Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers (21 page)

Greta sucked in a deep breath, sparking a flash of lightning behind her eyes as the tips of her breasts pressed into his jacketed chest. “An open mind. You mean you might be willing to give the marriage your blessing?”

Penny and Dylan were adults, independent and sure of what they wanted—they didn’t technically need Miles’s blessing. But as someone with an intensely close bond with her family, Greta understood that Dylan might hope for Miles’s approval, just the same.

“That depends,” Miles murmured, bending his head until the words puffed out against her lips.

“On what?” she breathed.

“On you.” A slow, predatory smile spread Miles’s perfect lips. Open, frank appreciation warmed his ice-blue eyes to the color of the summer sky. “I’ll agree to keep an open mind about my brother’s fly-by-night engagement if you agree to show me around the island that appears to have captivated my entire family. Show me what’s so special about this place, that Dylan and Logan would get addicted to it after a matter of weeks.”

A frisson of danger skittered down Greta’s spine. It would mean spending more time in Miles’s company. Touring him around Sanctuary, just the two of them and the long sunny days and hot humid nights …

As many romance novels as she’d read, Greta could recognize the clear signs of masculine desire in every line of the hard body pressed against hers. Miles Harrington wasn’t shy about letting her know he wanted her … but a man like him wanted only one thing from a woman like Greta.

She might not have much hands-on experience with men, but she wasn’t a fool. There was no way Mr. Billionaire CEO was going to give up the reins of his company to move to Sanctuary Island and run Hackley’s Hardware with her.

And Greta could never leave the island behind, no matter how much she sometimes yearned after the endless mysteries beyond the horizon of her small world. But Miles Harrington wasn’t her fantasy Prince Charming, here to sweep her away to a life of adventure and faraway lands. So what was the point?

The point, she realized, was that this was her chance to make Miles see that Penny had no designs on anything other than Dylan’s heart.

Even though every self-preservational instinct she possessed was clamoring for Greta to get away from Miles Harrington as quickly as possible, she knew she couldn’t pass up the opportunity to help Penny. After everything her best friend had been through with her ex-husband, Penny had more than earned a fairy tale ending.

The fact that it wasn’t in the cards for Greta only made her more determined to see her friend settled happily. Even if it meant spending time with the first man in years to both tempt her and infuriate her in the space of a single conversation.

With a sense of sealing her own fate, Greta said, “Fine. I’ll be your tour guide to the wonders of Sanctuary Island. And you’ll see that no one here cares about your money or whatever power you think you have.”

Something flared deep in Miles’s eyes, and he finally let go of her captured wrist only to wrap both muscular arms around her. “I have one more condition. You think you don’t like me—but sweetheart, chemistry like this doesn’t happen every day.”

Gasping at the searing heat of all the muscle he concealed under his perfectly tailored suit, Greta said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“No?”

Her only warning was the gleam of challenge in his seductive smile before he pressed those lips to hers. Greta opened her mouth to … she didn’t know what, to protest? To moan? But she didn’t have a chance to do either, because Miles immediately pressed his advantage and took her mouth in a deep, searing kiss that wiped every thought of protest from Greta’s mind.

She melted against him automatically, reveling in the fact that he was actually taller than she was so that their bodies lined up perfectly, but Miles drew back.

Staring down at her with wide, almost surprised eyes, he blinked once—and then the expression was gone, buried under a smooth, practiced smile. “I’ll keep an open mind about your friend and my brother,” he purred. “If you keep an open mind about me.”

Greta drew in a shuddery breath. “Okay,” she said, blushing at the hoarse rasp of her own voice. “I’ll try.”

Miles Harrington was judgmental, controlling, full of himself—he was no Prince Charming. But as Greta touched a fingertip to her lips, still buzzing with pleasure and plump from his kiss, she realized that even though she had no future with him … she had the present. And, as Miles pointed out, they had chemistry.

An exploding high school lab experiment’s worth of chemistry. Yowza.

Could she really afford to let this opportunity pass her by, on the off chance that Prince Charming might show up one day and wish she’d waited? Especially when she was uncomfortably aware of exactly how big a fantasy that was, anyway.

Maybe it was time to take a break from dreaming and live, even if only for a little while.

Chapter Three

Maybe some people would find it awkward to spend the night as a guest in the house of a woman they had all but accused of being a gold digger. Luckily, Miles was made of sterner stuff.

He was a pragmatist, at heart, and there was no suitable alternative to staying at the house on Island Road—which belonged to his family, incidentally, so Miles refused to give in to the awkwardness. In fact, before there was ever a town called Sanctuary, the entire island was owned by Silas Harrington, Miles’s however-many-greats great grandfather, who founded the company that eventually became the legacy Miles had dedicated his life to continuing.

But the Harringtons no longer owned any part of the island but the property on Island Road, and whoever was running things now hadn’t seen fit to establish a single hotel or inn. There wasn’t even a crappy motel or a kitschy bed-and-breakfast.

And Logan, damn him, was happily ensconced in the summer cottage with Jessica Bell.

That was a problem for another day, Miles told himself as he straightened his tie in the antique silver-framed mirror hanging over the porcelain pedestal sink in the guest bathroom. For now, he needed to focus on his plan to get the full story on Penny Little and her motives for marrying his youngest brother.

A plan that was going fairly well, if he could force himself to focus a bit more tightly on the goal. That kiss, yesterday …

Miles’s fingers paused in the act of checking his collar stays. Staring at himself in the mirror, all he could see was an image of Greta Hackley’s unpracticed, questing mouth, the unconscious sensuality of her body as she abandoned herself to the pleasure of the moment.

Caught up in his own seductive web, Miles admitted to himself that he’d taken it further than necessary to test the waters of Greta’s attraction to him. Greta Hackley, with her tomboyish, casual clothes and messy golden-blond braid, was surprisingly tempting.

Well, he’d have to resist the temptation. That was all there was to it. He was willing to seduce her a little, in order to get her softened up to the point of telling him the truth about her best friend, but there was a line Miles certainly wouldn’t cross.

He stared into his own blue eyes in the mirror and swallowed the knowledge that the line had already shifted a couple of inches.

After a breakfast of stilted conversation during which Miles made no attempt to probe Penny’s background while Dylan hovered over her, growling like a suspicious pit bull, Miles chose to wait on the front porch for his tour guide.

According to the weather app on his smartphone, it was going to be yet another hot, cloyingly humid day in paradise. It was barely nine o’clock, and he already regretted the tie. Loosening the knot with absent fingers, Miles sauntered over to the love seat swing hanging at the end of the wraparound porch and dropped into it.

He’d braced slightly for the motion of the swing, but when the chain attaching it to the porch ceiling gave way with a loud crack, Miles shouted in surprise as he crashed to the floorboards.

Sitting in the wreckage of the swing, Miles winced and shifted. The thin seat cushion hadn’t been enough to protect him from bruising. Drawing his knees up, he rested his elbows on them and stared contemplatively up at the jagged hole in the porch ceiling where the swing’s hook used to be anchored.

“Need a little help?”

Miles closed his eyes briefly. “Your timing is amazing. How do you always manage to show up when I’m in the midst of making an idiot of myself?”

“Just lucky, I guess,” Greta said. He could hear the smile in her voice before she vaulted up the porch steps to give him a hand.

“I promise you, it’s an unusual occurrence back in New York.” Miles accepted her help, a little surprised by how easily she set her weight against his to pull him to his feet. “My assistant would never believe this.”

“So you’ve got everyone who works for you fooled into thinking you walk on water, make no mistakes?”

Tensing against the implication that he considered himself godlike, Miles said, “What happened to you keeping an open mind about me? Already going back on our deal?”

Eyes widening, Greta’s mouth twisted into a rueful smile. “Sorry, and no. I was actually thinking that it sounded like a hard way to live.”

“What do you mean?”

She shrugged, the motion apparently making her aware that she was still clasping Miles’s much larger hand between her palms. Dropping her hands with a sweet flush, Greta said, “Oh, you know. The expectation level you live with—it must be brutal. To be expected never to make a silly mistake? You’re only human.”

Miles tilted his head, amused, as he straightened his suit. “It comes with the territory. When you’re responsible for hundreds of people’s livelihoods, their careers and their futures, you learn never to show fear. Never show weakness. Your employees take their cues from you, everything flows from the top down. Be confident and competent, and they’ll strive for that in their roles, as well.”

“I wish I’d brought a notebook so I could record all these pearls of wisdom.”

Casting her an irritated glance, Miles gave in to the heat and unknotted his tie completely. Sliding it free of his collar, he rolled it up and stuffed it in his pocket. The temperature seemed to have risen ten degrees in the last few minutes. “You know, plenty of people would think this is a great opportunity to pick the brain of a successful CEO.”

She snorted. “Oh sure, for when I try to take the hardware store public and turn it into a Fortune 500 company.”

“Hardware store?”

Miles recognized family pride in the straight set of Greta’s shoulders, the way she held her head. “Hackley’s Hardware, founded by my great grandparents when they first settled on Sanctuary Island in the forties. I run the store itself, now that Mama has gone down to part time. My brothers mostly work the side business, consulting on local building and maintenance projects.”

The green bite of envy scraped across Miles’s consciousness. “A true family business, hmm? It must be nice to have that support.”

Shrugging, Greta shaded her eyes and peered out into the bright sunlit front yard. “Sometimes. Other times, it feels like since I’m the only one in the store most of the time, and that’s still the core part of our business, that it’s all on my shoulders.”

Miles was startled by the sense of kinship he felt with this woman, whose day-to-day life probably didn’t resemble his constant whirl of high-intensity meetings and power lunches, but who clearly understood something about the demands of carrying on a family tradition.

Somehow uncomfortable with using that in his campaign of seduction, Miles gestured vaguely at the flower-lined paving stones that led through the front yard out to Island Road. “I hate to ask you to go into work on what I’m guessing is a pretty rare day off, but it appears we need to make a trip to a hardware store if we’re going to fix this porch swing.”

Laughing, Greta put her hands on her slim hips, drawing him to notice exactly how low those denim cutoffs hung from her trim waist. “I make plans to show you all the beauties this gorgeous hidden jewel of an island has to offer—and you want to see the hardware store, so you can get to work on a repair? Something tells me I’m not the only one who isn’t used to taking time off.”

“Guilty.” Miles grinned and spread his hands. “Although I have to admit, I’m partly motivated by a desire to see this family business of yours.”

She blushed, and Miles tried not to be charmed by her. That wasn’t the way this was supposed to go.

“Really?” Greta shook her head hard enough to swing the long tail of her dark gold braid over one shoulder to trail enticingly between the curves of her small, high breasts. “It’s nothing fancy, you know. It’s not a big box store or one of those renovation depots that’s stocked with a ton of crap you never knew you always needed. Hackley’s is a homey little place where you can get the basics to take care of your property.”

Surveying the sad, crumpled swing, Miles gave Greta a wry half smile. “Well, technically this house is my property. And I haven’t done much to take care of it since my grandparents died. Maybe it’s time I started.”

“This house has been taken care of,” Greta argued staunchly. “You hired Penny as caretaker, and she’s done a great job.”

“Sure. If you don’t count the front porch swing collapsing under me without warning.”

“You probably sat in it wrong. Don’t have a lot of front porch swings up there in the Big Apple, do they?”

“Maybe not, but we have chairs,” Miles retorted. “I’m the head of a multibillion-dollar international corporation with interests ranging from security and national defense contracts to the challenges of sustainable energy. I think I can handle the tricky procedure of
sitting
.”

Greta’s dark eyes narrowed. “Obviously not.”

Without being aware of moving, Miles was suddenly toe to toe with the exasperating woman. “Are you going to take me to your hardware store, or do I need to find it myself?”

She huffed out a sigh that tickled against the underside of Miles’s jaw, reminding him he hadn’t been able to shave that morning. At some point today, he was going to need to find a way to outfit himself for a longer stay than originally planned.