JAY STRAIGHTENED from behind the pillar where he’d been keeping an eye on the front desk and stealthily trailed a young, clean-cut businessman to the elevator.
The man looked a little like Michael J. Fox: short, compact and so boyishly cute he probably still got his cheeks pinched. He had an air of innocence about him that had most likely gotten him out of trouble his whole life long, but it didn’t fool Jay.
He’d seen the way the boyish businessman had smiled and flirted with Tara. He’d seen it, and he had to stop it.
Not because he wanted to smile and flirt with her himself, of course, but to fulfill his promise to Cliff Patterson.
Jay hovered behind the Boyish One, waiting for the elevator car to descend while he thought about how to defuse this latest threat to Tara’s single status.
As though sensing someone was behind him, the man turned his head without moving his body. For an instant, before his shoulders shifted with the movement, he resembled Linda Blair in The Exorcist. His sky-blue eyes were at the level of Jay’s neck. Slowly, they rose and focused on Jay’s face.
Jay knew he should scowl. His mission was to make sure that the guy considered Tara off-limits, but he was having a hard time with intimidation tactics.
Four days had gone by since George Merrimack begged Jay to spare his life, and he could still picture the smaller man hunched in the chair. None of the other eight or nine men he’d warned off since then had reacted quite so severely, but how was he supposed to glower when that image still haunted him?
He smiled. Then, to make sure the other man didn’t feel threatened, winked.
The man’s forehead creased in obvious agitation, and he turned around, his shoulders stiffening. He picked up his bag as the elevator car arrived but walked swiftly in another direction.
So much for expecting his fellow man to appreciate a friendly gesture.
Jay braced his hand against one of the open doors of the elevator and called, “Hey, buddy, want to ride up with me?”
The boyish businessman kept his eyes straight ahead and walked faster. Shrugging, Jay let the elevator doors shut and followed, barely turning the corner of the hall in time to see the other man yank open the door to the stairwell.
By the time Jay reached the steps, the businessman was half a flight ahead of him. Jay picked up his pace, the tools on his belt jostling against each other and producing a metallic clanging.
The businessman went faster. Jay took the steps two at a time while he wondered at the man’s curious behavior. He was acting as though the hounds of hell were chasing him when all Jay wanted to do was talk.
The Boyish One was undoubtedly the nervous type, which meant he might not be receptive to a frontal assault. Jay thought it best to use a little small talk before he let it be known that he and Tara were an item.
The man was fumbling with his key card at the door to his room when Jay caught up to him.
“So do you come here on business often?” Jay asked. The man shot him a pinched look before returning his attention to his key card. Jay frowned. Could he be wondering how Jay knew he was in town on business? “A guy like you in a good-looking suit like that, you’ve got to be here on business, right?”
The green light that was supposed to flash when the key card was inserted correctly wasn’t shining, prompting the man to press the card deeper and harder into the slot. Jay immediately identified the problem. He reached across the man and removed the card from his fingers.
“Here, let me. You’re putting it in the slot upside down.”
His arm brushed the sleeve of the man’s suit jacket. The man sprang away as though he’d touched an inferno. Jay inserted the card properly, and the green light came on, allowing him to push open the door.
He held it open wide and turned to the man in triumph, expecting a thank-you.
The boyish businessman squared his shoulders. Jay saw his chest expand as he drew in a slow, deep breath. “I don’t know how you got the wrong impression, but I’m not interested.”
Jay absently rubbed his chin. “You’re not? You sure seemed interested.”
“Listen, no offense, but I don’t lean that way.”
“You don’t?” Jay couldn’t believe he had read the signals wrong. He could have sworn the man was salivating while he talked to Tara. Hadn’t the guy noticed the way that green dress hugged her figure or how her skin looked like it would be sleek to the touch? What red-blooded man wouldn’t salivate?
“So I’m sure you’ll understand when I don’t invite you in. Not that I’m not flattered by the attention, but I prefer women.”
Women? What was he talking about? Jay thought over the last ten minutes, beginning with the wink at the elevator, and grimaced. Oh, no. It looked like he should have gone against his instincts and scowled.
“It’s you who doesn’t understand.” Jay took a step forward. The Boyish One took a step backward. “You know the hotel manager you were talking to downstairs?”
The man nodded, but he still looked nervous, as though he expected Jay to pounce. Oh, brother.
“She and I have a thing going.”
The man’s blue eyes got big and wide. With a sudden movement, he darted around Jay, nearly executing a back bend in his determination not to touch him. When he was in front of the door, he snatched the key card out of Jay’s fingers and backed inside the room.
“Whatever kind of sick proposal you’re making, the answer’s no. Meénages à trois aren’t my bag. Especially when one of the trois is a man.”
Before Jay could protest, the door slammed shut in his face. He stared at it in shock, debating whether he should knock and explain. But what if the guy was the competitive type? What if explaining that Tara wasn’t into threesomes sent him chasing after her for a twosome?
The sigh Jay released was heavy with resignation. He figured any trick that kept men away from Tara had to be considered a success.
Jay looked up and down the hallway, thinking this wasn’t a strategy he cared to repeat. Maybe intimidation tactics were the way to go, after all.
TARA COULDN’T believe she’d let the time get away from her. She should have done her payroll, ordered new towels for the pool area and helped Sadie Mae figure out how to scrub crayon marks off her son’s bedroom wall, but first things were first.
Alley needed her, and she was late.
She hurried down the hall to her suite, almost groaning aloud when she spotted Fred Cromwell coming the opposite way.
She’d mentally dubbed him the Extremely Happy Guest until she’d realized his normal expression was more dour than the Grinch’s before he stole Christmas.
That’s when she’d reached the conclusion she’d mistaken extreme flirtatiousness for extreme happiness. Fred Cromwell, it seemed, was only merry around her.
She pasted on a smile and tried to think of a gracious way to rebuff him without offending should he ask her out.
“Hi, Fred,” she said, bracing for his megawatt smile.
His Grinchlike expression didn’t change. Neither did he slow his pace. As he passed, she thought she heard him mutter, “Keep away. Keep far away.”
Tara’s relief was tempered with confusion. Dating from the time George Merrimack had made an all-out dash from the lobby to the street, the hotel guests had been treating her oddly. No, that wasn’t quite right. The male hotel guests had been treating her oddly.
They were friendly enough when she first made their acquaintance but backed off soon afterward. Just last night, the silver-haired businessman who had suggested she join him for after-dinner drinks in his room had suddenly announced he was going on the wagon.
She hadn’t intended to take him up on the invitation, but she could smell whiskey on his breath as he’d announced his sobriety.
She frowned. She prided herself on treating the guests with courtesy and friendliness. Was she going about it the wrong way?
She was so lost in thought she didn’t notice that Jay was in the hall until she reached her room, which was quite a feat because usually she couldn’t help noticing him. Neither, probably, could all the women she noticed noticing him.
If she had the power to fashion a man, she couldn’t come up with a better prototype than Jay. He had so much lean muscle molded over his six-foot-plus frame that she felt the need for an oxygen machine every time she looked at him. All that male beauty simply made it hard to breathe.
If it hadn’t been for the scar crisscrossing his eyebrow, his face might have been too perfect. She’d read somewhere that humans considered symmetrical faces most appealing, and his was in perfect harmony from his high forehead to his cream-soda eyes to his square chin.
But the most attractive thing about Jay Overman was that he didn’t seem to know he was handsome.
She’d been watching him for days, admiring his easy charm and the way the other hotel employees gravitated toward him. He paid as much attention to the elderly woman who ran the breakfast room as he did the pretty teenager who cleaned the rooms. He didn’t seem to notice the way female guests flirted with him, and he chatted with the young boys who gravitated toward him.
He was easily the most likable person she’d ever met, except George Merrimack certainly didn’t seem to like him. Come to think of it, she’d seldom seen an adult male guest get within ten feet of him.
“Hey, Tara.” Jay gave her the grin that lit up his face and made her feel like she was bathed in light. “Where’s the fire?”
“Fire?” Her hotel radar detector went on alert. “There’s a fire?”
He laughed. “Relax, Miss Worrywart. Nothing’s burning. I was just wondering why you’re in such a hurry.”
“I’m not in a hurry,” she denied, a few seconds before a meow sounded behind her door. She closed her eyes. Oh, no. Alley must have heard her voice.
“What was that?” Jay asked.
“Nothing.”
Alley emitted another meow.
“I heard a noise,” Jay said.
Tiny claws scratched at the door in a good imitation of a claw-brandishing killer in a teen horror flick. To cover the sound of the scratching, Tara raised her voice. “I didn’t hear anything.”
Jay tipped his head and narrowed his cream-soda eyes. “You’ve got a cat in there.”
“I do not.” Tara rose to her full height and lifted her chin imperiously. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m in a hurry.”
“You said you weren’t in a hurry.”
She clamped her lips shut, thinking furiously. She wanted to confide in Jay about Alley, but they hadn’t progressed to the point where they shared confidences. She’d come across him talking on the cell phone he kept clipped to his tool belt numerous times in the past few days, and she was still no closer to finding out what droppage was. Or who Sherry was.
Neither had she solved the mystery of how he’d managed to obtain a college degree while helping out his auntie Em. She’d quizzed her father about it, but it seemed Jay was as much a mystery to him as he was to Tara.
“This is embarrassing, but I think I might have left my stove on.” She touched her nose, self-consciously afraid it might be growing.
“So check.” Jay was leaning against the wall, smiling at her, obviously with no intention of going anywhere.
She edged the door open, intending to quickly slip through the narrow opening, but Alley rushed out and rubbed against her legs.
“I knew it,” Jay said. “I knew you had a cat in there.”
“Shh.” Tara picked up Alley with one hand while she reached out and yanked Jay inside her suite with the other. She shut the door and leaned against it.
He cocked an eyebrow. “Let me guess. The stove’s off, but the cat’s out of the bag.”
Tara cradled Alley protectively, afraid Jay might comment on her appearance. She was scrawny and of an indiscriminate breed with healed claw marks cutting through her tawny fur as though she were a veteran street fighter. She wasn’t beautiful, but Tara loved her anyway.
Instead of commenting, Jay put out his hand toward the cat as though he meant to stroke her.
“Don’t,” she warned. “Alley doesn’t like strangers. She…”
Her voice trailed off as Alley leaned into Jay’s hand, purring as he rubbed behind her neck. “That’s funny. I fed her for a week before she let me touch her.”
Jay shrugged. “What can I say? Cats like me. My sister Sherry’s cat always comes to me, too.”
Relief poured over her like a waterfall, so heavily that she realized she’d been obsessing about Sherry’s identity. But Sherry wasn’t his girlfriend. She was his sister. Jay continued stroking the cat, making Tara wonder what it would feel like if his broad hand stroked her. Merely watching him handle the cat was enough to make her skin grow hot.
“You like this, don’t you?” he asked, and it took her a moment to realize he was talking to Alley. When he focused on Tara, the strong planes of his face had gentled and a half smile curved his lips. “Where’d you find her?”
Tara swallowed, telling herself his tender expression was for her cat, not her. “Out back behind the hotel,” she said. “She was so skinny I could see her ribs. It about broke my heart, so I started putting cat food out for her. Anybody could see she needed a home.”
Jay took his hand away and focused on Tara as her words registered upon him. “That sounds like you’re going to keep her.”
Tara gathered the cat closer to her chest and buried her lips in the animal’s fur as though Alley were the Ms. Universe of the cat world. Lucky cat.
“Of course I’m going to keep her. Take a good look at her. Alley’s an alley cat. Who else would take her?”
“But doesn’t this hotel have a no-pets policy?”
She nodded. “I could lose my job if the wrong person found out about her, but I refuse to take her to the pound. You know as well as I do what happens to the cats people don’t adopt.”
Something inside him softened at her declaration and the fierce way she was holding the skinny cat, as though nothing was going to take Alley away from her.
She was the same way with Sadie Mae, who was the human embodiment of a stray cat. The clerk was so muddled Jay couldn’t imagine anybody else hiring her, but Tara kept her on and even defended her.
Tara, it seemed, had a soft spot for strays. And, despite her husband-hunting tendencies, Jay was rapidly developing a soft spot for Tara.
“I won’t tell anybody,” he said. “I promise.”
Their eyes met and held, the moment lengthening. She had bedroom eyes, he thought. The dark, fathomless kind that hinted at great passion. The kind that belonged to a woman who would fight for the underdog, whether it was a stray cat or a group of girls banned from the locker room bathroom. He moved forward, compelled by her gaze, wondering if he were crazy.
“Cuckoo.”
Semantics, semantics. Cuckoo. Crazy. What was the difference? Tara started, and the cat leaped out of her arms, causing Jay to jerk backward and wonder if Tara and Alley had heard that little voice in his head, too.
“Cuckoo.”
This time, Jay realized it wasn’t an internal warning voice but Tara’s cuckoo clock chiming the hour. He spotted the clock just in time to see a comical caricature of a rooster darting inside.
“I, um, should get Alley some food,” she said. Her face was slightly flushed, contributing greatly to the possibility that she’d wanted him to kiss her.
He raked a hand through his hair. Darn it. He knew better than to want to kiss her in return. Even if he hadn’t been busy keeping men away from her to fulfill his promise to Cliff, he knew enough to steer clear of her.
She wanted to get married, for Pete’s sake. So desperately that she’d turned her inn into the husband hotel.
Even as he had the thought, Jay’s mind wanted to dismiss it. Tara was a competent professional who could take care of herself, just as her father had claimed. He was having an increasingly hard time believing she had matrimony on her mind.
While Tara filled the cat’s dish and poured water into her bowl, he examined his surroundings.
He’d been in a number of rooms in the hotel, but hers was nothing like the rest. Colorful curtains graced the windows, and braided throw rugs spruced up the carpeting. Framed needlepoint sayings, similar to the ones he’d seen downstairs, dotted her walls.
Her tiny kitchen was a testament to domesticity. Artfully arranged pot holders and dish towels lent it a sunny touch of yellow. Copper pots hung from hooks above the stove. And, of course, there was the cuckoo clock. He could imagine her bustling about a tastefully decorated home of her own in domestic bliss. In domestic married bliss.
Even her refrigerator looked like it belonged to a married person. She’d attached colorful, childish drawings to it with small magnets. He squinted, taking a closer look, because two of the magnets had nothing whatsoever to do with domesticity.
“These are Bare Bob magnets, aren’t they?” He grinned at the likenesses of the naked figurine she kept in her office.
“Oh, my gosh.” She covered her face with her hands, but he could still see the skin peeking through her fingers. It was a telltale red. “I knew I should have thrown them out. I shouldn’t have listened to Sadie Mae when she pointed out no one ever comes up here.”
“Hey, don’t be embarrassed,” he said, absurdly glad her hunt for a husband hadn’t progressed so far that she was inviting men to her room.
He came across the room to remove her hands from her face. The minute he touched her, he knew it was a mistake. She was warm and soft, and a subtle, enticing scent clung to her skin. Her face was flushed, making her look even more becoming, but he wanted to put her at ease. “I like nudity.”
It was the wrong thing to say. Immediately, his mind stripped her of her clingy green dress and he imagined her as naked as the magnets on her refrigerator. She stared at him, her mouth slightly parted, as though she knew what kind of erotic pictures were moving sinuously through his mind. He was still holding her lightly by the wrists and he felt her pulse rate accelerate. His heart thumped in response.
Remember Cliff, the sane part of his brain screamed. Remember the promise. Remember this is a woman who wants nothing more than to be married. He cleared his throat.
“What I meant to say is that there’s nothing wrong with nudity,” he clarified. “I didn’t mean I want to see you naked.”
“You don’t?” Her brows drew together and she looked…insulted.
“No, no. I didn’t mean that,” he denied quickly, then blurted the truth. “I do want to see you naked.”
The look she gave him was so skeptical he realized she thought he reversed his position because he’d hurt her feelings. He let go of her wrists and put his hands on her shoulders, leaning closer as he made his point.
“I’m dying to see you naked. When I pulled you out of the hot tub, I had to chomp down on my tongue so I wouldn’t ask if I could help strip you out of your wet clothes.”
Her eyes widened, her mouth dropped open, and he realized he’d gone too far. Way too far. Even though he wasn’t really a maintenance man, for the time being she was his boss. And it wasn’t kosher to let your boss in on the fact that you wanted to see her naked.
Next thing he knew he’d be telling her all the things he wanted to do to her while she was naked. She was looking at him with such heat in her gaze it nearly scorched his eyeballs.
His cell phone rang. Darn that Sherry. She was always calling at the most inappropriate times. A few hours ago, she’d phoned while he was running water to test the effectiveness of one of the four new faucets he’d installed on the third floor. As usual, her problem couldn’t wait. Either he explained the intricacies of the Impeccabra’s design to a major retailer pronto or they could forget about that particular retail market.
Jay had to rush out to his car, dig up the paperwork and spend fifteen minutes on the phone convincing the retailer of the bra’s viability.
“I better answer this,” Jay said, reluctantly drawing away from her. He unclipped his phone, flipped it open and got ready to listen to Sherry’s latest problem.
Instead, Cliff Patterson’s booming voice came over the line.
“How goes it, my son? Any developments to report?”
I’m inside your daughter’s suite where I just got finished telling her I wanted to see her naked.
“No, no, nothing.” Jay walked a few paces from Tara and cupped his hand over the phone so her father’s voice wouldn’t carry. “Everything’s going according to plan.”
“No snags?”
“Not since you told her about my auntie Em,” Jay whispered, but he and Cliff had already had that conversation. “Listen, now’s not a good time to talk.”
Cliff lowered his voice. “She’s there, isn’t she?”
“Affirmative.” Jay closed his eyes. Affirmative? Had he actually said affirmative?
“I’ll hang up then,” Cliff said. When he did, Jay had the insane urge to say, “Over and out.”
“Was that my father?” Tara asked as he reclipped the phone.
Jay’s impulse was to nod, but he squelched it because he doubted he could explain why Cliff was phoning him. Somehow, he didn’t think she’d buy a maintenance emergency. “No. Not your father. No, sirree.”
“But I could have sworn—”
“Can’t talk now. Gotta go,” he interrupted. “I’ve been so busy replacing bathroom faucets on the third floor I haven’t gotten around to fixing that broken lock on the door by the parking lot.”
That stopped whatever she’d been about to say. “I didn’t know we had replacement faucets.”
“Yep. I found them in the supply room. The old faucets are so worn it made more sense to replace them than fix them. I did four today.”
“Great,” Tara said, smiling at him.
The smile was so luminous that an answering one automatically crossed his face. “I need to get to that lock before quitting time. So I’ll be on my way.”
A moment passed. Then two. The only sounds in the room were the ticking of the cuckoo clock and Alley’s purrs as she rubbed against his leg.
“Jay?” Tara’s soft voice broke into the silence. She had a great voice. Low and melodious. Sexy.
“Yeah?”
“You’re still here.”
She was right. He was still there, about a dozen feet from where he wanted to be, which was in her bed. With her. Oh, brother.
“I’m going,” he said.
She stepped aside so he could move around her, but the space was so narrow that his body brushed against hers. Desire, hot and instant, flared through him.
He tamped it down and walked out the door.
“Stupid, stupid, stupid,” he muttered as he walked down the hall, away from the temptation she presented.
But the self-recriminations didn’t help. He still wanted to see her naked.