No, check that. She’d had his attention, all right. There was hard evidence of that, so to speak. Plus, she had caught the speculative, masculine gleam in his eyes, once he’d bothered to open them all the way. She supposed there was a way to use that to her advantage if she were that sort of woman. But, alas, she wasn’t.
No, what she needed to do was to get him focused on business, caught up in the deal, challenged by the negotiations.
Unfortunately, she had a feeling one of those day-long motivational seminars couldn’t stir up Kevin Patrick Daniels. One thing she had to say for Mr. Daniels, he was no Max. Obviously, he had about as much ambition as a slug. Lying around in a hammock in the middle of a workday said a whole lot about the man, none of it good.
Of course, some would say that maybe she ought to take a few lessons in relaxation from him. She’d been on vacation less than a week and already she was caught up in a business deal when
she
should have been following
his example and sipping lemonade and lolling around in a hammock. What was it about her that drove her to succeed? If she could figure that out, maybe she could bottle it and slip a little into Mr. Daniels’s lemonade.
A good shrink would probably tell her that she spent so much time on her career, because she was better at it than she was at relationships. In fact, she’d grown so leery of men in recent years that she’d worked very hard to attain the kind of independence that made a male protector unnecessary. She could count on her career in ways she’d never been able to count on another human being. At least she’d been able to until Max had come along and thrown a monkeywrench into that side of her life, too.
Maybe that was why she had seized on the notion of getting that Victorian and turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. It was just one more way to solidify her independence, to make sure that she alone was in control of her future.
Right now, though, Kevin Patrick Daniels stood between her and the control over her own life that she craved. That put him in a very dangerous position. A woman scorned in love was nothing compared to the ire of Gracie MacDougal when she’d been scorned in business.
Yes, indeed, win or lose, the next few months were going to be very interesting.
4
“W
hy on earth didn’t you sell it to her?” Aunt Delia demanded of Kevin, after Gracie MacDougal had stalked out of the house, her spine rigid and her cute little behind swaying provocatively despite her annoyance.
“You been listening at keyholes again?” Kevin asked, regarding his eighty-seven-year-old aunt with amusement. She was wearing bright red sneakers, a purple skirt and a blouse with most of the colors of the rainbow in it. Compared to Gracie, she was a fashion nightmare.
Aunt Delia also had the hearing and curiosity of a kid. Nothing much got past her, as he had learned to his everlasting chagrin when he’d tried to sneak Marge Taylor up to his room late one night right after his aunt had moved in. Even though their rooms were in opposite wings of the house, Aunt Delia had apparently heard every creak of the stairs and enough of their whispered exchange to tell her they were up to no good.
Aunt Delia’s disapproving frown over breakfast the next morning—when Marge was long gone—had had a chilling effect on his lovelife. Of course, that scowl might have had something to do with the fact that Aunt Delia regarded that particular branch of the Taylor line as little
better than trailer trash. Nothing he could say about Marge’s superb wit, high IQ, and college degree was likely to change her opinion.
“You keep snooping like that, you’ll get a crick in your back,” Kevin told her now.
“Didn’t have to put my ear to the keyhole this time,” his aunt replied, clearly unfazed by the accusation. “You two had the volume up so loud it interrupted my favorite show. It was a lot better than listening to some cross-dressing weirdo on a talk show.”
Kevin shuddered, appalled and thoroughly baffled by her addiction to tabloid TV. “Why do you watch that stuff anyway?”
“A woman my age has to keep on top of what’s going on in the world.”
“Then you must have a mighty peculiar view of the state of affairs,” Kevin said. “You need to get out more. See some normal folks.”
“You took away my car keys,” she reminded him.
“After you mowed down six mailboxes in a row.”
She shrugged. “Accidents happen.”
“A few too many times in your case. I’ll take you anyplace you want to go.”
“So you say.”
“I will.”
She gave him a sly look. “Including that off-track betting parlor on the river?” she inquired a bit too eagerly.
Kevin saw too late the trap he had set for himself and resigned himself to an afternoon of keno and horse racing. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.
Aunt Delia seemed surprised by the easy capitulation. “Must mean you’re hoping to run across that woman again. What did you say her name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Gracie,” he said, rather liking the way it sounded. Old-fashioned. Prim and proper. Yep, that was Gracie, all right. Getting her to loosen up was going to improve his summer considerably.
“She’s right pretty, if you like the type,” Aunt Delia said slyly.
“I didn’t notice.”
“Hogwash! The day you don’t notice a woman will be the day they put you in the ground, Kevin Patrick. It amazes me still that one of them hasn’t caught you by fair means or foul. Goodness knows, half the female population of the Northern Neck has tried hard enough.”
Her expression turned thoughtful. “Of course, that’s the problem, isn’t it? They’re all trying too hard. What’s the challenge in that? You need a woman who won’t go all weak-kneed just looking at you. Struck me that this Gracie of yours has spunk.”
“I just met the woman. She is not
my
Gracie.”
“Whatever. She looks as if she could keep you on your toes. Probably too much woman for you, now that I think about it.”
Kevin fought a surge of indignation and lost. “The woman hasn’t been born who’d be too much for me,” he grumbled.
“So you say.”
“Do you have a license for all this analysis you’re doing?”
“I have something better. I have years of experience. You’d do well to listen to me once in a while.”
“I listen to every word you say.”
“And then pick and choose which half of them to ignore.”
He couldn’t deny that at least half of it fell on deaf
ears. “Okay, Aunt Delia, let’s leave me out of this for a minute,” he suggested on a more somber note. “Bottom line. Do you really want me to sell your house to Gracie MacDougal so she can turn it into a bed-and-breakfast?”
For a second, she looked nonplussed by the direct question. Then she squared her shoulders and looked him in the eye, challenging him right back. “Might’s well,” she said. “You won’t let me near the place. It’s a shame to let it sit there, when it could be filled with laughter again.”
His gaze narrowed. He was missing something here. She had fought tooth and nail every suggestion he’d made about putting the house on the market. She’d insisted, in fact, on putting it in his name, though as far as he was concerned it was still hers to do with as she liked.
“Do you mean that?” he asked. “I thought you loved that old house.”
“I do. I spent my entire life in that house. Not a minute goes by that I don’t miss it, but I’m not a fool, Kevin. I know it was getting to be too much for me. I’m better off here with you, though why you’d rather be out here in this mausoleum instead of in town is beyond me.”
She surveyed him, then shrugged. “Besides, you need somebody around who can stand up to you. None of those pitiful Daniels relatives of yours has the gumption to put you in your place when you deserve it. And Molly’s been catering to your every whim since the day you were born. I’ve never seen a housekeeper who’s so taken in by a smile and an occasional kind word. That leaves me to see you don’t get too big for your britches.”
Her eyes sparkled mischievously. “Something tells me that MacDougal girl could hold her own with you,
though. I wouldn’t mind watching the negotiations for the house, just to see the sparks fly.”
“Maybe,” he conceded cautiously. He knew what she was up to. She was laying the groundwork for throwing him into more frequent contact with Gracie. He had a hunch, though, that any actual deal would be a very long time coming. Aunt Delia was especially fond of fireworks, especially of the human variety.
“She didn’t back down when you said no, did she?” his aunt pointed out.
“True. She said she’d be back.”
“Good. Next time, I want to meet her.”
The very thought of such a meeting sent a chill through him. He shook his head. “I don’t think so.”
“Why on earth not? It is my house she wants to buy, isn’t it?”
“And we both know you’d give it away if you took a shine to the potential buyer. I won’t have you being cheated. If the time comes when you’ve given the matter some thought and you decide you want to sell, I’ll handle the negotiations.”
“Then keep the lines of communication open with Gracie MacDougal. Something tells me she’ll pay top dollar,” she said, regarding him with a canny look. “If that’s all you’re interested in.”
“We’ll talk about it when you’ve thought it over,” he repeated. “In the meantime, you stay the heck away from Ms. MacDougal.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know, getting to know a stranger might relieve some of the boredom around here.”
His aunt went to more luncheons and tea parties than the Queen of England, but Kevin played along.
“I already told you I’d take you to the off-track betting place tomorrow,” he reminded her. “We’ll have lunch, watch a few races. You can throw some of your savings down the tube.”
“Yes, and that will be real nice, but there’s a movie I’ve been wanting to see, too,” she mentioned oh-so-casually. “It’s playing in Fredericksburg.”
For pure sneakiness, Aunt Delia could put the Daniels side of the family to shame. “And you think these two outings will relieve the tedium?” he asked.
“It’ll be a start.”
“Okay. What movie?” Kevin asked suspiciously. “Not another of those violent, blood and gore things. The last one had no plot.”
“Of course it had a plot. It also had that hunky Jean-Claude van Damme in it. That alone was worth the price of admission.”
Kevin sighed at the thought of his aunt having fantasies about an action-movie superstar. “I worry about you, you know that.”
“Why? Just because I can appreciate a hunk when I see one?” She regarded him with another of those sly looks. “Bet that Gracie MacDougal can, too. I saw her looking at you, you know. Little wonder, given the way you dress.”
Since they’d had the discussion about the way he dressed about a hundred times, he seized on her revelation about Gracie MacDougal.
“She was checking me out?”
“Ogling you, in fact. You let her catch another glimpse or two, you can probably drive up her offer on that house by another fifty thousand.”
Kevin stared at her, astounded by her suggestion.
“Why don’t I just sleep with her?” he grumbled. “Maybe then she’d fork over another hundred thousand.”
Despite his facetious tone, Aunt Delia took him seriously. “Nope, I think building anticipation is a better approach. You’ll have her so muddle-headed, she won’t know what she’s doing. Once you’ve gone to bed with a person, nothing much is left to the imagination.”
Kevin thought of Gracie MacDougal’s singleminded negotiations earlier. “I think you may be underestimating her, Aunt Delia. I doubt she’s distracted easily. She’s a tough cookie.”
She feigned shock. “Don’t tell me you’re scared of her.”
“Scared? Who said anything about being scared?”
“Well, then, don’t let any grass grow under your feet. Get busy and reel her in, boy.”
Kevin had a feeling they weren’t talking entirely about a real estate transaction now. “I’ll see Gracie MacDougal again in my own good time. In the meantime, you do some serious thinking about whether you’re really ready to sell that house to her or anybody else. We’ve had other offers in the past and you haven’t been interested. In fact, you chased that last man off with threats of bodily harm a lady shouldn’t even know about. Made my blood run cold.”
“Times change. People change.”
“Not overnight they don’t.”
“Okay, okay, if it’ll make you happy, I’ll think about it. You set up an appointment with that MacDougal gal for tomorrow. Invite her to have lunch with us at the races.”
“Not on your life.”
“Coward.”
“Bossy old lady.”
She chuckled. “You’ll call.”
“Will not.”
But he did. He told himself he didn’t do it because he wanted to. He swore to himself he did it only to satisfy his aunt. He was more relieved than he could say when he got an answering machine. The sound of Gracie’s voice, all prim and prissy, did astonishing things to his pulse, which just proved beyond a shadow of a doubt why he needed to conduct this negotiation—if there was to be one—very, very carefully. Otherwise, he, not Aunt Delia, would be the one giving the house away.
In the end, he didn’t leave a message and he didn’t call again. Might have been stubbornness. Aunt Delia certainly would have called it that. More likely, it was just plain good sense kicking in in the nick of time.
Aunt Delia looked around the Riverboat with its banks of TV screens with absolute delight.
“Get me a
Racing Form,
” she ordered Kevin. “And hurry up. I don’t want to miss the first race.”
Aunt Delia had been spry as a young chicken ever since she’d hatched this plot to get him and Gracie MacDougal together, Kevin noticed. She was bossier than usual, too.
The truth was, though, he enjoyed matching wits with her. Nobody had ever put anything over on his aunt. She’d remained unmarried by choice, claiming that there wasn’t a man around who could tolerate the fact that she was smarter than he was. Kevin had the distinct impression, though, that that hadn’t stopped her from having a few serious male friends over the years. She was too darned savvy about relationships not to have been through a few herself. Not that she’d ever admit it. She’d go to her grave implying that she was as innocent as a
newborn babe. But the twinkle in her eyes when Kevin suggested otherwise proved his point.