Cinderella Busted (The Cinderella Romances #1) (33 page)

Rhett frowned. “Oh, I minded all right, and don’t ever try meddling in my love life again either.”

“I won’t. Believe me.”

“Hell, I ought to promote you for fixing things for me with Lily, but you’re already a vice-president. And the next step is my job, which I’m not quite ready to give up.”

“I’m good right where I’m at,” Garrett assured him. “I just like finally being even.” He maneuvered onto the turnpike entrance ramp. “We’re getting back a lot earlier than we planned after that late meeting in Boca canceled on us. You want me to take you by the office?”

“Nope,” Rhett said, reclining his seat slightly to accommodate his large frame. “Drop me at the house if you don’t mind. I want to grab a shower, and then go surprise Lily and take her out to eat.”

Garrett hazarded a long glance. “Man, you’ve got it bad. You
never
ditch work.”

Rhett smiled at his friend. “No, I don’t, and yes, I do, and not in that order. And keep your eyes on the road.”

“I’m glad you’re keeping your eyes on Lily. I don’t like that propane tank suddenly blowing.”

“I don’t either. I left a voicemail for the fire inspector, but I haven’t heard back.”

“Why don’t you hire your own investigator?”

“I did. He’ll be there tomorrow to check things out. I’ll have to tell Lily, but I don’t want to make her nervous.”

Garrett signaled and changed lanes. “She needs to be nervous, so she’s careful.”

“
I’m
watching over her now, Garrett,” he said. “I’ll keep her safe.”

“But you’re not with her twenty-four-seven,” Garrett argued. “Hell, maybe I’m worrying about nothing.”

“You stick to real estate, and let
me
worry about Lily now.”

“You want me to stick to real estate? Fine. Then listen up.” Garrett sped up to pass two tractor-trailers. “After your barbecue, Lily told Tammy that Cross had mentioned something to her about doing a development on the Intracoastal in Jupiter. Cross told her he’d be close by for a while.”

Garrett frowned at Rhett. “And stop growling. Lily’s back with you. She has no interest in Cross. Pay attention.”

“I am paying attention,” Rhett grumbled.

“Last Friday, Carstairs told me he thought that parcel we were after in Jupiter had become a lost cause.”

“
What
?”

“Yeah, owner not willing to sell at all, or something to that effect.”

“That’s never stopped us before,” Rhett said indignantly.

“Right. If a seller was hesitant, then we just sweetened the pot.”

“Damn.” Rhett stared out the passenger window. “Carstairs has seemed pre-occupied lately. He loses another prime parcel, and I may send
him
down the road.”

“I know how bad you wanted that Jupiter parcel.”

“Maybe it’s not too late.”

“You stepping in?” Garrett grinned at him.

“Yes, I am. Do me a favor. Go back through the short list of prospects Carstairs covered in that meeting with us a few weeks ago. Do some background checking on those sites for me. All of them. If Carstairs is slipping, I don’t want to lose any more parcels. We may still be able to salvage that one in Jupiter.”

“I’ll drop you off and go back to the office for a while, see what I can find out. I love snooping around after Carstairs.”

“Maintain your objectivity,” Rhett reminded him.

“I knew you were going to say that.” Garrett glanced over his shoulder and changed lanes, then sped up to get past a convoy of three overloaded family vans. “You’ve told me repeatedly that our time gets more and more limited the bigger BDC grows, and we need to delegate. But I’ve thought for a long time now that we give Carstairs and his team too much leeway in site selection.”

Rhett chuckled. “And you’d like nothing better than to get the goods on him.”

“You’ve got that right,” Garrett said and hit the gas.

Rob tapped on Lily’s office door after lunch and poked his head inside. “Mollette’s delivered the
Phoenix dactyliferas
an hour ago, and we need to get them in the ground,” he said without preamble.

Lily thunked her forehead with the palm of her hand. “Yikes! I forgot they were coming today.”

“There’s too many for me to plant them alone.”

“No, I’m coming. I’m pretty much finished here anyway,” she said, rising to her feet.

Everyone at the nursery had continued on after the fire—business as usual—keeping things as normal as possible for Lily, except for the pictures that covered every flat surface in the office. She gazed around at the two dozen frames in her private office alone. If she found her own place, she would have room for all of them, but she had loved these last few days of cohabitating with Rhett.

A smile tugged at her mouth. The thought of their make-out session on the couch last night had left him groaning and her wanting to groan. How long would he be patient with her? How long could
she
be patient? A single touch of his finger to her cheek ignited deeply banked fires within her. Did her touch do the same to him?

“Lily?” Rob still waited in the doorway.

“I’m coming.”

“Are you going to be ready for the code hearing tomorrow?” he asked hesitantly.

“Ready as I’ll ever be,” she said and followed him out the door.

By mid-afternoon, they were closing in on the last of the specialty palms. The Vermeer digger had prepared the hole for the biggest specimen in the lot. The large palm hovered over the center of the hole, held aloft by a crane hoist, while Lily centered the burlapped root ball right where she wanted it. Rob worked with a second crew on another
Phoenix
nearby.

Lily had Jason and two field growers with her. One of the field growers had splashed water into the bottom of the hole and mixed in their proprietary Bloom & Grow potting soil mix to await the lowering of the palm into the healthy black sludge.

“One little shot of water in the bottom, Charlie,” Lily told the closest field grower with the hose in his hand. “The sludge is still too dry.”

He did as directed while Lily grabbed the burlapped ball and pulled it slightly toward her.

“Drop her down a foot,” she called to the crane driver operating the hoist.

When the operator tugged—too hard—on the lever, the tree dropped two feet like an out-of-control boulder, then bounced hard against the chain shackling the trunk and rocked the attached hoist-arm. The burlapped ball vibrated into Lily and knocked her off balance.

Charlie grabbed for the ball to keep the chained palm from knocking Lily into the hole and inadvertently squeezed the hose grip in his other hand, shooting a spray of water over Lily and the edge of the hole where she struggled to stay upright. Her boots lost traction in the now-slick loam, and down into the hole she slid.

Panic erupted up top as the crew scrambled to get the palm away from the edge of the hole. If the winch broke and the palm slid into the hole, Lily knew she would be crushed.

Rob streaked to the hole, barking orders at everyone, and in seconds, the
Phoenix
palm lay angled against the truck a few yards away. Lily was on her third attempt to scramble out of the mud-slicked hole on her own and had almost reached the top when the edge of the hole gave way from the recent pounding, and she fell backward into the black sludge.

Rob peered over the side. “I can see two eyes and a mouth.”

Lily smiled, giving him a shot of white teeth, and he laughed. She swiped at the mud on her face.

“You just made it worse,” Rob hooted. “I don’t know whether to hose you down or pull you out!”

“Pull me out!” she called, and Charlie threw down the end of the hose and a few extra coils, then yanked her up and over the side.

“You scared me,” Charlie said, looking way too pale. “I’m so sorry.”

Lily patted his shoulder. “Not your fault. At least you stopped laughing long enough to get me out.”

She turned, hands on hips, and pretended to glare at the rest of them, but they only erupted in guffaws of laughter all over again, and she joined them.

“Go home and get cleaned up,” Rob said finally. “And stay there and rest up for tomorrow. I’ll finish up here.”

Lily smiled at the reflection of her blackened face in his sunglasses. “I believe I will.”

Garrett dropped Rhett at his mansion and pulled away. Rhett keyed his special remote to raise the garage door, so he could access the house through the kitchen. Sliding past the parked Navigator, he ditched his muddy construction boots in the laundry room and headed inside. A nice long shower would relax him and let him forget about Whittenhurst screwing up the Jupiter parcel acquisition for a while. He hurried upstairs, peeled off his field clothes, and jumped in the well-earned shower.

Once he collected Lily from the nursery, he wouldn’t have to worry about forgetting work problems, his focus would be a hundred percent on her. He was still amazed at how brave his little sweetheart had been after losing her childhood home.

Lily had taken him to the nursery office over the weekend to show him all the pictures of her father. He shook his head at the memory of the dozens of frames spread throughout the office. Lily’s employees loved her, and he could tell by the way she talked about them that the feeling was mutual. She reeled off every name, one by one, as she shared with him the pictures of her father. By the time she’d finished, the sun had long disappeared, and he knew Hank Foster like an old and dear friend. They had needed to wade through all those pictures together. The emotional exercise had been cathartic for her, enlightening for him, and showed him sides of Lily he hadn’t yet explored. He found he adored every new side of Lily he discovered—dangerously so.

Unable to get a handle on the depth of his burgeoning emotions, he continually set them aside and concentrated only on the moment. The tug and pull near his heart continued to build, waiting there in the wings, and eventually he would have to address the depth of his need to keep Lily close.

She had awakened a possessiveness and protectiveness he had thought himself incapable of feeling, especially after the abusive years of his childhood. The feelings were all there, simmering and threatening to boil over. He couldn’t share them with Lily yet and risk scaring her off, especially not after the emotional loss of her home. He had to keep things light for now.

He had pondered his emotional facets for so long his skin had wrinkled, and he exited the shower to towel off and grab a quick shave. Jetty’s was one of Lily’s favorite restaurants, and the casual atmosphere would be perfect for a lighthearted evening. Ten minutes later and towel still wrapped around his waist, he stepped out of the steamy bathroom and into the outstretched arms of a sheer-negligee-clad Delia Armstead.

“Delia!” Rhett gasped in surprise.

“Hello, handsome,” she purred and slid forward with feline grace, close enough he could feel her heat.

Her generous breasts pushed against the sheer silk gown, her nipples standing at attention like errant buttons in a world of satin ribbons. She leaned in just enough to tickle the skin on his abdomen with her breasts.

“Miss me?” she breathed sultrily and pressed her lips to his right nipple.

He flinched at the contact. “What are you doing?”

“That should be obvious, darling.”

One hand at his towel-covered waist, he used the other to grab her elbow and set her back on her heels.

Undaunted, she cooed, “I thought you’d never get out of that shower, but it gave me plenty of time to get ready.”

He followed her gaze to his king-size bed, now strewn with hundreds of red rose petals.

“What did you do? Buy out every florist in Palm Beach?”

Taking his response as encouragement, she eased forward again and tried to slip her arms around his neck. Startled as he was by the seduction scene on his bed, he moved his free hand up to ward her off—a fraction of a second too late—and his hand ran smack into one plump and eager breast.

“Oh darling,” she moaned and plastered herself to his front.

Rhett struggled to free the hand caught between them and stepped on the hem of her negligee robe. With his hand-freeing nudge to her shoulder and her hem firmly pinned to the carpet, Delia lost her balance and tilted backward, flailing her arms wildly. Rhett let go his towel to use both hands to steady her and succeeded only in toppling them both. Delia ended up on her back on the carpet with Rhett atop her, his towel skewed sideways in the process.

Delia recovered her breath first and wrapped arms and legs around him as he struggled to extricate himself.

“You’ve held me at bay for weeks,” she moaned and clung to him. “When you took me home after the charity gala instead of bringing me here, I almost gave up on you, but finally we’re together.” She stretched to press her lips to his.

“No, Delia,” Rhett said, struggling to reseat his towel and scramble to his feet at the same time.

“You’re right, darling,” she said, her voice husky. “We need to finish
this
in bed.”

A sharp gasp at the doorway startled them both. Rhett glanced up and his heart stopped.

Lily stood in the doorway, eyes wide and a change of clothes in her hand.

Silence loomed for one interminable moment, and then Delia twisted beneath Rhett to see who stood at the door.

“This is working late?” Lily cried, her voice vibrating with anger. “Who’s the liar now?”

Her gaze raked over the red petals littering the sheets and pillows, the bucket of champagne and glasses on the nearby table.

“No wonder you didn’t mind being patient!” She turned and fled for the stairs.

“Lily, no! Wait!” Rhett lurched forward, caught his ankle on Delia’s calf, and pitched forward onto the carpet again.

Delia grabbed his ankle to keep him from bolting after Lily. “No, Rhett. She can’t make you happy. Stay with me!”

He scrabbled free, wrapped his towel around him, and raced to the doorway as the front door slammed hard enough to rock the house on its foundation. He wheeled around to face Delia, now back on her feet, her own eyes wide.