Flirting with Disaster (2 page)

“Do you really want to talk about the pros and cons of living in Charleston?” Dinah inquired tartly.

“Not particularly,” Maggie said.

“Then let's focus on getting your life back on track. Moping around out here all by yourself is not you, Maggie.”

“I'm not moping,” Maggie retorted. “I'm on vacation.”

“Oh, please. You were halfway through that pint of ice cream when we walked in,” Dinah responded. “That's moping. Believe me, I know all the signs. It's obvious you're in trouble and we want to help.”

“I really don't need the three of you sitting here with these gloomy expressions on your faces trying to plan out my life. Hell, Dinah, you're the one who talked Warren into going out with me in the first place. Considering how things turned out, I should hate you for that.”

In fact, she
was
pretty darn irritated about it. If it hadn't been for Dinah's meddling, Maggie would never in a million years have fallen, however halfheartedly, for a man like Warren Blake. Rock-steady and dependable might suit a lot of women, but such traits had always bored Maggie to tears. She preferred dark, dangerous and sexy. Men like Cord Beaufort, as a matter of fact.

If she were being totally honest, she'd have to admit she'd known all along that with Warren, she was settling for someone safe. He might not rock her world, but he'd never hurt her, either. As it turned out, she'd been wrong. He
had
hurt her, though mostly it was her ego that was bruised. If a man like Warren couldn't truly love her, who would?

That was what she'd been pondering in her Sullivan's Island hideaway for a few weeks now. If she wasn't interesting enough, sexy enough or lovable enough for Warren, then she might as well resign herself to spinsterhood. He was her last chance. Her sure thing. Sort of the way Bobby Beaufort, Cord's sweet, but dull-as-dishwater brother, had been Dinah's backup plan till her hormones and good sense had interceded.

Even as Maggie was struck by that notion, she realized she should have seen the handwriting on the wall. Wasn't she the one who'd told Dinah that safe was never going to be enough? If it wasn't good enough for Dinah, why had she, Maggie, ever thought it would work for her? They'd always been like two peas in a pod when it came to choosing between conventional and unconventional.

“Mind if I say something?” Cord asked, his gaze filled with surprising compassion. He spoke in that slow, lazy drawl that had once sent shivers down Maggie's spine till she'd realized he'd never want anyone but Dinah. She'd learned to ignore the attraction and look in other directions. Warren, unfortunately, had been in the vicinity.

Maggie shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

“Here's the way I see it,” he began. “Nothing's stopping you from sitting in this cozy little beach house all the live-long day, if that's what you want to do. I'm sure your art and antiques gallery can pretty much run itself, thanks to those competent employees you've hired. And if it doesn't, so what? You've got a nice little trust fund from your daddy. You don't need to do a thing.”

Maggie bristled. She'd never liked thinking of herself as a spoiled little rich girl who didn't need to work for a living. She'd poured heart and soul into Images, a high-end shop that catered to Charleston's wealthier citizens and the tourists who visited the city's historic district. She'd never treated it like a hobby, and had taken pride in its success. She also felt a certain amount of perverse satisfaction just knowing that it drove her mother crazy to think of her daughter being in “trade,” as she put it. Juliette Forsythe should have lived in some earlier century.

As for her employees, Maggie didn't know where Cord had gotten the idea they were competent. She'd be lucky if they didn't run the place into bankruptcy. Although, until right this second with Cord taunting her, she hadn't much cared.

But if Cord was aware of her growing indignation, he gave no indication. “Maggie's a smart woman,” he continued mildly, aiming his words at Dinah and Warren and leaving Maggie to draw her own conclusions. “This has obviously been a trying time for her. I think we should let her decide for herself how she wants to spend her days. She can go back to work running her business, if that's what matters to her. She can come on out and help us with our project and make a real difference in someone's life. Or she can sit right here and feel sorry for herself. It's her choice. I think once we clear out and give her some breathing room, she'll make the right decision.”

Maggie saw the trap at once. If she did what she wanted to do and hung around here wallowing in self-pity and Häagen-Daz ice cream, they'd worry, but they'd let her do it and they wouldn't think any the less of her, because they loved her. But in her heart, she'd see herself for the ridiculously self-indulgent idiot she was being.

She'd lost a man. So what? Warren wasn't the first and undoubtedly he wouldn't be the last, despite her current vow to avoid all males from here to eternity. Leave it to a man as sneaky and surprisingly insightful as Cordell to appeal to her floundering self-respect.

“Okay, okay, I get it. Tell me again about this stupid project,” she said grudgingly.

Cord, bless his devious little heart, bit back a grin. “We're going to be building a house for someone who needs one. The church's congregation got the idea, a benefactor donated the land, and the preacher asked me to put together a volunteer construction crew. We'll be working mostly on weekends, since that's when people are available. Dinah and her mama are in charge of raising money for whatever building supplies we can't get donated.”

“What do you expect me to do?” Maggie asked suspiciously.

“What you're told,” Dinah said with a glint of amusement in her eyes. “Same as me. It'll be a refreshing change for us. At least that's what Cord says. We'll be hammering and painting right alongside everyone else.”

Maggie turned her gaze on Warren. “And you?” she asked.

“That's up to you,” he replied. “I said I'd help, but I'll stay away if you want me to, Maggie. I don't want to make you uncomfortable.”

Maggie wasn't sure Warren had any essential skills for building a house, so sending him away might not be much of a loss, but why bother? Maybe it was time to show all of Charleston that she was holding up just fine after her broken engagement. It was past time she held her head up high and behaved like the strong, independent woman she'd always considered herself to be.

“Do whatever you want to do,” she told Warren with as much indifference as she could muster.

“Then you'll help?” Dinah asked.

“I'll help,” Maggie agreed. “If I don't, who knows what sort of place you'll build? Everyone knows I'm the one with taste in this crowd.”

“We're building a three-bedroom bungalow with the basic necessities for a single mom with three kids,” Cord warned. “Not a mansion. Let's not lose sight of that.”

“You're building a house,” Maggie retorted emphatically. “I'll turn it into a home.”

But just as she uttered the words, Maggie spotted the satisfied glint in Dinah's eyes and wondered if she wasn't making the second mistake she'd made that day. The first had been opening the door to these three.

T
he blessed ceiling fan was making so much noise Josh couldn't even hear himself think. Normally that would be downright terrific, but he was sitting on the edge of his motel-room bed, facing down his boss and his boss's drop-dead-gorgeous wife, who was trying valiantly to pretend that this sleazy dump was a palace. They all knew better.

Josh raked a hand through his hair and tried not to stare at Dinah Davis's elegant, long legs. Dinah Davis
Beaufort,
he reminded himself sternly. He had a hunch if his gaze lingered one second too long, Cord would punch him out and forget all about whatever scheme had brought the two of them over here at the crack of dawn on a Saturday morning.

Which might not be a bad thing, Josh realized. He didn't like that matching gleam in their eyes one damn bit.

“Why exactly are you here?” he asked, wishing like hell he hadn't had that fourth beer the night before. It had knocked him out so he could sleep, but it was muddying his thought processes now and something told him he was going to need all his wits about him before this conversation was over.

“I need you to do me a favor,” Cord said.

“A huge favor,” Dinah amended.

Josh regarded both of them suspiciously. He turned his gaze on Dinah, since he had this gut-sick feeling she was the one who'd come up with this
huge
favor. Cord was a businesslike sort who laid things on the line, said what he needed and then left his crew to get the work done. Dinah was sneaky…or clever, depending on your point of view. Her mere presence here was enough to fill Josh with dread.

“I am not going out with one of your friends,” Josh announced, since that was always what women seemed to want from him. They assumed that if he was single, he was lonely. He wasn't, at least not in the way that made him accept blind dates intended to lead to something serious and permanent. In fact, he'd had enough experience with the female population to last him a lifetime. He was currently dedicating himself to a life of celibacy. Of course, he'd only been at it a week and it was already getting on his nerves, so the odds weren't great he'd stick with it. Still, permanency was absolutely, positively out of the question, and that was the only thing any friend of Dinah's was likely to be interested in.

“Of course not,” Dinah said sweetly. “I would never dream of imposing on you like that, Josh. I don't know you well enough to presume to know your taste in women.”

Even though he'd only encountered Dinah a few times in his life, Josh knew for a fact she only laid on that thick, syrupy accent when she was lying through her teeth. Her mama was the same way. He'd run into Dorothy Davis a few times when he'd helped out with the renovations Beaufort Construction was doing at Covington Plantation, her pet historic preservation project. She'd always poured on enough syrup to send a man into a diabetic coma just before she moved in for the kill. Watching her work on Cord had given Josh all the lessons he needed to know to watch his backside around the Davis women.

“What, then?” he inquired cautiously.

“Actually it's going to be a real challenge, something downright rewarding,” Cord said in what sounded like an overly optimistic bit of spin. “We're going to be building a house for a particular family and I need you to oversee the project. I'll keep you on the company payroll, but everyone else will be volunteer labor.”

“You don't build houses,” Josh said, trying to get a grasp on what Cord was saying. “You do historic renovation. So do I.”

Cord's lips twitched. “I'd say we both have enough skill to build a house from the ground up if we put our minds to it. Besides, this is a one-shot deal. I'm not asking you to take on an entire development in the suburbs.”

Josh still couldn't hide his bemusement. “I don't get it. Why me? For that matter, how did you get sucked into this?”

Cord cast a glance at his wife, which answered one question, then he leveled a look straight into Josh's eyes. “I want you on this because the Atlanta renovations are finished and there's nothing going on over there till we get that new deal finalized. The Covington renovations are almost done. I need to finish up out there if we're going to keep my mother-in-law happy. She's got some big gala scheduled in a month to show it off, and if every little detail isn't just right, she'll have my hide. You've got the time for this right now. I don't.”

“I do historic renovations,” Josh reminded him again. “I don't build cute little houses with amateurs.”

“You do if that's what I need you to do,” Cord reminded him mildly, pulling rank.

“It's a bad idea,” Josh argued. In fact, it was a lousy idea in ways too numerous to mention. He settled on one. “It's a waste of my skills. I should be helping you out at Covington. Then you'll be done that much sooner.”

“Hey, come on, pal,” Cord cajoled. “It's a few months out of your life for a good cause. What's the big deal?”

Josh shuddered. He knew more than most about good causes. For most of his life he'd been on the receiving end of other people's charity. He hadn't much liked it. It had reminded him that there was nothing normal about his family, that his dad had disappeared before Josh had needed his first diaper change and that his mom had tried to fill that void with one creep after another. They'd run from cheap motel to cheap motel in more cities than he could count, trying to get away from the worst of the creeps. It was the reason he picked rooms like this one. It reminded him of his so-called homes. That kind of history didn't exactly qualify him to build anybody's dream house.

“This is like one of those Habitat for Humanity things?” he asked.

“Exactly like that,” Cord said. “But this is just a one-shot deal being put together by a church in Charleston. One of the parishioners has had a run of real bad luck and the church wants to help her out. They've got the land. They've got people beating the bushes to get building materials donated. I'm putting together the construction crew and I want you in charge.”

“You say it's for someone who's had a run of bad luck. What kind of bad luck?” Josh inquired, despite his intention to nip this whole scheme in the bud.

“A woman with three kids,” Cord said. “Her husband was killed in a car accident and left them with nothing but a mountain of debt. They had to sell their house and move into a cramped apartment. They were about to be evicted from that till the church stepped in and took care of the rent, but they need a bigger place, a home that really belongs to them. Building this will give them a new start in life.” He gave Josh a pointed look. “I'm sure you can relate to that.”

Josh cursed the day he'd spilled his guts to Cord about his lousy childhood. He should have known it would come back to bite him in the butt.

Before Josh could stop her, Dinah whipped out a picture of a pretty, but exhausted-looking woman with three solemn-looking kids. Every one of them appeared beaten down. Unfortunately, just as Cord had guessed, Josh could relate to that. His mother, Nadine, had looked exactly like that way too often. He felt his heart twist. How the hell was he supposed to say no now that he'd looked into those sad, vulnerable eyes that reminded him of her? His mother always bounced back quickly, but something told him this family might not have her resiliency.

“I suppose they're all going to be underfoot?” he asked, resigned. If there was one thing he was more skittish about than women, it was kids. He didn't know what to make of them. He sometimes wondered if that was what had sent his father fleeing, the jittery sense that he was in way over his head when he found out Josh was on the way.

“That's part of the deal,” Cord said. “They have to help, right down to the littlest one.”

“I'm not babysitting a bunch of kids,” Josh declared fiercely. “It's way too dangerous for them to be anywhere near a construction site.”

“You won't have to worry about them,” Dinah assured him. “I'll make sure they're kept busy and out of your way.”

“And the mother?”

“She'll do whatever you need her to do, the same as the rest of us,” Dinah promised. “And we've already rounded up a lot more volunteers. You'll have plenty of help.”

“I don't suppose any of these volunteers will actually know what they're doing,” Josh said, resigned to his fate.

“We'll bring in professionals for the plumbing and electrical,” Cord promised him.

Josh sighed. “Great. The house might fall down, but at least the toilets and lights will work.”

“It's up to you to see that the house doesn't fall down,” Cord chided. “So, is it a deal?”

“Do I have a choice?” Josh retorted wryly.

“You can always go off and look for another renovation project to fill the time till our deal comes through in Atlanta,” Cord said.

Unfortunately, Josh knew that high-end historic renovation projects were few and far between. He also knew that Cord was better at them than anyone else he'd ever met. He didn't want to work on some half-baked job for an idiot who barely knew one end of a hammer from the other. He owed Cord for making him foreman of the Atlanta project when a lot of contractors would have turned their backs on a man who'd wandered from place to place as much as he had. Cord had trusted him to stick around and see the job through.

Josh had done that, and now would be the perfect opportunity for him to move on, the way he usually did. But he was damn tired of staking out new turf for a few months, then leaving it behind just when he started to feel comfortable. He'd worked in Atlanta and Charleston for Cord, so he knew his way around in both places. It wasn't as if he was going to be putting down any roots if he stuck around awhile longer. Nobody in his right mind would put down roots if this dump of a motel room was what he came home to at night.

As long as neither Dinah or Cord had any ulterior motives, Josh couldn't see much of a downside to staying. Maybe one good deed would make up for some of the miserable stunts he'd pulled in his life. Maybe he'd start to feel better about who he was if he gave something back, instead of living in the lonely isolation that had become a habit as far back as he could remember. People who were always on the run had few genuine friends. Maybe that was what had made Nadine latch on so desperately to anyone who showed her the least bit of kindness.

He gave Dinah a hard look, because she was the one he suspected of not being entirely truthful about her motivations. “This is just about the house, right?”

She beamed at him. “Of course. What else could it possibly be about?”

In Josh's humble opinion, she sounded just a bit too cheerful. “You tell me,” he pushed. “You don't have any ideas about me and this single mom, do you?”

“Absolutely not,” she said. “I haven't even met Amanda yet. That's her name. Amanda O'Leary. We wanted to get everything in place before we told her what was going on. We didn't want to get her excited and then have to let her down if we couldn't make it happen. I'm sure she's still grieving the loss of her husband, so I seriously doubt she's looking for a new relationship.”

Josh stared Dinah down, but she never so much as blinked. He turned his gaze on Cord. “Is she telling the truth?”

“Dinah's a journalist,” Cord said. “She always tells the truth.”

“We'll see about that,” Josh said, still skeptical.

“You're saying yes?” Dinah asked eagerly.

“Sure,” Josh said without enthusiasm. “Like Cord said, I've got time on my hands. I might as well do something productive with it.”

“You're an angel,” Dinah declared.

Josh chuckled. “Not even close, darlin'. Not even close.”

 

Now that she was back in Charleston, Maggie knew she had no choice but to drop in to see her mother. If Juliette Forsythe heard from someone else that her daughter had returned, Maggie would never hear the end of it. It would be added to her already lengthy list of sins.

The Forsythe mansion faced Charleston Harbor, its stately elegance protected by a high wrought-iron fence. The front lawn was perfectly manicured, and in spring azaleas spilled a profusion of pink, white and gaudy magenta blossoms over the landscape. But in July, as it was now, everything was unrelentingly green. Juliette didn't believe in “tawdry” annuals along the walkways or hanging in pots from the porch ceiling. One brave gardener had edged the walkway with cheerful red geraniums and been fired on the spot for his audacity.

Maggie had timed her visit carefully. Juliette had a standing hair and manicure appointment at 10:30 a.m. Thursdays, so that she would be looking her absolute best when she met her friends for lunch and shopping in the historic district. By arriving at nine forty-five, Maggie knew she would only have to endure a twenty-minute grilling before being dismissed. No one kept Madame Monique waiting, not even Juliette. In fact, the hairdresser was the only person in all of Charleston that Maggie had ever seen intimidate her imperious mother.

“It's about time you came to see me,” Juliette declared when Maggie walked into her upstairs sitting room, where she was drinking her morning coffee and finishing her raspberry croissant. She was already dressed in a stylish knit suit. A pair of one-carat diamond studs winked at her ears. Her makeup was flawless. Every highlighted blond hair on her head was in place, which seemed to mock the need for the impending salon appointment.

Juliette was fifty-seven, but looked ten years younger, the result of obsessive control of her diet and enough skin-care products to stock a spa gift shop. Her self-absorption might annoy Maggie, but it was simply the way Juliette had been raised. Her duty was to be an asset to her wealthy husband and a doting mother to her children. Unfortunately, there had been only Maggie upon whom to lavish all that attention. Maybe if there had been sons or another daughter to distract Juliette, Maggie wouldn't have been the focus of so many maternal rules and regulations and would never have felt the need to rebel.