Flip This Love (9 page)

“That’s not why I called you!” A note of anguish rang through in her tone.

She watched as Harley’s easy congeniality hardened into a mask of cool resignation. He signaled their waitress as she rushed past, simultaneously rising from his seat. “Kaci, sweetheart, would you mind sending our food on up when it’s ready?”

“Sure. No problem.”

The waitress scurried off and Harley tugged at his cuffs, clearly impatient with everything—his gorgeous suit, their aborted lunch date…her. “We’re going to finish this meeting in my office.”

Laney startled at the announcement, her jaw dropping as he plucked her portfolio from the table and tucked it under his arm. He gathered up the wine bottle and both glasses and took two steps toward the front of the restaurant, then paused to look back at her.

“You wanted a meeting? This is your meeting. Come on.”

She scrambled after him, her too-high heels slapping the painted concrete floor. “Where are you.... What are you—”

Past the hostess station he hooked a right, taking them away from the main entrance and stopping in front of a door marked “Private.” “Do you mind?” he asked, nodding to the handle.

Laney gripped the handle and twisted, throwing a little hip into it to get the heavy steel to budge. “Your office?”

“Upstairs.”

He took said stairs two at a time. Undaunted by the pace he set, she click-clacked to keep up with him. “You keep an office downtown?”

“I deal with the city a lot. It’s convenient to home and most of the sites we work. The building was cheap,” he added as he nodded to the second steel door on the upper landing.

“You own the building,” she concluded, coming to a halt beside him.

“Yes.”

Her eyebrows rose of their own volition as the puzzle pieces began to fall into place. “And the restaurant downstairs?”

He shrugged. “Tommy was looking for a backer, and I was hungry.”

Tommy. He was talking about Tommy Delacroix, the hottest chef east of New Orleans. He was also the biggest Cooks Network star at the moment, having scooped up the southern cuisine crown when Paula Deen dropped it. Harley Cade owned the stairwell they were standing in, wore cufflinks, and hobnobbed with celebrities like Tommy Delacroix.

“You were hungry,” she repeated, disbelief dripping from each syllable.

“Do you mind getting the door?” He nodded again to the fire door in front of him. “I know it’s not very gentlemanly of me, but I have my hands full.”

In shock, she pushed the handle down and gave it a jerk. This one swung far more freely, throwing her the rest of the way off balance.

Harley caught the door with his foot and used the breadth of his body to quell her wayward momentum. Her hand flew to his chest. Her pervy subconscious took the opportunity to revel in its muscular contours before her brain clicked into gear again. This time, she did tug at the seams of her dress as she threw her shoulders back. “Thank you.”

“No, thank you,” he replied, a smug smile curving his mouth. “Been at least two weeks since I was felt up like a teenage girl.”

She opened her mouth to retort, but he nodded for her to precede him.

“Go on, or we’ll never get anywhere with this.”

Laney took a steadying breath and refrained from thinking about all the very non-business-related places she wanted him to take her. She knew coming in she would have to hold strong. Not so much against Harley’s reputed killer instincts, but in terms of curbing the visceral reaction to being this close to him. She needed to be focused. Keep her eyes on the prize. And for God’s sake, she had to stop thinking about how badly she wanted to feel him up. In every possible way.

Harley led the way into his office, and for the first time since his crew chief handed over the keys to the renovated loft, he took a moment to look around, wondering how Delaney would see it. There were no walls. Hell, there was seldom anyone there but him. He’d set up desks and drafting tables for various project managers. They only came in during the day if they required a surface larger than a clipboard and smoother than a hunk of cardboard flattened on the bed of a truck. Every one of the desks and tables were covered. Blueprints, project plans, checklists, and swatch books. There were before, during, and after photos tacked to strips of cork, and messy timelines scrawled on white boards bearing the marks of past projects.

Laney hung back, but the moment she saw him turn to look for her, she sprang to life. Back straight, chin up, and her gaze set on something beyond him, she strode into the room as if she owned the space.

He quickly turned away so she wouldn’t catch his smile. She was using her runway model strut. He loved that one. It ranked right up there with her spoiled rich girl pout and the ice queen stare. She never simply walked through the door. No, she swept in like a rogue breeze. Her very presence stirred the air and his senses, proving exactly how dangerous a game he’d been playing. But he was done messing around. The phone call he’d made to his attorneys would either make or break him. But he didn’t see wooing Laney as a gamble so much as a calculated risk.

She could cut him off at the knees without batting an eyelash. He knew she was capable of it. And she’d known he’d tried to make a date out of her request for a meeting. He’d warned her he would. She called him and said she needed his help. As far as he was concerned, all promises to leave her alone were null and void. He needed to tread carefully, though. The next phase of this project was going to take delicacy and finesse. Two things he hadn’t been blessed with at birth. But he was a man who proved to be quick at acquiring new skills. He hoped when the time came, he’d be up to the task. In the meantime, he would play the game, wait for her opening gambit, and figure out what direction to go from there.

“We rescued the bar downstairs from an old hotel after Katrina.” He strolled through the room as if he wasn’t about to walk a very high tightrope. Maybe she was falling for it. For all she knew, he had a whole closet full of thousand dollar suits like the one currently making him feel as if he were trussed up like a prize hog. He waved the wine bottle in the direction of a series of photos blown up and framed. “Those are pictures of the house in Holmby Hills. Jack Benny lived there.”

“Who?”

He stopped and pivoted in her direction. “Seriously?”

She tossed her head, but her glorious hair was pinned up in some kind of boring businesswoman knot so the effect wasn’t quite what it should have been. “I’m not as old as some people.”

He snorted and plunked the bottle down atop a stack of building code guidelines. “I’m two years older than you, not ten, and I know who Jack Benny was.”

Her eyes narrowed and her chin came up. She knew he was lying. Damn it.

“Okay, fine, my mom told me who he was, but the guy was famous back in the day,” he admitted.

“Uh-huh.”

A small, smug smile played at the corners of her mouth as she turned to look at the photos. He took the opportunity to drink in the sight of that creamy expanse of skin again. She might not have been the original designer, but whoever was certainly had a woman like Delaney in mind when they dreamed it up. The fabric flowed over her subtle curves like rich red wine. She was slender, but perfectly shaped—high, surprisingly full breasts, tapered waist, rounded hips, and legs that went on and on. The patrician figure she’d inherited from the Tarrington side coupled with her mother’s dark Creole coloring were a potent combination. But he had to wait her out. She’d come to him for a reason, and as much as he wanted to think she’d finally come to her senses and accepted she was meant to be his, he doubted there’d been any such epiphany. She wanted, or needed, money. It was obvious from her reluctance to move directly to the point.

“Guess who the neighbors are,” he prompted as he placed the glasses on the edge of the massive desk his mother unearthed at an antique auction.

She cast a teasing glance over her shoulder. “Ben and Jerry?”

He rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows they’re in Vermont.”

Laney burst out laughing, her arms falling to her sides in surrender as she whirled to face him. “Really? Everyone knows?”

He shrugged and patted his stomach as he flashed her a mile-wide grin. “Anyone who enjoys eating as much as I do.”

She laughed again and he felt like he’d pulled up fifty-year-old shag to find Madagascar ebony wood floors beneath.

“Though, I admit I’m more of a pastry guy than ice cream.”

“But you wouldn’t turn the ice cream down.”

“Never.”

“I bet you were hell on your mother’s grocery bill,” she teased. “Good thing she was such a great cook.”

Laney’s eyes widened, and she snapped her mouth shut with an audible click. Her ears turned a violent shade of pink. A peachy flush crept up her neck. She knew his mother was a wonder in the kitchen because she used to cook lunch for her and two hundred of her snottiest friends every school day until the day Laney was handed a diploma.

For one moment, because he wasn’t anything close to a saint, he basked in her discomfort. A part of him, the part who felt like his pants were high waters and his cuffs too short, thought she wouldn’t show up today. Of course, the part of him that ripped the past out of houses and chunked it into industrial dumpsters sneered at those ancient insecurities. She wanted something from him. Unfortunately, she wasn’t after his heart. Or even his body.

In a voice so shaky he hardly recognized it, Delaney Tarrington had requested a lunch meeting. To discuss a business proposition. Because the girl born with the silver spoon was broke, and the kid whose mom was the lunch lady was holding bags of Monopoly money.

He didn’t feel any need to rescue her from her
faux pas
. Laney was one of those women born to skate through the most awkward of social situations. She’d make it through this one without his assistance. Eventually. Knowing he could throw her so far off-kilter never ceased to amaze and delight him. He’d been known to intimidate most men with his size and sometimes his demeanor, but women usually loved him. Most of the time, all he had to do was smile in their general direction and they latched onto him like static cling. Except Delaney. Maybe that was why he was so enthralled with her. Maybe it was because she so obviously wanted him, too, but for some weird reason, seemed determined to deny it until her dying day.

“Yes, my mother is an excellent cook, though she doesn’t do much of it anymore.” He smirked and pulled the portfolio from under his arm “I guess you could say she got burnt out on it.”

The joke earned a groan from her, but the worry lingered in her eyes, telling him whatever she wanted from him was serious. And imperative enough to make her swallow a shot of the ninety-proof pride she kept bottled up inside her.

She’d slept with him after having a few too many glasses of cheap champagne one night, but this was the first time Laney had volunteered to share a meal with him. He’d spent a small fortune trying to entice her, but to no avail. Yet here she was, here they were, and he meant to make the most of his time with her. Even if his coat was cutting him snug across the shoulders and the tie he’d knotted no more than thirty minutes earlier felt like a noose.

Picking up one of the glasses, he thrust Laney’s back into her hand. She took the wine reflexively. “I didn’t mean to—”

Not caring if he came across as rude or impertinent or any of the other adjectives Laney and her sort had applied to him over the years, he cut her off with a brusque wave and flipped open the portfolio. “Hugh Hefner was the neighbor I was talking about. The Playboy mansion is on the same street,” he said as if they’d never stumbled into the awkward pit of their shared past.

“I was going to present—”

He shook his head. “I can read.”

He regretted his snide tone almost immediately. The proposal was neatly typed, her pitch both professional and earnest. He scanned the itemized column of numbers on the second page and had to bite the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing out loud when he got to the sum total of her requested investment.

In the weeks since he’d returned to town, he’d formed a clearer picture of the things Delaney had been dealing with since he rolled out of her bed and strolled out of her apartment. He’d been so damn sure once he had her, he’d be able to keep her. He’d flip the tables, try to shift the balance of power. He simply hadn’t known her world had turned upside down. It wasn’t difficult to mark the toll the past six months had taken on her. To see the woman she was now, and how very different she was from the spoiled girl he’d left behind. No, he couldn’t laugh at the little bit of seed money she needed to get a toe-hold in the world. He’d been in the exact same spot once.

Nodding, he flipped back to the first page and re-read her proposal and business plan, this time, with the focus her hard work and determination deserved. When he was finished, Harley closed the folder and held the proposal out to her. Brooke wet her lips then took it, a wary look in her eyes.

“Well? What do you think?”

“Done,” he answered with quiet surety.

She shook her head a little, then gave him a puzzled half-smile. “What? Just like that?”

Harley lifted a shoulder and let it fall. “It’s your flower and candy money, but if that’s how you want to spend it—”

“Don’t tease,” she snapped. “This is important.”

“I agree, and I’m not teasing. I spent almost as much trying to get past your voicemail. If you need a leg-up, I’ll cover you.”

Turning her head, she slanted a suspicious glare at him. “Are you offering a leg-up for a leg over?”

He barked a laugh, stunned and amused by her audacity. “Now who’s the crude one?”

She drew a deep breath, and being only human, and a guy, naturally his attention wandered to her breasts. Steeling himself, he forced his gaze back up to her face. It was no real hardship. Wariness had given way to hope. Her skin was pale and smooth, her dark eyes luminous. “You’re serious.”

A statement, a plea, and a big, fat demand all wrapped up in two words. He loved every crazy, annoying facet of her. Unable to keep his hands to himself for one second longer, he gently removed the folder from her death grip and tossed it onto his desk. He plunged a hand into her hair, destroying the business-like twist and sending a couple of pins flying.