Silk on the Skin: A Loveswept Classic Romance (5 page)

“I don’t want to hear about a green one. Or blue. Or yellow. Or black.”

“Not yellow,” he broke in, his eyes full of mischief. “It would clash with your coloring. Now, black would be sensational on you, especially with the cutouts around the—”

“Let’s talk about M & L,” she interrupted. The son of a gun knew exactly how to get to her!

“You’re the one who’s no fun now,” he complained, leaning his hip against the counter.

“The original party pooper,” she agreed, stepping over to the counter. She faced him and leaned her hip against the counter too.

He gave a loud exaggerated sigh. She hid a grudging smile of amusement.

“Okay, Cass. You’re the boss. Yesterday, I told you about the problems at the company. There is a solution. Go to the offices and check out everything I’ve said. As a major stockholder, you have every right to do so.”

“I’ve also got a proxy agreement,” she reminded him. “Someone else votes for me, and I see no reason to change that.”

“You can break that agreement with Ned at any time, and you know it.”

Her jaw dropped in astonishment at his knowledge of the terms of her agreement with Ned.

“That is private business!” she began hotly.

“Half of Wall Street knows it.” he said in a cool
voice. “Ned is in the habit of bragging to his friends about how untroublesome that little clause is to him. It feeds his ego to think that you’re too flighty even to know you can invoke it.”

“Flighty?”

“Flighty. At M & L, you are considered to be a born-late hippy who has an unprofitable shop in a quaint little seaside town because she needs to do something to fill the hours.”

She opened her mouth to vent a protest, then shut it as she realized it was exactly what he wanted her to do. He wanted her angry at Ned, angry at everyone, and determined to prove them wrong. She could see how people would get the wrong impression of her. They only knew she owned a Christmas specialty store on the Jersey coast. Even Ned really didn’t know much more than that about her. But they didn’t know
her.
She doubted very much if Ned “bragged.” He was probably relieved that she had confidence in him.

She forced herself to shrug nonchalantly. “They’ve got a right to their opinion. But I’m curious about why you’d think that breaking my proxy agreement with Ned would cure the company’s ills.”

“I told you before. Your shares give Ned the majority voting block on the board. How a board goes, so goes the company. It’s bad enough when stockholders don’t vote the right way, but it’s worse when someone else is doing it for them.

“So you expect me to go up to M & L’s main offices, take a quick look-see, and be ready to make an intelligent decision?” She laughed dryly. “I could decide that Ned is doing a great job.”

“Not if I’m the one showing you the operation, Cass.”

Aha, she thought, while smothering a smile of satisfaction. So Dallas would guide her through M & L. It ought to be some guidance. She bet her last Mary Snead pillow he was the one who thought she was flighty—and pliable. He had to, if he expected her to fall for this.

It suddenly occurred to her exactly how to teach Dallas Carter a well-deserved lesson and at the same time keep him from causing trouble with the other stockholders. It meant being around him for hours at a stretch, but she decided she could handle it. All she had to do was maintain her poise, and she’d just done that.

“I do understand what you’re telling me,” she began slowly. “But M & L is a manufacturer. I sell—”

“It’s still a business. You obviously have a talent for knowing what will sell in what market. It doesn’t matter whether it’s ball bearings or microchips; the appeal of each is only to a particular market. I know what I’m talking about, Cass. It’s what I do for a living. I’ve worked for a computer manufacturer, a foreign-car builder, a major restaurant chain, and now a lingerie company. Strip any business down to the fundamentals, and it’s the same as the next.”

“How long is your vacation?” she asked.

He frowned at the sudden question. “I have to be back a few days before the board meeting on the fifteenth. I’d like you to go with me, Cass.”

“But …” It was her turn to frown. She could have sworn Ned had said it was on the twentieth. She made a mental note to double-check the date when she received the notices.

“I’ll make you a deal, Dallas. You say selling is the same thing, no matter what it is or how big. Work in my store for the rest of your vacation. Prove to me that you can put a fish in another pond and he won’t know the difference. If you can do that, I’ll go up to New York and look over M & L.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, clearly considering what her offer meant. She mustered an innocent smile and added, “I bet you can’t.”

He gazed at her for one moment longer, then thrust out his hand. “Done. And I’ll outsell your other employees.”

He had taken the bait. Cass grinned and shook his hand. She instantly realized that touching him was a big mistake. His hand was warm and strong and very masculine. To her relief, the door to the store opened and a young couple walked in.

“I believe, Mr. Carter,” she said, “that you have customers to wait on.”

And that, she decided, made them almost even.

Four
 

He must have been crazy.

As Dallas pushed his way through the aisle to ring up his third sale of the day, he wondered why he had ever agreed to Cass’s deal. At the time it had seemed like a perfect opportunity to nurture the seeds he had planted with her. They’d be working together for long periods of time. He could talk in detail about what was happening at Marks & Lindley, bring more logical argument to his case. Instead, everything seemed to be conspiring against him.

First the heavens had split apart at the seams, and heavy rains were drenching the entire shoreline. WinterLand had been mobbed since it opened that morning. If Noah’s Ark had pulled up outside, he wouldn’t have been surprised. Hell, he thought, everybody else was here. The only good thing was that he couldn’t help but sell something. It was frustrating to admit, though, that
he wasn’t outselling the regular employees. Jean mothered people into buying. Mary, with her round-eyed madonna look and eager-to-please attitude, made people feel guilty if they didn’t buy. And Joe, the part-timer, called in for the heavy traffic, acted as if every customer were an unpardonable interruption. Somehow, people couldn’t resist forcing him to sell them something. But the big-shot president could barely give away the damn stuff compared to them, Dallas acknowledged grimly. So much for putting fish in different ponds. If it weren’t for the rain, he’d be in big trouble as far as the terms of the deal were concerned. And Cass, with the constant gleam of triumph in her eyes, knew it.

“How about some postcards?” he asked his two women customers when he reached the register.

“No,” said one. “Just the doll.”

“A hand-carved wooden ornament? It would look terrific on your tree.”

“I don’t bother with a tree.”

“We have some beautiful glass candle holders—”

“Just the doll,” snapped the other. “And hurry it up—it’s hot in here.”

“Right,” Dallas said flatly. “Cash or charge?”

He jabbed out the amount on the register buttons and practically slapped the change into their hands.

Jean appeared and, with her hip, nudged him away so she could ring up a sale.

“How’s it going?” she asked.

“Rotten,” he admitted, not bothering to leave the counter area.

“Why don’t you take a break?” Jean suggested. “We’ve handled bigger crowds than this.”

He smiled at her. “No. I might miss out on yet another humbling experience.”

Jean chuckled. “You’re doing okay.”

“Jean, I haven’t done just okay since I sold encyclopedias door to door.”

“Come on,” Jean said scoffingly. “Encyclopedias? You?”

“Me,” he confessed with a wry smile as he remembered the summer before college, when he’d lugged samples of the heavy books in a desperate attempt to earn tuition money. His father’s military income hadn’t stretched to funding higher education. He’d finally wised up on the encyclopedias, and gotten a full-time job after classes. He’d nearly killed himself, but he’d had the money for school. Chuckling, he added, “Believe me, Jean, doing okay with that was actually doing great.”

“Well, relax, Dallas. You’re simply helping out here, right?”

Gazing into Jean’s shrewdly questioning eyes, he only smiled. Obviously, she wasn’t buying Cass’s story that he was filling in while he was down here. Considering the way he was doing so far, he wasn’t about to admit the truth. “That’s me. Good old ‘fill-in’ Carter.”

“When donkeys fly,” Jean muttered.

After Jean went back into the fray, he leaned on the counter and surveyed the crowded shop. The customers were animated, their festive voices belying the gloomy day outside the door. One big party, and he was the wallflower, he thought in frustration.

His gaze turned to Cass, who was showing several wreaths to a group of people. Her profile was
patrician and delectable. Her shining ash-blond hair was swept back from her shoulders and arrowed down to the middle of her back. Her stance was at once straight and relaxed, the tailored plaid shirt and blue trousers she wore showcasing her figure.

She was gorgeous, and that, he admitted, was becoming a very big problem. The time he’d spent in her company had only made him more aware of her small but perfect curves, the scent of wild flowers in her hair, and the easygoing confidence she exuded. It was obvious that she was comfortable with the woman she was, and accepting of others. He considered the ardent career women he had dated in the past. Conversations with them had consisted of debates over whether women were getting a fair shake in the marketplace; relaxation had meant doing something very up-scale, like the Club Med; and sex had been a serious competition for equal satisfaction, with each going to his or her side of the bed afterward to sleep in solitary peace. That kind of woman had made sense, in an odd way. He’d been burned badly once, after which companionship without commitment had appealed as much to him as it had to the women with whom he’d been involved. But for a long time now, he had preferred being alone rather than attempting what he had known would be another sterile relationship.

Cass was different from those women. Very different. She had a joy in her that left him wondering if he’d missed some joke. He could easily imagine her sopping wet and grinning with satisfaction as she held up a crab … or naked and
laughing in bed. She was an oasis in a very dry desert, he admitted. With each moment he was becoming more and more attracted. He’d begun to fantasize about kissing her, and the idea was so tempting that he could almost taste it.

Dammit, he thought. He couldn’t afford to waste time daydreaming about her, like some kid with his first crush. He was too old for crushes. But the more time he spent with her, the more he wanted her. He’d have to do something about that. Later, he acknowledged. He should be taking advantage of this golden opportunity to push her toward his objective. And he should be doing his damnedest to figure out some way to win in this deal with her—even if he had to cheat.

“Hey, mister! You planning on daydreamin’ all day? I got things to buy, ya know.”

Dallas straightened from the counter and stared down at a wizened lady, who glared back belligerently.

“Here.” She shoved a half-dozen items across the counter. “Ya got any tablecloths with reindeer on ’em?”

“I’ll go look,” he said, smiling politely.

As he walked toward the tablecloth displays, he decided that if he had to, he’d draw the damn reindeers himself.

Anything for a sale.

With weary satisfaction Cass totaled up the day’s receipts on the register. The deluge of rain and customers was over, and WinterLand looked as if a cyclone had hit it.

A very profitable cyclone, she admitted, smiling as she stuffed the money and checks in a bank bag and zipped it locked. Dropping the bag on the counter, she glanced up to find only Dallas straightening the displays.

“Where are the others?” she asked, frowning.

“They left a few minutes ago.” He winked at her. “We’re alone at last.”

She looked around the shop as if disbelieving, then forced back a desperate urge to run. Okay, so she was alone with him. No big deal. “Well, you might as well go on home, too, Dallas. I’ll clean up.”

He came toward her. “And desert you? Never. My father, the colonel, would be put out by my lack of manners.”

“Your father wasn’t a colonel,” she retorted.

“Full-bird, Air Force,” he replied, leaning over from the other side of the counter.

She ordered her feet not to back away. The counter was between them, and Formica made a damned fine barrier. “That explains why you think you can order someone to do something, and she’ll just do it.”

“Not me, Cass,” he said, chuckling. “I haven’t ordered you to do anything. I’ve merely told you the problem and the only possible solution. Why are you so resistant to the thought of being more active with your shares?”

Forgetting herself, she leaned forward and said in a heated tone, “Because I don’t believe in butting in where I don’t need to.”