The Man for Maggie

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“Then it’s settled.”

He could tell Allison wasn’t buying any of this and he felt as though he needed to do something to convince her that he’d really been planning to ask Maggie. So he moved closer to Maggie and casually draped an arm around her shoulders.

Big mistake.

It was one thing to go out of his way to provoke Allison but he didn’t need to get this close to Maggie to do it.

Who knew she’d be the perfect height? Just tall enough that when they danced together at Leslie’s wedding, her head would tuck nicely under his chin. She’d smell like strawberries and cream, and look up at him with those chocolatey eyes and when she spoke, that amazing voice would be for his ears only.

Definitely something to look forward to, but not a good idea to be thinking those things in front of Allison, who would be on the phone to his sister the minute she got home.

“I should go,” he said. “I just need to run upstairs to check the attic for insulation. Do you have a stepladder?”

“I haven’t seen one. I have a flashlight, if that’ll help.” She ducked out from under his arm and retrieved it from the cupboard under the sink.

“Thanks. I’ll be right back.” With any luck, Allison would be gone by then.

He took the stairs two at a time. The opening to the attic was in the hallway ceiling. He’d have to stand on something to reach it.

A kitchen chair?

No way was he going back downstairs. There had to be something upstairs.

Maggie’s bedroom was to the right. The bed was neatly made but otherwise the room looked as though it’d been hit by a cyclone. Two suitcases, a stack of hat boxes and a couple of cardboard cartons took up most of the floor space. The top of an old dressing table was cluttered with hats and hairbrushes and jewelry, including the string of pearls.

He resisted the temptation to investigate further, except to see that the only chair in the room was an old wicker rocker heaped with clothes.

The two other bedrooms appeared to function as storage space and an office, judging by the books and papers strewn everywhere. He moved into the room to retrieve her office chair and couldn’t resist taking a look at what she was working on. It stopped him dead in his tracks.

“I’ll be damned.” Then he grabbed the chair and headed out the door, grinning like a fool.

MAGGIE WOULD MUCH RATHER have gone upstairs with Nick than be in the kitchen, listening to Allison’s chatter about Leslie’s wedding and how it would be the event of the summer. She was relieved to finally hear Nick’s footsteps on the stairs. When he walked into the kitchen to return the flashlight and say goodbye, his eyes held an odd combination of amusement and uncertainty.

“Gotta run,” he said. “I’ll drop off the estimate as soon as it’s ready. Allison, it’s been a pleasure, as always.”

“You’re leaving?” Allison seemed to forget all about the wedding. “I’ll walk out with you. See you later, Maggie.”

Maggie wondered if “later” meant the next time Nick was here.

He tucked his clipboard under his arm and headed out the front door, with Allison close behind. Less than a minute later, she heard his truck pull away. Apparently he didn’t want to listen to Allison’s chatter any more than she did.

Maggie was just glad they were gone. A jumble of emotions had her all aflutter and she needed time to sort them out.

Nick had asked her to be his date to his sister’s wedding!

She knew better than to let the invitation send her spirits soaring, but she couldn’t keep the bounce out of her step as she gathered her folders and sketches and sprinted up the stairs.

She felt like a teenager again, daydreaming about being asked to the prom by the coolest guy in school. Or the hottest, depending a person’s perspective!

Yet, she needed to be realistic. Nick had invited her to the wedding so he could get out of taking someone named Candice and possibly to annoy Allison and his family. Not because he wanted to spend an evening with her. Besides, a man who was interested in a woman “that way” wouldn’t give her a fruit basket. His gift had been funny and sweet, but about as far from romantic as a gift could get. And right after he’d asked her to the wedding—and she’d said yes—he’d suddenly been in a big hurry to leave.

Best not delude herself about Nick’s intentions. Still, she’d learn a lot about him when she met his family. Nick Durrance deserved to be happy. Once he started working here, she’d have plenty of opportunities to help him find that happiness. She had a good feeling about that.

Until she reached the doorway of her office.

No!

She slammed the folders onto the bed.

No, no, no, no, no!

The yearbooks she’d been poring over last night were still lying on the floor. All of them open to the pages with Nick’s pictures.

Had he come in here when he’d come up to check the insulation in the attic? He’d given her that odd look when he’d come downstairs. She’d thought it had something to do with Allison’s endless talking, but what if…

Frantically she looked around for the access to the attic, relieved to see that it was in the hallway near the top of the stairs. He would have opened the hatch, looked inside and gone back downstairs. Nick didn’t seem the type to snoop, and he would have had no reason to go any farther.

She returned to the office, gathered up the books and slipped the first one into place on the bookshelf.

How had he reached the access to the attic?

She went back into the hallway and took another look. He was tall but he wasn’t that tall. He hadn’t had a stepladder with him, which meant he must have stood on a chair.

Her desk chair.

Which meant he would have had to step right over the yearbooks to get it.

Oh, Maggie. You are such an airhead.

Everything that everyone had ever said about her was true. She rushed into things without thinking them through and she was flighty and impulsive. Of course, none of those things had anything to do with leaving the stupid yearbooks lying on the floor when she knew Nick was coming to inspect the house. That was beyond flighty. That was the dumbest thing she’d ever done.

Okay, so making a pair of wings out of an old patio umbrella and trying to fly off the roof of Aunt Margaret’s garage had probably been the dumbest, but she’d only been eight years old. Now she was an adult.

What must Nick have thought when he’d seen his entire high-school history spread out on her office floor?

Oh, Maggie. You’ve really done it this time.

She cast a glance at the ceiling. “Aunt Margaret, I can’t believe you let me do this. You always used to tell me to put my things away when I was finished with them. Why didn’t you say something?”

She shoved the other three yearbooks onto the shelf.

Aunt Margaret’s laughter filled the room.

“This is not funny.” Ugh. Dead people had such a sick sense of humor.

Maggie looked around the room and tried to remember why she’d come up here, but all she could think about was what Nick might have been thinking.

“Darn. I really want to go to that wedding with him. What if he changes his mind?” But if she expected an answer, she’d have to wait for Aunt Margaret to stop laughing first.

As for Nick, she decided there was only one way to find out how he felt.

Ask him.

NICK SAT at the drafting table in his office, trying to focus on the floor plan and the list of materials he’d need, but concentrating on Maggie’s renovations was difficult when all he could think about was Maggie.

Why on earth would she have been looking at those yearbooks?

He tried to remember if he even owned copies. If he did, he hadn’t seen them in years.

He definitely liked the idea that she’d been looking at them though. It meant she had more than a passing interest in him.

So?

So…he didn’t know why that mattered but he still liked the idea. On the other hand, what if Allison had put her up to this? Was he really such a bad person that Allison Peters had to turn up and make his life miserable? Maybe he’d stored up a bunch of bad karma and now it was payback time.

Right. That sounded like something Maggie would say.

He knew how his family would react to him taking someone so unorthodox to the wedding. He indulged himself in a sly grin. Yes, sirree. For the first time in as long as he could remember, he was actually looking forward to a family function. But would Maggie survive a formal encounter with the Durrance family? She could always tell them their horoscopes, he thought with amusement. That alone would be worth the price of admission.

His conscience kicked him in the gut. Ticking off his family was not a good reason for asking a woman to go out with him. Especially Maggie.

He didn’t know why but he couldn’t stop thinking about her. But the sooner you finish this estimate, he reminded himself, the sooner you’ll get to see her again.

He was busy punching numbers into his calculator when Brent Borden, his longtime friend and only employee, came in and tossed a roll of blueprints on the top of the filing cabinet. “Hey, boss. How’s it going?”

“Good. I’m working up an estimate for Miss Meadowcroft’s remodeling job.”

“Sure hope we get that one. She sounds like a hot little number, from what everyone’s saying.”

“Yeah, well, she wants to turn her house into a spa, and there’s a very good chance that Durrance Construction will get the job.”

“All right! We can use the work, and here’s hoping Miss Meadowcroft will be spending lots of time on the job with us.”

Nick glared at him. “She lives there, so I think it’s safe to say that she’ll be around. And it’ll help to remember that she’s a client.”

Brent’s eyes went wide, then he burst out laughing. “I see,” he drawled. “So that’s how it’s going to be.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

“Man, you have never given a damn if someone hustled a pretty girl on the job site. I seem to recall that when we were hired to work at the massage parlor—”

Jeez. Nick should know by now that past mistakes always came back to bite him on the butt. “Maggie Meadowcroft isn’t running a massage parlor. Her house is in a respectable neighborhood and she’s a very nice woman—”

Brent was still laughing. “You sly dog. You’ve already put the moves on her!” He held up a hand and Nick reluctantly met his friend’s high-five.

“Let me guess,” Brent speculated. “A little pizza. A lot of beer. Wham, bam, thank you—”

“Hang on a minute. You got this all wrong.” He might as well spill it, since Brent would hear about it sooner or later. “I haven’t gone out with her. I just asked her to go to my sister’s wedding.”

Brent let out a long, low whistle. “You invited her to meet your family? Man. Either she’s really special or you really have it in for her.”

Nick sighed. “If I didn’t have a date, Leslie and Allison were going to line me up with one.”

Brent stopped laughing. “Allison?”

“Allison Peters,” Nick said. “From high school. Remember?”

“Uh, yeah.” Brent made a face that pretty much summed up Nick’s feelings about that whole fiasco. “What about her?”

“She lives next door to Maggie, and she’s my sister’s bridesmaid and she just happened to drop by Maggie’s this morning with the news that Candice Bentley-Ferguson is newly divorced and once again hot to trot. Oh, and did I mention, also one of my sister’s bridesmaids? What was I supposed to do? Let myself get lassoed into taking her?”

“Quite the dilemma. Which you resolved by asking the new ‘client’ to go with you?”

Wiseass. It’s not as though Brent had never gotten himself into a jam. “Okay,” he agreed. “I wasn’t thinking clearly. But you know my family. And Allison. What I was I supposed to do? Let them set me up with Candice?”