The Pint-Sized Secret (7 page)

“Relax,” he coached. “Remember? Deep breath. Heavy sigh. Whatever works.”

An uncensored smile—the first he’d seen—flashed across her face. It was warm enough to cause a tightening sensation in his chest.

“You’re making fun of me,” she accused without rancor.

He grinned. “Now, why would I want to do that?”

“To make me laugh. It’s what you do. You’re a charmer. I watched you last night. Every woman you talked to was chuckling by the time we walked away.”

“Is that a bad thing?”

“Absolutely not. It just makes it harder to know when to take you seriously.”

He pulled to a stop at the curb beside one of his favorite small parks, then turned and met her gaze. “I’ve already told you that I don’t do serious,” he said quietly. Then it was his turn to sigh. Before he could stop himself, he added, “Something tells me you could change that, Brianna, and to be perfectly honest, it scares the hell out of me.”

He wasn’t sure which of them was more taken aback by his words. Until they were out of his mouth, he hadn’t even realized he’d been thinking that way. He’d recognized his attraction to her, accepted it as a fact of life, but more? He hadn’t even begun to contemplate that.

Her startled gaze locked with his. Pink tinted her cheeks. She opened her mouth, probably to protest, then fell silent instead.

He rubbed a finger over her knuckles until they eased their grip. “Don’t panic, darlin’. I’m just giving you fair warning.”

“But I don’t want—” she blurted.

“What? A fair warning.”

“No,” she said, then seemed to catch herself. “I mean I don’t want anything, not from you.”

Jeb nodded. “I know. That’s what makes me think something’s going to happen. You’re the first woman I’ve met in years who clearly wants absolutely nothing from me.” His expression turned wry. “Not even my company.”

“That’s not—”

He cut her off before she could utter a blatant lie. “I make you nervous, Brianna. If I hadn’t brought up Max Coleman’s name, you would never have agreed to go out with me last night. You would just as soon I’d disappear. I’m not blind to that. You couldn’t wait to get me out of your house.”

“That’s just because…” She shrugged, then leveled a look straight at him. “You were so persistent. I was convinced you had to be after something.”

Jeb forced back an admission of guilt. “Such as?”

“I have no idea,” she said, sounding thoroughly frustrated by her inability to assess his motives.

He sensed then that she really didn’t know what had brought him poking into her life. Did that mean she was innocent? Or did she simply think that she’d covered her tracks too well ever to be discovered? Or that she merely assumed him to be some form of affable rake, rather than an investigator on a mission? His assigned jobs at Delacourt Oil were innocuous enough. His father tended to keep him where he could do no harm. His investigation of the soured land deals had been instigated at his own initiative, so why would she or anyone else suspect what he was up to?

“An honest woman,” he said lightly. “That’s all I’m looking for, Brianna.”

She flushed at that. From embarrassment or guilt? He couldn’t help wondering.

“Then you’re looking in the wrong place,” she told him. “No one’s totally honest all the time, Jeb. Not even me. I tell the same little social lies as anyone else, shade the truth on occasion when it won’t harm anyone.”

“How about big lies?”

“Not if I can help it.”

“What about secrets, Brianna? Do you have any of those?”

“Don’t we all?”

Her tone was light, but the color had drained from her complexion, renewing his fear that she did have things to hide. Were they just general things she wanted no one to know, or specific things she didn’t want him to discover? Such as the fact that she’d been betraying his family?

“How about this?” she suggested. “If I ask you for a million dollars, will it change your mind? Maybe make you go away?” There was a vaguely wistful note in her voice.

Jeb laughed, even though he found her desire to be rid of him troubling on any number of levels. “It might slow me down, make me think twice, but only if you could convince me you were serious.”

“I guess that’s out then,” she said with what seemed to be feigned regret. “I’m not that good an actress.”

“Then let’s back-burner all this serious talk for the next hour or so and enjoy our lunch.”

She seemed relieved by the suggestion. Though her expression remained guarded as they chose a spot in the shade, by the time they’d spread a blanket on the ground and opened the hamper, she was chuckling at his deliberate attempts to make her laugh. She still didn’t sound carefree, but she was definitely not as guarded as she had been.

“I knew you couldn’t resist me,” he teased.

“Oh, I can resist
you,
but I’m a sucker for a bad joke,” she retorted.

“How about expensive champagne? Are you a sucker for that, as well?” he asked, holding up a bottle and two crystal flutes.

“Absolutely.” She accepted the glass he poured for her, then asked, “By the way, how did you get all of this put together in such a hurry? You couldn’t have been in that deli more than fifteen minutes. Do you have a standing Saturday order?”

“Nope, but I will admit that I called it in before I left the house this morning.”

“What if I’d said no?”

“You did say no. More than once, as I recall.”

She lifted her glass in a mock salute. “Okay, then, what if you hadn’t been able to persuade me to change my mind? Would all of this have gone to waste or did you have a stand-in in mind?”

“I would have taken it home and dined all alone,” he said with exaggerated self-pity. “Such a waste.”

Brianna dug into the picnic basket and came up with caviar and toasted triangles of bread to put it on. “Do you often dine at home on caviar?”

“Not if I can help it,” Jeb said. “I hate the stuff, but women seem to like it. I was out to impress you.”

“Fried chicken would have done the trick, especially if you’d cooked it yourself. I do love to see a man in an apron, especially if he’s in front of a stove, instead of a grill.”

“Sorry. You’re fresh out of luck. I can order up a gourmet dining experience from any restaurant in town, but I can’t boil water. I’m afraid there have been too many testy housekeepers in my past, begging me to stay out of their kitchens.”

“And here I thought anyone worthy of the Delacourt name would have to be capable of great feats of daring everywhere from the boardroom to the kitchen.”

“Wrong family. The men in my family grew up pitifully pampered.” He grinned. “But I’m willing to learn, if you’re willing to teach me. I get bored with pheasant under glass and beef Wellington.”

“You are joking, aren’t you?”

He chuckled at her startled expression. “About the pheasant or the cooking lessons?”

“Both.”

He shook his head. “Only about the pheasant.”

“There are cooking schools if you’re serious,” she pointed out.

“I’d rather be tutored, one-on-one.”

“I’m sure they’d arrange that, as well.”

“I meant by you.”

She laughed. “I know you did. Sorry. My days are crowded enough as they are. While you’re dining on pheasant, I’m popping something frozen into the microwave. The last time I had time to cook a real meal was…” She hesitated, then shrugged. “I honestly can’t remember that far back.”

“Let’s make a deal,” Jeb said impulsively. “One meal a week, I buy the ingredients. You teach me to cook. You can pick the night and the menu.”

He told himself the suggestion was only a way to guarantee that she would keep seeing him, keep allowing him into her home so he could keep an eye on her, but he knew better. It had long since gotten personal. He was just looking for excuses to keep seeing her. First it had been the invitation to join him for a run, then the even more impulsive invitation to the sacrosanct bachelor beach house, now this. He was pathetically eager to find some niche for himself in her life.

And she was plainly just as eager to keep him out. She was shaking her head before he finished making the suggestion.

“No time,” she insisted.

“That must mean my father is working you entirely too hard. I’ll have to speak to him.”

“Don’t you dare,” she said, sounding genuinely alarmed. “I love my job. Yes, it does take a lot of my time, but I’m more than willing to put in the hours. How many people get a chance to do something they love and get paid for it?”

“Probably not as many as there should be,” Jeb said, thinking of his own situation. He was trapped in a business he didn’t care much about one way or the other. He stayed out of family loyalty and inertia, he supposed, unlike Michael and Tyler, who genuinely loved every aspect of it. They were the true oilmen in the company. They were the ones who deserved to inherit it, though his father seemed dead set on carving it into equal shares for all five of them.

“Does that include you?” Brianna asked, studying him intently.

Since she’d already heard the rumors about his dissatisfaction, he saw no reason to deny it. “Pretty much.”

“Surely you have options. Why don’t you leave? Do what you love?”

“I’m not sure I have an answer for that. Maybe it’s as simple as middle-kid syndrome.”

“Meaning?”

“There are five of us. The oldest and the youngest have already staged rebellions that shook the family. I suppose I’m just staying put to please my father, maybe help keep the peace a little longer. Isn’t that what us middle kids do? Try to please? Try not to make waves?”

“Since I was an only child, I have no idea. What would you rather be doing?”

Jeb couldn’t very well reveal that his dream was to join his brother as an investigator or, at the very least, to turn internal corporate spy for his father. So, he thought wryly, it seemed he was going to have to keep a big-time secret, too. Maybe the total honesty thing wasn’t as easy as he’d always assumed.

“I’m still figuring that out,” he evaded. “How did you get interested in geology and oil, anyway? It’s pretty much a man’s world.”

A smile crossed her lips, then faded. “My dad was a wildcatter. He had more dreams and ambition than success, so I guess I caught the fever. But I was more practical than he was. I wanted to learn how to find the stuff with scientific data, not just gut instinct.”

Jeb wondered if it was her father who’d been the beneficiary of her research for Delacourt Oil. Was that why she was betraying the company, to give her dad a long-overdue break?

“Where is your dad working now?”

“He died several years ago,” she said, her expression revealing that the sorrow of that was still very much with her. “A severe thunderstorm came up when he was on a rig in the Gulf of Mexico. He drowned.”

“I’m sorry. You must miss him a lot.”

“Every day,” she said. “My mom died when I was still in grade school, so it had just been my dad and me for a long time. It was a bit of a nomadic existence, so I rarely kept the same friends for long. You’re fortunate to have such a large family, to have spent your whole life in one place.”

“Most of the time,” Jeb agreed with a touch of irony. He couldn’t help thinking that her life could have been his. But for the whims of fortune, her father could have succeeded wildly in the oil business and his own father could have failed.

She reached for a strawberry from the container in the basket, then slowly bit into it. The ripe berry spilled juice on her lips. Jeb’s gaze locked on the red moisture in fascination as she ran her tongue across her lips to catch the errant drips. His body reacted as if it had been his tongue tasting that sweet juice…tasting her.

This was bad, he thought, reining in his hormones. Very bad. Brianna had gone from suspect to desirable woman in the past twenty-four hours. His suspicions didn’t seem to be keeping pace with his libido. Pretty soon his head was going to lose the race. Since his father didn’t seem concerned about the leaks, why should they worry him so? Maybe he should just give up his investigation and openly court Brianna, assuming she would allow it.

Unfortunately, he wasn’t the kind of man who liked to leave a job unfinished, which meant his hormones needed to be kept in check just a little longer.

“Maybe we should go,” he suggested with more regret than he wanted to admit to.

Wide blue-green eyes met his, then darkened to the shade of a storm-tossed sea as the moments ticked by. Desire? Passion? Was that what he saw churning in the depths? Heaven help them both if it was, because he doubted he was strong enough to resist it for long.

And then, if it turned out she was as guilty as he feared, there would be hell to pay.