Ford snuck another glance at his passenger. Becky Jean hadn’t said a word since they’d left the factory. He’d hoped some fresh air would do her good, but in the glow of the passing streetlights, she appeared as dazed as he felt. He couldn’t leave her alone in her present condition. He’d worry himself sick if he did.
She waited for him to open the car door for her—another sure sign she wasn’t herself tonight. For a moment, she reached out to take his offered hand, but snatched hers back before their fingers touched.
Ford stood back, allowing her to stand under her own steam. He followed her to her door where she dug in her purse, eventually producing a key attached to a KeyP Me Safe Light. He glanced around, but all he could see in the weak light coming from the porch light were a few clay pots with some sort of flowers bubbling out of them. Her hand shook, but with the aid of the flashlight on her keychain she managed to fit the key in the lock. In case she had ideas about leaving him outside, he trailed close behind her, pausing to remove the key from the lock and shut the door.
As she stepped out of those fuck-me pumps that had been driving him insane for the last hour, he reminded himself he’d brought her home in order to care for her, not to take advantage of her.
When she slipped the jacket off her shoulders and tossed it on a nearby chair, he fisted his hands in his pockets and reminded himself he had no business thinking about how soft her skin had been beneath his fingertips.
And when she turned and faced him, eyes dark with arousal, lips parted in invitation, he forgot everything except how much he wanted to kiss the beautiful woman standing before him.
He closed the distance separating them in two strides. Her scent overwhelmed him. Out of necessity, he’d blocked it out on the set, but they were alone here so he opened himself to her every nuance. Her beauty went beyond the physical. There was a wholesome quality about her that made her radiant in a way he’d never seen before. It both intrigued and scared the hell out of him. He’d never been attracted to wholesome. All the women in his life had been worldly and sophisticated—complicated. They played the relationship game on the same terms he did—without any expectations.
Becky Jean had expectation written all over her face.
He planned to leave Butte Plains as soon as he could find a buyer for his and his mother’s share of the factory and negotiate a fair price. Becky Jean deserved someone who would stick around. Someone who would give her the fairy tale.
Before he did something they’d both regret in the morning, he took a step back. Becky Jean followed. He lifted his hands, intending to push her away, but moving with purpose, she wrapped her hands around his head and drew his face down to hers. Her lips were warm and pliant, her kiss more experienced than he would have believed. She nipped his lower lip. He gasped and opened for her.
Damn. Her tongue swept in, dueling with his. His blood turned to molten lava slaughtering cells in his upstairs brain. Thinking with his downstairs brain, he cupped her ass and dragged her hard against him. She was soft in all the right places, and fuck if he didn’t want to take everything she offered. Her fingers tickled the pulse at his throat then went to work on the top button of his shirt. The fastener slid free. Cool air brushed his skin bringing sanity with it.
“Whoa.” Backing away took every ounce of decency he possessed. There were at least a million reasons not to peel her out of her dress and sink into her warmth. They were business partners. Never mind she was the hottest thing west of the Mississippi. She didn’t strike him as a casual sex type of woman. “We have to stop, Becky Jean.” He held his hand up—a stop sign between them.
If he’d actually thrown a bucket of ice water on her head, he couldn’t have done a better job of breaking the spell between them. Becky Jean blinked a few times then focused her gorgeous blue eyes on him. Another blink washed away the last traces of arousal, replacing the tender emotion with anger. Cold. Hard. Anger.
Ordinarily, he reveled in pushing her buttons, riling her up to see blue flames in her eyes and a rosy blush on her cheeks, but her anger tonight was different. Sharper. Deeper. If looks could kill, he’d be wearing a toe tag.
“Go, Ford.” She pointed at the door. “Get out of my house.”
“I’m sorry, Becky Jean, but you know as well as I do—”
“That you’re a snake oil salesman? Because you are.” She pointed at the door again. “Get out. Now.”
“Can’t we talk—?”
“About the way you seduced me on camera? About the way you touched me? About the way I—”
The way you felt in my arms? The way your skin feels like satin and your hair feels like silk? The way that dress makes me want to tear if off to see your luscious curves? The way I think about you morning, noon, and night? The way I wish to hell we weren’t who we are? “About us?”
“There is no us, Ford. There’s me, and there’s you. For a minute there, I lost my head. Thought maybe I was wrong.” The vixen who’d all but attacked him had disappeared, replaced by the shy and all-too innocent woman he’d come to admire.
He’d gone too far during the broadcast, let his desire for her show, and they were both going to suffer for his mistake. “I’m sorry.” He inched toward the door. “I’m really sorry.”
He knew he should be thanking her for throwing him out of her house. She’d done the right thing. He’d done everything she’d accused him of, and more. As he drove up the hill to his temporary home, he cursed himself for a fool. Not once since Becky walked into their makeshift studio, glammed up to the nines, had he given a single thought to the consequences of acting on his desires. He’d allowed his hormones to overrule his common sense, and Becky had suffered for his stupidity. He owed his partner an apology.
~~~
Oh. My. God. Becky fell face-first on her bed. She’d wanted to prove to him she wasn’t some backwoods mouse—that she could be sexy and sophisticated like the women he undoubtedly dated on the East Coast. For once, she’d wanted him to look at her with desire in his eyes. The dress, shoes, and makeup she’d let Roseanne talk her into had done the trick. She’d turned the tables on Ford, saw the way he’d looked at her when she entered their makeshift studio. His eyes nearly popped out of his head, but he’d turned the tables right back on her, reducing her to a puddle of goo in front of God-only-knew how many viewers. And she’d fallen for his seduction. Fallen so hard she’d flung herself at the man, even knowing he couldn’t offer her more than a romp in the sack.
“He didn’t even offer a quick tumble,” she reminded herself. She rolled to her back, refusing to shed a tear over Ford Adams. Face it. He doesn’t want you. You’re nothing more than his business partner. Maybe his relationship with Ronnie is more serious than I thought.
He’d been right to push her away. Girlfriend or not, Ford would eventually leave Butte Plains, and she had nowhere else to go. They’d turned the company around, so it was only a matter of time before he started looking for someone to buy him and his mother out. As strange as his relationship with Ronnie seemed to her, he did have a life to go back to, and she had… nothing.
Her 25 percent of the company grew in value every day. Eventually, it would be worth something—at least enough to keep her going until she found something else to do with herself. Because she couldn’t see retaining her portion once Ford sold. Potential buyers would probably want the whole thing anyway, which meant in order for Ford to sell, she would have to, as well.
Was it wrong for her to wish he’d stay? The elder Mr. Adams had known the importance of his business to the town and done everything in his power, except ask his son to come home and help to keep the place open. He’d be proud of what Ford had accomplished in so short an amount of time, but he’d also be rolling in his grave if he knew his progeny’s plans to sell. She knew in her heart he’d hoped a year would give his son enough time to realize Butte Plains and Adams Manufacturing were home and decide to stay.
She’d known from the beginning falling for her new partner would be a stupid thing to do, and, after tonight, she also knew she’d ignored her own advice. But for a hot minute when he’d been wrapped around her, bombarding her senses with his lips, his sneaky, seductive words, and the damn vibrator he created, she’d let herself believe he felt something for her, too.
Talk about stupid. She set the gold standard for idiocy.
~~~
Becky ducked into the ladies’ room for one last check before her interview. Not a hair appeared out of place, but her tidy hairdo did nothing to quell the butterflies in her stomach. In the weeks following the humiliation of throwing herself at Ford and being rejected, she’d dedicated herself to her job, building an entire network on the foundation of their flagship program, the Adult Shopping Show. Months of work had gone into converting the original building into a home for the new network. The expanded facilities would allow them to branch out to a full schedule of prime-time and weekend shows, each with a different theme. Talks were underway to feature their competitors’ products during the less popular time slots.
Thanks to Ford’s creative genius, their product line had expanded exponentially. He complained about not being able to design fast enough to keep up with her marketing plans, but they both knew the opposite was true.
Right this minute, he was doing an interview in one of the new studios with Forbes Magazine. A reporter from Cosmopolitan waited for her in yet another studio. Afterward, she and her partner were going across town to meet a Realtor about purchasing an abandoned warehouse in order to expand production. They were also looking at a few locations near the Interstate to become a new distribution hub. To say they were busting at the seams would be an understatement.
The previous week they’d hired the same architect who had designed the remodel of the old factory to draw up plans for an extension to the current offices so they could get rid of the portable units brought in to house their newest employees. Her marketing team had increased from one—her—to half-a-dozen-plus underlings. The accounting staff outnumbered every other department except factory workers and the direct sales team.
Becky made a mental note to talk to Ford about his ideas regarding the phone order takers. Outsourcing to India would save them money, but hiring a company out of Dallas to pick up the slack would keep jobs in Texas, if not in Butte Plains. He might not care about creating jobs locally, but she did.
“We’re ready for you, Ms. Parker.”
Becky gave herself a mental shake and followed the intern down the hall.
Ford leaned against the wall outside the door and listened in on Becky Jean’s interview. He’d done at least a dozen in the last few months, but this was her first, and to hear her tell it, her last one. She’d only agreed because the magazine’s editor insisted their female readership wanted to hear her success story, not his.
A feminist to the core, he’d let Becky Jean believe she’d badgered him into all manner of equal opportunities for women within their company, but he’d fire every man on the payroll if he could replace them with women as intelligent and driven as his partner. His design set them on the right course, but without Becky steering them along the path, they’d probably be no better off than they were the day of his father’s funeral.
The woman deserved her day in the limelight.
“Hey. The receptionist said I’d find you here.”
Ford smiled and gave Scott a guy hug. “Did you come to drag me back to New York?”
“No, man. You got a good thing going here, and the new guy is working out okay. He’s so good I’ve actually had some time to work on a few projects on my own.”
Even though Ford had made a lot of money designing for other people, while working for others, he’d missed letting his imagination run wild. “I hear you, buddy. I never knew how much I missed the creative process until I got to do it full-time. What kind of stuff have you been working on?”
He knew that smile. Scott had always been a big kid, unable to hide his enthusiasm. “You still have an office?”
“Sure do.” He didn’t know why he was standing out in the hall anyway. Becky Jean didn’t need his help. The woman could take care of herself. He waved his hand, signaling Scott to follow. “Come on.”
Ford shrugged out of his suit coat. After hanging it on the back of his chair, he removed his tie and popped the top button on his shirt. Feeling as if he could breathe again, he turned his attention to his guest. “Ronnie didn’t come with you?”
Scott shook his head. “Sorry. I tried, man, but she’s adamant she isn’t going to set foot in this hick town. Her words, not mine.”
He searched his heart for the disappointment he’d become used to, and found resignation instead. He’d heard the insult before and thought the very same thing a time or two himself, but he’d never heard it from Ronnie. She was too diplomatic for that. The woman was a pro at saying something without saying anything. Her unique ability made her a favorite in her social circle. No party could be complete without Veronica Ramsey.
If she thought Butte Plains a hick town, what must she think of him? He plastered a smile on his face. “Makes me wonder what she sees in me.”
“It’s always been a mystery to me,” Scott said with a laugh. “I always thought she had good taste then she took up with you. Shattered my image of my little sister.”
His former roommate knew him better than anyone else on the planet, yet he never said a thing when he’d asked Ronnie out. Ford had taken his friend’s silence as approval. “Trust me. Your sister is far from being the saint you led me to believe her to be.”
“Hey, I never said she was a saint. Personally, I don’t know what you see in her. She can be a brat when she wants to be.”
Her holdout on coming to Butte Plains being a perfect example. “Tell me about it.” He shuffled a stack of financial reports to the side of his desk. “So, what brings you back to Hicksville?”
His friend beamed. “I have something I want to show you.”
“Yeah? You been spending company time designing something on your own?”
“Don’t tell the boss, but yes, I have.” He dug in his pocket. “See what you think.”
Ford turned the prototype over, examining it from every possible angle. “This is incredible.” He’d never seen anything so lifelike. “How much is it going to cost me?”
“What makes you think I’m willing to sell?”
He put the object back in its box then rocked back in his chair. “You wouldn’t have brought it to me if you didn’t want to strike an agreement with Adams Manufacturing.”
Scott nodded. “You got me there. Never crossed my mind to take it anywhere else.”
Ford tried to contain his excitement. Coming to terms with Scott on this project would put them at the top of the heap in the adult toy market. He couldn’t afford to let the opportunity get away from him, but he also knew his friend was shrewd enough to know what he had. He’d come to Adams Manufacturing first out of loyalty and friendship, and if Ford had anything to say about it, he’d still have a loyal friend when the negotiations were done.
“There will be a ton of cost to get it into production. The first hurdle will be figuring out how to mass produce it. Then there’s packaging and marketing.”
“Not telling me anything I don’t know.”
“It’s worth more than I can offer up front. Adams Manufacturing is expanding fast. Lots of cash is coming in, but lots is going out, too. Would you be interested in a percentage agreement?”
“Only if I can personally oversee every step from creating the molds to designing the packaging.”
“From New York?”
“From here. The new guy we hired is doing a great job. So good, I can’t believe we didn’t hire someone years ago.” Scott cleared his throat and fidgeted in his seat. If Ford didn’t know better, he’d mistake his college roommate’s actions for nerves. “I could stay as long as it takes.”
He’d seen the reports from the company he co-owned with the man sitting across from him. The kid they’d hired to take up the slack while Ford revived his family’s business was some kind of genius, it seemed. He had yet to meet the guy, but Scott, and the bottom line, didn’t lie. But he couldn’t imagine why the born-and-bred Yankee would want to spend months in Butte Plains, Texas, when he could easily turn the project over to Ford’s team and just sit back and collect his profits—of which there would be a shit-ton of once this product became available to the general public.
“Running away from something? Is what’s her name getting too close?” He’d lay odds a woman had something to do with his friend’s contract condition.
“You mean Solange?”
“Is she the runway model?”
“Yeah, but this has nothing to do with her. A lot of work went into creating this product, and I want to make sure the consumer gets the best possible version of it.”
“And you don’t trust me to see to it?”
“You know that isn’t true. Look around you. You’ve got your hands full as it is. I have the time and the expertise to spearhead this project. Can you say the same?”
Scott had him there. “I’ve got the expertise, but you’re right about the time. And the plant is running at capacity. As a matter of fact, Becky Jean and I are supposed to go look at some real estate this afternoon. We’re thinking of opening another production facility—among other things. Wanna go with us?”
“You bet. I’ve got to drop my bags off at The Yellow Rose. Pick me up there?”