Keeping Company (10 page)

Yes, he would spend time with Alaina. They would play this little game to fool their friends. But damned if he didn’t suddenly want it to be a lot more than that.

“I should go,” he said, checking his watch. “I promised my daughter I’d tuck her in. I don’t want it to get too late.”

“How old is she?” Alaina asked. She was genuinely curious about Dylan’s children, but half her reason for asking was to keep him from leaving.

“Seven. The divorce was really hard on her. She can’t understand why her mom went south in
pursuit of fame and fortune. Little girls tend to think their mothers should want them.”

That hit home. Alaina felt an instant kinship with Dylan’s daughter. She frowned into her Scotch. “Some women aren’t cut out to be mothers. Unfortunately, knowing that doesn’t make it any easier to be their kid,” she said candidly.

Dylan didn’t comment. He knew instinctively Alaina did not make a habit of revealing that kind of personal information. He soaked it up like a sponge and craved more, but settled for what she’d given him.

“You have full custody?” she asked.

“Yes. Of Cori and my son, Sam, too. He’s nine going on forty-two.” He was curious how she would react to his kids and how his kids would react to her, but it seemed a dangerous train of thought to pursue, so he dismissed it. What he and Alaina were entering into didn’t really allow for those kinds of questions … yet. He pushed himself to his feet and stretched lazily. “You’ll meet them Sunday. At one of those dreaded social events I mentioned. How do you feel about picnics?”

“I’m game,” she said as she stood and followed
him across the room. “Besides, a deal’s a deal, right?”

He turned at the door and gave her a long look. “Right.”

For an odd handful of seconds their gazes held, blue eyes and brown full of wary speculation about this threshold they were about to cross. Alaina glanced away first, dropping her gaze as Julia slipped in the door, wound her slender body around Dylan’s ankles once, then trotted off in the direction of the kitchen.

“It’s a magic crystal,” Dylan said softly.

She looked up at him, puzzled.

“The Crystal of Kalamari. It’s a magic crystal taken from the cave of the wizard Danathamien in
Tales of the Kalamari
by Frank D. Richard.”

“My,” she said, gazing down at the pin, at the rainbow of colors caught inside the prism of glass. “And all this time I thought it came from a flea market in the Sudan. Does it have any special powers?”

“Oh, yes,” he said, much more serious in his answer than she had been in asking. “If your heart is
pure and your desire is strong, the crystal can make your dreams come true.”

Hooking a finger under her chin, he tilted her face up and dropped a kiss on her softly parted lips. “Good night, Princess. I’ll see you on Sunday.”

“So, you and Dylan hit it off, huh?”

It wasn’t so much a statement as it was an exclamation of disbelief.

Alaina glanced up from her painting to shoot a disgruntled look Jayne’s way. Jayne was seated cross-legged on the porch swing, head bent, painting her toenails orchid.

The Saturday-morning air was fresh and brimming with September sunshine. A small, round wicker table on the porch held a carafe of coffee and the remnants of the muffins Jayne had brought for breakfast. Alaina had been wondering how best to bring up the subject of Dylan Harrison. Jayne had taken the matter out of her hands.

“Is that so difficult to believe?”

“I’ll say.” Jayne dipped her brush back in the polish bottle and left it there so she could talk with her hands. “You two are from completely different planes of awareness. I know they say opposites attract, but honey, this is stretching it to the limit. I mean, Dylan is laid-back and easygoing, completely unconcerned about appearances and material possessions, and you’re”—she hesitated, obviously searching for a diplomatic comparison—“not.”

Alaina narrowed her eyes. She’d just about had it with people telling her how incompatible she and Dylan were. Marlene had been chanting it for two days like a mantra.

So she enjoyed the trappings of her success. Owning a BMW was hardly a serious character flaw. And so Dylan ran a bait shop and dressed like a street person. So what? He was witty and irreverent and fun.

Alaina stabbed her paintbrush in a glob of black on her palette and applied it to the canvas with aggressive strokes. Lord, was she actually defending him? Did it really matter what their
friends thought of their relationship? The important thing was that everyone know they were seeing each other. That was the whole idea, wasn’t it?

An ill-tempered snarl simmered behind her teeth. She glared at her canvas. She had been in on the plan to fool everybody from the very start. It wasn’t as if the scheme had just hit her as a complete surprise. But now that she’d had a couple of days to stew about it, the idea of “keeping company” had her feeling extremely crabby, and she couldn’t quite put her finger on why.

It was the ideal solution to the pervasive problem of mate-minded friends and their dubious matchmaking skills. There was just something about having Dylan Harrison considering her “safe” that rubbed her the wrong way. The competitor in her was chomping at the bit to prove him wrong.

“So what have the two of you got planned?”

Alaina’s paintbrush jerked upward, putting a horn on her horse’s head.

“Planned?” she asked, her heartbeat pounding. Had Jayne seen through the ruse already? Impossible. Jayne didn’t look for subterfuge, she looked
for symbolism. She snuck a look at her friend. “What makes you think we have something planned?”

“And you claim I don’t make any sense,” Jayne grumbled. She sat back, fanning her wet toenails with the loose tails of the oversize paisley shirt she wore above a flowing khaki skirt. “People who are seeing each other usually have things planned. You know, like dates.”

“Oh. Dates. Of course.” Alaina let out a measure of pent-up breath with each sentence. Her angular shoulders relaxed beneath the navy-blue polo shirt she wore. “I’m going with him to a picnic tomorrow.”

Jayne looked impressed. Her dark eyes rounded even more than usual in her pixie face, the light of speculation gleaming deep within them. Alaina discounted it. It was just a picnic. Jayne was easily amazed. Grass growing amazed Jayne. “He’s taking you to the bar and bait shop employee picnic? Hmm.”

To fend off the advances of Chloe the bearded waitress. It was hardly a flattering thought. Nor was it a thought she could share with Jayne. Jayne
and her penchant for matchmaking had gotten her into this situation in the first place.

“This sounds semiserious,” Jayne said. She reached for a piece of blueberry muffin and nibbled on it thoughtfully. “So I guess I won’t ask you if you want to go out with Knute Grabowski again.”

Alaina’s teeth went on edge. The name had roughly the same effect on her as fingernails on a chalkboard. “Promise me on pain of death you won’t ask me to see Knute Grabowski again.”

Knute was a lumberjack Jayne had met, God knew where, befriended, and then foisted off on Alaina at one of her oddball parties. He was approximately the size of a sequoia and very nearly as intelligent as one.

Predictably, Jayne defended him. “He’s not a bad guy once you get to know him.”

“Jayne, you would say that about anybody. You would say that about Adolf Hitler. You would say that about the Marquis de Sade.”

Jayne made a face. “What did Knute do?”

“He took me to a wet T-shirt contest in a biker
bar. I had to threaten him with a broken beer bottle to keep him from signing me up as a contestant. You can’t imagine how disappointed he was. In spite of the fact that I didn’t get doused, he announced to one and all that I had far and away the best hooters in the place.”

Jayne choked on her muffin. Her eyes watered. “I admit, he’s a little rough around the edges.”

“A little?” Alaina arched a dark brow sardonically. “ ‘I’ll bet you like to be on top’ is a long way from being a smooth line in my book.”

Jayne pressed a fist to her mouth and glanced away, her cheeks turning red with pent-up laughter. “I suppose Dylan seemed like a great match after that, huh?”

Something in her tone of voice caught Alaina’s attention. She prided herself on being able to read people. It was essential to success in her business. A look, a muscle twitch, a slip of the tongue—each could be a giveaway of something important in a client or a witness. And Jayne’s voice carried something other than amusement. It was something subtle, something odd. Alaina gave her friend a shrewd look.

Swallowing her laughter, Jayne glanced around, casting about frantically for a new topic. Her eyes settled on Alaina’s canvas and she pointed to it as if it had just suddenly sprouted up from the floor of the porch. “I like your painting. A dog with a horn. Very symbolic.”

Alaina stared at the canvas. “It’s a horse.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course I’m sure.”

Her artistic rendition wasn’t exactly a dead ringer for Fury, she admitted objectively. In fact, it had to be the ugliest horse ever immortalized in art. It had four stubby legs that all appeared to be on the same side of its body, and it definitely had the head of a Doberman.

Jayne pushed herself up from the swing and stepped closer to scrutinize the damp canvas. She narrowed her eyes and chewed her full lower lip. “Maybe subconsciously you wanted to paint a picture of a dog with a horn. Art comes from the subconscious, you know. You really shouldn’t try to make the cosmic flow of creativity conform to conscious precepts.”

“It’s just a painting, Jayne,” Alaina muttered crossly. “Don’t make a big federal case out of it.”

“Hello, ladies!”

The simple salutation jolted all of Alaina’s sensual systems into high gear. Her head snapped up, and her gaze collided with Dylan’s as he jogged up her sidewalk. He wore a pair of red running shorts that made him look impossibly tan and impossibly sexy, not just because he had great legs, but because shorts were the only clothes he had on.

His upper torso was wonderfully bare except for the thicket of dark curls that carpeted his chest and the patch of silky-looking hair on his belly. He looked damn good for a forty-year-old guy, Alaina marveled, her gaze taking in taut, flat muscles. From his chest to the tips of his running shoes, there didn’t appear to be a spare ounce on him. She unconsciously sucked in her tummy as he bounded up the steps onto her porch.

Jayne beamed a smile at him. “Hello, handsome.”

“Hi, Jayne.” He stopped mere inches from Alaina, leaned down, and dropped a kiss on her mouth. “Good morning, Princess.”

“Ummm …” She really did mean to say something, but her brain was stuck in neutral. The warmth of his mouth clung to her lips, and his taste lingered as well—mint toothpaste. “Ummm …”

“Honestly, Alaina,” Jayne chuckled. “You sound like one of my llamas.”

Dylan grinned, more than a little pleased with Alaina’s reaction to his surprise attack. “Speechless, Counselor? I guess I’ve still got the magic touch.”

“You do okay … for an old guy. What brings you to this neighborhood?”

“Exercise, Princess,” he said, jogging in place for a few steps. “You ought to give it a try before desk-jockey spread sets in.”

He had the audacity to emphasize his statement by smacking her on the fanny, then letting his fingers linger just a bare second longer than was strictly necessary. Alaina would have come back at him with a scathing remark, but she was too busy trying to gulp down a breath. The feel of his hand on her bottom had done something diabolical to her lungs.

“I’ll have to take you running with me one of
these mornings,” Dylan said. He planted both hands at his waist. “Fresh air, exercise, get those old endorphins flowing, flush some of the tar and nicotine out of your system. You’ll love it.”

Alaina shot him a look. “Get real.”

“The most physical thing Alaina does is run the fax machine at work,” Jayne said.

“I object to exercise on principle,” she explained with her most regal look, tilting her nose up. “It makes me sweat.”

Dylan waggled his brows. His voice dropped to the velvety, sexy purr that set all of Alaina’s most strategic nerve endings humming. “Some of the best activities in life make us sweat, Princess.”

“Speak for yourself, Conan.”

How she had managed to say anything at all was beyond her. Her brain was suddenly writhing with sweaty images, every one of them erotic and every one of them involving Dylan Harrison. It wasn’t difficult to imagine that he would be fantastic in bed. Most of his muscled body was visible to the eye right now, and the red running shorts didn’t leave a whole lot to the imagination.

Dylan backed her up against the porch railing
and bent to nip at her pearl-studded earlobe. “Oh, I just love all those barbaric little pet names you have for me, honey muffin.”

“Laying it on a bit thick, aren’t you?” Alaina asked under her breath, ignoring the urge to wrap her arms around him and start doing some nibbling of her own. This was an act for Jayne’s benefit, she reminded herself.

Dylan gave her his devil’s smile and stepped back. “The picnic tomorrow is potluck. I volunteered us to bring potato salad. Thought I’d better tell you so you could get busy in the kitchen.”

Alaina arched a brow. “You expect me to
cook
?”

“Well”—Dylan frowned—“it’s just potato salad.”

The silence that accompanied her look was telling. Dylan felt his heart sink a little. She couldn’t cook. He wondered if she’d ever even heard of Donna Reed. He had really been hoping she would surprise him and tell him she was into gourmet cuisine. Even nouvelle would have been preferable to no talent at all.

Jayne patted his arm consolingly. “Honey, if it
doesn’t have microwave instructions on the box, you’re out of luck.”

“I can do it,” Alaina said defensively.

It was a bald-faced lie, but she didn’t care. She didn’t like the feeling of feminine inadequacy she’d felt facing Dylan’s obvious disappointment in her lack of culinary skills. It was just potato salad. How hard could it be? She had two degrees from the University of Notre Dame, for crying out loud. She could sure as hell handle a little potato salad.