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Though her dark eyes were wary, she smiled and said, “Nice to know my first impression wasn’t too far off the mark.”
He blinked. “Oh?”
“I told Elliot, our personal trainer, that you looked trustworthy,” she explained. “Even though you’d been peering in the windows of the spa alarming the women.”
Maddie regarded him with shock. “You did what?”
Tom winced. “It wasn’t the way it appeared. I was looking for a place to have a good workout. I was told the spa was only for women, but I wanted to see for myself if I could join. Jeanette intercepted me outside and made it very clear that I couldn’t.”
“Sorry,” Jeanette said, though her voice lacked sincerity. “Just enforcing the rules.”
“Maybe you and Cal can team up and get something similar going for the men in town,” Maddie suggested. “That way I won’t have to pretend I don’t know he sneaks in there late at night.”
“I don’t suppose you’d let me sneak in with him, would you?” Tom asked wistfully.
“Not a chance,” Jeanette said sharply, drawing a look from Maddie. “I just mean, Cal’s one thing. He’s married to an owner. But if we let you sneak in, then someone else will ask, and the next thing you know we won’t have a special place for women.”
He grinned at her rapid-fire explanation. “For a minute there, I thought maybe you had something against me personally.”
“How could I?” she said. “I don’t even know you.”
“We could change that,” he suggested, and had the satisfaction of seeing her blush.
“I don’t think so,” she said tightly, though yet another sharp glance from Maddie had her adding, “Thanks, anyway.”
He just stared at her for a moment before pulling out the chair next to his. Before Jeanette could sit down as he’d hoped, Jessica Lynn scrambled onto it and tugged on his arm. “I’m hungry,” she announced. “Where’s my doll?”
“Right here,” he said, picking it up off the seat of his own chair and handing it to her. Conceding the fact that Jeanette would be sitting elsewhere—probably as far from him as possible—he leaned down and confided to Jessica Lynn, “I’m starving, too.”
“Count me among the starving,” Jeanette chimed in, surprising him.
“Then let’s order,” Maddie said. “Cal should be here any minute with the boys.”
“Where’s Katie?” Jeanette asked.
“At a friend’s house, in theory doing homework. I have my doubts—the Grahams have a pool.”
Tom regarded Maddie with curiosity. He’d already digested that there was an unmistakable age difference between Maddie and her husband—probably a good ten years—but it also sounded as if they had a large family. And Cal was only around his age—early to midthirties. “How many children do you have?”
“I have five,” Maddie told him. She gestured at Jessica Lynn and Cole. “These two are mine with Cal, but I have three from my first marriage. Ty’s a sophomore at Duke. Katie, as I mentioned, is with a friend tonight, and Kyle will be here any minute with Cal.”
“And you manage the spa full-time?” Tom asked, impressed.
“And does an amazing job of it,” Jeanette added. “Women are great multitaskers.”
Tom frowned at the note of censure in her voice. “I’m aware of that. I’m just trying to learn who does what in Serenity.”
After shooting a bewildered look in Jeanette’s direction, which suggested there would be questions for her later, Maddie said, “Well, you’ll be happy to know that Jeanette is an organizational wizard herself. She’ll be our representative on the Christmas festival committee. Will you be chairing that?”
“Yes,” Tom said. Suddenly the prospect of planning the town’s holiday celebration didn’t seem as dismal as he’d anticipated. He still thought there were better uses of his time, but if it threw him together with Jeanette, it couldn’t be all bad. Right now, though, she was regarding him with undisguised suspicion.
“Since you and Maddie clearly don’t really know each other, what are you doing here?” Jeanette asked as if he’d crashed the party.
Maddie’s expression went from bewildered to dismayed at Jeanette’s rudeness. “I invited him,” she said. “And before you ask, it was Cal’s suggestion. He called on his way home and said he’d run into you at the movies and invited you to join us. He thought it would be nice for Tom to get to know a few people in town.”
Jeanette didn’t look entirely satisfied with the answer, but she sat back and hid behind her menu. The continued high color in her cheeks was the only thing that gave away her embarrassment.
Once Cal arrived with the boys, the tension at the table dissolved, primarily because there was no way Tom and Jeanette could be expected to communicate with each other. It wasn’t until they were on their way out to the parking lot that he had a chance to speak to her privately. As the others drove off, he deliberately lingered beside her.
“I’m sorry if my being here tonight was a problem,” he said, studying her intently. “Have I offended you in some way? When Maddie called, I had no idea who else would be here. I was just tired of staring at the four walls of my room at the Serenity Inn, so I seized on the chance to get out for a meal and some conversation.”
She sighed heavily. “I’m sorry. I know I’ve behaved like an idiot, but you don’t know Maddie that well yet, or her partners. They…meddle.”
Ah, the picture was getting clearer. “Inveterate matchmakers, huh?”
“You have no idea. It was amusing when they were focused on each other, but now they seem to be turning their attention to me. It’s humiliating, to say nothing of unwelcome. And it’s really embarrassing to see you put on the spot the way you were tonight.”
“I wasn’t embarrassed. It made my day when I looked up and saw you crossing the restaurant. I’d been hoping to run into you again.”
His response only seemed to aggravate her. “I don’t date,” she said emphatically.
Tom wasn’t half as put off as she’d clearly intended for him to be. She’d inadvertently created a fascinating challenge for him. He’d always excelled when told that something was beyond his reach.
“I imagine there’s a story behind that,” he said, holding her gaze until she looked away.
“Several of them, unfortunately.”
She started to walk away, but he stayed in step with her. “We’ll have to get together sometime so you can tell me about it.”
Her lips twitched. “Wouldn’t that constitute a date?”
“Not if we don’t want it to,” he said seriously. “Two friends commiserating over a good dinner and a bottle of wine could be perfectly innocent.”
“Not if one of those ‘friends’ is you,” she said. “I may be wrong, but somehow I don’t think there’s anything innocent about you.”
Tom didn’t even try to deny it. “It’s the dimple, isn’t it?” he said with exaggerated dismay.
“You, Mr. McDonald, are entirely too full of yourself. Something tells me you’re a player.”
“I was always told that self-confidence is a good trait. Did I get that wrong?” he asked worriedly.
“You say self-confidence,” she teased. “I say arrogance.”
“I’ll work on that,” he promised.
“We’ll see.”
“Hey, I’m all for self-improvement, especially if it means you’ll eventually say yes to having dinner with me.”
“Self-improvement should be its own reward,” she said. “Good night.”
“Do you need a lift?” he asked hopefully.
“No, thanks. I have my car.”
“Then, can you give me a lift?”
“What about the car in which you just offered to drive me home?”
He shrugged. “I’ll get it tomorrow.”
For the first time all evening, she laughed. “You’re incorrigible.”
He shrugged, unrepentant. “You’re not the first person to tell me that this weekend.”
“Apparently the women in your life are all on to you.”
“The other one was my mother,” he admitted.
“Well, I rest my case. She would definitely know.”
She climbed into her sporty little convertible, gave him a jaunty wave and drove off, leaving him in her dust. Being rejected by Jeanette Brioche was getting to be a little hard on his ego, which of course only made him more determined to win her over. He had a hunch he knew the rules of this game far better than she did and, in the end, he never lost. Not when something mattered to him.
Despite knowing that the Christmas committee would throw him into contact with the elusive Jeanette, Tom had hoped Howard would back off for a while. Unfortunately, when he arrived at work on Monday morning, it rapidly became evident that this was one area in which the mayor was highly efficient. Tom’s secretary beamed at him.
“The committee’s waiting for you in the conference room,” Teresa announced. “I’ve had coffee and doughnuts brought in.”
Tom frowned at her. “What committee? I don’t have a meeting on my calendar for this morning.”
Her smile never wavered. “Oh, dear, I must have forgotten to make a note of it on that calendar you insist on keeping yourself. It’s on the one I keep.”
“What committee, Teresa?” he repeated impatiently.
“Christmas festival, of course. I know Howard discussed it with you. He asked me to set it up.”
Sneaky SOB, Tom thought uncharitably. And as for Teresa and her annoying tendency to take orders from people like Howard Lewis, she did know more than anyone else about how this place operated. He needed her. Otherwise his career in public service in Serenity was going to be very short-lived. That might make his folks happy, but he didn’t want his career to falter even slightly because he’d offended a knowledgeable secretary within his first two weeks on the job.
“Okay, give me a quick rundown on the committee members,” he said, grimly determined to see this through. Once it was over, perhaps he could reconsider whether he was at all suited to a life of public service, after all. It had sounded darn noble once upon a time, but that was before he’d been confronted with making decisions about hanging snowflakes on the town green or whether Santa’s chair needed to be repainted with gold and adorned with glitter or whatever other little crises this committee dreamed up to waste his time. He was pretty sure nothing like this had ever been mentioned in any of his public-administration courses. And he definitely hadn’t run into this sort of thing during his tenure in the planning and finance departments of the other towns in which he’d worked.
He listened as Teresa described the makeup on the committee. In addition to Howard and Jeanette, the other two members were Ronnie Sullivan, who owned the hardware store on Main Street, and Mary Vaughn Lewis, the president of the chamber of commerce.
“You’ll want to watch out for Mary Vaughn,” Teresa added. “She’s bound to make a play for you. It’s what she does.”
Tom appreciated the warning, though he couldn’t help wondering if another woman’s interest might be just what he needed to spark a little life into the relationship he hoped to have with Jeanette. Then again, plans like that tended to backfire, he thought as he prepared to go to the meeting.
Jeanette sat at the conference table tapping her pen impatiently on the mahogany surface. She was thoroughly annoyed that she’d had to switch her entire schedule around at the spa to be here, but to make things worse, Tom was nowhere to be found.
Not that she was anxious to see him again. Dinner the night before had been awkward enough. She’d been rude, and she wasn’t likely to hear the end of it from Maddie anytime soon, either. Nor was she looking forward to more of Tom’s advances. She had a hunch he was persistent.
She turned to Mary Vaughn. “This is a waste of time,” she groused. “You could have sold another house this morning and I could have done two or three treatments. If the town manager isn’t here in five minutes I am out of here.”
Across the table Ronnie Sullivan, Dana Sue’s husband, winked at her. “Settle down, sugar. Things move at a slower pace in Serenity.”
“Tell that to Maddie,” she retorted.
He grinned. “The way I understand it, Madelyn is the one who sent you over here. I’m sure she knew what to expect.”
Discovering that Ronnie was on the committee had been a surprise. Dana Sue had never mentioned that. She wondered if Dana Sue had any idea that Mary Vaughn was on the committee, as well. No way, she concluded. If Dana Sue had known, she’d have been here herself, protecting her turf: Ronnie.
Jeanette stole another glance at Mary Vaughn, who was wearing one of her expensive designer suits, chunky gold jewelry and a diamond-encrusted watch that cost more than Jeanette made in a month. Suddenly she was struck by the thought that Mary Vaughn and Tom McDonald were an ideal match. Both professionals. Both go-getters. And both, apparently, on the prowl. Yes, indeed, that was the solution to her problem. Once those two met, Tom would give up on Jeanette and move happily on to more available prey.
Astonishingly, the idea didn’t hold nearly as much appeal as it ought to.
Finally Tom came into the room, looking no happier than she was to be here. She had to admit that dressed up for work in neatly pressed navy slacks, a blue-gray shirt the exact color of his eyes, gold cuff links and a tie that he’d already loosened, he managed to give a little jolt to her system even though he was definitely not her type. She preferred sexy, blue-collar guys who had absolutely no pretenses. Of course, based on past results, her taste was pretty questionable.
“Morning, folks,” Tom said in a slow drawl that gave Jeanette another jolt to her system. Darn the man. He smiled, introduced himself and shook hands with everyone at the table. His attitude was friendly enough with most of them, but turned a little frosty when he reached the mayor. “Howard,” he said curtly.
“Good morning,” Howard said, oblivious to the undercurrent. He and Ronnie seemed to be the only people one hundred percent happy to be here.
Next to her, as anticipated, Mary Vaughn was studying Tom with a look suggesting he might well become her next romantic diversion. Jeanette noted the way Mary Vaughn honed in on Tom’s left hand, obviously noting the lack of wedding band. She suddenly perked up, readjusting her suit jacket to expose a bit of cleavage. Jeanette sighed. Could she be any more obvious?
“Howard, since you called this meeting, why don’t you get it started,” Tom suggested. “I’m sure you have an agenda. Since I’m unfamiliar with the traditions here in town, I’ll just take notes today and chime in if a suggestion comes to mind.”
His tone hinted that any suggestions he might want to make right now wouldn’t be offered in the spirit of the holidays. Jeanette totally sympathized.
Howard, however, took the ball and ran with it. Within an hour, he’d assigned Mary Vaughn to speak to all the choirs in town. Ronnie had been designated to investigate new decorations. That had left dealing with prospective vendors for Jeanette.
“Tom, you’ll work with her on that, right?” the mayor said, to Mary Vaughn’s obvious disappointment.
“Of course,” the town manager said, giving Jeanette an impudent wink.
“Then I’d say we’re well on our way to having the best Christmas festival Serenity has ever seen,” Howard chirped cheerfully. “Good job, everyone. Same time next week.”
“We’re meeting weekly?” Jeanette asked, horrified.
“Well, of course we are. We have to stay on top of this, don’t we?” Howard replied. “I might be Santa around here, but I can’t do this without my little elves.”
Tom looked as if he wanted to jab his ballpoint pen straight into the mayor’s heart. Jeanette understood the emotion.
“He’s not worth the time in jail,” she murmured as she passed by.
To her surprise, his lips twitched. “You sure about that?”
“Now that you mention it, no. Check with me again next week. I might supply the pens.”
5
When Jeanette finally made it back to The Corner Spa, she was edgy and more annoyed than ever with Maddie for getting her involved in the Christmas festival. Two hours wasted every week from September all the way until the event itself in early December! Ridiculous. On top of that, Maddie had gently chided her just now for her attitude toward Tom on Sunday night. She’d expected it, but that hadn’t made the experience any less annoying. She was still muttering about it when she ran into Helen in the café.
