Chapter Eight

The noon sun pressed like a blow torch, burning Lacey’s skin and leaving a fine sheen of perspiration that probably smeared her makeup and surely curled her hair. But Lacey wasn’t thinking about her hair or her makeup as she and Clay slowly circled the perimeter of her property and the land adjacent to it.

She wasn’t even thinking about the attractive man who walked a few steps in front of her, giving her a perfect view of a T-shirt molded to ripped muscles and jeans that curved over his backside and down the length of long, strong thighs.

The truth was, he was as skilled verbally as he was physically, and his words were painting a picture so vivid and alluring that Lacey felt as though she’d stepped into his imagination.

And his imagination, it seemed, included villas. The idea was so out there, so creative, and so perfect that she almost didn’t want to let it get too comfortable in her head. But she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

“You really think we could do villas?” she asked.

“Why not? Lots of resorts have cabins and separate structures.”

“This isn’t a resort.”

“It ought to be.”

She knew that. Deep in her heart, she knew that was what Barefoot Bay needed. But did she dare think that big?

“I don’t know,” she said quietly.

“Look.” He pointed to the slight rise in the Everham property, where a small house had once stood but now only the foundation and some studs remained. “Right there. Picture individual, private villas with cozy patios and intimate rooms. Sleek African mahogany floors and sheer netting over every bed.”

Cozy. Intimate. Sleek. Sheer.

Bed.

His words were as hot as the sun, and the images he conjured had her dreaming of a lot more than profit potential.

“Sure, you can have a few rooms or suites in the main building,” he continued. “That’s where the lobby and restaurant and offices will be, maybe a spa. But the thing that you can do with this virgin area is give people an oasis. High-end, expensive, one-of-a-kind villas that offer a vacation experience unlike—”

“Unlike a bed-and-breakfast, which is all I was prepared to undertake.”

He smiled down at her. “You’re not letting those two bags of wind at the Super Min scare you off, are you? I’m sure we can find a way around some ancient zoning ord. Especially with villas, if there’s a limit to the number of bedrooms you could have.”

He was right about that. But still. “Clay, I don’t have the money for what you’re talking about. Insurance will barely cover a four-or five-bedroom inn.”

“Building a place like this requires investors. We’ll get money, Lacey.”

“Will we?” she asked. “This is still a job interview, you know. I haven’t agreed to become a ‘we’ yet.”

“You will.” He took her hand, the touch as thrilling as his confidence. “C’mon, let’s go look at the view of the beach from that spot. Let’s see this place the way your guests will.”

So positive. So confident. So attractive. Of course she followed him. Yeah, this was some tough job interview. Who was she kidding? He had the job. Because with every imaginative suggestion, with every “just out of the box enough to be brilliant” idea, with every demonstration of a keen working knowledge of design and building, Lacey was more certain she’d found her man.

His fingers tightened around hers and a thousand butterflies took flight in her stomach. Easy, Lacey.

“You certain you can buy this lot?” he asked.

“This one and the one on the other side. I’ve been in touch with both neighbors and they jumped on my verbal offer. They’re just waiting for final paperwork from their insurance company so they can have access to the house deeds at the bank.” She’d only planned to buy the lots to make sure no one built too close to her B and B, but the idea of villas had just changed everything.

“How many villas do you think?” she asked. “How big? How… much?”

“You’re not asking the right questions, Lacey.” At the top of the slight rise he paused, turned her toward the Gulf. He put his hands on her shoulders, pulling her a little too close to him. She could feel the warmth of his body against her back, the power of his muscles, the length of his legs.

For a few minutes they stood very still, nothing but heat and sun and humidity pressing down.

“Ask yourself this question,” he finally whispered into her ear. “What would someone pay to wake up to this view, in a private villa, with coffee brewing and a tray of homegrown fruits waiting on their patio? Someone—two someones, probably—who would roll out of bed and bask in the sunshine just like we’re doing now?”

Roll out of bed… oh. Did he have to say that?

“They’d stare at that gorgeous blue horizon all day, romp in the waves, roll in the sand, and appreciate this magical place until the sun kissed the water and turned the sky pink gold. Then they’d uncork a bottle of wine and cozy up on a chaise to watch the moon rise and dapple the water.”

She closed her eyes, awash in peace, serenity, even hope. Could she create a place like that? It was so much more than she’d ever imagined. It was terrifying and thrilling and daunting and fabulous.

And way out of her price range and capabilities. “I can’t—”

He squeezed her shoulders. “Hey.”

Laughing softly, she dug for a better way to use the banned word. “I can’t imagine how amazing that would be.”

Another squeeze, this one more affectionate and tender, his thumbs on the nape of her neck, buried in her hair. The move was intimate but completely natural and nothing in heaven or earth could get her to step away from this man or this moment.

“Do you know how rare and valuable this land is, Lacey?” he asked. “You can get loans and investors just based on the value of the property.”

“True, if I want to go deep into debt and make promises I might not be able to keep.”

“You’d keep them. And you wouldn’t be in debt long, not if the resort was like no other around here.”

There was that word again. “Resort.”

“Doesn’t that sound better than bed-and-breakfast?”

“It sounds… big.” And better than a bed-and-breakfast.

“Big and bold and beautiful.” He threaded his fingers deeper into her hair and pulled her body closer. “Go big or go home, I say. And, come on, it would be a crime not to build something unforgettable here. There aren’t many beaches like this left in America.”

“All the more reason to keep it pristine.”

“You sound like Charity.”

“I just want to build something that belongs here. It has to be true to the land.”

“I promise I will,” he said softly, the words pouring over her like the sunshine. “But in the process you can make Mimosa Key the next St. Simons or Tybee or Cumberland.”

She snorted softly. “Patience and Charity would love that.”

“They just need to see you as a source of income and not competition. You could single-handedly turn this island around.”

The thought made her dizzy. Or maybe that was his hands, his chest, his hard body behind hers. His seductive voice and even more seductive ideas.

David.

David? What the hell made her think of David at a time like this?

Maybe the seductive voice and ideas. David had had both, and it had cost her.

“I don’t know,” she said on a sigh. “I just wanted a little inn.”

“And a little in-come,” he said wryly. “Why settle for that?”

“Because… because…” There was no reason. She was just scared. She’d never tried anything so big. What if she failed? “I just can’t—sorry, but I can not—figure out a way to afford that.”

He didn’t say anything for a moment, but stayed very still. Had she disappointed him? For some reason she didn’t want to let him down. She wanted to impress him, to appeal to him, to think as big and wild as he did. But—

“What if your architect was free?”

This time she stilled, and he eased her even closer, taking away all space between them, nestling her head under his chin like it was the most natural place in the world for her to be.

“You would do this job for nothing?” she asked.

“I’d get something out of it.”

Could he mean… “What, if not payment?”

“Credentials.” He whispered the word, making it sound like pure gold to him. Maybe it was. Maybe becoming “official” mattered more than cash.

“So, you want to work for free.” She reached up to close her hands around his so she could uncloak herself from his arms, but he just gripped her tighter.

“I want to work for you,” he said, honey over gravel in his voice. “I won’t take a dime until your resort is profitable. How does that sound?”

Very, very slowly she managed to turn in his arms, brushing his body as she did, painfully aware of every masculine inch, every hard bump, every relentless angle, but forcing herself not to let the amazing sensation cloud her brain. He wasn’t asking for sex; he was asking to work on spec, for the experience.

“It sounds tempting.” Like everything else about him. “But I need you to be perfectly straight with me. Why would you do that?”

“I need this project in order to prove to the Arch Board that I can sit for the exams,” he explained. “So it’s a win-win for everyone.”

“Why couldn’t you just take the exams? How can they stop you?”

He stabbed his fingers in his hair, hesitating as he considered his reply. “I need one significant project under my belt,” he said slowly. “I left my dad’s firm before I got it. After seeing this place and what could be done here, I know that this is the project I not only want to do, but I’d love to do. Enough that I’d do it for free. And that solves some of your money problems.”

Some, not all. “It also makes me wonder if I’m getting a good enough architect.”

“Fair enough. You can fire me at any time and keep all the work I’ve done to date. I need the project and you need a partner who can give life to your vision.”

She gave him a slow smile. “Except sometime in the last ten minutes, it became your vision.”

“It could be our vision, Lacey.”

“It could be,” she agreed. She did want a partner. She did want a vision. She did want something as big and bold as he described, especially if she didn’t have to attack that challenge alone.

“I guess it’s possible.”

“Anything is possible, Strawberry.”

Right then, with this man holding her in the sunshine, giving her strength and ideas and throwing reason and excuses out to sea, she actually believed that.

“C’mon, I want to show you something.” He took her hand again and pulled her back down the hill, toward her property, while she dug for a reason why she shouldn’t follow him.

For once in her life, she couldn’t think of a single excuse.

Clay almost ran down the sandy slope, light from the weight that had just left his shoulders. When the idea to work pro bono hit him, he didn’t even have to think about it. This was the perfect solution to his problem. He needed a significant project to take to the board, exactly like the one he visualized. No one could claim nepotism, no one could suggest that anything untoward had happened, and no one could deny him the chance to get the licenses he needed to move forward.

Lacey Armstrong offered a way out of the Catch-22 he’d been caught up in, and he wanted it. Okay, he hadn’t told her everything, but he’d told her enough. And he would give her the whole ugly story, but only after they’d established a level of trust and a deeper connection. Which felt inevitable.

But now he had to close this deal. And he knew exactly how to do that.

He’d left his tools on the picnic table at the edge of her property, situated in the small bit of shade from a tree too stubborn to give in to the storm. Sitting on top of the table, he took out his pencils and pad and gestured for her to sit across from him on the tabletop while he worked.

“I’m going to draw, Lacey,” he said. “And you can ask me anything you want. This’ll be that job interview you wanted so much.”

“Can I watch you work?” She leaned up to look over his sketch pad.

“No.” He moved the pad away, out of sight. “I’ll show you when we’re done. And then you tell me if I can be your architect or not.”

Leaning back on her hands, she just watched him for a few moments, quiet.

“No questions?” he asked. “I expected an ambush.”

“All right. Why don’t you work for your father anymore?”

He feathered a few pencil strokes, starting where he always did, with the first of the two vanishing points, where the horizontal lines would come together if the structure were long enough.

“My father,” speaking of vanishing points, “is very competitive, and remarkably insecure. We just couldn’t work together anymore, so I left.”

“On good terms?”

“We talk.” When absolutely necessary, which would be almost never. He looked up to see her surprised expression. “You were expecting something else?”

“I guess,” she admitted. “Something like your ideas are too avant-garde and his old-school approach makes you crazy. Something more… cliché.”

What had happened with Dad was a cliché, all right. Right out of a soap-opera script. “He loves my ideas,” he said in response. “Steals them all the time, as a matter of fact. Like your favorites, French Hills and Crystal Springs.”

“Those are your designs?”

“While I was an intern, so no real credit.” But they were his ideas.

He sketched some basic triangles, rounding them off like the buildings he’d been looking at online last night. Almost immediately the bones of the structure started to appear.

“Any siblings?”

“A sister, Darcie, who’s a year younger than I am and still works at the firm.”

“She’s an architect, too?”

“No, a numbers person. Accountant, Web site maintenance, marketing, handles a lot of real estate and contract issues.”

“Are you close to her?”

“Yep.” He paused at the first window. Arched or square? He went for a soft arch and decided she should know he had more family than just Darcie. “I also have a brother, Elliott.”

“Oh, older or younger?”

He smiled. “He just turned one.”

“You have a one-year-old brother?”

“Half-. My dad remarried, and they have a child.” He congratulated himself on keeping the darkness and anger out of his voice. Maybe he was over it after all.

“And your mother?”

“She’s…” Coping. “Funny line of questioning for a job interview, Strawberry.”

Lacey laughed, lifting up her hair to get some air on her neck, looking so sexy and sweet he wanted to put down the sketch pad and kiss her. No, he wanted to sketch her. Just like that, hair up, guard down, eyes bright, smile even brighter.

“I’m just trying to get to know you. You give everyone a nickname?”

“Only if I really like them.”

Color darkened her cheeks. “You don’t even know me.”

“I like what I know of you so far. I know you’re a good mother, and I like that.”

“How would you know what kind of mother I am?”

He turned the pad to deepen the perspective of one wall. “You’da killed me if I’d gotten any closer to your daughter yesterday. How long have you been a single mom?”

She didn’t answer right away, just turned her profile to him. He stopped drawing to study the shape of her nose. Not perfect in a classical sense, but really perfect for her face.

“I’ve never not been a single mom,” she answered, still not turning to him as if the confession embarrassed her. “I didn’t marry Ashley’s father. I’ve raised her alone from day one.”

It did embarrass her; he could tell by the note of defiance in her voice. “You’ve done a great job,” he said simply. “I’m sure it’s been tough.”

“My parents are local, and they’ve helped, but, yeah, it’s a challenge. Especially now because she has an opinion on everything.”

“Did she have an opinion on me?”

She just laughed. “All of us had an opinion on you.”

“You mean your friends that were in the bar last night? What did they tell you to do? Run as fast as you can, Lacey; he’s got an earring and a tattoo?”

“No, that’ll be my mother when she gets back from New York. Of course, that’s not saying much because I’ve pretty much made a second career out of disappointing my mother. But my friends? They totally encouraged me to give you a chance.” She grinned. “Especially Zoe.”

“The blonde?”

“The pretty blonde,” she added.

He started to outline the balustrade, the vision so clear in his head he wasn’t even thinking as his pencil worked. “She’s not my type,” he said.

“What is?”

He glanced up. “Job interview question?”

“Curious woman question.”

“You’re my type, Lacey.”

“Oh, please. You’ve already said you’d work for nothing. You don’t have to throw in gratuitous praise to get the job.”

He stopped drawing and looked directly at her. “You are my type,” he repeated.

“I’m older than you are.”

He shrugged. “Wouldn’t have noticed if you weren’t obsessing over it. Ma’am.”

Laughing, she shook her head. “So you like well-endowed redheads who use the word can’t and have teenage daughters with too many opinions? Why do I find this hard to believe?”

“I like curvy, sexy, gorgeous strawberry blondes who are willing to take risks when something is important enough.” The fact that she was a single mother spoke volumes about what kind of woman she was, whether she realized it or not. “I also happen to think we’re more alike than you realize.”

He finished the balustrade, and considered showing her the drawing, but something was missing.

“Why are you frowning?” she asked.

“I’m not done yet and I can’t decide what I’ve left out.”

She leaned forward. “Can I look yet?”

“No. But…” He wanted to ask her to hold perfectly still, just like she was, with dappled sun turning her hair to spun gold and highlighting each little freckle on her nose.

“All right. I got it. Just keep talking. Tell me more about your mother who you constantly disappoint.”

She laughed. “You picked that up, huh? No. I’ll tell you about my dad, though. He’s the only person in my immediate family I’ve told about the B and B. I wanted to clear the idea of leveling the house with him because his parents built it, as you know, and my dad was born on the kitchen table.”

“Really?” He looked up, surprised. “That’s a cool piece of history.”

“I know, but the kitchen table”—she turned toward the water and closed her eyes—“is gone.”

“Must be awful to lose everything.”

She nodded. “I go through some bad nights, remembering things, and then I say, Hey, we survived. That’s all that matters.”

“But you lost your home.”

“I’m building a new one,” she said with false brightness. “We’ll live in the, uh, resort someone wants me to build.”

He smiled. “I like that.”

“And, honestly, I don’t want you to think we lost some amazing architectural wonder. My grandparents never did anything to improve the house, then they willed it to me, and it was, honestly, on its last…”

“Support beams?”

“Precisely. Or it might have survived that storm. But for the years I lived there, all I could really do was piecemeal repairs. I wanted to do more, promised my Granny Dot I’d do more, but I always had…”

“A reason not to,” he finished for her as he took out a package of colored pencils and began the job of adding blues to the water and browns to the building and just the right colors to capture his vision.

“Bingo.” She pointed at him. “I have a daughter and a small business. Life in general was plenty of reason not to take a huge risk like this. Then the hurricane came and I… faced death.”

“Whoa.” He stopped shading and studied her. “Seriously?”

“Yep. I climbed into a bathtub that is now in a storage facility in Fort Myers, and used a mattress to keep my daughter alive.” Her voice wobbled a little. “After you go through something like that, it seems stupid to worry about antique tables and even stupider not to take some chances.”

The look in her eyes said that chance was on him. And right there, at that angle with the blue-on-blue horizon cutting a perfect plumb line behind her and determination setting her jaw at a defiant angle, Lacey Armstrong was completely lovely, strong, and sexy.

He slid his pencil across the page, a power moving his fingers like he had no control. But he had plenty of control, and he used it.

“You’re drawing so fast.”

“I’m inspired by you.” Low in his belly, a slow burn started. Natural, being this close to a woman he found attractive, but surprising, too. Intimate. Hungry. Hot. “In fact, when I’m finished, we should go skinny-dipping.”

Her jaw dropped in pure shock, then she let out a pretty laugh. “You do? Well, I don’t think that’s part of the job interview. Unless…” Her voice trailed off, but he didn’t take his eyes off the page. The drawing was going too perfectly.

“Unless what, Lacey?”

“Unless you think you’re applying for a completely different job.”

“One for the day, one for the night.” He smiled but kept his head down, his pencil flying. Couldn’t stop now, not even to flirt with her.

“That would be…”

He waited for her to finish. Crazy. Impossible. Unthinkable. What would it be? When she didn’t say anything else, he tore his gaze from the work and met hers.

“That would be what, Lacey?”

“Something new for me.”

“How’s that? No men in your life, ever?”

“Not many, not recently. I just don’t have the time or interest.” She didn’t sound convincing.

“Ashley’s father?”

“I haven’t seen him since she was a baby, and he’s not in the picture.”

“Good, then maybe I could talk you into, you know, my special Architect with Benefits program.”

She laughed. “Pro bono and benefits? I’m starting to wonder if I won the lottery.”

“You like the idea?” Because he did. A lot.

“Maybe.” She brushed a hair off her face; the golden red curl caught in her fingers like her voice caught in her throat. “I’m not going to lie and act like…”

“Like you haven’t thought about it.”

For a long, heavy moment, neither spoke. Then she whispered, “I’ve thought about it.”

“Me, too,” he said, setting down the pencil and slowly turning the pad toward her. “See? I’m thinking about it right now.”

The look on her face was priceless and every bit as beautiful as he’d drawn her.