PAUL SANDERS tried keeping his eyes straight ahead. Tried concentrating on his stride, on the punishing pull of sand at his feet, on the good clean high of physical exercise. Tried doing anything but looking back over at the Richardses’ house. He’d gone jogging on this beach on purpose, just to scope out the elegant lakeside bungalow. Just to get a feel for his target.
Derek Richards, self-made multimillionaire, who’d developed the world’s first pitless avocado, the world’s first banana that stayed at peak ripeness for a week without turning brown, and now, rumor had it, an easy peel seedless tomato that ripened on the vine and didn’t rot after picking. Rumor also had it that he’d had a falling-out with Stauderman, Shifrin and Luz. That he’d be looking for a new advertising agency.
Paul Sanders, president and CEO of The Word, Inc., wanted that account. He wanted it bad. The Word, Inc. and Paul himself, had made a promising beginning with the successful ad campaign for Attitude! clothes. Now, poised for the real big time, he was ready to dive in, leave his childhood of poverty far behind him.
He’d done his homework carefully, researched whatever information was out there on Derek Richards’s rapid rise from farmer and botanist to celebrated pioneer in food engineering, darling of chain supermarkets and top chefs alike. Since Paul recently bought a summer house only a few hundred yards away, the chance to see the man in his element while remaining incognito had been all too tempting.
Instead, Paul had rushed unnecessarily to aid a woman who turned out to be Derek’s daughter—Tracy, wasn’t it?—locked eyes with her and fallen prey to the hottest surge of electric desire he could remember in his thirty-one years—not that he’d had too many hot electric surges of desire for the first twelve or so. This unexpected meeting wasn’t part of his plan.
The Richardses’ house came up slowly on his right. Damn. He could see her out on the deck, even in peripheral vision, not that he needed to see her to remember what she looked like. Dark hair curling around fair skin. Lips of a tempting rose color and sexy shape. Loose dress with a blue flowery pattern that clung to her slender figure when the warm breeze blew. A combination of sensuality and innocence, strength and vulnerability that intrigued him beyond the obvious rush of lust. Figured he’d meet someone like that looking like the disadvantaged slob he used to be.
Paul frowned and quelled the irrational wistfulness. Of course it didn’t matter. If he—when he got the account, he could meet her as who he had become—successful, well-dressed, a man of means, someone who could really impress her. She’d never connect him with the bum who’d been worried about sand in her contacts.
Right now he just had to jog by and resist the urge to turn and look at her again.
He drew even with the house. Was he imagining it or had all the women on the deck lined up to stare at him as he went by?
“Excuse me.”
He kept going, ignored the barely audible call. What the hell could she want from him? From the corner of his eye he saw the women scooting down the long deck, following his progress. This was nuts.
“Excuse me.” Louder this time. He couldn’t pretend he hadn’t heard.
Against his better instinct, he stopped. “Yes?”
Four women in summery cocktail dresses, cool and elegant in spite of the heat. A tall, striking brunette, a sweet-faced blonde, a short, frizzy-haired eccentric-looking woman…and her. His eyes found hers instinctively; he felt the same jolt, the same electric pull.
Until he noticed her neighbor, the tall brunette, smirking and jabbing her with her elbow. He put his hands on his hips, overwhelmingly conscious of his sweaty, disheveled appearance.
“Hi.” She pushed a curl behind her ear and flashed a warning glance at her neighbor. “I’m…Tracy.”
He nodded, wary as all hell, and pitched his voice into a gruff gravelly bass, as if he were recovering from laryngitis. “Hi, Tracy.”
A gust of hot wind off the lake hit his back and ruffled the folds of her skirt. The sweet blonde blushed, ducked her head and examined her drink; the frizzy-haired one regarded him frankly over the tops of her bright purple glasses, mouth curved in a know-it-all smile.
Tracy received another jab to the ribs from the tall brunette who was still smirking into her martini glass. He got the distinct impression they were very amused by something. Like him. Four rich girls who couldn’t resist playing with the forbidden bad boy. He itched for them to see him in the office, in action, totally on their level. Right now he felt the way he did when Deke Zuzman and his gang of preppies cornered him in the school parking lot at Brookline High and made fun of the clothes his mom bought from a charity store in Roxbury.
“I…was wondering.” Tracy started a smile, then bit her lip as if she were trying to suppress it. “If…If…If—”
The tall brunette emitted a barely concealed snort of laughter and turned away. Ms. Frizzy had to cough suddenly; the blonde shot them both a dirty look and jerked her head toward the door. The three of them started backing quietly into the house.
“If what?”
“—if you wanted to come. I mean come up and…join me…our…the party.”
The female trio ducked into the house, barely suppressing their laughter. Tracy let out a nervous giggle and covered her mouth with her hand, watching him over the top of her fingers.
His attraction dissipated; a slow boil began instead. What fun. Invite the sweaty lowlife hunk of beef up to your swanky party. Have him pass the hors d’oeuvres. Maybe ask him to strip so the guests can get a really good look at the merchandise. Tracy Richards ought to know better. She’d grown up on a farm with barely enough to go around.
Money really changed people. Thank God it hadn’t changed him.
“I don’t think so, thanks.” He turned to walk away when a glimpse of her eyes stopped him. Disappointment. Embarrassment. Not the eyes of a spoiled girl who didn’t get what she wanted and was about to scream to Daddy for it.
She opened her mouth to say something when the door to the deck swooshed open and a man came out, mid-thirties, thinning hair, expensive suit.
“Hey, Tracy, why aren’t you inside? The party’s in full swing.” The man stood possessively close to her and glanced down at Paul. “Hey, how are you. Tracy, come on back in. It’s hot out here.”
He took her arm and tried to turn her. Paul took an instinctive step forward, not at all liking the way the guy touched her, then stepped back. This was none of his business. Maybe Little Miss Megabucks loved being manhandled.
Tracy shook loose and clutched the deck railing, distaste written all over her face. “I’m fine, Jake.”
“Okay. We’ll bring the party out here, then.” Jake glanced again at Paul. “You know this guy, Tracy?”
He asked as if he was curious about something that had washed up on the beach after a sewer overflow day. Paul clenched the hands on his hips, wishing he could ram his balance sheet down Yuppie Boy’s throat.
“Oh.” Jake smiled in obvious relief. “I thought he might be one of your…you know…friends.”
His tone was smarmy, insinuating. Paul gritted his teeth, surprised at a twinge of disappointment. So he’d pegged her correctly. She collected guys from the wrong side of the tracks for recreational purposes. Friends, Jake called them. How delicate. But wealthy women were into that. The whole affair-with-the-tennis-pro dynamic.
“Tracy?” The screen door to the deck whooshed open again. “Why are you out here in this heat, honey? The guests are asking about you.”
Paul came to sudden attention. There he was. Balding, mustachioed, slightly overweight, just like his pictures. Derek Richards. The man who could make all of Paul’s dreams come true if Paul took the right steps to hook him. But not here, not dressed like this, wanting to strangle and ravish his daughter at the same time.
Mr. Richards caught sight of him and squinted over the railing into the dimming evening light. “Who’s this?”
“Dad, this is…” Tracy turned to Paul, eyebrows raised in a question.
“I’m…Dan.” He blurted the first name that came into his head.
“Dan.” She nodded, not taking her eyes from his.
He returned her gaze, struck again by the way it got inside him and scrambled him up, made him want to hang around when every shred of common sense told him to get the hell away from her, and more to the point, away from her father before “Dan” made any kind of impression Mr. Richards could recall when Paul began vying for his account.
“Dan glad to meet you.” Jake chuckled heartily. “Get it?”
“No.” Paul and Tracy spoke the word together.
“As in, ‘damn glad to meet you’…Dan…damn.” Silence reigned on the deck. “Okay. Dan, my man, why don’t you come up and join us, then?”
Jake’s voice was overly hearty, the invitation too tremendously sincere, the challenge cold and obvious. Mr. Richards gave Jake a surprised look that changed into a thoughtful smile when Jake threw him a wink. Tracy just stared at Paul like he was the biggest present under the tree and if she had anything to say about it, her name would be written all over the tag.
Paul’s body went rigid; his tough kid attitude surged to life as if he’d been transported back in time. So the Richards et al wanted a lowlife sloppy hunk to amuse them for the evening? He could do that. He could do that so well they wouldn’t have a clue who he really was. And one of these days he’d have them eating out of a feedbag he’d have the pleasure of strapping on personally.
“Thanks.” He let a slow, make-my-day grin spread over his face. “I’d love to join you.”
TRACY CLUTCHED her second beer and watched through narrowed eyes from across the room as Dan reduced Missy and Allegra to near tears and sympathetic clucks with another hard-luck tale. This Manhunters thing wasn’t going quite the way she envisioned it. He was supposed to be as enticing a person as he was a physical specimen. He should have the power to attract her mind as well as her body. But he couldn’t seem to get over the fact that he didn’t have as much money as the other people in the room.
Who the hell cared but him? And maybe Jake. Tracy and her family had done without for decades. The family had been close and united—the Richards vs. Old Man Poverty. They’d had enough, barely, and they’d had their dream of making it big with the produce her dad worked so hard to develop. Now, with the battle won, her mom gone, her dad charging ahead full speed to fill the emptiness, Tracy had lost that first real flush of enjoyment building 21st Century Produce into a success. How much more success did you need when you’d already achieved it? But obviously for this Dan guy, money was the root of all envy.
“Had your chat with poor boy yet?” Cynthia sidled up next to Tracy. “Anything going to happen between you?”
“I doubt it.” Tracy jerked her head toward Dan, who didn’t seem to want to take off his sunglasses, even indoors. He was putting his hand to his chest, in the middle of some poignant story or other. Allegra gasped; Missy laid a comforting hand on his arm. Her parents’ friend Mrs. Teamon, sporting a Caroline Ferrera dress and a seductive aura, joined the group and pointedly introduced herself to him.
“What do you think?”
“Hmph.” Cynthia slugged back a sip of her third martini, characteristically steady as stone in spite of her consumption. Only the southern drawl gave her away. “I think there’s something cheesy in the State of Wisconsin.”
“That’s what I thought, too.” Tracy turned toward her friend, who’d grown up a have-not in rural North Carolina. “He’s trying awfully hard not to fit in. What did he tell you?”
“Oh, the usual. Lead paint chips and rusty water and food stamps and teenage gangs and gee, wow, isn’t this a nice home, gee, wow, I’d like to live in a nice place like this someday, et cetera…et cetera.” She waved her hand off to one side. “Made me wish I’d brought a violin.”
Tracy gave a wry grin. “Too bad it isn’t snowing. We could have him stand outside and sell matches.”
The two women turned back to watch Dan in action. He was shaking his head gravely, making Allegra bite her lip. A tear rolled down Missy’s cheek. Mrs. Teamon blinked away moisture and called over two of her gold, silk and diamond-accessoried friends.
Tracy tipped her head close to Cynthia. “Think he’s full of it?”
“Stuffed to the brim.” Cynthia took a swallow of martini and smacked her lips. “Chip on his shoulder the size of Mt. Saint Helens before the explosion.”
“Bummer.” Tracy sighed. “He’s so gorgeous. And he has this amazing intensity about him. Like he gets up and solves world crises before breakfast.”
“Bet he’s dynamite in the sack, too.” Cynthia smacked her lips again, but without drinking this time. “Why don’t you get him alone and find out what his real deal is?”
Another extremely female woman joined the circle around Dan. Tracy gave a wistful shrug that she didn’t know was going to be wistful until she shrugged it. Despite his strange behavior, he was still the most attractive man she’d met in a long time, if ever. “Looks like I’m last in line.”
“Details, details. Let the expert handle it. I know how you can get him alone, no problem.”
“Oh?” Tracy turned and folded her arms across her chest, trying not to show her ridiculous rush of eagerness. “One of your nice subtle methods, Cynthia? March up to him and say, ‘hey, buddy, wanna get cozy?”’
Cynthia fixed her with a disdainful stare. “Ha. Ha. Ha. Much better than that. Go outside on the deck.”
“And…?”
“And stand there. Let the breeze blow your dress around, lift your head dreamily toward the stars, shake your hair sensually in the moonlight and look lonely and available. If he’s interested, he’ll come out.”
“Ha! More likely Jake will come out and breathe scotch fumes down my neck.”
“I’ll take care of Jake.” Cynthia tossed back the rest of her martini and patted her hair. “He won’t know what hit him. Oh, and by the way, when you walk past Dan’s harem if you can make ‘by-accident’ eye contact, so much the better.”
Tracy laughed. “Cynthia, you are a master.”
“Uh-huh.” Cynthia looked around and gave Tracy a gentle shove toward the door. “Get going, incoming puppy love. Jake! Over here, sugar! Can you help me? I really need some good male advice….”
Tracy moved away, past a few annoyed husbands making snide remarks about the sloppy intruder, and pulled even with the gaggle of females cooing over Dan’s latest tale of woe. She slowed her steps, feeling completely ridiculous. He had about ten dozen adoring women all over him, why the hell would he glance over at her?
He did. Raised his head in the middle of a sentence and caught her eye, as if he knew she’d be there, as if he’d been keeping track of where she was in the room. She jerked her eyes away and walked out into the humid air of the deck, closing the door carefully behind her, wondering who had taken away her ability to breathe naturally, who had poured warmth all through her body.
She clutched the railing and forced her lungs to operate. This attraction was so real, so powerful, she could suddenly understand why people got involved with someone totally wrong for them, a practice she’d always found bewildering. Right now she wanted to throw Dan in the sand and ride him like a cowgirl. She couldn’t recall ever feeling this…bestial about wanting a man. Potent stuff. Dangerous. Exciting.
The door to the deck slid open behind her. Tracy’s body became a stiff block of receptive nerve endings. She had to force herself to relax, to lift her head dreamily toward the stars, which were unfortunately hidden by clouds. She tried to shake her hair sensually in the barely visible white glow of moonlight—except her hair was too short to do more than wiggle—and attempted to look lonely and available, which was hardest since she was ready to scream wanting to turn around and see if it was him.
“Hi.”
Tracy closed her eyes and let his deep raspy voice run through her. Oh God. It was him. He leaned on the railing next to her, his presence so powerful she nearly wanted to run away from it.
Nearly. “Enjoying the party?”
“You have nice friends.”
“There are a few men in there, too, would you believe.” She winced. What a stupid jealous-sounding thing to say.
He chuckled. “You coulda fooled me.”
The deck door slid open a few inches; whoever was opening it paused to talk to another guest, his hand still on the door, on his way out. Oh, no. Was it Jake? Had Cynthia not managed to delay him? Had someone—
“Want to take a walk?”
Tracy’s head snapped toward Dan. A walk? In the dark? On a near-empty beach with the most attractive man she’d ever encountered? Gee, she’d have to think about that one for at least— “Okay.”
She led the way down to the beach, telling herself not to get carried away. Reminding herself that something wasn’t quite right about him. Maybe as Cynthia said, he had a chip on his shoulder about wealthy people. Or maybe he was a con man who preyed on rich, lonely women by gaining their sympathy. Tracy wrinkled her nose. Rich lonely women always sounded like such a pathetic way to be female, except that it happened to describe her to a tee.
Of course he could also be some psycho Door County Strangler type, but it wasn’t likely. If only he’d take off the dark glasses she might be able to sense more about who he was.
“Nice night.”
“Mm-hmm.” But then walking on the beach alone with him could make a blizzard a nice night. “I’m glad you decided to come to the party. It was impulsive of me to invite you. I don’t usually pounce on strangers.”
“Oh?” He sounded surprised, as if he thought she was a professional stranger pouncer. “Why me?”
Tracy’s eyes shot open and froze that way. Uh. How did one answer politely that the sight of him turned her into a depraved beast woman? “Oh…I’m…not really sure.”
“Well here’s a guess.” His voice didn’t change much from its gravelly tone, but she thought she could detect a hint of bitterness. “You wanted to amuse your friends and relations with someone who never puts radicchio in his salad?”
Tracy stopped walking. “Is that what you thought?”
“I wondered.”
“Oh, my God, not at all.” She could have laughed at the irony. She was probably the last person on the earth to think financial hardship was amusing.
He stepped back toward her. “Jake and your dad seemed to think I was pretty funny.”
“Yes, well, they have strange senses of humor. Dad’s okay, he’s just one of those brilliant people who’s also a little clueless. Jake’s a snob.”
“He seems to think highly of you.”
“He thinks highly of my income bracket.” Her turn to sound bitter.
Dan took a step closer at the same time the moon hit a thinner patch of clouds and brightened the humid air around them so she could more clearly see the lines of his face, blurred by the days-old beard, and the shiny glint of light off his lenses.
“Why do you still have on your glasses?” She was dying to see his eyes. In her fantasy they were blue and deep and you could lose yourself in them for hours at a time.
“Prescription. I broke my other ones. Can’t see a thing without them. You still haven’t answered my question, Tracy.”
“Oh?” Her voice came out breathless and silly into the warm still air around them. “What question was that?”
“Why you invited me to the party.”
“Oh. That question.” Because you made me crazy with lust and I swore an oath to my friends that I would hunt you down. “Well…I just thought…you might—”
He focussed on her so intently she could imagine his gaze burning through the glasses. “Was it because of the chemistry between us when we first saw each other?”
Tracy’s mouth opened and closed several times. Luckily she produced no sound, because if she had, she probably would have said something like, “Hamnadgjwek.”
“I didn’t mean to embarrass you.” He grinned and started walking again, his movements easy and graceful, as if he were totally comfortable being in his own skin. “You don’t have to answer.”
Tracy followed, stumbling on nonexistent obstacles in the sand, her movements shaky and off-balance, which pretty much mirrored the state of her brain. She’d told herself not to get carried away by the romance of the moment. Her mission was to find out about Dan. If he checked out okay, if he wasn’t just faking the poor-boy thing for some questionable reason or other, then she could get carried away by the romance of the moment.
“So where did you grow up?” she asked.
“Boston. Roxbury, actually. Mom put Dad through Tufts Medical School, Dad said ‘thanks, seeya later,’ married some Beacon Hill society chick. Mom raised me cleaning people’s homes. I came to Wisconsin because my grandmother lives in Wauwatosa and Mom moved back here to be close to her. The end.” He punctuated the story with gestures and ended dropping his hands to his side.
“Oh, gosh.” No dramatic bid for sympathy there, but Tracy brimmed with it anyway. His dry recital of facts touched her more deeply than if he’d tried ranking his childhood with the world’s great tragedies as he had at the party. Possibly he’d only been trying to put one over on the clucking brood surrounding him. Possibly he was being straight with her. She had to admit she really liked that idea. Especially if the reason behind it was that he liked her. That she sparked something inside him the way he did in her.
“So what’s a nice guy like you doing in a neighborhood like this?”
He chuckled. “Interesting perspective. I work for the Gabriels on Apple Lane. Handyman, pool boy, whatever you want to call me. They need it done, I do it.”
“Oh.” She chided herself for her disappointment. Now who was a snob? So he wasn’t ambitious, that didn’t make him less of a person. He certainly seemed intelligent. Maybe he had some other goal he was working toward at the same time. “Have you…been doing that for a while?”
“Not long.”
“Are you planning to stay with them?”
“What, you don’t think I can fulfill my every dream cleaning the Gabriels’ pool?”
She heard the smile in his voice and laughed her relief. “Maybe, I don’t know you. But my guess would be that you have something else going.”
“Why?”
“Just a hunch.”
“And if I don’t?” He stopped and turned toward her with an abruptness that made her rear back. “If I’m determined to be a pool boy for the rest of my life would you think less of me? Or more?”
Tracy studied him curiously; his brows were raised, lips curved in a half smile, but his jaw was set and that potent intensity radiated from his body. She really really wanted to see his eyes. “I’m sorry. I don’t understand.”
“Would I be more attractive to you the way I am now, or in a suit at the head of a corporate table?” His lips returned to the stiff half smile as if her answer would make up his mind about her.
Luckily, she could answer honestly and ease any worry he might have on that score. “I prefer you the way you are.”
“That’s what I thought.”
She frowned. Something about the way he said that didn’t make it sound like a compliment. “Why do I get the feeling that’s a mark against me?”
“Let’s put it this way.” He stepped closer, the nearness of his body making the wide expanse of beach seem like an intimate enclosed space. “Now you have to answer.”
She gaped at him, flushed, disoriented, desire buzzing wildly through her. “Answer what?”
“Whether you felt the chemistry between us when we met.”
Her breath came in a long inhaled rush. She knew how she’d answer. And she knew where her answer would lead them. “Yes,” she whispered.
“I told you whatever the Gabriels need, I do.” He reached out, trailed a finger up her bare arm to her shoulder, over the line of her collarbone to her cheek. The bitterness was back in his tone, along with a barely perceptible dose of sarcasm. “I’m thinking you’re looking to have me service your needs as well. Uncomplicated guy, uncomplicated sex. Am I right?”
Tracy stiffened. He thought she preferred him scruffy because she wanted him for some kind of trans-socioeconomic screwing? Obviously he had her confused with Mrs. Teamon’s gang of boy-raiders. And she’d been stupid and naive enough to think he really liked her.
Colossal, major mistake.
Her disappointment brought tears perilously close to the surface; she stuffed them back down under a nice healthy coating of fury. The jerk. He’d been playing her all night, playing all of them. He was a worse snob than Jake, not able to see past their money. Well, she could play, too. They could make it a nice unpleasant round of doubles.
“Oh, Dan.” She forced her body to relax, turned her face so his finger brushed her lips. “I’m so glad you understand. That’s exactly what I want you for. To service my needs.”
“That’s what I thought.” The words came out hard, clipped.
“And…oh!” She gave a tiny gasp. “I have a very pressing need right now.”
“I just bet you do.” Harder. More clipped. He sounded like he wanted to throw her in the lake.
“I want you, Dan. I need you.” She leaned toward him and ran her tongue over her lips, enjoying herself hugely. “…to clean our pool.”