youth,” she explained.

  The expectant look became a full-blown laugh. “I hadn’t realized it, but you’re right. The idea of having a kid like me would scare anybody off! Lord, when I think of the things Grady and I got into, it’s amazing we made it to twenty—and without being the death of our parents.”

  “Just you and Grady? Was Michael the responsible one?”

  “Probably. I didn’t meet Michael until college. But, yeah, I’d guess he was the responsible type even as a kid. Steady. Not like Grady and me.”

  As she gave him directions off the expressway, a twinge drew Bette’s eyebrows into a frown, but she didn’t have time to consider it, because he had another question.

  “How about your friends?”

  She hesitated, uneasy. “I, uh, I haven’t been very good about keeping up with my friends. There’s one girl from high school, Melody, who always checks in when she comes through the area. And my assistant, Darla, has been a wonderful friend to me.”

  She broke off to give him further instructions on where to turn. She could have let the topic drop there, but she felt the need to explain further. She refused to use the word justify even in her own mind.

  “You know how it is when you get into college and get immersed in your classes and studying.” She thought back to some of his stories tonight; maybe he didn’t know. “Setting up a business is like that. It doesn’t leave time for anything else. It takes twenty-five hours a day just to get it off the ground. To make it really fly, you have to be totally dedicated to that, and that alone.”

  He glanced at her as he made the turn into her street and she knew he didn’t agree.

  “What’s the use of having your own. business if you let it run you? The whole idea is to not have a boss looking over your shoulder, telling you what to do and when to do it. Work’s fine, but there are other things in life. Ambition can take over.”

  She bristled a little at the implied criticism at the same time she wondered if anyone could really be that offhand and still make a go of a business. Experience had taught her the demands of a successful business. And she had done sufficient homework on Paul Monroe to know his business was successful...even if her research had left out exactly what he did.

  “This is it,” she said coolly, “the one in the middle of the block with the light on.”

  He pulled into the driveway. “A house? You own it?”

  “No. I’m renting this one, but I’m starting to look for a place to buy.” The next step in her plan. With the business apparently on its feet, it was time to stop wasting money on rent and start building equity.

  “It’s nice, but you could use a jack-o’-lantern.”

  “Jack o’-lantern?”

  “You know, a pumpkin, carved to look like a face, with a candle inside,”

  “I know what a jack-o’-lantern is.”

  “Good. Because that front doorstep of yours could definitely use one. You know Halloween’s getting close.”

  “Yes, I know, but a pumpkin has not been at the top of my list of priorities. I’ve been busy at—”

  “At work,” he finished for her.

  She glanced over, but saw no sign of the humor she might have expected. His gaze was fixed with great concentration on her bare front step.

  She prepared to say her thank-yous, but he turned the engine off. For a blood-thundering instant she thought he was going to turn to her, reach across the bucket seats, take her in his arms and . . .

  Before her imagination could get too carried away, he’d gotten out and come around to open her door. She thanked him, but ignored his hand.

  She’d known him less than eight hours, but sometimes that was all it took to see the flaws. He’d made no effort to hide them. From his own words she’d learned he hated schedules and put fun ahead of responsibility. He hadn’t learned that achievement followed a plan.

  It all added up to one message: he was a man to stay away from.

  Too bad her hormones didn’t agree.

  “A hatchback, huh?”

  She followed the direction of his gaze to the garage door windows. Hatchback. Car.

  “That’s right. A total suburbanite, that’s me. It comes in handy for hauling things from the hardware store.”

  “But you don’t drive in to the city?”

  “Not if I can help it. It’s more efficient to take the train. That way I can work during the commute and don’t have to worry about parking. You always drive?”

  “I like the freedom.”

  Stepping within the pool of light at the front door, she took a slow, steadying breath as she unlocked the door then turned to him, holding out her hand.

  “Thank you, Paul. I enjoyed the evening. Dinner was wonderful, and Mama Artemis’s is a real find. I—”

  He ignor
ed the hand and the speech. Grasping her upper arms, he turned her to face him, startling her into silence. He bent his head, so slowly she thought she might explode from the waiting before he ever reached her lips.

  And then, when the waiting had finally ended, all he did was brush his mouth against hers—top lip, bottom, top lip again. Softly, quickly.

  “Good night, Bette.”

  He turned her around and headed her inside. Automatically, she closed the storm door and wooden door behind her. But she couldn’t move any farther. She heard his car door shut, heard the engine start, heard his car back up and pull away, and still she stood, leaning against the door’s wooden panels, staring into the hallway’s familiar shadows.

  One thought; filled the yawning emptiness his touch had made of her mind.

  Uh-oh.

  Chapter Three