скачать книгу бесплатно
He quietly closed the door and returned to the parking lot.
A quick walk around the dismal property only served to confirm all of David’s suspicions. The place was a total wreck in dire need of demolition, which he would be more than happy to arrange. He got back in his car and headed for his hotel on the other side of the highway. As he drove, his thumb punched in his assistant’s number on his cell phone.
Jeff Montgomery was probably in the middle of dinner, he thought, but the call wouldn’t surprise him nor would David’s demand for instant action. The young man had worked for him for five years and seemed to thrive on the stress and the frequent travel as well as the variety of tasks that David tossed his way, from Make sure my tux is ready by six, to Put together a proposal for that acreage in New Mexico.
This evening David told him, “I need to know everything there is to know about the Haven View Motor Court across from the hotel. Who owns it? Is there any debt? What’s the tax situation? Everything. And while you’re at it, see what you can dig up on a woman named Libby Jost. Have it on my desk tomorrow morning, Jeff. Ten at the latest.”
“You got it, boss” came the instant reply. David Halstrom was used to instant replies.
He was used to getting precisely what he wanted, in fact, and he figured he’d own the ramshackle Haven View Motor Court lock, stock and barrel in a few days, or a week at the very most. And if he didn’t exactly own the fallen strawberry-blond angel by then, at least she’d be on his payroll.
Two
At ten o’clock the next morning Libby, in faded jeans and a thick white wool turtleneck, wasn’t at all surprised that she had a splitting headache while she followed the painting contractor around Haven View. She couldn’t even bear to think about the previous night, even as she wondered what had happened to the handsome bear.
As on most days, a camera hung from a leather strap around her neck because a dedicated photographer never knew when a wonderful picture might present itself. This morning, however, the camera strap felt more like a noose while the camera itself seemed to weigh a lot more than it ever had in the past. She was grateful the contractor didn’t walk very fast, which allowed her to sip hot, healing coffee while she tried to interpret his expressions.
Sometimes the man’s sandy eyebrows inched together above the bridge of his nose as if he were thinking, Hmm. This old wood window trim might be a little bit tricky. That won’t be cheap. Other times he narrowed his eyes and bit his lower lip which Libby interpreted as, There’s not enough paint in the state of Missouri to make this crummy place look better. Once he even sighed rather dramatically and then gazed heavenward, which probably meant he wouldn’t take this job no matter how much she offered to pay him.
Finally, the suspense was more than she could stand, not to mention the imagined humiliation when he told her the place wasn’t even good enough to paint, so she told the man to take his time, then excused herself. She headed back to the office, pausing once more to look around the foot of the lamppost to make sure she’d picked up every shard of broken glass from last night’s sorry incident.
She had almost reached the office door when she heard the familiar growl of a certain sleek automobile. As she turned to watch the dark-green vehicle approach along the gravel driveway, Libby swore she could almost feel the sexual throb of its engine deep in the pit of her stomach. Oh, brother. She wasn’t going to drink Chianti again for a long, long time.
Or maybe she was just feeling the deep shame of losing control the way she had the night before. Whoever the guy was and whatever he wanted, his opinion of her must be pretty low. If nothing else, she thought she owed the guy an apology along with a sincere thank-you for rescuing her from all that shattered glass.
She also thought, while staring at his fabulous car, that the vehicle was undoubtedly worth more—way more—than her fifty-thousand-dollar surprise fortune. How depressing was that? Still, it certainly piqued her interest in the man behind the wheel and whatever intentions he might have.
As if by reflex, she put her coffee mug on the ground and lifted her camera, shoving the lens cap in her pocket and glancing to make sure the aperture was set where she wanted it for this relatively bright morning. She snapped him exiting the car.
He seemed taller and more muscular than she remembered from the night before, but that face matched her memory of it perfectly. It was tough. Rugged. Masculine as hell. It was a countenance far better suited to a dusty pickup truck than a shiny luxury sedan.
His face, however, was shielded by his lifted hand as he approached her. Damn. She really wanted to capture those great Marlboro-Man features, especially his wonderful smile lines, but he kept them hidden as he approached.
She lowered the camera. He lowered his hand.
“How are you feeling this morning?” he asked.
Sensing the smirk just beneath his affable grin, Libby quickly forced her lips into a wide, bright smile as she responded, “One hundred percent.”
He cocked his head and narrowed his autumn-colored eyes, scrutinizing her face. “Really?”
“Well…” Libby shrugged. The man knew all too well what her condition had been the night before. She had nearly thrown up on him, after all. There wasn’t much use denying it. “Maybe ninety-five percent. Actually it’s more like eighty-five percent, but definitely trending upward.”
“Yeah,” he said, bending to pick up her coffee, then placing the mug in her hand. “Booze tends to do that more often than not.” Now his gaze strayed from her face, moved down past her turtleneck, paused at her breasts for a second, then focused on her Nikon. “What’s the camera for?”
“I’m a photographer.” She took a sip from her mug.
“I thought you were a motel sitter.”
Libby laughed. “Well, I’m both I guess. I’m Libby Jost.” Locals more often than not recognized her name from the photographs in the paper, but it didn’t seem to ring even a tiny little bell for Mr. Marlboro Man. She extended her hand. “And you are…?”
“David,” he said, reaching out to grip her hand more tightly than she expected. “I’m…” He frowned slightly, then angled his head north in the direction of the hotel across the highway. “I’m the architect of that big shiny box.”
At that particular moment the big, shiny, mirrored façade of the Halstrom Marquis was full of lovely blue autumn sky and a few crisp white clouds. Libby loved it more every time she looked at it, she thought.
“It’s stunning,” she said. “You did a truly spectacular job. And I confess I love taking pictures of it. It’s a completely different building from one day to another, even from one minute to another. Today it’s like a lovely perpendicular piece of sky.”
“Thanks. Just a few more weeks until the grand opening. Would you like an invitation?” He chuckled rather demonically. “I’m sure the liquor will be freely flowing, if that’s any incentive.”
Libby rolled her eyes. “I’ve sworn off. Trust me. But I’d love an invitation. Thank you.”
“You’ve got it.” He plucked a cell phone from his pocket and mere seconds later he was directing someone to put her on the guest list. “No, that’s all right. Don’t worry about the spelling right now. No address necessary,” he said. “I’ll deliver it personally.”
For some odd reason his use of the word personally and the way he locked his gaze on her when he said it suddenly caused a tiny shower of sparks to cascade down Libby’s spine. She took a quick gulp of coffee, hoping to extinguish them.
This guy was good, she thought. He was good not only with buildings, but with women, too. At least his technique seemed to be working fairly well with her at the moment. She swallowed the rest of the coffee.
She was so conscious of her sparkling, sizzling innards that she didn’t even realize the painting contractor had walked up behind her until he cleared his throat rather loudly and said, “Here’s your estimate, Ms. Jost. I guess you know it’s a pretty big job, considering the age of the place and all. My numbers are there at the top,.” He pointed with a paint-crusted fingernail. “You just give me a call whenever you decide.”
“All right. Thank you so very much for coming. I’ll definitely be in touch.” She was thrilled—amazed actually—that he was willing to take on the work.
The man had turned and walked away as Libby flipped a few pages to glance at the all important bottom line. Reading it, she could almost feel her eyes bulge out like a cartoon character’s. She didn’t know whether to scream or to faint dead away or to throw up—again—right there in the driveway. She might just do all three, she thought bleakly. This was terrible.
He wanted thirty-seven thousand dollars for all the painting and patching that needed to be done, which would leave her the not-quite-staggering sum of thirteen thousand dollars for additional, equally necessary repairs and renovations like plumbing fixtures, tile, carpeting, new beds and bedding and lighting, not to mention a bit of advertising and a new damn sign over the office door. She’d had no idea, none whatsoever, that her dreams were so damned expensive and so dreadfully, impossibly out of reach.
Libby was so stunned, so completely stupefied that she was only vaguely aware that David had taken the paper from her, and then the next thing she heard was a gruff and bear-like curse followed by the sound of tearing. Her painter’s estimate, she observed, was now falling to the ground in little pieces, like an early, quite unexpected snow. It was a good thing she didn’t want to hang on to it, she supposed.
“This is absolute bull,” David said. “It’s worse than highway robbery. I’m betting the guy doesn’t even want the job, Libby, and that’s why he jacked the price up so high. He probably just wanted to scare you off.”
“Well, it sure worked,” she said, trying to accompany her words with a little laugh. A very little laugh. “Gee, now I can hardly wait to see if the plumbing guy and the electrician try to scare me, too. I can imagine it already. It’ll be just like Halloween here every day of the week. Trick or treat!” There was a small but distinct tremor in her voice that her sarcasm couldn’t even begin to disguise. At the moment, quite frankly, Libby didn’t care.
“Look,” David said. “I can get my guys over here for two or three days or however long it takes. They can do the painting for you for a tenth of that amount. Even less than that, I’d be willing to bet.”
“Your guys?” Libby’s headache took the opportunity to make a curtain call just then. She closed her eyes a moment, hoping to banish the unwelcomed pain. “I don’t understand this at all.”
David was already opening his phone as he responded to her. “Painters. From the Marquis.”
“But you’re the architect.” She blinked. “How can you…”
“Architect or not, I just happen to be the guy in charge over there right now,” he said, sounding most definitely like a guy in charge.
“But…”
He snapped the phone closed and gave her a look that seemed to question not only her ability to make a decision, but her basic intelligence as well. “Look,” he said. “It’s really pretty simple. Do you want the painting job done, done well at a reasonable price, or not? Yes or no.”
This was obviously a man who made lightning-quick decisions, Libby thought, while she tended to procrastinate and then a bit more just to be absolutely sure or, as in most cases, semi-sure. Procrastinating had its benefits, but maybe lightning quick was the right way to go at the moment.
“Yes,” she said. “Yes, I do want the job done at a reasonable price. Actually, what I want is an utterly fantastic job at a bargain basement price.”
“You’ll have it,” he said. He stabbed in a number, barked some commands that were punctuated here and there with curses, flipped his cell phone closed and then told her, “A crew will be here in twenty minutes. Write a list of everything you want them to do. And be specific.”
Libby nodded. She could come up with a list for them in less than five seconds, she thought. Number One was paint everything. There was no Number Two.
While Libby worked on her list in the office, David walked around the shabby motel grounds once again, scowling, muttering under his breath, telling himself he must really be losing his grip. He’d just done one of the most stupid things in his life when he’d offered to help fix up the damnable place he had every intention of tearing down.
What was the old expression? Putting lipstick on a pig? He shook his head. There wasn’t enough lipstick in the world for this dilapidated pigsty.
On the other hand, his crew of painters were on the clock anyway in case of last-minute problems before the Marquis’ opening so this little detour across the highway wasn’t going to cost him all that much. It wasn’t about the money, though. It was more and more about the woman, the luscious little strawberry blond.
She’d already gotten under his skin just enough for him to fashion a lie about who he actually was. He’d introduced himself to her as the architect of the Marquis—an architect, for God’s sake—a mere hired hand instead of the Big Deal Boss. That alone was enough to make him question his sanity.
He hadn’t actually planned to do that or rehearsed any sort of deception, it had simply sprung forth somehow when she’d offered her soft, warm hand and then inquired, And you are? For a split second, while he held her hand in his, he hadn’t been quite sure who he was, where he was or what he was doing.
He wasn’t a liar, although he’d probably stretched or bent the truth a few times during business negotiations. But in his personal life, what little there was of it, particularly with women, he never lied and he never promised anything he didn’t follow through with from the moment he said hello to a woman to the moment he said goodbye. And he’d said a lot of goodbyes in his time.
He’d spent year after year watching female faces and their accompanying body language abruptly change when they heard the name David Halstrom. It was like going from Zorba the Greek to Aristotle Onassis in the blink of an eye, again and again, year after year, woman after woman. Women looked at Zorba with curiosity and pleasure and genuine affection. They looked at Onassis as if they were seeing their own reflections in the window of a bank.
He was thirty-six-years-old now, and he’d been a millionaire since he was twenty-one and a gazillionaire for most of the last decade. But until he’d laid eyes on Libby Jost, with her strawberry-blond hair and her light blue eyes and the nearly perfect curves of her body, David hadn’t realized just how much he’d truly yearned to be treated like a normal, everyday guy instead of a damn cash register.
So, what the hell. He’d be an architect for the next few weeks, and then he’d confess, and the fact that he had more money than God would go a long, long way in soothing Libby Jost’s hurt feelings at his deception.
In the meantime, he decided he’d better be going before the painters arrived and greeted him by his actual name. He stopped by the shabby little office to tell Libby goodbye and to give her his private number just in case she needed him, and it was only then, when he actually said the words to her, that David realized just how much he wanted her to need him.
The painting crew turned out to be four young men in their twenties or early thirties, all of them in paint-splattered coveralls, and all of them with long hair tied back in ponytails and piercings in one place or another. They looked more like a rock band than a team of professional painters. She hoped David knew what he was doing as she gave them her list, walked them around the place, then waited for the bad news she had begun to expect.
“So,” she asked when they’d completed their inspection of the place. “Can you do it? And for how much?”
She held her breath in anticipation of the bad news.
The tallest of the young men shrugged his shoulders and gave a little snort. “Well, it’s a challenge, ma’am, no doubt about that. But, sure we can do it. Hell, yes. As for how much, as far as I know right now, you’ll just have to pay for the paint. We’re all on the clock over at the Marquis, so we get paid one way or another. Over here. Over there. It doesn’t matter.”
Libby was still holding her breath, waiting for the bottom line.
“I’m guessing seven hundred dollars ought to cover the supplies,” he said. “Give or take a few bucks.”
Then he pulled a fold-out palette of paint colors from his back pocket. “If you want to choose the main color and the trim right now, ma’am, we can pick it up and get started after lunch.”
Libby was still a few beats behind him, still celebrating the seven hundred dollars, give or take, as if she’d just won the lottery. Things were suddenly, terrifically back on track, she thought, after this morning’s horrible derailment.
“Ma’am?” He fanned open the color chart in front of her.
“Oh. Sorry.” She looked at the chart. “Well, this won’t be too hard. I’ve had these colors in my head for weeks. I want a rich, creamy ivory for the walls. This one. Right here.” She pointed to a swatch. “And I want a deep, deep, wonderful green for the doors and the trim. There. That’s it exactly. It’s perfect.”
“Cool,” the painter said, then turned to his crew. “We’re all set. Mount up, boys. Let’s hit the road.”
Libby hit the road, too, right after her ever reliable front-desk replacement, Douglas Porter, arrived. She’d known him since she was two years old, and if her aunt Elizabeth was the mother figure in Libby’s life, then Doug was most definitely her stand-in father after all these years. His nearly religious attendance at dozens of school plays and concerts and teacher’s meetings, and his presence at every major event in her life more than qualified him for a special kind of parenthood. Plus, it was Doug who’d given her her very first camera on her tenth birthday, then spent hours showing her how to use it properly, not to mention forking over a small fortune for film, filters, lenses and often staggering developing costs.
But he wasn’t really her uncle. He’d been the best man at Aunt Elizabeth and Uncle Joe’s wedding and after Uncle Joe went missing in Korea over half a century ago, Doug simply stayed around. It was clear to anyone with eyes that he loved her aunt, and it never failed to sadden Libby that the two of them hadn’t married.
“Elizabeth’s pretty chipper today, Lib,” he had announced when he entered the office. “You’ll be glad to see that, I know. So what’s going on around here? How many guests do we have?”
It had become a running joke between the two of them, about the guests, and she had offered the standard reply. “No more than you can handle, Doug.”
She’d paused on her way out the door. “Oh, I’m expecting some painters this afternoon. They know their way around so you won’t have to do anything.”
“Painters?” His white eyebrows climbed practically up to his scalp. “Why on earth…?”
“No big deal,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m just having them do a few touch-ups.”
As she closed the office door she could hear him muttering something about throwing good money after bad, silk purses and sows’ ears.
Libby was still smiling about that when she parked her car at the nursing home’s rehab facility and walked down the long glossy hallway to her aunt’s room. She knocked softly, then opened the door, happy to see that the crabby roommate wasn’t there at the moment, but not so happy to see the sour expression on Aunt Elizabeth’s face.
“Painters, Libby? You’ve hired painters? What on earth are you thinking, child?”
Libby sighed. “I guess Doug called.” She should have figured on that, she thought, as she pulled a chair close to the bed. “I wish he hadn’t done that. I wanted to surprise you, Aunt Elizabeth.”
“I am surprised,” she said, rearranging the sheet that covered her. “And not all that pleasantly, my girl. You shouldn’t be throwing your money away…”
“Wait. Just wait a minute.” Libby held up her hand like a traffic cop. Sometimes it was the only way to stop this woman from going on and on. “I got a very special deal on the labor, so the job really isn’t costing much at all. Trust me.”
Her aunt narrowed her eyes. “How much?”
“Seven, eight hundred tops.”
“I don’t believe you,” she snapped.
“It’s true, Aunt Elizabeth. Cross my heart. I’ll even show you the canceled check when I get it.”
The elderly woman clucked her tongue. “And I suppose it’s already too late to stop this painting nonsense?”
“Yes,” Libby said stubbornly.
Her aunt, equally stubborn, glared out the window for a moment before she snapped, “Well, then tell me what colors you picked out. You know very well that I don’t like change, Libby, and when your Uncle Joe gets home he’ll expect the place to look just as it did when he left for Korea.”
After half a century he’s not coming home, Libby wanted to scream at the top of her lungs, but she didn’t. Aunt Elizabeth was an absolutely sane and reasonable woman, and likely a lot sharper than most folks her age, except for her complete and utter denial of her husband’s death.
If you started to argue with her, if you tried to convince her the man was dead, she’d snap, “Well, then. Show me his death certificate.” And of course there wasn’t one since he’d gone missing in action, so her aunt always won the argument. And that was that.
When Libby was a little girl, she honestly believed her Uncle Joe would be coming home any day. She couldn’t recall how old she was when Doug told her that the man had been missing in action since the 1950s. And he wasn’t coming home. Ever. Now, this is just between you and me, sweetie, he had said.
Over the years, Aunt Elizabeth’s friends and acquaintances tolerated this little lapse of sanity, this unreasonableness, or whatever it was. Doug, bless his heart, seemed to accept it completely. Libby did, too, she supposed, after all this time. When the subject arose, they’d all give her aunt the usual sympathetic nod or a brief tsk-tsk before quickly moving on to another topic of conversation.
Was she crazy? Perhaps. But the craziness was quite specific and limited to Uncle Joe and his imminent return. Aside from that particular bat in her belfry, Aunt Elizabeth was completely normal.
“Tell me the colors, Libby,” her aunt demanded now.
“You’re going to love them,” she said. “I tried really hard to duplicate the original cream and green of the Haven View. I knew that’s what you’d want.”
