The Billionaire's Bridal Bid (8 page)

“No.” She shook her head. Her tone sounded…sad maybe, but not disappointed. “I know that’s not a possibility. And it’s not what I want, either.”

“Good.” As hard as she was to read today, he could see the truth in her answer. “That’s a relief. Because the people of this town seem very protective of you.”

She quirked an eyebrow, some of her tension melting away. “They do?”

“Yes. I had several people warn me to treat you right. And one old lady with hair the color of beets told me that if I broke your heart she’d hire one of those guys from
The Sopranos
to break my kneecaps.”

Finally, Claire laughed, a genuine bark of laughter that seeped into his soul. “That would be Mrs. Parsons. She eats at Cutie Pies every Monday for lunch and watches way too much TV.”

“Obviously.”

“But she’s harmless. And on a fixed income, so I doubt she could afford to hire Paulie Walnuts.”

“Good to know. Because that Mrs. Parsons had me worried.”

She shot him a look of pure exasperation. “You know, I’m trying really hard to be angry with you right now. And I don’t appreciate you making it so difficult.”

Her annoyance was palpable. In fact, she looked pretty darn close to stamping her feet and shaking her fist at him.

“I didn’t come back here to make things more difficult for you.”

“But you did.” She sighed. “Make them more difficult, I mean.”

“I’m going to be here another week or two, more if I find a property.”

She looked up and her gaze met his. “You can be away from FMJ that long?”

“The B and B has wireless. I’ll work remotely. Drive back for the day if someone spills any more Red Bull on a two-million-dollar piece of equipment.”

“Well, that’s a relief.”

Was that actual relief buried under her sarcasm? Once again, he gave in to the urge to touch her. Just reached out his hand and trailed a finger down her cheek. She shivered in response. Her sensible mind may tell him she wanted him to leave, but her body said something else entirely. She still desired him. Just as much as he wanted her. It was that logic of hers he’d have to get past.

“I can’t promise I’m not going to pursue you while I’m here. This thing between us isn’t over yet, Claire. We both know that.”

She stepped away from his touch. “I told you I don’t want—”

“You told me you don’t want complications in your life. That’s not the same thing as not wanting me.”

“Maybe. But I can’t have one without the other.”

“And if you could?”

“I can’t. It’s a moot point. At the very least, there’s going to be gossip and speculation. And when you leave, that’s just going to make things that much harder on everyone.”

“That’s what you’re worried about? Gossip?”

She shot him another one of those you’re-an-idiot stares of hers. “That’s
one
of the things.” She ran her apron through her fingers, twisting the cloth into tight figure eights.

“What if everyone just thinks we’re friends?”

“Friends? That ridiculous.”

“Is it?” he asked. “People are only going to gossip about us if they think there’s something interesting going on. There’s nothing less exciting than two people not having sex.”

“So you think if we pretend to be just friends that people will lose interest?”

“Exactly.”

“That’s the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”

He had to laugh at the sheer indignation in her voice. As if his unworthy idea was an affront to her intelligence. He might be more annoyed if he didn’t suspect that her attempts to pick a fight weren’t just a way for her to alleviate the sexual tension between them.

She just glared at him, his laughter only making her fume more. “You’re supposed to be a genius,” she accused.

“I am a genius.” Which he knew was not the same thing as being smart about people. He never had excelled
in that arena, something his brother had never let him forget growing up.

“Then try to be a little smarter.” She blew out her breath in a huff. “No one is going to believe we’re just friends. If we’re spending time together, people are going to assume there’s something going on. They’re going to gossip.”

He took a step closer, but she backed away. “Are you saying you’re so attracted to me that you can’t be around me without people knowing how you feel? That your feelings are too strong to hide?”

“Of course not,” she scoffed, backing another step away, practically inviting him to follow.

“Because as hard as it’s going to be, I can hide my feelings. Can you?”

Her spine straightened indignation. “Of course!”

“Good.” He took another step closer until she bumped against the tree at her back. He propped his arm on the trunk beside her head, leaning in toward her. “Because the way I see it, either we pretend to be friends in public, or I pursue you in public and leave no doubt about what’s going on between us.”

“And if I agree to go along with this silly plan of yours? If we pretend to be just friends in public—” she looked up at him, her gaze wide, her breathing shallow “—then do you promise to stay away from me the rest of the time?”

He smiled, relishing her obvious discomfort. “Hell, no.”

Claire didn’t trust Matt. Especially since he’d sworn mere seconds ago to keep his hands off her in public, yet now he had her wedged between his body and a tree. He hadn’t touched her, but he stood close enough that she
could feel the heat radiating off his body. She’d dashed out of Cutie Pies without grabbing her jacket. The crisp fall air only urged her to lean into him, to absorb all that heat for herself.

He didn’t close the distance between them, as if he were waiting for her to make the first move. The worst part of it was, she wanted to. Arch her back, tilt her neck, raise up onto her toes and she’d be pressed against him, her lips just under his in an unmistakable invitation.

One he wouldn’t refuse.

But a temptation she couldn’t give in to.

She planted her palm on his chest, relishing the firm strength of his chest muscles. She arched onto her toes, but angled her head so her lips hovered beside his ear. She drew in a deep breath full of his scent and then whispered, “Back off.”

Giving his chest a firm shove, she got him to move only because she’d surprised him. He laughed as he stumbled out of the way and she dodged under his arm.

Holding her palms out as if to ward him off, she pronounced, “I’ll go along with your plan only because I don’t have any choice. I can’t stop you from looking at properties here, but let me go on the record as saying that I think this is a very bad idea. And I don’t trust you for a minute.”

He feigned shock. “Don’t trust me? What’s not to trust?”

“I don’t trust your motives. And I certainly don’t trust that you’re a man of your word.”

His lips curved in a slow, smug smile. “Considering the only promise I’ve made is to do everything in my power to lure you back into my bed, I guarantee you can take my word for it.”

“That is
not
what I meant.” She bit out her response word by word. Sheesh. There were times when she just wanted to wrap her hands around his throat and strangle him. Which was so much better than the times she wanted to wrap her hands around other parts of him. “I don’t have a choice in this, do I?”

He grinned. “Not at all.”

“I’m not sleeping with you again, so you can get that idea out of your head right now.”

“Yes, ma’am.” His gaze ran down her body and back up, leaving no doubt exactly which thoughts were taking up permanent residence in his brain.

She nearly growled in frustration. She
so
didn’t need him egging her on.

As annoyed with herself as she was with him, she stalked toward the exit of the park, desperate to stay one step ahead of him. With any luck, Kyle and his mother would be gone from Cutie Pies by the time she and Matt made it back.

She’d seen Kyle’s interest in Matt and it worried her. If they met, one of two things would happen. Either Matt would ignore the fact that Kyle was his nephew, which would hurt the boy’s feelings. Even worse was the possibility that Matt would acknowledge Kyle. It was all too easy to imagine Matt temporarily befriending Kyle only to hurt him more when Matt left Palo Verde for good.

With any luck, the week Matt was planning on being here would pass quickly without Matt and Kyle ever coming face-to-face. And then, maybe, it wouldn’t hurt Kyle so much when Matt left. As for herself, well, by now she was pretty much doomed to get hurt no matter what. She sure didn’t trust luck to protect her.

Claire had never had much faith in luck. It tended to
turn around and bite her on the ass. And that was the real reason she was going along with Matt’s plan.

The only way to guarantee that Matt didn’t have a chance to hurt Kyle was to make sure they didn’t meet. The only way she could guarantee that was to spend as much time with him as she possibly could. If she kept him distracted enough, he’d coast through the week and be gone before she knew it.

His plan to avert gossip wouldn’t work, of course. But then, she didn’t think that he thought it ever would. Matt was used to getting what he wanted. In this case, he obviously wanted to spend the week chasing her. Well, he was going to get what he wanted. She’d let him chase her, but he wasn’t going to catch her.

M
att could take apart and put back together any gadget he got his hands on. He could decipher the technical specifications for any product his team developed. He’d authored or coauthored over fifty patent applications. He’d led his R & D team at FMJ to create so many ground breaking products that one of the local magazines had recently named him “The Man Most Likely to Save the World.”

But when it came to women…well, they were still something of a mystery. Sure he knew how to please one. That was a simple matter of biology. Understanding what went on in their minds was another matter entirely.

The mysteries of one female brain were all he could handle at a time. Which was why he decided to ignore the fact that Shelby Walstead obviously didn’t like him. Which at least partly explained why he was so easily distracted in the following week. Shelby was supposed
to be showing him properties. But any time he had even the barest excuse to play hooky, he took it.

“What do you mean you’ve only seen five properties?” Jonathon asked via videoconference four days later.

Matt was sitting on the back patio of the B and B where he was staying. He had his email open at the bottom of the screen and a pair of windows open at the top for the three-way videoconference. Ford’s image was visible in one window, Jonathon’s in the other. Even when they were all traveling, they chatted at least weekly, though they worked best when they were all together. Though Ford was the CEO of FMJ, Jonathon had always had the strongest “vision.” He was the unspoken bully of the playground, keeping them on task, when they were likely to be distracted.

“Give him a break,” Ford jumped to Matt’s defense. “He’s only been there four days. And no one likes to look at real estate.”

Since he couldn’t let Ford do all the defending, he said, “I don’t think she likes me.”

Jonathon rolled his eyes. “What are you, ten? Stop worrying about Claire and—”

“Not Claire. The real estate agent. Where’d we find her anyway?”

“Wendy hired her. And it doesn’t matter if she likes you. Just go see the properties she shows you and make a judgment call so you can get back here.”

“At least tell us things are going better with Claire,” Kitty chimed in from over Ford’s shoulder.

“No,” Jonathon grumbled. “I don’t give a damn how things are going with Claire. He should focus on looking at properties.”

“Things are great with Claire.” Matt forced some enthusiasm into his voice.

Great. That was strictly true. He was certainly spending enough time with her. Each morning he went to see one property with Shelby, during which time the woman was professional, but uncommunicative. After that, he stopped by Cutie Pies for lunch. He’d spend the afternoons with Claire.

She’d turned into some sort of maniac cruise director. Apparently, she had taken his challenge to feign friendship for the sake of the town quite literally. Each afternoon she’d scheduled some “friendly” activity for them to do together. They’d entered a chess tournament at the senior center. They’d joined a tour bus on a trip to the local apple orchards. One afternoon she’d even dragged him to the elementary school to judge the science fair. The activities were so wholesome, even he was starting to believe they’d never slept together.

“There’s no point in staying there if you’re not accomplishing anything,” Jonathon pointed out.

“Progress may be slow,” Matt said defensively, “but if there really is a viable property nearby that’s perfect, trust me, I’ll find it.”

“Find it fast. Your team is getting antsy without you. Neither Ford nor I speak geek quite the way you do. Without you here to translate, productivity has come to a screeching halt. I stopped by the lab yesterday to check on things and I interrupted a Final Fantasy tournament.”

Matt chuckled. “That sounds like them.” His team of engineers were brilliant, but sometimes…high-strung. Coaxing work out of them could be taxing. But when you presented them with the right challenge, they could work miracles.

“You don’t have to sound so proud,” Jonathon
groused. “We never have this kind of problem when you’re here.”

“You make it sound like I never leave the office.”

Ford chuckled. “You never do leave the office. When was the last time you took a vacation?”

“I go to that conference in San Jose every year,” he protested.

On the other end of the videoconference, Ford mumbled something to someone in the background. A second later, Kitty leaned into view again and spoke over Ford’s shoulder. “Matt, darling, going to a conference for work forty-five minutes from your house is not the same thing as going on vacation.” Her gaze shifted as she redirected her gaze to Jonathon. “And you should get off his case. He deserves a break. Not everyone is as married to the company as you are. Thank goodness.”

Kitty and Ford exchanged a look of intimacy that made Matt a little uncomfortable. He couldn’t imagine what it would be like to share that kind of bond with someone. He, Ford and Jonathon were as close as brothers and had been since middle school. Hell, he liked them a hell of a lot more than his actual brother. Still, he couldn’t help envying Ford’s relationship with Kitty. They were close in a way he’d never been with another person. Except maybe Claire, and look how that had turned out.

Maybe some people just weren’t meant to have that.

After a few more painless jabs from Ford about working too hard, Matt ended the conversation. Pre tending to be friends to eschew gossip was one thing, but he was more than ready to take this “friendship” to the next level.

Claire lived in a quirky 1920s cottage on the south side of town. Long and narrow, it sat perched at the top of her steeply sloping lot. The previous owner had added meticulously terraced landscaping, which she tried to maintain. Like the other houses on her street, it was quaint. Even though the neighborhood was neither fancy nor particularly desirable, it was stable and quiet, with most of the residents being either older couples or young singles like herself. It was the kind of neighborhood where people turned off their porch lights at nine sharp and went to bed with their TV remotes or mystery novels not long after. No one ever rang a doorbell after ten.

So Claire had already showered and dressed for bed in her boxer shorts and tank top when Matt rang hers at ten-fifteen on a Tuesday night. When she spied his familiar form through the peephole, she very nearly went back to bed. Then as if sensing her ambivalence, he rang the bell again and called out, “Claire, the longer I’m out here, the more people are going to see me.”

She flicked the dead bolt and swung open the door, but stood there, blocking his entrance. “I’m not letting you in, Matt. You’re breaking your promise.”

He didn’t bother to pretend to misunderstand. “I’m tired of pretending we’re just friends.” With his hands shoved deep into his pockets and his voice practically pouting, he seemed like a little boy complaining because he’d lost his favorite toy. But there was nothing childlike about the heat in his eyes. Then he lowered his voice to a sensual caress. “I’m tired of playing games.”

Her resolve wavered, but she tried to make her voice sound firm. “I have to be up early in the morning. I’m tired. It’s too late.”

God, she’d said a mouthful there. She was tired. Just
exhausted from the week of balancing work and trying to keep Matt occupied.

And it was too late. Not only too late at night but too late in her life. She, quite simply, felt too old to be doing this.

Still he braced his shoulder on the doorjamb and ducked his head as he smiled that roguish smile of his and something inside of her tightened.

“Come on, Claire.” He snagged her hand with his own and toyed with it, running his thumb over the skin of her finger pads. “Just let me in.”

His voice was low and soft, coaxing. His touch light and so seemingly innocent. Heat curled through her belly, making the sensitive flesh between her legs pulse with need.

A memory flashed through her mind, of him standing just like that, outside her college apartment, head ducked, smile shy, as he nervously asked her on their first date. He’d been so different twelve years ago. But then again, so had she.

She had run into him just that day in a coffee shop not far from campus. He, Ford and Jonathon had been sitting at a table in the corner, deep in discussion when she’d walked in. Her heart had started pounding the second she’d seen Matt.

A couple of years ahead of her at school, they’d always awed her a little. Ford had been the most popular guy in their class, able to charm any girl he’d wanted. Jonathon had been from a poor family, with a crappy home life. He got into a lot of fights, but Matt and Ford always backed him up. But Jonathon wasn’t the kind of kid you felt sorry for. She’d known even then that he wouldn’t be in Palo Verde forever. He just had that look in his eyes. Like he’d do anything to get out. She’d
recognized it even as a kid because she’d felt that way herself.

But it had been Matt she’d always had a bit of a crush on. Even as a freshman in high school, when he’d been a senior. He’d been awkward, but so serious and intense. He too had clearly been destined for things greater than Palo Verde.

And when she’d seen him in that coffee shop near campus, her heart had started pounding so loudly she was sure everyone could hear it. He’d looked up, just as she’d walked past. Those whiskey-brown eyes had met hers and she’d felt like her insides had melted and might just slip out through the soles of her feet. He’d nodded and said hello. She’d barely been able to squeak a reply before hurrying to catch up with her friend.

She cursed herself the rest of the day for not stopping to talk. For being too afraid. Too nervous. Too awed by him. But then somehow, miraculously, he’d tracked her down. Shown up on the doorstep of her apartment to ask her out. And she’d let him in.

“Do you remember the first time you asked me out?” she surprised herself by asking.

His head came up, his expression a little wary. After a second, he straightened, as if he too were suddenly aware he’d been mimicking that posture. “I do,” he said seriously.

Of course he did. It had also been the first time they’d had sex.

She hadn’t been able to go out. Her very first college test had been the next day and she couldn’t risk doing badly. If her grades dropped and she lost her scholarship, she couldn’t afford more loans to make up the difference.
So instead of taking her out, he’d ordered pizza and stayed to help her study. And three hours later they’d ended up having sex on her sofa.

He’d been looking at her just like he was now, with all that intensity channeled toward her. It still made her knees go weak. But she was smart enough now to know better.

“At the time, I thought it was romantic, the way we couldn’t keep our hands off each other.” She tried to pull her hand away, but he didn’t release her.

Instead, he moved closer, running his hand up her arm, saying nothing but subtly inching his way into her house. His gaze seemed glued to the progress of his hand, as was hers. Against her skin, his fingers were rough. His hand was at the crook of her elbow, his thumb tracing a circle on her skin.

She felt trapped by his touch. Somehow unable to get free of him. “Now, I just think I was an idiot.”

He looked up at her now, eyebrows raised. “Not an idiot. Impetuous maybe. We both were.”

She shook her head, finally finding the strength to pull away from him. But to do so, she had to retreat into her house and he followed, closing the door behind him. His presence instantly filled the narrow space of her living room. She wanted to retreat, but where could she go? Not to her cramped and tiny kitchen and certainly not to her bedroom. Her only choice was to face him down, here in the living room. It was an unlikely location for a showdown, with its carefully cultivated atmosphere of peaceful femininity. She felt like Sleeping Beauty facing down the dragon in her own castle. Now who was going to save her from the prince?

He could see her looking for a way out, but now that he’d breached her defenses, he didn’t dare let her escape. He may never find a way back in.

Instead, he launched an all-out assault. Closing the distance between them, he cupped her jaw in his palm. Her hair was damp against his fingers, like she’d just taken a shower. Another woman might have played coy. Might have skittered away and acted shy. But not Claire.

Claire bumped up her chin and met his gaze full on. Clearly not quite comfortable having him in her home, but unwilling to back down from the challenge. That was his Claire in a nutshell. There wasn’t a fight in the world she’d walk away from, even if she thought she couldn’t win.

But tonight, this thing between them…it didn’t have to be a battle. There didn’t have to be a loser. They could both win. They could satisfy this crazy need that was eating them both alive. He just had to make her see that.

Matt didn’t really have a way with words. Manipulating a conversation wasn’t his strong suit, but Ford always said the most convincing arguments held a grain of truth. So that’s where Matt started.

“We were both young,” he said. “We’re different people now. But here I am, still standing on your doorstep. Still just as desperate for you to let me into your life.”

She laughed, a sound that was a little nervous while still laden with sexual promise.

“You find that funny?”

She bit down on her lower lip, her expression tinged with exasperation. “I find it funny that you think you’re the one at the disadvantage.”

“You never did get that, did you?” She tried to duck her head, but he nudged her chin back up. “You’ve always had all the power, Claire. I’ve always been completely at your mercy.”

She looked a little awed by the prospect. And he could almost believe that she didn’t see how much power she really had over him. She looked ready to argue. So he convinced her the only way he knew how. He showed her. He used something more powerful than mere words.

He pulled her to him and kissed her.

She tasted faintly of red wine and warm, cozy evenings curled up with a book. Her mouth was warm and pliant beneath his. A little surprised, a little resistant. As if she was still clinging to her protests.