With This Kiss (8 page)

But given that he was considering an offer to acquire several more lakefront inns throughout the Northeast, he knew hands-on was the way to go. He’d need to understand the ins and outs of the business in order to have any true sense of whether he could run it at peak profitability.

“Sounds good to me.”

He was pleased to see that she looked a little thwarted by his easy agreement. Had she been hoping to get to him?

“Fantastic,” she replied.

Hmm, had that word come out from between her teeth? This time he was the one letting a grin loose. Despite how things had been left between them the previous night, his smile was there before he knew it was coming—or could stop it. He simply couldn’t stop it from landing this time.

Her lips moved up in a little smile of their own. “I didn’t think I’d ever see it,” she said, so softly he almost didn’t hear it.

He shouldn’t be wanting to move closer to her. But some things were uncontrollable. Like his reaction to her, for one.

“What didn’t you think you’d see, Rebecca?”

She looked back at him, her green eyes clear and purer than he thought he’d ever seen on a woman before.

“Your smile.”

As thrown off his game as he’d ever been—and disliking the way her comment felt like a punch in the gut—he came back immediately with, “People don’t say things like that.”

Embarrassment shot across her face.

“I have no edit button,” she agreed, but gone was the impish playfulness that she’d had on earlier. Instead, her mouth was turning down at the corners. “I obviously need one.”

Right then, a woman who was probably in her early twenties came in. “I’m not late, am I, Rebecca? Last night’s snow made it harder than I thought it would be to get into town.”

He could still feel how embarrassed she was by what she’d said as Rebecca introduced him to Alice. Stepping away from the front desk, her cheeks were still pink as she met his eyes.

“Looks like you and I are free to head upstairs.”

He’d gone over the line with her just now… and he regretted it. He hated the way the light had gone out of her eyes.

“I spoke out of turn, Rebecca.”

As far as apologies went, it wasn’t a great one, and she simply shrugged, trying to act like it was no big deal. But he could tell that it was.

Wanting, needing, to get them back on track, back to a place where business came first and emotions had no place at all, he asked, “What’s first on your training agenda?”

There was no smile on her face as she said the one word guaranteed to strike fear into his heart… and to make sure he paid for the way he’d just spoken to her.

“Toilets.”

“No one is ever going to complain about our standards of cleanliness,” he told her a while later. “That’s for sure.”

Sean hadn’t been this close to a toilet since his early teenage drinking days. He worked out daily, but he hadn’t done this kind of awkward physical work for a very long time. The truth was he rarely even had to make his own bed. Either his housekeeper took care of it or he was in a hotel with service.

One thing was certain: he’d never leave a mess for them to clean up again.

And he’d be leaving
way
bigger tips in the future.

Rebecca didn’t respond to his comment, but from her profile as she wiped down the bathtub, he could see a small smile on her face.

Her natural beauty was radiant enough that even with her hair pulled back into a ponytail and a smear of soap across her left cheek, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.

Down on his knees in one of the inn’s bathroom floors was just about as strange as it got in Sean’s world. But, then, it got even stranger when he realized that the inside of his chest felt off-kilter. Like muscles that hadn’t been worked in a very long time were trying to move again.

She looked over her shoulder at the toilet. “You’re really good at that, you know.”

He planned on making some sarcastic comment about his toilet-cleaning skills, but before he could even open
his mouth, she was holding out a hand to help him up off his knees.

The touch of her skin against his stopped every synapse in his brain from firing. How could they, when electric sparks were too busy going off in every other part of him?

And as he pulled his gaze up from their joined hands to her beautiful eyes, he saw that her impish little smile was gone now, too. Her full lips had opened into a tempting
O
of surprise.

Maybe if he’d had any control whatsoever over himself around her, he would have located that sarcastic comment and put it out there between them. Maybe if he wasn’t so mesmerized by the color in her cheeks from the hard work they’d been doing, he would have let go of her hand and gotten the hell out of the too-small bathroom.

Instead, he found himself reaching out with his free hand to brush away the soap bubbles on her cheek.

He didn’t just hear her swift inhale; he felt it reverberate through her jaw to his hand. And all he could think was how soft her skin was.

“You had some soap on your face.” His words sounded strangled. Borderline gruff. He wouldn’t have recognized the voice as his own if he hadn’t felt it come up his throat.

“Thank you for cleaning it off.”

Jesus, her breathy words did crazy stuff to his insides, had him thinking, wondering even crazier things.

Would her lips be as soft as her skin?

Would they taste like the first ray of sunlight in spring?

Sean had lived a perfectly controlled life for nearly twenty years. But in less than twenty-four hours this woman, his brother’s ex-fiancée, was destroying that control.

Without even trying.

She’d been his brother’s fiancée.

His brain was finally starting to register sane thoughts again when Rebecca took an abrupt step back from him.

“Lunch. We missed lunch.” Her cheeks were far more flushed than they’d been before they’d touched. She covered them with her hands as if she could somehow hide her reaction from him. “You must be starving. I’ll go see what Mrs. Higgins can whip up for us.”

She turned and fled the room. But Sean stayed exactly where he was.

For whatever reason, he couldn’t think straight around her. Which meant he needed to get a grip right here, right now, before he joined her for lunch.

His reaction to her was unacceptable. Period. She was not only his brother’s ex-fiancée, but she was also his employee. Sean had never mixed business with pleasure. He wouldn’t start now. Not only did he need Rebecca to keep running the inn during Stu’s absence, but working closely with her was the best way to learn the hotel business top to bottom. He needed more experiential data in hand before making any acquisition decisions for the inns he was considering purchasing.

Putting his hands on either side of the sink, he stared at himself in the mirror he’d cleaned with his own two hands.

Coming back to Emerald Lake had never been easy. He’d prepared himself for dealing with his family. With his mother, especially.

If only he’d known that the real person he should have prepared himself for was Rebecca. For sweet smiles. For charm that masqueraded as guileless honesty.

In the end, it was the most dangerous thing of all about Rebecca. He could protect himself from her beauty. Even from the attraction that sparked between them like a live wire.

But the seeming purity of her responses, the way she spoke every thought and feeling aloud regardless of whether it helped or hurt her… Sean hadn’t believed there was a woman alive who possessed those qualities.

Despite how sweet Rebecca seemed, he still didn’t.

How could he when she still hadn’t come completely clean with him about Stu, and clearly had no plans to do so any time soon?

Not planning on beating around the bush another second, Sean slid into a seat across the table from Rebecca in the kitchen and said, “I’ve spoken with half a dozen of Stu’s friends. None of them know where he is.”

She stirred a spoon into her untouched split pea soup. “He obviously doesn’t want to be found.”

Sean couldn’t argue with that. Still, he had to know. “I was surprised to find out that my phone calls are the first his friends have heard of his disappearance. They told me they knew the wedding was called off, via your e-mails, but nothing more.”

He watched a whole host of emotions flit across her face. Regret. Frustration. And finally, resignation.

“I don’t know all of Stu’s reasons for what he did, Sean. But what I do know, I can’t tell you. I’m sorry.”

He jumped on the proof that she did, in fact, know more than she was telling him. His own anger and frustration lit a fire beneath his words as he told her, “If he’s in trouble, I want to help him. I need to help him.”

He watched her swallow, close her eyes tightly for a moment, the re-open them with a shake of her head. “He made me promise not to tell anyone his reasons.”

Sean leaned in toward her, all but forcing her to look him in the eye as he said, “He couldn’t have meant me.”

She never broke his gaze, not even as she whispered, “I’m sorry, Sean. I promised.”

“I’m his brother.”

“I know.” Regret hung in every word, in the faint lines around her mouth. “But he told me he needed time,” Rebecca replied, as if it were really that simple. “I’m trying to give it to him.”

They were sitting in a private back area of the kitchen, by a small window that looked out on the lake. It was a clear, bright day and he could see layers of ice on the surface of the lake starting to melt beneath the sun’s warmth.

For all the power of winter’s cold and ice, it could hold out for only so long against the growing heat of spring.

Not at all satisfied with her response—with any of them, no matter how genuinely upset she’d seemed as he’d poked and prodded at her to try and get her to break his brother’s confidence—he said, “Why did you come here, Rebecca?”

Sean told himself he wanted to know the answer to this question simply because he was on a fact-finding mission on behalf of his brother.

She didn’t answer for a moment. Finally, she said, “I was ready for a change.”

There was nothing quite like hearing his words come back at him—and knowing them for the bull that they were. The previous night, she’d asked him why he’d sold his business and that was all he’d given her.

But now he understood, all too clearly, that if he was going to get any more out of her, he was going to have to give a little himself.

“Fair is fair,” he said softly. “How about I answer you first? After fifteen years of launching new businesses for other people, I started to feel like I’d learned everything there was to know about venture capital. I woke up one morning and knew I was ready for a new challenge. I wanted my own business. That’s why I bought the inn with Stu a couple of years ago. Because I knew it wouldn’t be long before I’d be here learning the business, top to bottom.”

And maybe, he’d started to think, he’d bought the inn because he wanted a reason to come back home one day.

“It’s going to be your turn to answer my question soon,” he said, but he didn’t like that she hadn’t so much as had a sip of soup or a bite of bread yet. “I want you to eat something first, though.”

Her eyes narrowed as if she was getting ready for a fight. “I can take care of myself, you know. I didn’t starve before you showed up here.”

Liking that spark inside of her way more than he should have, Sean didn’t let her snarky comment stop him from buttering a piece of bread and sliding it over to her.

“I’ve never had such good bread anywhere. Mrs. Higgins puts even Parisian bakers to shame.”

Finally, she grudgingly reached for it and took a small bite of the delicious bread.

“Tell me about Paris while we eat.”

It was clear that neither of them had forgotten she owed
him an answer to his question about why she’d come to Emerald Lake. But he wanted her to replenish some of those calories she’d burned off while cleaning the inn’s bedrooms like the Energizer bunny first.

After all, he reminded himself yet again, she was a really valuable employee.

“The architecture is amazing. Every time I go back, I’m surprised all over again by just how much visual stimulation there is.” He’d never been asked to put his feelings about Paris into words before, and he found that he was discovering his feelings at the same time as he was sharing them with Rebecca. “Throughout Europe, history is all around you, every moment of every day. Past and present, they all come together with perfect fluidity, from the ancient stone walls of the Louvre to the postmodern pyramid in the middle of the plaza.”

Rebecca’s eyes were lit with interest. “I’ve read so many books about Paris that sometimes I feel like I’ve been there. I’ve even dreamed about walking along the Seine, about standing in the middle of Notre Dame Cathedral looking up at the buttresses and stained glass, and then going for coffee at Les Deux Magots to see if I can hear echoes of the great writers in the walls.”

Sean couldn’t think of the last time he’d talked so much to anyone about something other than business.