Love to Believe: Fireflies ~ Book 2 (13 page)

“You know the saying, eavesdroppers never hear well of themselves? Cal and Dad were on the porch when I went to call them for dinner. I overheard part of their conversation.” She folded her hands over her stomach and stared at the ceiling. “My dad is never going to accept me in the role I’m currently in. He just isn’t. It doesn’t matter how well I run the business, it doesn’t matter that the numbers are up and the employees and clients are happy. All that matters to Big Will is that I’m a woman instead of a man.”

“That’s shortsighted of him, and surprising, considering he’s so successful a businessman.”

“I got upset at first. Angry and frustrated more than hurt, you know? But there’s something I’ve been thinking about for a couple of years. I wasn’t ready to do it before, but I am now. So...” She crossed her arms over her chest.

“So, what?”

“Nothing I want to talk about. I need to think it through, and when I’m ready, I’ll tell Cal.” She turned her head, and Sean did the same so they could look at each other. “I’m not going to ask you to keep secrets. That isn’t fair.”

“Do you have a dollar?”

“Do I--I guess. In my purse.”

“On you?”

Rebecca’s brows met in a quizzical vee. “No. I think I have a couple of quarters in my pocket. You have a vending machine in here or something?”

“Hand them over,” he said. “Don’t give me that look. Just give me your quarters.”

“If you think I’m going to pay you to kiss me--”

Sean grinned. “I would never be so bold. Trust me.”

Rebecca stood and dug into the front pocket of her jeans. “I lied. I only have one quarter.” She handed it to Sean and flopped back onto the mattress, reclaiming her prior position.

Sean tucked the coin into his pants pocket. “Okay, now you officially have me on retainer. Anything you tell me is protected under attorney/client privilege.”

Rebecca smiled. “Clever move, Counselor. Okay, here it is. Don’t laugh. I’m going to start my own consulting business,” she blurted, and her cheeks flooded red. Her eyes, the color of moss--or emeralds, or maybe clover, he couldn’t tell, and why the hell was he thinking something so stupid anyway?--had widened and regarded him now with serious expectation.

“What kind of consultant?”

“I’d be the liaison between the client and the construction company. Say you decide you want to build an office park, but you’re a lawyer, right? So you don’t know anything about construction. You get quotes and do your due diligence and you pick a contractor, but you’re still at his mercy because you don’t understand the business. So you hire me to make sure he stays on task, meets deadlines, orders the right materials at the best price. In the capacity of project manager, I’m helpful to your contractor, too, because assuming he’s honest, there are still going to be glitches on the job, but now he doesn’t have to explain them to you. He can explain them to me, and it’s my job to help him smooth it out, my job to make sure you understand what’s really going on. It’s a win-win.

“And, also, I’m a CPA, so I understand the accounting end of things. You won’t have to worry about misappropriated funds or errors on your tax returns. And when I say I know my way around honest deductions, you can take it to the bank.”

Sean stared at the ceiling and considered her plan, turned it over in his mind, and saw the benefits. He played through a number of scenarios, looking for drawbacks and found none besides the obvious ones that every small business faced.

“Pretty damned brilliant.” He turned his head to face her again. “You can’t lose. Even during times when the construction business is slow, you’ll still have clients who need a CPA to do their accounting. It’s like you have this cool consulting niche that feeds your love of building, and the accounting side to run parallel. Have you thought about how you’ll market your services? Do you belong to any community groups, like the Chamber of Commerce or the Rotary Club? You’ll need a website, too. And you might even consider offering a newsletter. That will--”

“Whoa, slow down.” Rebecca’s eyes crinkled with her smile. “I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I haven’t done any serious planning yet. I only just decided to do it today.”

“What’s your first step?”

“Dad will have to hire an office manager and someone to take over operations out in the field. When I’ve collected résumés, I’ll go over them with Cal, and he and I can narrow them down to a handful for Dad to interview. He can hire a little miss to run the office and fetch his coffee, and a man to do the site work. That should make him happy.”

“The second he realizes he’s paying for two instead of one he’ll be begging you to come back.”

“Big Will never begs. Big Will sucks it up and moves on. If he ever realizes he was wrong, I’ll never hear about it. Not from him anyway.”

“Does that bother you?”

“Not really.” She sat up and shrugged. “He is who he is.”

“That’s very grown up of you.”

She grinned. “I didn’t say I don’t dream of coshing him upside the head when he spouts his chauvinistic crap. You know, it’s funny, because he doesn’t act that way with my mother. He thinks she walks on water.”

“That’s probably why they’ve been married so long.”

“Maybe.”

“Hey, can I kiss you and go to second base now?”

“You may kiss me.” Rebecca leaned down and rubbed her lips against Sean’s. “You may not go to second base.”

“You sure about that?” He touched his thumb to the soft cleft in her chin while the fingers on his other hand danced along her spine.

“Do you really want to test me?”

In one quick motion, Sean reversed their positions. With his lips playing above hers he said with a slow smile, “Oh, Xena. You know how I love a challenge.”

Chapter 6

Chili bubbled in the crockpot. Rebecca set the microwave timer to go off in an hour to remind her to turn the setting from high to low, then she took the brownies from the oven and set them on a rack to cool. In the bedroom, her cell phone rang, and she dashed down the hall to grab it before the call went to voice mail, jumping over Mr. Peabody, who lay in the middle of her bedroom floor warming himself in a sunbeam streaming through the window.

“You sound out of breath. Did I catch you in the middle of a work out?”

Rebecca’s anticipation came to life at the sound of Sean’s voice. She reminded herself to breathe. “My phone is in the bedroom and I was in the kitchen. What’s up?”

“What time are Brenna and Maddie supposed to be over?”

“One.”

“It’s eleven-thirty now. I can be there in ten, if you’re free.”

Rebecca swallowed hard and read between the lines. Her skin tingled and her toes curled into the carpet. “You have to be gone before they get here. I don’t want to have to explain anything.”

“See you in a few.”

Rebecca clicked off the call and scrambled to brush her teeth and apply a little mascara. Although she and Sean had talked about getting together before her crime show marathon with her BFFs, the morning had grown late and Rebecca assumed he couldn’t make it.

She should have known better. When had a man, in the whole history of the universe, ever passed up a sure opportunity to get lucky?

On her way to the closet, she yanked off her ratty sweats and dropped them in the hamper, favoring instead worn blue jeans and a long-sleeved T-shirt of forest green. She made the bed, knew it to be a waste of time under the circumstances, and settled on the living room sofa to wait for the knock at the door. She rested her head on the couch cushion, her feet on the coffee table, and thought back to Thanksgiving Day. Sean had indeed gotten to second base, but not without a great deal of muffled laughter and final acquiescence on her part when she made him promise to make no effort to steal third.

“Second base only, and I mean it, mister,” she had said, to which Sean had replied, “Scout’s honor,” and then kissed and caressed the resolve right out of her bones. But he was as good as his word, and they returned downstairs and parted ways, he to the kitchen to help with what remained of the dishes, she to the man cave to watch movies with the ladies. Rebecca wondered what Big Will thought about the Kinkaid tradition of the women not participating in cleanup since they had prepared the meal. She grinned at the thought of her chauvinistic father up to his elbows in dirty dishwater.

After the men and women joined company, Rebecca and Sean stole glances when they thought no one was paying attention, but otherwise ignored one another. Best not to raise questions neither of them wanted to answer.

Head back, eyes closed, she stroked Mr. Peabody’s soft fur, after he settled in her lap, and focused on his rumbling purr to calm her nerves. The cat squeaked his annoyance when she set him aside a few minutes later to answer the knocking at the door.

Rebecca took a deep breath and opened the door for Sean. Her heart skipped with joy at the sight of him, and her belly did a slow tumble. Not good. Not good at all.

Don’t overthink this. Enjoy the moment. No strings, no stress.

“C’mon in.” She stepped aside to allow him entry. “You surprised me when you called. It was getting so late I figured you’d be a no show today.”

“Church,” he said. “My mother guilted me into taking her to mass, and then she had to talk to every person in the place, including the monsignor, who had a thousand people in line ahead of her.”

“A thousand? Really? That’s some congregation.”

“We Catholics are a prolific bunch.”

“What do you expect when you don’t believe in birth control?”

Sean winced. “I’ve had a big enough helping of guilt for today, Xena, if you don’t mind. I’m hoping for something earthier now that religion is off the table.”

Rebecca grinned. “So you went to mass and now you’re here for Situational Developments. You do see the irony, right?”

“Situational Developments?”

“That’s a Maddie-ism for sex.”

Sean laughed. “Only Maddie. And, yes, I see the irony, but I don’t care.” He took her hands in his and his grin turned wicked. “Lead the way, my warrior princess. Time’s a-wasting.”

***

Rebecca hadn’t planned to doze, but Sean’s weight and warmth, post bone-melting sex, had lulled her into comfortable drowsiness.

When the microwave timer went off, her eyes flew open and her body jolted to awareness.

“Off.” She gave Sean a hearty nudge. “The girls will be here in half an hour, and Brenna is chronically early, which means fifteen minutes if we’re lucky.”

Sean nuzzled her neck for a moment before letting her up. He stretched and yawned, and she admired the play of muscles over his torso while she wriggled into her jeans. She hadn’t pegged him for a gym rat, but the definition in his abs and biceps told her otherwise.

“C’mon, handsome. You have to get out of here. Oh, geez, is your car out front?” She yanked the green T-shirt over her head and ran into the bathroom to find an elastic band for her hair. She returned to the bedroom while she twisted the unruly mass into a messy bun.

Sean tugged on his jeans. “Relax. I walked over, and I’ll be gone before they get here.”

“You better be. Hey!” She squealed when he caught her in his arms and pressed a kiss to her lips. “Haven’t you had enough?”

“No. Have you?”

Rebecca laughed at his expression and took his face in her hands. “If you haven’t left by the time Brenna and Maddie show up, you’re the one who has to explain to them why you’re here and half naked.”

Sean rolled his eyes. “Fine, fine. I’m going.”

He grabbed his shirt and stood motionless when the knock at the door sounded. His eyes met Rebecca’s and they looked so panicked she would have laughed if she wasn’t certain that her expression mirrored his.

“I told you they’d be early,” she said.

“Do you have a back door?”

“You can go through the patio off the kitchen. C’mon.”

The knocking began again along with Brenna’s voice calling out, “Hey, Red, it’s your besties. Open up!”

“Coming!” She pointed Sean in the direction of the patio door. He dipped his head to hers for a quick, hard kiss, and headed out carrying his socks and shoes. She drew a steadying breath and started toward the front door, stopping short when she spied Sean’s jacket where he had tossed it on the back of the couch. “Just a second, you two!” She grabbed the jacket and ran back through the kitchen and out the door. She met Sean in the middle of the yard.

“You forgot your coat.” She bit back laughter at the sight of him sneaking away from her house, still in his bare feet.

His grin made her heart beat faster. “What happened to not wanting to sneak around? This is ridiculous. You know that, right?”

“You’re welcome to come back in and chat with Brenna and Maddie.”

He shook his head. “But not that ridiculous.” He took his jacket and pressed a kiss to her forehead. “Go have fun. I’ll take Brenna’s always-be-early compulsion more seriously next time.”

Next time. There will be a next time.
Her stomach upended with a happy and lustful flip.

“Bye.” She hoped he missed the hitch in her voice. She allowed herself one last look at him from the patio and rushed to the front door, flipping the crockpot to low on her way through the kitchen.

“It’s about time,” Brenna said when Rebecca opened the door. “What took so long?”

“Sorry, sorry. C’mon in. The brownies are ready.” Rebecca gave the door a shove and led Maddie and Brenna into the kitchen. “Set your stuff on the counter and I’ll get out the blender. Maddie, there’s room for the bag of ice in the bottom part of the freezer.”

“What in the world took you so long to answer the door?” Brenna pressed. “And do you feel okay? You’re red as a beet.”

Rebecca rested her palms against her hot cheeks. “I’m fine. Just, you know--is it warm in here? It feels really warm.”

“It’s comfortable to me,” Maddie said.

“Me, too,” Brenna said. “Hey, how’d your espresso brownies turn out?”

“I don’t know. I haven’t tasted them yet.” Rebecca knelt and buried her head in the cabinet under the counter, rummaging around for her blender. The sooner she whipped up some margaritas, the better.