Love Came Just in Time (18 page)

“Too much time in ears,” she said, rising and shaking her head.

Gideon looked up at her. “I beg your pardon?”

“I spent too much time at Disneyland,” she said. “It warped me. My judgment is clouded. My taste in shoes is skewed.”

“Don't tell me you're acquiring a liking for fairy footwear.”

“Nah, give me Keds every time,” she said, making a grab for her self-control and common sense before they both hit the same high road her luggage had. “Let's storm the kitchen.”

Gideon rose, keeping his feet a safe distance apart.

“Might I regale you with stories of my latest business coups whilst we prepare our meal?” he asked, reaching for her hand.

Megan found her hand in his and her common sense/self-control nowhere to be seen.

“Business coups?” she echoed, frowning up at him in an effort to distract herself. “I don't think so.”

“Tales of exciting market trends and investment plans?”

She looked at him in horror. “You've got to be kidding. It'll ruin my appetite!”

“You sound annoyingly like my brother.”

“He sounds like my kind of guy. Maybe he's the one who booby-trapped your computer.”

“I'm beginning to suspect that might be the case.”

“Well, then take your vacation. Getting fired is highly unpleasant.”

“You seem to know of what you speak.”

“Honey, you don't know the half of it.”

And she had no intentions of telling him the full extent of it. A few amusing anecdotes might make him smile, but he'd flip if he knew just how many times she had been canned.

But that wasn't going to happen anymore. She nodded to herself as she led him back to the kitchen. Thomas had given her a chance to be successful at something. After all, how hard could it be to get up to the castle, take a look around and tell him what he'd bought? It was a little chance, but one she had been desperate enough to take. She wouldn't fail. She
couldn't
fail. If she couldn't even do something this simple, there was no way she could show her face at home again. They all thought she was flaky as it was. She would head up to the castle first thing tomorrow. It couldn't be that far and it couldn't be that hard to find. She'd send home a report, then settle back and enjoy a well-deserved recuperation.

But first, dinner had to be made.

“Heaven help us,” she muttered, as she and Gideon walked hand-in-hand into the kitchen.

She stood surveying the various pots and pans Mrs. Pruitt had left simmering on the stove, then looked at Gideon. He returned her stare, looking just as perplexed as she felt.

“Would you rather find a cookbook and read, or would you rather . . .
stir?”
she said, hoping a little subliminal suggestion might work on him.

“I'm a fabulous reader,” he said promptly, commencing a search for a cookbook.

Megan stared back at the stove. Well, at least this would distract her from the deafening clamor her hand had set up at being parted from Gideon's.

“Bad hand,” she said, frowning down at it sternly.

“I beg your pardon?”

Megan shoved her hand behind her back and smiled at Gideon. “Just giving it a pep talk in preparation for cooking. Find anything useful?”

Gideon held up a fistful of scribbled notes. “I think this might be it.”

Megan sighed.

It was going to be a long night.

GIDEON SAT AT the table, plowing manfully through his meal. The potatoes were scorched, the meat both raw and burned depending on what side of it faced up on one's plate, and the vegetables were unrecognizable in their mushiness. Somehow, his deciphering of Mrs. Pruitt's notes and Megan's stirring hadn't turned out the way it should have. At this point, Gideon didn't care. He was starved enough to eat about anything.

Once his nutrient-starved brain could function properly again, he looked over at his dinner companion. She was currently toying with her carrots, as if she thought they might provide the answers to life's mysteries. Gideon leaned over and looked at them.

“Don't see any answers there,” he said, then met her eyes. “Do you?”

“Nope,” she said. “Just overcooked vegetables.”

“We'll do better next time.”

“We'll starve to death,” she said gloomily. “Surrounded by raw ingredients we can't put together to save our lives.”

Gideon watched Megan's downcast face and wondered what troubled her. She couldn't think the disaster before them was her fault. He was as much responsible as she. Perhaps she was merely fatigued from her journey to the inn. While they'd cooked, she had told him of her harrowing experience with the thieves in London. Add that to her long walk from the village and it was no wonder she looked a bit on the peaked side.

Gideon couldn't deny that no matter how she looked, she still made him pull up short. There was something just so open and artless about her. He couldn't remember the last time he'd encountered another human being who didn't have some sort of agenda where he was concerned. Even his father, useless bit of fluff though he was, managed to tear himself from the races long enough to give Gideon a lofty earlyish order or two. The only person who called him anymore without wanting something was his mother.

Megan didn't seem to have any expectations of him. She had no idea who he was and, distressing though it was to him, seemingly couldn't have cared less what he did. Not even blatant boasting about his title and manor hall at Blythwood had fazed her. She did, however, like his laugh.

He was beginning to wish some of her nonchalance would rub off on him. Just the sight of her left him with his head spinning. Having her undivided attention was almost more than he could take. Though he certainly wasn't having any of the latter presently. Her vegetables were enjoying far too much of her scrutiny.

Perhaps she was still put out with him? He'd apologized thoroughly for having splashed her. Secretly, he was relieved he hadn't plowed her over. He'd been trying to fix the blasted fax machine in his car. Another one of Stephen's insidious little assaults, no doubt.

Perhaps, then, she wasn't looking at him because she found the company dull. He frowned. He could be entertaining. Perhaps he should try out some of those skills he'd learned in that Don't Alienate Your Partner seminar his mother had coerced him into taking the year before. He'd done it to please her, because she asked so little of him, though he hadn't seen the point in it. He never alienated anyone unintentionally. Yes, he would trot out his hard-won skills and see if they were worth the sterling he'd paid for them.

“Tell me more about your family,” he said. There, he was off to a smashing start. People loved to talk about their families. And there he was, fully prepared to listen to her. It was a foolproof plan. “You mentioned a brother? The one who sent you over here?”

“Thomas,” she said. “He bought the castle up the way. He wanted something that had originally belonged to a McKinnon. He's always been big on the ancestral stuff.”

“And he sent you here to study the terrain, as it were?”

She sighed and stuck her fork into a mound of carrots. “It was a charity gig. You know, after the mouse debacle.”

“Poor Dumbo and his ever-lengthening ears.”

“He kept pinching my tail. He deserved every bit of whiplash he got.”

“Oh, Megan,” he said, unable to do anything but shake his head and smile. Megan McKinnon was a business disaster.

“The rest of them are just like Thomas: all successful, all the brightest of stars, all settled into their careers and forging ahead, the obstacles be damned.”

Everyone except me.
Gideon didn't have to hear her say it to know it was exactly what she was thinking. He had no frame of reference for that. Everything he'd put his hand to had turned to gold. Schooling, sports, business. He'd never once been sacked, never once been told he wasn't good enough, never once questioned his direction or his purpose. He could hardly believe such things had happened regularly to the woman across from him. Surely there was something she'd done that was noteworthy.

“How did you fare at university?” he asked.

“I quit. I didn't like them telling me what to study.”

Gideon mulled that one for a moment before turning to another possibility. “Your mother's clothing business—”

“Baby clothes are cute, but not for a life's work.”

“The theater?” he ventured.

“I've done it all. Sewn costumes, painted scenery, worked lights, acted, danced, forgotten my lines. All in my sister's theater troupe.”

Gideon looked at her in horror. “She didn't sack you, did she?”

“I did the honors myself.”

Gideon reached over and took her hand before he knew what he was doing. And once he had ahold of it, he found he didn't want to let go.

“You just haven't found your niche,” he stated firmly. “Something will turn up.”

She looked at him and her eyes were bright. Gideon suspected it might have been from the tears she was blinking away.

“Do you think so?” she whispered.

“I'm certain of it,” he said, giving her hand a squeeze

And then he understood what had been troubling her, why she'd said half a dozen times while stirring supper that she hoped the weather changed so she could pop up to the castle first thing. She needed a success.

And then a perfectly brilliant idea occurred to him. He would help her fix her career. His Don't Alienate instructor had specifically listed the fixing of partners on his list of Don'ts, but Gideon was certain that didn't apply to him. If anyone could fix Megan McKinnon's life, it would be him. And he would, just as soon as he had pried her away from her veggies so he could have her full attention.

“Let's escape to a tidier room,” he suggested, rising. “We can talk more comfortably there.”

“I can't leave the kitchen like this—”

“It will keep,” he said, pulling her up from the table. “Maybe you can tell me a little about your career interests.” He knew he was pushing, but he could hardly help himself. Business was his forte, after all.

“I don't have any career interests.”

Gideon froze. “You don't?”

“Not in the sense you probably mean. I hate dressing up for work.”

“You hate dressing up for work,” he repeated slowly. “Yet . . .”

“I hate the corporate thing. Don't own panty hose. Don't want to own panty hose.”

He lifted one eyebrow. “But wearing mouse ears and a tail didn't bother you.”

“I didn't have to wear panty hose.”

“I see.”

“I think you do.”

Gideon smiled at the way she looked down her nose at him. She was so adorable, it was all he could do not to pull her into his arms and kiss the freckles right from that nose.

Almost before he knew what had happened, he found himself doing just that.

She pulled away and laughed. And that was when he felt himself falling. It was the first time he'd heard her laugh, and he'd been the one to bring in out in her. He was so taken aback by it, he couldn't stop smiling.

She was smiling back at him.

Gideon realized then that there was much more to it than just a smile. For the first time in his thirty-two years, he found the thought of standing right where he was and staring into green eyes to be the most important thing he could possibly do with his time.

Alarms went off in his head.

Gideon ignored them.

They sounded again, but with words this time.
Just what the devil are you thinking to stare at a woman's knees, then watch her destroy dinner, then want to kiss her?

Gideon blinked.

Good heavens, he was losing it. He was supposed to be taking her in hand and repairing her life. He was not supposed to be feeling his knees grow unsteady beneath him. He was not supposed to be gaping at a woman he hardly knew and finding himself so charmed by her that he had to remind himself to breathe. It was all he could do not to haul her up into his arms and stalk off with her like one of those blasted barbarians from one of Stephen's medieval texts.

But the stalking sounded so appealing if it meant having Megan McKinnon in his arms.

He looked down at her again, considered his alternatives, then gave his common sense the old heave-ho. He took her face in his hands, stared down into her fiery green eyes, smiled at the silky touch of her riotous hair flowing over his fingers, then lowered his mouth and covered hers.

And for a blissful moment, the earth moved.

And then, just as quickly, Megan had moved—but not too far away because somehow his watch had gotten caught in her hair.

“Ow, ow, ow,” she said, grabbing her hair with her hand.

“Wait,” he said, following her with his arm.

She gingerly pulled strands of hair from his watchband. “I don't kiss on the first date,” she said, staring intently at her hair.

“This isn't a first date.”

“Then I
really
don't kiss, especially on the first non-date.”

Half a dozen pot lids suddenly crashed to the floor. Megan screeched, a sound reminiscent of the recently departed Mrs. Pruitt, and threw herself into his arms. Gideon contemplated the positive aspects of this turn of events. He put his free arm around her and pulled her close. She clutched his shirt.