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The door swung open, and he was in. And smiling. “Morning, ladies,” he said, his voice still holding a hint of just-out-of-bed roughness that made Dana swallow. Hard.
Then she smiled, thinking, Okay, toots. You can do this.
Damn.
The Dana Malone smiling broadly for C.J. from across the store was not the same Dana Malone he’d left three days ago. Where was the nervousness, the shyness, the insecurity, that had—C.J. was pained to admit—made it much easier to blow her off as any kind of a threat to his hard-won autonomy?
You are man, he reminded himself. Strong. Above temptation. Impervious to…smiles.
While he stood there, thinking about how strong and above temptation he was, the curly-haired dynamo standing beside Dana jutted out a slender, long-nailed hand. “Hi! I’m Mercedes Zamora. Partner Number Three.”
“Oh! I’m sorry!” Dana said. “Mercy, this is C. J. Turner—”
“I know who the man is, honey,” Mercy said with a warm—very warm—smile. Out of the corner of his eye, C.J. caught Dana’s glare. The phone rang. Nobody moved.
“Merce?” Dana tugged one of the woman’s long curls. “The phone’s ringing.”
“What?” she said, still grinning at C.J. like an overeager retriever. Dana tugged again, harder. “Ow!”
“The phone?”
“Well, why didn’t you just say so?” Mercy said, rubbing her head. But as she turned away, she glanced over her shoulder at C.J., then gave Dana a look he decided was best left untranslated.
Dana rolled her eyes, shrugged in a we-love-her-anyway gesture, then said, “I’m sorry…wasn’t I supposed to meet you at your office?”
“You were. Except it occurred to me I might get a better feel for what you all needed if I saw the shop first.”
She laughed. “There’s a thought,” she said, then ducked behind the counter and held up the coffeepot, grinning. “Can I tempt you?”
Uh, boy.
It wasn’t fair, the way that nearly weightless dress, barely darker than her skin, caressed her curves, skimmed her breasts, her thighs, fell in a graceful sweep to her ankles.
It wasn’t fair, the way her thick hair, corralled into a braid, exposed her delicate jaw and neck, the way that same wisp drifting around her temple still eluded capture. As she swept it back, he noticed she wore simple pearls in her earlobes.
It wasn’t fair, her having earlobes.
“No. Thank you.”
“Your loss,” she said, pouring herself a cup.
“So,” C.J. said, turning to face the sales floor. And frowning. “Hmm. Now I understand why you need a bigger space.”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you?” he heard behind him, and he smiled. But it was true. He’d never in his life seen so much stuff crammed into one store. Not an inch of wall space had been left exposed, and you took your life in your hands navigating the floor, as well. There were even mobiles and stuffed animals and wall hangings suspended from the ceiling. Something…indefinable spread through him, gentle and warm and oddly…scary.
He grinned anyway, taking in the racks of tiny clothes, the miniature furniture, the shelves of whimsical lamps and tea sets and fancy dress dolls. The combined scent of rich coffee and her perfume as she came to stand beside him. “This reminds me of what I’d always imagined the Old Woman’s shoe to look like on the inside. No wonder you nixed all the places I showed you. Which means…damn. You’re probably going to hate everything I picked to show you today, too.”
“Now, now…guess we won’t know until we try, right?”
Tempted to peek behind the counter for the telltale pod, C.J. instead crossed to a display of christening gowns, fingering one whisper-soft garment frothed in ivory lace.
“The workmanship’s incredible, isn’t it?” she said. “That one’s nearly seventy years old.”
C.J. let the fabric fall from his fingers, stuffed his hand in his pocket. “You’d think the family would want to hang on to something like that, pass it down.”
“If there’s someone to pass it down to.” Before he could decide if he’d only imagined the slight edge to her voice, she said, “Let me grab my purse and we can get going, I’ve got an appointment with a decorating client at twelve-thirty.”
She disappeared into the forest of racks and displays, leaving her perfume in his nostrils and a decided sense of foreboding in his brain.
On the surface, Dana mused upon her return to the shop two hours later, one probably couldn’t call the outing successful. Because C.J. had been right—all the new places sucked, too.
“Well?” Mercy said the instant the door shooshed shut behind her.
“Nothing.”
“Oh. Well, did you find a place, at least?”
Dana gave her a dirty look. One that belied what she was really thinking, which was that on a personal level, things couldn’t have been more successful. As in, there was a lot to be said for having spent a whole two hours in the man’s company without angsting about how she looked or what she said or even what he thought about her. Not more than once or twice, anyway. “Where’s Cass?”
“The baby kept her up all night with colic, so she’s taking the day off. Says she’ll switch one day next week with you, if that’s okay.”
“Yeah, sure,” Dana said distractedly, leaning on the counter and leafing through the mail. “Although we really need to think about hiring another body or two. So we could, you know, have lives?” The phone rang. Without looking, she reached for the receiver.
“Great Expectations—”
“Dana?”
“Speaking. May I help you?”
“Dane…it’s me. Trish.”
She jerked upright, the mail forgotten. “Trish? Where are you? Mama’s worried sick about you.”
“I’m okay. Which I told her last week when I talked to her. Listen…I need to see you.”
It took a second. “You’re here? In Albuquerque?”
“Yeah, just for a couple days, though.”
“Where? Give me a number where we can reach you—”
“You coming into the shop tomorrow?”
“What’s tomorrow? Saturday? Yes, I’ll be here all day—”
“When do you get in?”
“Around nine, I suppose. But wouldn’t it be better to get together at my place? Or Mama’s house—?”
Click.
Dana stared at the phone for a second, then slammed it down.
“What was that all about?” Mercy asked.
“That was my airhead cousin.”
“The one who disappeared?”
“The very same.” Dana huffed a sigh. “Says she’s in town, but won’t tell me where she is. Said she’s coming to the shop tomorrow, although God knows why.”
Swishing a lime-green feather duster over a display of ornate frames, Mercy shrugged. “She probably wants money.”
“Yeah, well, she’s in for a rude surprise, then, since between the medical bills from last year and our expansion, this is one dry well. If she needs help, she can jolly well haul her butt back home and go to work like the rest of us poor slobs.”
Mercy laughed.
“What’s so funny?”
“Anyone who didn’t know you would think you were this wussy Southern belle, all sweet and helpless. But let me tell you, if I had to pick someone to be on my team against the bad guys? I’d pick you in a heartbeat.”
Dana tilted her head at her friend. “Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
The phone rang again the very moment a mother with four stair-step children tumbled into the shop.
“Great Expecta—”
“Hey, I’m on my way to another appointment,” C.J. said, and Dana’s face warmed with pleasure. Dumb. “But I just thought of a place I bet would be great for the shop. Don’t know why I didn’t think of it sooner. Must be the heat. In any case, I’m tied up until five, but wondered if you wanted to see it then? It only came on the market this morning, and I don’t know how long it’s going to last. And the great thing is the owner’s willing to sell, so you could apply the rent toward the purchase price if you all want to buy eventually—”
“Slow down, slow down,” she said, laughing. “Yes, five would be fine. But let me meet you there.”
She wrote down the address on a scrap of paper, then hung up, deciding she was feeling all fluttery and trembly inside because of the prospect of finally finding the right location for the store. Yes, that must be it.
Mercy drifted over to the sales counter while the mother browsed and the kids wreaked havoc. Since there was little they could hurt or that could hurt them (despite the place being an obstacle course for Dana), no one paid the children any mind.
“Let me guess,” she said. “That was C.J.”
“Why would you think that?”
“Because your face wasn’t darker than your dress five minutes ago.”
“Bite me.”
That merited a cackle. “He ask you out?”
“No, goofball—he has another place to show me.”
“Miss?” the mother asked. “How much is this play kitchen?”
“It should be tagged,” Mercy said with a smile. “Let me see if I can find it for you.” Then, over her shoulder to Dana as she edged toward her customer, “I’ve got a real good feeling about this one.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake, Merce—”
“The property, the property,” Mercy said, saucer-eyed. “Why, what did you think I meant?”
Then she cackled again, and Dana thought, With friends like this…
Dana was so quiet, so expressionless. C.J. listened to her sandals tapping on the dusty wooden floor as she wordlessly walked from room to room in the quasi-Victorian, her expression telling him nothing.
“The Neighborhood Association would be thrilled to have you in the area. Plus, it’s close enough to Old Town to pull in a nice chunk of the tourist traffic. And I think the other businesses around would complement yours—”
She shushed him with a swat of her hand.
It was beastly hot in the house, which smelled of musty, overheated wood and dust and that damned perfume; several strands of her hair hung in damp tendrils around her neck.
And he stared. As if he’d never seen damp necks and tendrils before. So he looked out a grimy window, thinking maybe it was time to bring the electronic little black book out of retirement. Except the thought made him slightly nauseous.
The tapping came closer, stopped. He turned; she was smiling. Beaming.
“It’s perfect! When can the others see it?”
“Whenever you like.”
She clapped her hands and let out a squeal like a little girl, her happiness contagious. And C.J. hoped to hell his inoculations were up to date.
A few minutes later, after they’d returned to their cars, C.J. said, “See, what did I tell you? When it was right, you had no trouble at all making a decision.”
Her laugh seemed to tremble in the heat. “True. In fact…” Her gaze met his over the roof of his car. She glowed, from the heat, from excitement, from what he guessed was profound relief. “I feel downright…empowered.”
C.J. opened his car door, letting out the heat trapped inside. “And what,” he asked without thinking, “does an empowered Dana Malone do?”
Her grin broadened. “She offers to cook her Realtor dinner.”
Nothing to lose, Dana reminded herself as perspiration poured down her back in such a torrent she prayed a puddle wasn’t collecting at her feet. As she watched C.J.’s smile freeze in place, the undeniable beginnings of that Oh, crap look in his eyes.
“But before you get the wrong idea,” she said over her jittering stomach, “this is only to thank you for all your patience with me, especially since I know how busy you are and you probably eat out a lot, or stick things in the microwave—”
“Dana,” he said gently, looking wretched. “I’d love to, really—”
And here it comes.
“—but I don’t think…that would be a good idea.”
Despite having steeled herself for the rejection, embarrassment heated her face. Still, she managed a smile and a light, “Oh. Well, it was just a thought. No harm, no foul.” Except after she opened her own car door, she wheeled back around. “Although you could have at least lied like any other man, and told me you already had plans or something.”
“And if you’d been any other woman,” he said softly, “I probably would have. But you deserve better than that.” He drew in a breath, letting it out on, “You deserve better than me. Marriage, babies…not in my future, Dana. But something tells me you very much see them in yours.”
