Chapter Seven

 

 

“Hi.” She had no idea what else to say. She was ridiculously conscious of how small the space was, how intimate and that she had climbed up into the tree house he’d built without asking permission.

Not that she was certain there was an etiquette to entering an abandoned tree house.

To her surprise, Prescott didn’t back out or invite her to climb down so he could discuss whatever it was he wanted her for. Instead, he climbed into the tree house with her, remarkably agile for a tall man. He wore a rain-speckled jacket much too grungy to be his. He shut the door behind him and, since he couldn’t stand, crouched his way over to sit beside her on the vinyl cushions.

She could see a raindrop sparkling on his lashes. His hair was damp but otherwise he looked as perfectly crisp as always.

He glanced around. “I haven’t been in here for probably fifteen years. Maybe more. Makes me feel like a kid again.” He stretched out his long legs. “It stayed dry,” he said, not without pride.

“Yes. It did.”

There was silence but for the drumming of the rain on the roof. He was so still he made her fidgety. “How was the tux fitting?” she asked.

He turned to look at her and as their gazes connected she thought, not for the first time, how gorgeous he was. It wasn’t only the sharply angled features, the high cheekbones and dark eyes that might or might not be native in origin. It was the energy he radiated. Not nervous energy, like hers, but a kind of quiet energy that drew her.

“It was a setup. They got me good, too. I didn’t suspect a thing until I came out of the changing room in the ugliest powder blue tux you have ever seen.” He grinned in self-mockery and she was happy to see he could laugh at himself. “They got pictures and everything.”

He didn’t seem too angry. More like he admired the way they’d managed the prank so successfully. She tried not to smile but it was impossible. “Pictures?” Oh, she really, really wanted to see those pictures.

“You knew.” It wasn’t a question, it was a statement.

She kept quiet because he was right.

He regarded her with the quiet intensity he brought to most things. “Why didn’t you tell me? You’re trying to suck up to me so I’ll build a house for your boss. You could have told me.”

She wrinkled her brow. In truth it hadn’t even crossed her mind to tell him. She thought about how excited the boys had been—and they really were a bunch of boys when they got together, including Jack. “Because they trusted me. They let me in on the secret because they believed I wouldn’t tell you.” She couldn’t stop her lips from twitching. “And it was funny seeing you get so upset about wearing an ugly rental tux.”

He chuckled and his face was even more attractive when he laughed. “You should have seen it. Honest to God I thought Evan had lost his mind. If James hadn’t made me feel like Cooper was such a poverty case we couldn’t afford anything else I would have fallen in.”

“So, you’re not mad?”

“Naah. We went for lunch after, had a beer.”

That probably explained things in Prescott speak.

“So, what are you doing up here?” he asked, turning all his energy to her once more.

“I needed a quiet place to think,” she said, doing her best to look innocent.

“Thinking, huh?” He leaned closer and her heart began to do a strange fluttering dance in her chest.

She backed up but she was already against the wall. “It was, ah, hard to think with all the wedding preparation going on at the house.”

“Thinking? That all you were doing?”

Her phone was barely tucked beneath her, she could feel the lump of it at her hip. Her iPad was on her lap. “I might have made some notes.”

He pounced the way Lucky would pounce on her ball, only a lot more gracefully. She gave an involuntary start as he closed his hand immediately on her cell phone, so his hand grazed her hip. He lifted the phone and held it up.

Okay, so she was busted. She lifted her chin. “Fine. I needed to return a call. You weren’t here. It couldn’t bother you.”

“But we had an agreement,” he said, all low and sexy, not moving back so he was in her personal space and she could see the fine texture of his skin, smell the all-male scent of him.

She bit her bottom lip. “I know.”

He seemed to find her mouth fascinating, so much so that she had to force herself not to nibble on her lip some more.

“Mrs. Rupert called,” she admitted. “She is not the kind of person you don’t call back.”

“Mrs. Rupert?”

“Yes. She’s found a site she thinks would be perfect.” She rushed to speak before he could refuse. “It’s not on the market so you can’t say you’ve seen it because you haven’t. But it’s in Malibu.”

“Malibu?”

“You promised me, Prescott. You promised five sites.”

He seemed to consider her words. “But you promised me you’d only use your cell phone for one hour a day.” He shook his head but there was a disturbing light in his eyes that in another man might be humor. “Seems to me there should be consequences.”

“Consequences?” She hoped he wasn't thinking of throwing her out on her ear, though the way he was watching her mouth, and the gleam in his eyes that was moving from teasing to interested made her suspect kicking her out was not what he had in mind.

“I could simply keep you so busy you don’t have time for cell phone hour.”

They’d been fighting this moment since that first second when he’d walked out of his office to find her sitting on his car. She recalled the leap of recognition she’d felt, the strong attraction she’d felt to him physically even when he’d acted like an arrogant ass.

Her body had known, had always known that this was inevitable.

He reached and took a lock of her hair, twisting it around his finger. She didn’t pull away or move or do anything except start to melt.

Their gazes connected and she felt a fierce hunger deep in her belly. She tilted her face up even as he lowered to her mouth.

Oh, that first kiss. That stunning meeting of lips and his hands in her hair, and hers going to his shoulders, feeling the solid bulk, the warm muscles at play.

He pulled slowly away looking as stunned as she felt. He took a deep, shaky breath. “I don’t do things like this.”

“You don’t?” He’d seemed fairly practiced to her. Plus, from her research that had somehow encompassed his private as well as his business life, she knew he was rarely without a woman in his life.

He shook his head impatiently. “Not like this. I’m an orderly man.”

“Yes, you are.”

He kissed her again, longer this time, deeper. “There is nothing orderly about you, about this.”

Orderly would not be the first word that would come to her mind, either.

Her heart was racing, everything from her hair to her curling toes felt askew. Orderly? Not a chance.

“I choose carefully,” he said, and then kissed her again as though he wanted to stop and couldn’t. “But you, you make me feel reckless.”

She smiled, feeling all her feminine power. “Good.”

She kissed him back and as the rain drummed down outside, his hands began to move, tracing her shape, learning her with the same intense focus he’d bring to a piece of property on which he was considering designing a house.

And that thought acted like a thorough dunking in the Chance family pond.

She pulled back, banged her head on the plywood wall behind her, pushed him away to give herself a little breathing room.

“Wait, we shouldn’t do this,” she panted even as every cell in her body screamed yes, yes we should. “We work together.”

He traced her from shoulder to hip, edging around her breast but not quite touching it in a way that made shivers dance down her body. “No. We don’t work together. You work for someone who wants to hire me. So far, I haven’t agreed.”

“But you have to. And this—” She threw her hands up. “This will mess everything up.”

“Why?”

“Because.” She couldn’t think of a lot of clear reasons because she couldn't really think, but in her gut she knew this was probably a bad idea. “Because the sex could be terrible and then things would be awkward.”

Seriously? Had she actually just said that? She rewound her blabbermouth tape. Yep, she’d said that. One more reason why she shouldn’t have sex with Prescott. He made her say really dumb things.

Fortunately, instead of being insulted he seemed amused. “Do you really think that’s a possibility?”

“Yes.” No! But her last boyfriend had seemed like he’d be studly. He was athletic, good looking, but between the sheets there’d been an excess of saliva and a lack of technique that had ruined things. She didn’t feel like sharing that sad episode of her love life so she kept uncharacteristically silent while the rain tapped on the roof.

Prescott seemed like he was choosing words carefully, then he said, “I don’t want to boast, but I haven’t heard any complaints.”

“Like you would.”

“What do you mean?”

She listed off a few critical items. “You’re gorgeous, famous and rich. Not a lot of women are going to dump a guy like that for a lack of—” How to put this? “Chemistry in the bedroom.”

Oh, lord. There went her mouth again running off without her. Challenge the guy’s proficiency in bed. That was a good plan.

“Do you think you could be overthinking this?” His finger was still doing that hypnotic tracing movement and she did not think that lack of chemistry was going to be an issue.

“Yes. I overthink everything.”

“Well, I don’t want my first time with you to be in a tree house.” He grinned in sudden memory. “Though my first time was in fact right here in this tree house.”

Her mind raced ahead to the sleeping arrangements. “The bunk beds?”

“Please. Now that you’ve challenged my talent in the sack? You really think I’m going to have sex with you in a bunk bed under my parents’ roof?”

“Probably not.” And now that he was telling her it wasn’t going to happen, she was more disappointed than relieved.

Then he teased her with a final, deep kiss. “When I take you to bed, it’s going to be where I have lots of room and lots of time to make sure you get all the chemistry you can handle. Got it?”

She nodded, feeling every womanly part of her quiver at the thought.

He’d never worked to seduce a woman before. Not like this. Not even that first time in the tree house. Becca Brody had been her name. A year older than he was, a hell of a lot more experienced, she’d been the one doing the seducing. He’d gone into that tree house with her a boy and a few memorable hours later he’d emerged—well, a boy still but one who thought he was a man.

He and Becca had spent a lot of time in the tree house that summer he was sixteen. What she hadn’t taught him they’d figured out together. From then until now, he’d never had a problem satisfying a woman.

And if they didn’t seem interested or demanded a lot of wooing he rarely took the trouble. So why did this woman who always seemed to have her buttons done up wrong or mismatched socks have him plotting to send her to the moon and back?

Didn’t make any sense.

And he didn’t have time in his life for unnecessary complications.

Then she looked at him with her big green eyes and he remembered the feel of her impossible-to-tame hair in his hands, recalled the taste of her on his mouth, and he knew that one day very soon she’d be naked and in his bed.

The atmosphere in the bunk-bedded room was different the second night, with the tree house incident between them. He could hear her, restless beneath him. But then she did everything restlessly.

“Prescott?” she whispered.

“Yes?”

“Iona Rupert’s ordered the Gulfstream and wants to fly down Tuesday to see the site. She suggested you meet us at the airfield. We’ll fly down together.”

He could tell from Holly’s tone that she hated passing on the message as much as he hated being ordered around by some woman married to a guy with too much money and no social conscience. Naturally, he wanted to refuse immediately. But he could hear the strain in her voice. She needed him to say yes so she could keep that wretched job. And because he found himself caring that she had enough money to scrimp by, he said, “I’ll meet you at the site.”

He heard her body roll and then she pushed her head over the side rail of her bunk bed as though they were kids at summer camp.

“Seriously? You’ll do it?”

He leaned out and looked down at her. Sighed. “Holly, you make me bend my principles.”

“You mean you’ll design the Ruperts a house even if you don’t love them or the site?”

“No.” What did she take him for? “I meant my personal principles. I won’t bend design principles.” Some things were unshakable.

“Why don’t you catch a ride with us?”

“I prefer not to be beholden.”

“So, do you have your own private plane too?”

“No.” It was true. He didn’t own the entire plane. He shared it with another architect. He didn’t like boasting about his wealth. It made him uncomfortable. The foolish part was he’d never gone into architecture to make a fortune. He’d found his calling. Most of his colleagues had predicted that his lack of sales technique and people skills would be his downfall. Strangely enough, he thought that those very qualities had added to his success, though he liked to think that he was hired because he was a very good architect.

By the time they left right after brunch Sunday morning, Prescott wondered if Daphne and Jack were planning to adopt Holly to round out the brood to an even dozen. They certainly treated her like one of the family. His mother said, as she was leaving, “And you won’t forget to check on the napkins?”

“No. And I’ve got a friend who recently got married. I’ll ask her about the candle holders I was telling you about. They’ll be perfect for a fall wedding.”

“I just hope we don’t have to hold it under cover. It rains here as often as not.”

“We’ll figure it out,” Holly said, as though she was somehow responsible for the wedding.

He wasn’t at all surprised when Daphne enfolded Holly in a hug, or when Jack followed suit.

He was hugged in his turn and he vowed to himself not to leave it so long between visits.

Holly glared in her rearview mirror one more time. Why was Prescott stalking her in the stealth vehicle? She slowed so he could pass her and then he slowed, staying right behind her. Finally, irritated, she called his cell phone.

“Yes?” he answered.

“Why are you following me?”

“How did you get this number?”

“I asked you a question first.”

He sighed. “I am following you because I don’t trust that vehicle of yours will make it back to San Francisco.”

Even though she had the same fears it was annoying to have Mr. Rich Guy follow her like a stealth missile. “I have managed to drive thousands of miles in my life without your help, thank you.”

“Okay. Now, how did you get my cell phone number? In fact, how did you find out about the phone?”

“Your mom mentioned calling you on it. So, I texted myself from your phone so I’d have the number.”

“My phone was in my car all weekend.” The unspoken message being as clear as if he’d shouted at her. Because I don’t take my phone with me on a weekend at my parents’ place. But, being Prescott, he didn’t say the words, he let her divine them.

“I know. I used your magic key thing and let myself into your car and found the phone and then I called myself on it.”

“You went to a lot of trouble to get my number.” He sounded ridiculously smug, like she was a girl with a crush.

Her body went hot at the memories of their time alone together in the tree house.

Damn it, he had good reason to be smug. She was a girl with a crush. A huge, problematic crush on a very rich, very sexy architect who usually dated women who were also rich, sophisticated, and, if her research was to be believed, sometimes titled.

“You are so hard to get hold of, I figured I should at least have your cell number.” And she had been pleased to discover he was human enough to own a cell even if he never used it.

“Well, you called and I answered, so I guess it worked.”

“You’re not overtaking me,” she said, watching that amazing car plod along behind her, keeping pace.

“No. I’m not.”

“Fine,” she snapped, and disconnected.

He followed her all the way home and then, just when she began to think he had ideas about trying to have sex with her in her tiny shared apartment, he waved and carried on his way.

Okay, fine, so he wasn’t in a rush to have sex with her. He’d probably only been teasing anyway.

Which was good. Excellent. She couldn’t imagine a worse idea than getting involved with a man who pretty much held her career in the palm of his genius-architect-who-never-compromises hand.