Business or Pleasure? (13 page)

He lifted her hand to his lips as they walked. “Okay, Daze.
I'll accept her invitation and have dinner with her. You can even come along if you want. Make sure I behave myself.”

“Oh, no,” she said, and her voice was infinitely lighter than it had been just a minute earlier. “You need this time alone with her so she can get to know her marvelous son.”

He smiled into the sweet, quiet darkness that surrounded them and pulled her closer to his side. “You like me, don't you?”

She laid her cheek against him and sighed. “It's true,” she said. “I really do.”

They walked back to the hotel, laughing softly in the moonlight and whispering the wicked deeds they had planned for each other when they were alone. But when they got back to their room and Alec took Daisy into his arms, felt her soft skin against his and breathed her sweet scent, wickedness was the last thing on his mind.

All he could think of as he took her mouth in the lightest of kisses was that he was, without a doubt, happier than he had ever been in his life.

“Amazing,” he said, pulling back to see her.

She smiled up at him and nodded and he felt his heart twinge one last time before it expanded and grew heavy with the weight of his overwhelming need for her.

He wanted to tell her something that would make her understand how he felt, to share the tremendous burden of this unfamiliar sensation. But then she dug her fingers into his hair, pulled him closer and kissed him with an intensity that shook him. The heaviness lifted, and all that was left was her, there in his arms.

He fell into her and melted into her pure, incredible heat before he scooped her up in his arms and laid her gently onto
the bed. He sank down beside her, traced a teasing line down the side of her body with his fingertips and asked, “Anything you need?”

“Anything?” she asked, her expression growing serious.

Then it was his turn to get serious. “I can't think of anything I wouldn't do for you, sweetheart,” he said, rolling just far enough away to gain access to her full, round breasts, to the warm skin of her stomach, to the hot, wet heat at the vee of her thighs.

As his hand moved over every smooth curve of her body, he could feel her trembling, could feel the vibration moving between them, sweet and seductive and unstoppable. And then she moaned, begged for more and he gave it, even as his own arousal pooled low and deep in his stomach like a wave of desire, pulling him under its powerful force.

She gasped as he stroked her, arched into his hand like a contented cat, twisted her hips to invite him further inside. “I want you right…here. Don't stop,” she begged as his fingers played in her damp curls, then dipped in again and again to explore her sensual folds.

“I won't—”

“Ever,” she finished.

“Ever,” he agreed, and then she rolled on top of him, took him inside her, and it was his turn to beg her to stay right where she was, doing exactly as she was doing.

He whispered his need for her in gasping, halting, incomprehensible words, and she sighed in a kind of surrender before she leaned over and kissed him, using her tongue to tease and soothe in turns as she moved and rocked, making the world spin around them with the exquisite motion of her body on his.

The tension built, higher and higher, gathering in his muscles and his mind and his heart, until every fiber of him reached out to the very essence of her. Then, suddenly, she straightened above him and he saw her face, eyes closed, lips parted, brow furrowed. Lord, what was this feeling? he thought as he let his hands roam down over her delicious, insanely sweet body to the delicate curve of her hips, helped guide their rhythm to an intense, spiraling, endlessly perfect place until finally, blissfully, she contracted around him, cried out his name in a sound of anguish, of hope, ecstasy and love.

Her release exploded inside him, and everything within him that yearned for her rolled and swelled and burst into countless tiny, sparkling fragments. He gasped, cried out her name, then thrust up one more time, taking her to the end of herself, to the end of him, to an unspoiled place where they could dwell together for as long as the fates allowed.

 

Daisy was fantasizing again.

She knew it wasn't good for her peace of mind, but she couldn't help herself. Somewhere between slipping into that slinky dress and slipping between the soft, cool sheets with Alec last night, something…no,
everything
had changed between them. And against her better judgment, she now found herself thinking that this thing with Alec might just work out, that Alec's feelings for her might be deepening to the point where he might be ready to let her inside his traditional arm's length.

But that was just a fantasy, she reminded herself as she sat up, stretched and yawned. And her fantasies had never done her any favors in the past, so she struggled back to reality and
the events that were happening in the real world. Here. Safely outside her overactive imagination.

She glanced at the clock and realized with a start that Alec had left to visit the job sites over an hour ago. And that meant that Daisy only had thirty minutes to get ready and meet Nikki at the dock.

Their receptionist, for all her gossipy ways, was a very nice girl. In fact, she'd been the first to volunteer to deliver a handful of overnight packages that had been shipped to the main office by mistake, which saved them both the cost and delay of having them redelivered.

Daisy didn't want to be late, so she showered and dressed and ran down to the dock. She got there just in time to hear the ferry's horn as it arrived. Nikki was one of the first people to get off the boat and she didn't look as if she'd fared particularly well on the two-hour trip. When Nikki reached the top of the gangplank, Daisy could see that her knuckles were white where they clutched the packages, that her skin was an unhealthy mix of yellow and green, that her cropped red hair looked as if she'd pulled her fingers through it about a thousand times.

Daisy gave her a light hug when she stepped onto terra firma. “You okay?” Daisy asked even though she could see the answer in the way Nikki swallowed repeatedly, her jaw pumping and grinding.

“God, no,” she said, and Daisy led the way back to the hotel and got Nikki settled into a chaise lounge on the patio with a cup of Earl Grey tea. While Nikki recuperated, Daisy opened the packages and dealt with their contents, then puttered around the office a bit before returning to check on her guest.

“Thank goodness that's passed,” Nikki said, looking pinker and healthier than she had earlier.

Daisy laughed. “Thanks for making the trip.” She looked out over the harbor. “It's worth it just for this view, isn't it?”

“It's gorgeous,” Nikki said, then immediately leaned in for the kill. “So tell me. How are you and Mr. Mackenzie doing?”

Daisy paused for a moment, then lasered her gaze on Nikki. “What do you mean exactly?”

Nikki shrugged to convey the innocence of her question. Daisy had seen her do it a million times. It was the steely glint in her eyes that gave her away. “I only meant that you guys seemed a little snippety with each other before you left.”

Daisy relaxed. Only she and Alec knew what had transpired since then. Their secret was safe from little Miss Scuttlebutt for now.

“And I guess,” Nikki went on with another quick shrug, “everyone was just wondering how you felt about the client forcing him to hire you back.”

Forcing…
Daisy's smile staggered. “I'm sorry,” she said finally. “What was that?”

“You know,” Nikki said with a dismissive wave. “Joseph Baldwin called and you were gone and he told Mr. Mackenzie that he had to hire you back or no contract.” Nikki looked out over the harbor and the part of town they could see from their patio. “Word has it Mr. Mackenzie fought it like a wild man, but I bet he's glad he knuckled under now. I hear the client's really happy with the firm. And this place is great.”

“Yes, it is,” Daisy agreed mechanically as she tried to put order to her chaotic thoughts, to understand why she suddenly felt so cold.

“Anyway,” Nikki went on, oblivious to Daisy's distress.
“The office grapevine is buzzing about this job being a real make-it-or-break-it thing for Mackenzie professionally so he's real lucky you decided to come back.”

Nikki's commitment to rumor, hearsay and scandal was the stuff of legend, and usually her information was as trustworthy as the World Almanac. But something was wrong with this picture.

“You know, Nikki, I think you have this one all wrong. Everybody knows that Alec can't be forced to do anything. And, anyway, the Baldwins didn't even know I was coming to the island.”

“All I know is,” the girl said with a crafty smile, “someone in legal said the client put it in the contract that you'd be on-site, and they wouldn't sign it if you didn't come. They were so determined, they said they'd find another firm to handle the job if Mr. Mackenzie couldn't get you to come back.”

Daisy's head was pounding so relentlessly she was unable to take a moment to appreciate Virginia and Joseph's loyalty to her. A loyalty, she realized, that was far stronger and more resilient than Alec's own.

Her heart squeezed painfully and somehow it must have shown because Nikki leaned forward again and touched Daisy's cold hand. “I guess you got it worse than ever for him, don't you sweetie?”

Daisy didn't answer right away because her throat was threatening to seal up entirely. Clearly, everyone at Mackenzie Architectural knew that she'd been nursing a serious case of unrequited love for Alec. Soon they'd know just how blind that love had been. And then her humiliation would be complete.

Winning is what matters,
Alec had said to her on the golf
course.
Winning
is what mattered to Alec Mackenzie. And boy, look what he'd been willing to do to win this time.

The memory of the electricity that had arced through her when he'd taken her hands in his and begged her to come back to work, of the earnestness on his handsome face when he told her how much he needed her. She knew now that when he'd told her he needed her, it had given her hope that he might someday feel more for her, something more like love. But he hadn't wanted her to come back to work at all. He'd just been lying to get what he really wanted: money, recognition, power, accolades…. Whatever it was, he'd lied to her and she'd believed every word.

The realization that everything else that had happened between her and Alec was also a lie settled over her like a cold mist. What a fool she'd been, she thought as her heart crumbled to dust. A stupid, hopeless, heartbroken fool.

Daisy tucked her hands beneath her to hide their trembling and pasted on a happy face for Nikki. “Oh, that,” she said, rolling her eyes for effect. “I'm so over him.” Then, in an effort to distract Nikki from giving her more details that she really didn't want to know, she added brightly, “Now, tell me all the news from the office,” and settled in for a nice, long, one-sided conversation.

A
lec looked at his watch. Half past two. By now, Nosy Nikki would be back on the ferry and headed for home, so he locked up the construction trailer, jumped into his golf cart, pointed it toward the hotel and stepped on the accelerator. Hard.

He and Daisy had agreed that because of Nikki's eagle eye for scandal, he should make himself scarce this morning. She was sure to get a whiff of something juicy if she saw the hunger in his eyes when he looked at Daisy or if she heard how Daisy's voice dipped and softened when she spoke to him. So even though he'd hated to leave Daisy and their warm bed this morning, he'd departed early and gone to one of the job sites to hole up in the trailer and work on some drawings until it was time to go home.

He checked his watch again as he sped down the hill. He
had a vague sense that he was doing some pretty serious speeding because the other drivers—especially the ones he was passing—were giving him sour, disapproving looks. Too bad, he thought. He had somewhere to be.

Alec had no problem admitting that he was driving like a maniac because he was anxious to get home and spend the day with Daisy. The thing he was more reluctant to admit was that she'd gotten under his skin in a way no one ever had. He didn't know what that meant—hell, his heart had been buried so deep for so long, he wasn't even sure it could be resurrected, even by someone as amazing as Daisy—but he was pretty sure he was ready to get out the pickaxes and start digging.

And for Alec Mackenzie, that was pretty big talk.

He smiled to himself and whistled an off-key little ditty as he pulled to a stop outside their hotel. They'd talked about going hiking through the island's interior or renting a sailboat this afternoon. Of course, the way things had been going around here lately, he thought as he opened the front door, he wasn't sure they'd even make it out of the room. And that was just fine with him.

When he stepped inside the cool, quiet interior of their suite, the atmosphere seemed eerily calm. A strange, inexplicable chill hopped down his spine as he walked toward the bedrooms. At the last minute, a noise from Daisy's room made him turn left instead of right in his search.

“Daze?” he called out and reached down to scratch Bam Bam who was sitting outside Daisy's not-quite-closed door.

A loud thump came from inside her room so he moved one step closer and pushed open the door with a fingertip.

And that's when he saw her throwing things into her suitcase so fast you'd think the place was on fire.

He blinked. Twice. “What are you doing?” he asked, and stood still as a statue in the doorway even though his pulse had shifted into high gear.

She didn't even look up. “Packing.”

“I can see that,” he said, and swatted away a nagging sense of dread. “Where are you going?”

“Home.” She pulled a stack of shirts from a drawer and savagely dumped them into her open bag.

Apprehension, sharp and insistent, trickled through him as he watched her whirling about the room in her haste. “I must have missed something. Why are you going home?”

“Because I can't stay here anymore.”

He looked around the room, saw silk and lace spilling out of one drawer, sweaters falling out of another. One suitcase was already packed, a third sat empty at the foot of the bed. He searched for what could be wrong and came up empty.

“Daisy, what happened?”

“Section seven, paragraph D,” she said matter-of-factly and handed him a thick sheaf of papers as she spun by him.

The Santa Margarita contract. It was opened to the section she'd mentioned. The heading read “Mackenzie Architectural Staffing Requirements.”

So she knew.
Dammit.

At first, it'd been a business decision not to tell her the circumstances that led to her being rehired. After all, he couldn't afford to have her refuse. Later, well, he knew he should have told her but honest to God, with everything they'd gone through in the last week, he'd just never found the right time.

“Hey,” he said, taking a step toward her. “I know I should have told you but I thought you'd get upset.” He tried a weak smile. “And look. I was right.”

She shot him a look so deadly, it should have killed him where he stood.

“I'm sorry,” he said, putting both hands up. “I am. I'm sorry I didn't tell you myself.”

She zipped up the second suitcase and started packing the third. “Too little, too late,” she said, repeating his words from the previous night. “You lied to me, Alec.”

Anger rumbled deep in his gut but long practice kept it from marring his outward calm. “No. I said I wanted you to come back and I did.”

“No, you didn't. You wanted to
win
. Well, congratulations,” she said as she threw a pair of sneakers into the suitcase. “You won. You got what you wanted.”

The pain in her eyes was so intense he had a sudden urge to take her into his arms and comfort her. But then, just as quickly, he swept the instinct aside.

“This isn't about winning and losing,” he said, although he knew with a flash of unease that—originally, anyway—it had been about that very thing. “Oh, c'mon, Daze,” he said, purposely trying to keep his voice even. “Don't be mad. You came back. I got the contract. We're a great team. Hasn't this all turned out for the best?”

“‘I need you, Daisy,'” she quoted as if she hadn't heard him. “‘I can't do this without you, Daisy.'” She stuffed a handful of bras into her suitcase. “Those are lies. And they're the basis for everything we've done together since.”

She looked up at him, her expression aghast, her cheeks bright with embarrassment. “My God. This must be what it feels like to be one of your temporary bimbos,” she said. “Poor girls,” she muttered as she returned to her task with a shake of her dark, soft curls. “And to think I wasted so much
time carrying a torch for you. Well, fortunately for me, I wised up before you could use me up and discard me.”

The anger bubbled, then spilled into him, washing over him like a miserable, ruthless tide. “So you're leaving,” he choked out. The heat in his voice scorched the very air around them.

“Yes. I'll explain to the Baldwins—”

“To hell with the Baldwins,” he said, and turned away from her so she couldn't see the hurt he knew was showing in his eyes.

Of course she was leaving.
Of course.
Lord, he'd been out of his mind to believe she was different. What had he been thinking to let himself get so tangled up with her? For chrissakes, how could he have let himself get so close that she could hurt him at all?

When he heard her zipping up the last suitcase a moment later, he turned back to her, his face a carefully composed mask. When he spoke, he kept firm control over his voice, his expression, his body language. “I'll call accounting tomorrow morning and have them cut you a check.”

She blinked and he watched, silent and grim, as the tears that had gathered in her dark, wounded eyes spilled over and slid down her cheeks.

And then Alec turned and walked away.

 

Because Alec hadn't had a relationship with his mother for so long, one of the many things he couldn't possibly have known about her was that she was as persistent as the moon pulling in the tides.

In the four days since Daisy had left, Barbara had called exactly four times, asking him to meet her for dinner. On
Thursday afternoon he finally relented and agreed to meet her the following night.

The longest day of the year was only few days away, so the sun was still clinging to the horizon as Alec walked to
The Galley
on Duncan Street to meet his mother for dinner.

He was in no hurry to get there. As he walked past the noisy, colorful, summer tourists swarming the pier, he noticed his steps were slow, his energy drained.

The last few days at work had been a disaster without Daisy, but the nights had been worse. Sleep had become nothing more than a dim, hazy memory as he lay alone in his big, empty bed night after night, thinking of how wonderful it had been to hold her, soft and sated, in his arms each night as he fell asleep. Thank God his days were full of the extra work her departure had left behind. It was the only time he wasn't completely preoccupied with thoughts of her and the heartbreaking look on her face when he'd last seen her.

He sighed and shoved his hands into the pockets of his jacket. It was for the best. He knew it was. But still, he couldn't deny that all the joy had leaked out of his life the minute he'd walked out the door. And now that Daisy was gone, it seemed that he was just putting one foot in front of the other in virtually every area of his life.

Thanks to her, work was now a lonely grind, the idea of shallow bimbos bored him silly, and waking up with a soft, warm woman—more specifically, Daisy Kincaid—in his arms had become as natural as breathing. Damn her, he thought. For worming her way into his life, into his mind and—it made him mad as hell to admit it—into his heart.

But what was he supposed to do? he thought crossly, when
by both word and deed, she'd made it clear she didn't want anything to do with him?

“Hello, Alec,” his mother called out, waving at him from in front of the restaurant. “Hello!”

“Hi, Barbara,” he said as he opened the door for her and accepted her continental, two-cheek air kiss in greeting.

“Was it a long walk?” she asked, then kept up a steady stream of nervous chatter as they were shown to their table.

Because they hadn't spoken in years, they had a lot to catch up on so they didn't lack for conversation during dinner. As the meal wound down, though, his mother grew quieter. After the coffee was served, she reached across the table, then stopped just short of touching his hand.

“Alec, I've been wanting to tell you something,” she said as she pulled her hand back. “Something I should have told you a long time ago.” She looked down into her cooling, untouched coffee and sucked in a big breath. “About three years before you were born, your father and I had another child. A son.”

His hand tightened on his cup reflexively. “Are you telling me I have a—” But he stopped when she shook her head.

“No.” Her voice was a whisper. He had to lean forward to hear what she said next. “Your brother died just three days before he would have been six months old.”

Alec's throat constricted. It felt like someone was squeezing the air out of him little by little.

“Your father wanted to have another child right away but I couldn't do it.” She looked up, and he saw her eyes were shiny with tears. “I was so afraid. No one could tell us why Christian had died, and I was sure I'd done something wrong…. God,” she said quietly, “I loved that little boy so much.”

For a moment the years-old grief was fresh in her eyes, and Alec could suddenly imagine her as a young woman, enduring the misery of losing her child. Just as suddenly, his heart began to ache for her.

“Anyway,” she said as she dashed the tears away with the back of her hand, “of course, I finally got pregnant. With you.” She smiled unsteadily. “You were such a wonderful little boy. So charming and sweet. But something had happened to me when we lost Christian. It was like I'd died, too. Inside,” she said, and touched her heart with her fingertips.

She was silent for a moment, and while he stared into the eyes that were so much like his own, memories filled the silence. His mother and father fighting, the parade of nannies and housekeepers, the distance between himself and his parents that he'd always hoped to bridge, the way he'd tried so hard to win her attention, and how he'd finally given up hope.

“Essentially, Christian's death ended my marriage,” she said finally. “But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst was what I did to you.” Her deep-blue eyes burned with sorrow and regret. “Because I knew how much it would hurt to lose you, I refused to take the risk of loving you.” She reached out then and took his hand, gripped it hard. “Of course,” she said, and he heard her voice crackle with long-pent-up emotion, “in the end it wasn't something I could control. I loved you, anyway.” She squeezed his hand again. “How could I not?” she asked with a pale smile. “You were my baby.”

He smiled, too, and had to make an effort to quell the emotional tsunami raging inside him. “I know,” he said simply, and tightened his own hold on her fingers.

“I'm sorry, Alec. I missed out on so much.”

“It's all right,” he said, surprised that he really meant it. “I'm glad you told me. It explains so much.”

She cleared her throat awkwardly, her smile growing. “There's one more thing.”

“There's more?” he asked and his mother laughed.

“I want to start over, Alec. Let's face it, I have more days behind me than I do in front of me—”

He must have looked alarmed because she stopped short and said, “No, no. Everything's fine. I just don't want to waste anymore time. And someday you'll give me grandchildren—”

“Don't count on it,” he interrupted, but his words lacked some of the conviction they would have had a week or two earlier.

She didn't pry, she just stirred her cold coffee and let it go. “You're a good man, Alec,” she said with just a shadow of sadness. “You did a good job raising yourself.”

He smiled. “Not everyone would agree with you, Mom,” he said. “But thanks.”

And after they'd finished their coffee and had made plans to get together the following week, he walked home through the bustling center of town and thought about how she'd chosen not to be a mother to keep herself safe from being hurt. He thought about how she'd run away and hidden behind her work. And then he thought about how badly that had backfired for everyone.

But it wasn't until much, much later when the pinkening dawn was peering through the shutters and he was still staring up at the ceiling that he realized how much he and his mother were alike. She'd tried to shield herself from love, and all she'd really done was grow older, isolated and lonely and filled with regrets. He'd done the same, tried to keep himself
from falling in love with Daisy, and now here he was, miserable and alone.