Книга - The Pregnancy Surprise

The Pregnancy Surprise
Kara Lennox


Reece Remington needs some fun in his life, and Sara Kaufman is just the woman for the job. While he's helping her temporarily run the local B and B, she plans to show him a side of the Texas coastal town the tourists never see. Until the sexy, straitlaced CPA shows Sara a side of him she never expected to see! Reece came to Port Clara to set his uncle's charter business back on course, then hop the next plane back east.But Sara's tempting him to rethink his priorities. And when a night of passion leaves them both yearning for more, he wonders how he can ever leave. Especially with the big surprise that's awaiting them both…









If she were to settle down, it would take a special kind of guy, one who was as adventurous as she was


Sara had to admit Reece didn’t strike her as the least bit adventurous. He was ultraserious, a buttoned-down CPA who loved to talk about risk management and long-term projections.

Her projections usually didn’t extend past what she planned to have for lunch that day.

And yet…he was so delicious. Not only that, but he was a good guy. Delicious men came and went, but ones with character—they were a bit more rare.

Maybe she ought to decide what she wanted from Reece before she did something crazy.


Dear Reader,

Alpha heroes—those arrogant, I’m-in-control-here males—certainly have their appeal. Or those dark, brooding, wounded heroes…I love ’em! But give me a man with brains over brawn and I completely melt.

Reece Remington is just such a man. Unlike his take-charge cousin Cooper (from Reluctant Partners, the first in the SECOND SONS series) or his devil-may-care ladies’ man cousin Max (whom you’ll meet in the third book of the trilogy, The Good Father), Reece is a man more comfortable with a computer spreadsheet than a woman. He’s handsome as sin, but hides behind his glasses. He always plays it safe. He needs a woman to wake him up and teach him to enjoy life, but he doesn’t know that, either! What fun I had matching up Reece with happy-go-lucky Sara.

My editor said, “I love all the Remington men, but I have a soft spot for Reece.” That’s how I feel, too. If I were going to marry any of the Remingtons in real life, Reece would be my choice. I hope you love him as much as I do. (And maybe I’m like Sara more than I’d care to admit!)

All best,

Kara Lennox




The Pregnancy Surprise


Kara Lennox







ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Texas native Kara Lennox has earned her living at various times as an art director, typesetter, textbook editor and reporter. She’s worked in a boutique, a health club and an ad agency. She’s been an antiques dealer and even a blackjack dealer. But no work has made her happier than writing romance novels. She has written more than fifty books.

When not writing, Kara indulges in an ever-changing array of hobbies. Her latest passions are bird-watching and long-distance bicycling. She loves to hear from readers; you can visit her Web page at www.karalennox.com.




Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Epilogue




Chapter One


The crash from the kitchen was so loud, it sounded like a car coming through the wall.

Sara Kaufman’s heart hammered inside her chest as she dropped her dust cloth and ran toward the noise.

“Help! Sara, are you there?”

It was Miss Greer. The thready voice calling for help confirmed Sara’s worst fears. Her elderly employer was hurt.

Sara reached the kitchen door at the same time as Reece Remington, one of the guests at the Sunsetter Bed-and-Breakfast where Sara lived and worked. They bumped each other trying to fit through the door side by side.

Reece stepped back and let Sara enter first. “Was that Miss Greer?” Concern etched his handsome face.

Sara was about to answer, but Miss Greer called again. “Sara?” The voice came from the open pantry. “Is that you?”

“I’m coming, Miss Greer!” Sara and Reece rushed to the pantry. Through the doorway they could see their white-haired landlady lying amidst an avalanche of boxes and canned goods. Flour covered her face—it looked as if an open bag of the stuff had fallen on her head.

“Oh, my God, what happened?” Sara’s first instinct was to reach for Miss Greer and get her back on her feet, but Reece stopped her with a hand to her shoulder.

“Don’t move her,” he said. “If she’s injured, that might make things worse.”

“What happened?” Sara asked again.

“I’m not sure.” The elderly lady sounded less panicked now that help had arrived. “Maybe I slipped on something. When I started to fall, I grabbed the shelf and pulled half the pantry down on top of me and now I’m stuck. Thank goodness it was the flour that hit me in the head, rather than the economy-size can of cling peaches.”

“Are you injured, Miss Greer?” Reece asked. “Does anything hurt?”

“Now, don’t fuss over me,” she groused, moving her head around so they could see she at least hadn’t broken her neck. “I think I can stand up if you two help.”

Sara and Reece both squeezed into the pantry. It was a tight fit, with all three of them in there, and under other circumstances Sara would have enjoyed the proximity. Reece was a thoroughly delicious man, tall and rangy with broad shoulders showcased perfectly by the starched, button-down shirts he wore. If only he would relax a little…

Reece took one of Miss Greer’s arms and Sara took the other, and they tried to pull her up. But they’d moved her only a few inches when she howled in pain and they were forced to gently set her back down.

“Where does it hurt?” Sara asked.

“My hip.”

“I’m calling an ambulance.” Reece exited the pantry, which at least made it easier for Sara to breathe in there. All that maleness crammed into such a small space was a little distracting.

“I’m sure it’s not serious,” Sara said, though she wasn’t sure at all.

It scared Sara to see Miss Greer like this.

Sara had worked at the Port Clara, Texas, B and B for more than ten years. The older woman wasn’t just her boss; she was family.

“What am I going to do?” Miss Greer asked. “What if I’ve broken something? You hear about old people breaking their hips and never coming home again.”

Sara wished she had an answer, or even some believably reassuring words, but she’d never been much good in an emergency. All she could think to do was hold Miss Greer’s hand and squeeze it.

Reece was already on the phone. He was calm, no sign of panic, and Sara took several deep breaths, trying to follow suit. The paramedics would come, and maybe they would determine it wasn’t a serious injury.

Then they could all laugh over the mishap, and Sara could clean up the pantry, fix the broken shelf and make soup and sandwiches for everyone.

She was glad Reece was here. He obviously knew how to handle a crisis.

She squeezed Miss Greer’s hand again. “How bad does it hurt?”

“It’s not too bad if I lie still,” the old lady said, but her brow was creased with tension.

Sara nibbled at her lower lip. Maybe Miss Greer’s hip wasn’t broken. Maybe she’d just…sprained it or something.

Reece returned and got down on his knees beside Sara. “The ambulance is on its way, Miss Greer. Can we do anything to make you more comfortable while we wait?”

“I suppose I should get ready for a hospital stay,” Miss Greer grumbled. “Sara, you go pack me a bag. I want my own nightgown so I don’t have to wear one of those things that’s open down the back so everyone can ogle your hindquarters. Reece, you go find my pocketbook. I’ll need my Medicare card.”

The woman gave orders like a general.

“One of us should stay with you,” Sara said.

“Why? I’m not going anywhere.”

Sara exchanged a look with Reece as she pushed to her feet, and tried not to smile. Miss Greer must not be in too bad a shape if she could still be ornery.

Sara had only been in Miss Greer’s bedroom a couple of times in all the years she had worked there. Her landlady was intensely private. The room was as neat and clean as a monk’s cell. Sara hunted around until she found an overnight case on the top shelf of the closet.

She reached for it, but it was a few inches too high.

“Let me get that.” Reece came up behind her and stretched his arms over her head, easily reaching the case. She felt the heat of his body almost, but not quite, touching her back, and her skin tingled with awareness.

Whether he meant to or not, he’d tempted her since he and his two cousins had moved into the B and B a few weeks ago to deal with an inheritance from their uncle.

Reece handed her the small, cloth-covered case. “Here you go. Do you know where her purse is?”

Sara looked around. “Ah. Hanging on the hook on the back of the door.”

She opened the dresser and haphazardly filled the suitcase with nightgowns, underwear and socks, because Miss Greer’s feet were always cold, even in summer. Reece, the fake alligator purse clutched between his large hands, watched her.

“What?” she said. “You think I’m doing it wrong?”

“She might like her clothes folded.”

“You think I should fold Miss Greer’s underwear?”

“She obviously likes things neat. Maybe you should pack a robe, too. And a toothbrush.”

“You want to do this?” she asked Reece, who seemed not entirely comfortable amid all the accoutrements of an old lady. He looked excruciatingly out of place surrounded by cabbage roses, lace doilies and the faint scent of violet water.

“No, no. I guess you’re doing fine.”

Apparently not, given his suggestions. “Why don’t you check on Miss Greer? I’ll be done in a minute.”

She did not need help packing—she did it all the time. Her best friend, Allie, teased Sara that she could live for six months in the Amazon with only what she could stuff into her backpack.

When Sara finished cramming the overnight case with everything she thought might come in handy, she returned to the kitchen, but she paused in the doorway to watch Reece and Miss Greer. He brushed flour off the elderly woman’s face using a handkerchief and a gentle touch. Sara couldn’t hear what he said to her, but his voice was low and soothing.

Miss Greer watched him with obvious adoration on her face. She reached up to pat his cheek, and he squeezed her bony hand, sandwiching it between his and holding it there, looking comfortable with the display of affection.

The slight irritation she’d felt toward Reece vanished. Any man who could show kindness and affection to an old lady who wasn’t even a blood relative—and look at ease doing so—was okay in her book.

Miss Greer treated him like a favorite grandson, and Reece sometimes even made the gruff old woman smile.

Sara strode into the kitchen. “Here’s your overnight bag. Can I do anything else? Do you want something to eat?” Nothing was hopeless if you had a big bowl of spicy tortilla soup in front of you, along with a thick slice of homemade bread and real butter.

“Thank you, dear,” Miss Greer said, “but I can’t eat right now. What am I going to do? A broken hip is serious business. I’ll be out of commission for weeks, and who’s going to run the B and B, I ask you, if I’m in the hospital? I have guests arriving today—six people!”

“Don’t worry about that,” Sara said. “I can handle things until you’re back on your feet.”

“What about your trip to California?” Miss Greer asked. “Anyway, the B and B is a full-time job and I can’t afford to pay you a salary. You do more than your fair share, given that I’m only paying you room and board.”

Sara did need money to live on, which meant she had to work other jobs sometimes, like the temporary gig providing meals at an independent movie shoot in California.

“That job has been postponed,” she said breezily.

“But what about the business end?” Miss Greer asked, a note of desperation creeping into her voice. “Sure, you can clean, and the customers seem to like the breakfasts you’ve cooked, but you’re a disaster with finances.”

Sara tried not to take offense at the blunt comment. She knew this wasn’t an indictment of her trustworthiness, but confirmation of the fact that she was dreadful when it came to managing money. Everybody knew that. If there was such a thing as numbers dyslexia, she had it.

“Please try not to worry,” Sara said. “We’ll work something out. Hey, I know. Reece could handle the money side.”

“Excuse me?” Reece said, giving her a panicked look.

“He’s here anyway,” Sara continued as if he hadn’t objected, “and he’s a CPA, so you can be sure he’s competent. He’s doing all the bookkeeping for Remington Charters, and you know Allie wouldn’t allow that if he wasn’t good with money.”

“Oh, would you, Reece?” Miss Greer asked. “You’re such a good guest, and I hate to impose when you and your cousins have been so nice, but I would rest easy knowing…knowing Sara doesn’t have to handle everything.”

Reece removed his glasses and rubbed one eye before answering. “Well…sure, I can do that for you. But I’ll be going back to New York next week. If I don’t return soon, I’ll lose my job.”

Next week?

“I thought your family owned the company,” Sara said. “Isn’t your boss your father? He wouldn’t fire you.”

“You obviously don’t know my father.”

“Don’t you still have lots of vacation left?” she asked him. Cooper, Reece’s cousin, had said this was Reece’s first vacation in eight years. Eight years! How did he stand it, the same job, crunching numbers day after day after day?

“I hadn’t planned to use it all,” he said. “But don’t worry, Miss Greer. I’ll stay for at least a few more days, and if you need to be in the hospital longer than that, we’ll work something out.”

The doorbell rang.

“That must be the paramedics,” Sara said as she went to answer it.

Reece tried not to feel annoyed that Sara had volunteered him for a job before consulting him, knowing he couldn’t refuse in front of a woman lying on the floor with a broken hip.

“Just promise me you won’t leave the finances to Sara,” Miss Greer whispered. “Don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely girl, sweet and generous to a fault and a hard worker. But she doesn’t have a head for business. Have you ever seen her checkbook? It’s the stuff of my nightmares.”

Reece couldn’t help it, he actually shuddered. He’d caught a glimpse of Sara’s checkbook when she’d brought it out to pay one of her hippie-artist friends for a handmade ceramic teapot—an entirely useless item in his opinion, but Sara had been in raptures about it. The checkbook register was written in five different colors of ink and had more cross-outs than a third-grader’s book report.

“I know exactly what you mean,” Reece whispered back.

“You can’t let her touch the B and B’s checkbook—or the calendar. She’ll write down the wrong dates.”

“I’ll handle it, promise,” Reece said. “You focus on getting well.”

Miss Greer pinched his cheek. He hadn’t let anyone get away with pinching his cheek since he was eight years old. “You’re a good boy, and so handsome, too. How is it no woman has caught you?”

A few had tried, especially after a radio station had named him one of the top-twenty bachelors in Manhattan. But he suspected most of them had been more entranced with the cachet of the Remington family name than with Reece himself.

The truth was, he liked living alone. He liked having everything just so, and the one time he’d gotten close enough to a woman that she’d halfway moved in with him, it had driven him crazy.

“She’s in here.” Sara directed the paramedics into the kitchen, where they had Miss Greer on a stretcher in no time. The older woman didn’t complain, but Reece could tell by the tension in her face that she was in pain.

“We’ll follow in Reece’s car,” Sara said, patting Miss Greer’s arm as the stretcher passed by her.

Reece waited until the stretcher had cleared the kitchen door. “We will?” he said to Sara.

“Of course we will.”

“Shouldn’t we call someone from Miss Greer’s family?”

“She doesn’t have any family. She’s never married or had children. And we can’t let her go to the hospital by herself.”

“I thought I would stay here and clean up the mess in the pantry,” Reece said, “and fix the shelf. Shouldn’t one of us be here to take care of the guests?”

“The guests know where we hide the key. They’ve all stayed with us before, so it’s no big deal. But if you want to stay here I guess that’s okay.”

“Isn’t it kind of unsettling, just letting strangers into your house to roam about?”

Sara laughed. He loved to hear her laugh, the sound a bell-like tinkling. “You New Yorkers! You think the Silversteins are going to steal us blind when we have their credit-card information?”

Good point. He nodded.

“Anyway, B and B guests are nice people in general. That’s what I’ve found. They never steal anything.”

Personally, Reece thought Sara was far too trusting—of everyone. The way she wandered all over the world, crashing wherever someone offered her a bed, sharing meals at the homes of people she barely knew, anyone could take advantage of her.

But she would never believe him. Something bad would have to happen before she would become suspicious and skeptical like him.

He frowned at the thought. He liked her innocence. It was part of what made Sara, Sara.

“So can I borrow your car?” she asked.

“You don’t have a car?” Come to think of it, he’d never seen her drive. He’d seen her ride off on a battered bicycle, but he hadn’t imagined that was her only transportation.

“Mine broke down when I was driving back from Santa Fe, and I couldn’t afford the repair bill, so I sold it and rode the bus the rest of the way home.”

“How do you survive without one?”

“Port Clara’s not that big. I walk or ride my bike, and now that the streetcar is running again, I ride that. But the hospital is all the way in Corpus Christi. So can I borrow your car?”

The thought pained him. He’d just bought that car—a cream puff of a Mercedes, barely used. He’d been thinking about buying a car anyway, and he’d intended to purchase something conservative and practical. But the little blue Mercedes had caught his eye.

He seldom succumbed to impulse purchases, and the car was unlike anything he’d ever owned, but he hadn’t been able to walk away from it.

He hadn’t even let his cousin Max drive it.

“All right, I’ll go to the hospital with you,” he said to Sara. Miss Greer would probably appreciate someone there to handle the paperwork, he reasoned.

When they were settled into the Mercedes’s leather bucket seats, Reece entered their destination in his satellite navigation system and they were off. The GPS routed them over the causeway that linked their little barrier island with the mainland, which was a relief. He always felt nauseous on the ferry, which was the other way off the island.

“I’ve been dying to ride in this car,” Sara confessed. “Do you like it?”

“So far.” It was the most sinfully decadent car he’d ever bought.

“Why didn’t you hire someone to drive your car down from New York, like Cooper did?”

“I didn’t own a car. With the cost of parking and maintenance in Manhattan, using public transportation or taxis makes more fiscal sense. I’ll probably end up selling this one.”

“But what if you want to take a Sunday drive? Or a road trip?”

“It’s easy to lease a car if you really need one.” But he hadn’t taken a road trip since college, and even back then he hadn’t seen the point in it.

“I miss my car,” she said wistfully. “It had over two hundred thousand miles, and I logged every one of them.”

“Maybe time to get a new one then. Old cars aren’t as safe as the new ones, and not as economical or environmentally friendly, either.”

“Yeah, well, if I could buy a new one I would. I’ll have to settle for a used one, once I save enough money.”

At least she understood the concept of saving money. A lot of people didn’t—they wanted to buy everything on credit.

He wondered how people like Sara made it in the world. She was obviously not stupid. She was pretty—more than pretty, actually—and personable. He knew not everyone had been born with the advantages he had, and maybe her parents hadn’t sent her to college, but there were lots of careers that didn’t require a degree.

She could have gone into sales, or gotten an entry-level job at a company and worked her way up. But instead she’d chosen to drift aimlessly—at least, that was the way it appeared to him. He doubted she had any savings or property. “Have you made any plans for retirement?” he asked suddenly.

She stared at him as if he’d just sprouted an extra nose. “Excuse me? I’m twenty-nine. I haven’t planned for next month.”

“Now is the perfect time to start thinking about it. If you saved just a hundred dollars a month—”

“What is this? You’re not going to try to sell me swampland in Florida, are you?”

Obviously he’d made a conversational gaffe. “I just worry about you.”

“Oh.” She backed down a bit. “Well, that’s sweet, but I don’t worry about me, so why should you?”

“Exactly.”

His answer seemed to flummox her. “You hardly know me.”

“We’ve lived under the same roof for almost three weeks now. I know you better than you think.”

She smiled and cocked her head flirtatiously. “And here I thought you didn’t know I was alive. You hardly ever say anything to me.”

That was because she often made him tongue-tied. It certainly wasn’t because he didn’t notice her. With her swirly, bright-colored skirts and tie-dyed shirts and big, dangly earrings, how could anyone miss her? Not to mention that mountain of curly brown hair and those big, soft hazel eyes.

She was watching him carefully with those incredible eyes, and his mind went blank. Talking about finances, he was in safe territory. Anything else, and it was hit or miss.

“I didn’t mean to shut you down,” she said. “If you really want to tell me about how I should save for retirement, I’ll listen.”

He shook his head. “Never mind. I overstepped. I apologize.”

Neither of them said a word the rest of the way to Corpus Christi.




Chapter Two


Sara knew she’d blown it. She’d finally engaged Reece in a conversation—a real conversation, not just Would you like more coffee? or Thanks for breakfast.

But she’d gotten her back up because he’d asked her about her future, and she had a reflexive defense mechanism built in about that. Every time she visited her parents, they hammered her about how she chose to live her life.

Reece obviously disapproved of her, too. When he’d said he worried about her she’d softened, but it was too late—her reaction had sent him right back into strong-and-silent mode.

She wondered what to do next. She’d never been timid where men were concerned, and if she saw one she liked, she let him know, and she persisted until she found out whether there was any interest in her.

The jury was still out with Reece. She hadn’t flirted openly with him, since Miss Greer would not have approved of her hitting on guests. Yet she felt a certain chemistry at work whenever they were in the same room.

Once they reached the hospital, Sara sat in Miss Greer’s treatment room while Reece took care of the paperwork. He stuck his head in the door once to see how their patient was doing, but then he disappeared again.

Maybe he didn’t like being around sick people. But when he returned a short time later with a doctor in tow, insisting that he take a look at Miss Greer now, she realized he was just doing his man thing—solving problems, making things happen. She had tried to snag a doctor in the hallway—twice—but they’d blown her off. She was doubly glad she’d insisted on Reece coming to the hospital, or Miss Greer might have waited in the treatment room being systematically ignored till the cows came home.

“We need to get some X-rays,” the young doctor declared. “You two can wait out front.”

Reece wasn’t good at waiting, she soon discovered. He spent a lot of time outside the hospital’s glass doors, pacing and talking on his cell phone. He looked at his watch a lot.

Sara didn’t even wear a watch. If she needed to know the time, she could look at her cell phone—if it was charged.

At one point Reece disappeared, but when he came back he brought her an apple and a cup of coffee from the cafeteria. A peace offering, perhaps? Or maybe he just didn’t want her passing out from hunger.

Finally a nurse called them back. Miss Greer had been returned to her treatment room, looking none too happy. A doctor was waiting for them—a different one.

“Your grandmother’s hip is broken,” he said matter-of-factly. “The joint was in bad shape to begin with. If she wants to walk again, we’ll have to replace the hip.”

“She’s not our—” Sara started to say, but Reece nudged her with his elbow. She cleared her throat. “Then of course she should have the surgery. Right, Grandma?”

“I told the doctor just to give me some crutches and let me go home,” Miss Greer grumbled, “but he doesn’t listen.”

“How long will she be in the hospital?” Reece asked.

“Given her age, at least a few days. But once she’s home, she’ll need a lot of help. We’ll assign a home-health aide and a physical therapist, but she still can’t stay alone—not for at least a month.”

“She has me,” Sara said. “I live with her.”

“I can help, too,” Reece said.

“Good. Then you want to proceed with the surgery?”

“Excuse me, Doctor,” Miss Greer said, “it’s my hip that’s broken, not my brain. Stop talking like I can’t hear you.”

Sara bit her lip. It was refreshing to hear her landlady giving someone besides her an earful, for a change. “Grandma, you want the surgery, right?”

“No, but if there’s no other way to get better, I guess I’ll have to do it.” She looked at her own watch. “Oh, Holy Ghost, the guests will be arriving any minute and no one is there to greet them.”

“They’ll let themselves in,” Sara said reassuringly.

An orderly came to transfer Miss Greer to a room, leaving Sara and Reece standing alone in the hallway. She looked at him, eyes full of worry. “Why don’t you go back to the Sunsetter? I want to stay for a while longer and make sure she’s taken care of.”

“How will you get home?”

She shrugged. “Oh, I’ll find a way, I always do.”

Reece could just imagine. Would she hitchhike? Take a bus? “What if I come back in a while to get you?”

“That’s a lot of driving.”

“It’s only forty minutes. I don’t mind.” He really didn’t mind. The woman was exciting to be around, even if she did keep him in a constant state of semi-arousal. Anyway, what else did he have to do?

He had already set up the bookkeeping for Remington Charters, the business he and his cousins had inherited from their uncle. He could have gone home a week ago, and really he should have. But he’d been dragging his feet, pretending there was more work to do, and not quite sure why. For the first time in his life he wasn’t eager to return to his office and the numbers he loved.

Numbers were reliable. He understood them. He could rely on them to behave. Beautiful, wild, chestnut-haired women, on the other hand, were a complete mystery to him.

But he now realized Sara was at least part of the reason he hadn’t rushed home to his job, although she clearly was a most unsuitable woman for him.

Relationships were all about compatibility. Having the same interests, the same values. The fact that she got his juices flowing simply wasn’t enough.

“Well, if you really don’t mind driving all that way,” Sara said, “I’d appreciate it. Miss Greer will rest easier knowing someone is looking after the guests.”

“What rooms should I put them in?” Reece asked.

“The Silversteins always like the Orchid Room…no, wait, maybe that’s the Canfields who like to stay there. They’re coming next week…or the week after. But for sure, put the Taylors in the Tea Rose…or maybe it’s the Lilac Room.” She waved a dismissive hand. “It’s in the calendar at the front desk.”

Miss Greer wasn’t kidding about Sara being bad with the details. She was intelligent and well-read. He’d often seen her tucked into the window seat in the side parlor, reading something really dense like Proust or Hemingway.

Yet she was a disaster when it came to numbers and details. Why was that?

“I should go,” Reece said. “I’ll come back around eight o’clock. We can grab a bite afterward, if you want to.” He held his breath. Had he actually just invited Sara Kaufman to have dinner with him?

She surprised him with a warm smile. “I’d like that. Ooh, I heard about this great restaurant not too far from here. I’ve been dying to try it.”

“Okay, sounds good.” And it saved him the agony of coming up with some place to take her that she would enjoy.



SARA WAS WAITING in front of the hospital when Reece pulled up precisely at eight o’clock. She waved and trotted toward the car, jumping into the passenger seat. The car suddenly seemed a more cheerful place, filled with her colors and the scents of vanilla and cinnamon that swirled around her wherever she went.

She looked a little tired, but as usual she was smiling. “Right on time.”

“I hate being late.” Besides, he was hungry. He usually ate dinner early, went to bed early, woke up early. He liked getting to the office before anyone else, when he could really concentrate in the quiet. Just him and the numbers.

“Did you get the guests checked in?” Sara asked.

He nodded. “When I got back I found the Silversteins roaming about the living room a little puzzled by the fact no one was there to greet them. But when I explained about Miss Greer’s accident, they were completely understanding. The other two couples arrived right after. I got them all settled into their rooms.”

Then, because he’d promised Miss Greer, he’d listened to messages, returned phone calls and taken three reservations. Business was certainly heating up as summer approached.

“How is Miss Greer?” he asked as he pulled away from the curb without any clue where they were going.

“Resting comfortably. She’s scheduled for surgery first thing in the morning. Meanwhile, they gave her some pain meds that worked pretty well, though they made her a little bit loopy.”

“Loopy?” That was hard to imagine.

“She thought she was a little girl, and she spoke in German. Did you know she came over from Germany right after the war?”

“I truthfully don’t know anything about Miss Greer. She’s not exactly chatty.”

“Sometimes when she’s baking, she’ll let things slip.”

“Speaking of baking…” Reece said, “I assume you’ll want to be at the hospital for Miss Greer’s surgery tomorrow.”

“Yes, of course,” Sara said passionately. “Someone has to be here for her. But what does that have to do with baking?”

“What about breakfast?”

“I can grab something here.” Then she gasped. “Oh, my gosh, who’s going to feed the guests?”

Exactly what Reece was wondering.

Sara looked at him, her eyes beseeching. “I don’t suppose you’d—”

“Oh, no. I don’t even know how the coffeemaker works. Where are we going, by the way?”

She looked around, orienting herself. “Turn right at the light. Reece, you have to do breakfast. It’s easy. I’ll get everything ready for you. All you have to do is pull things out of the oven. Then there’s just the easy stuff—orange juice, yogurt, toast—oh, shoot, I need to bake bread, too.” She looked at her watch. “Maybe we shouldn’t do dinner after all.”

Reece was surprised at how disappointed he felt. He wanted to take Sara to dinner. “I’ll help,” he said. “I guess if I don’t actually have to cook, I can handle it. As soon as we’re done with dinner, we’ll go back and I’ll help you all I can to get ready for tomorrow.”

Her smile lit up the whole car. “Great.”

Yeah, great. He wondered if he should refund the Silversteins and the others some of their money. Part of the appeal of a B and B was a fancy, fabulous breakfast. But with Reece in charge, he was afraid it would be distinctly non-fabulous. He would shoot for edible.

“Just so you know, cooking was the one Boy Scout badge I never got. And I made it to Eagle Scout.”

“You were a Boy Scout? That’s so cute.”

Cute? He didn’t want Sara to think of him as “cute.” But he supposed “hot and studly” was out of the question.

“Sara, where are we going again?”

She looked around. “Oh, shoot. I forgot to tell you to turn at the last light.”

“No problem.” Reece made a U-turn. “So where is it?”

“I’m not sure of the exact address, but I think I know how to get there.”

“And what’s this place called?”

“I don’t remember, exactly. But I think it’s an Indian place. Or maybe Pakistani. Maybe there’s an elephant on the sign.”

Pakistani food? No, thanks. Despite the fact New York had ethnic restaurants on every corner, he was a meat-and-potatoes man. Spicy, foreign food had never done anything but give him heartburn. He didn’t even like pepperoni on his pizza.

Well, maybe he could get a hamburger. Few restaurants would refuse to cook a hamburger.

“I think you turn left at this next light,” Sara said uncertainly.

“You think?”

“It’s around here somewhere, don’t worry.”

Easy for her to say, but he hated not knowing where he was. It would never occur to him to wander around until he found a restaurant that he sort of knew the location of. If he’d been the one planning dinner, he would have found the name and address of the restaurant, programmed the information into his satellite navigation system and followed the directions.

“Want to look at the map?” He pointed to his GPS, which showed their current location.

“Oh, I can’t make heads or tails of maps. It’s easier for me to find things by feel.”

They wandered around for another fifteen minutes, making what Reece knew were increasingly random turns, until it became clear they were hopelessly lost.

“I saw a steak house back that way,” Reece said. “We could try that.”

Sara wrinkled her nose. “Steak is so boring. I know I can find this place. Give me five more minutes.”

In five more minutes he was going to start eating the leather on the dashboard. But he obliged her and, miracle of miracles, after a couple more turns, they found themselves at a strip shopping center in the middle of which was a sign with a red goat on it. The restaurant was called Sofia, and it was neither Indian nor Pakistani, but Bulgarian.

“That’s it!” Sara cried triumphantly. “I told you I could find it.”

“If we drove every street in Corpus Christi, we’d find it by process of elimination,” he grumbled. “Anyway, I don’t see an elephant.”

She punched him lightly on the arm. “Don’t be a spoilsport. We’re here, aren’t we? And that goat looks like an elephant.”

They were somewhere. Which was not cause for celebration as far as Reece was concerned. He would’ve preferred the steak house. Yes, he was set in his ways. But he liked his ways.

“I’m not eating goat meat,” he said, though he did pull into a parking place. He could at least give the place a try, since Sara seemed to be so excited about it.

“You’ve never eaten goat?”

He pulled a face. “Have you?”

“Sure. In Mexico, cabrito is served everywhere. It’s good.”

“It’s goat meat.”

“Well, I’m sure this place serves something you’ll like.”

The restaurant was kind of interesting, he had to admit, reminding him of something you might find in the Village. The décor was dark and red and suitably exotic, and everyone who worked there appeared to be actually from Bulgaria. The mouthwatering smell of grilled meats made Reece’s stomach growl. Maybe this wouldn’t be so horrible after all.

The prices were certainly reasonable. Not that he minded paying premium prices for really good food.

Sara ordered Bulgarian red wine, cold cucumber-yogurt soup, and some kind of pepper stuffed with meat and rice.

“Do you have a hamburger?” Reece asked when the waiter turned to him. “Or a plain beef steak?”

Sara and the waiter wore twin expressions of horror.

“Reece,” Sara said, “you can’t come to a restaurant like this and order hamburger. I’m not sure they even serve beef here. Don’t you want to try something interesting?”

“I don’t really like spicy food,” he said, feeling boring all of a sudden.

“How about this?” Sara asked, pointing to an unpronounceable word on the menu. “It’s supposed to be like a shepherd’s pie.”

That didn’t sound so bad. “Okay.”

Sara smiled, pleased, and Reece suddenly realized he would eat just about anything—even goat—to get that smile.

“Spicy food is an acquired taste,” she said when the waiter had gone. “If you experiment, you’ll find things you like.”

“I might like it, but my ulcer wouldn’t.”

“Ulcer? You have an ulcer?”

“I did two years ago.” It was the most miserable experience of his entire life. “Don’t worry, it’s better now. But I try not to tempt fate by eating weird stuff.”

“Hmm. I’ll bet your ulcer had a lot more to do with your work than your diet.”

His doctor had shared that opinion, but he’d refused to believe it. “Not likely. I love my work.”

“You eat, drink and sleep your work,” she countered. “You always have your cell phone glued to your ear, or your nose against the screen of your laptop. You check your watch constantly.”

He shrugged. “Unfortunately, my department doesn’t run itself.”

Sara’s observations weren’t new to him. He knew he spent more time and energy on his work than was strictly healthy.

He’d thought everything was under control in his department when he’d left almost a month ago for what was supposed to be a two-week leave of absence.

But the job had escalated when ownership of the business came into dispute, and the eventual resolution involved a complex merger of interests among the Remington cousins and Cooper’s soon-to-be wife, Allie Bateman.

Problems had also cropped up at his regular job, problems only he could solve.

“Did I say something wrong?” Sara said. “You suddenly got this look on your face like you swallowed a bug.”

He shook off his dismal thoughts. Tonight, at least, he ought to be able to forget about his job. He forced a smile. “No, you didn’t say anything wrong. You’re right, I do work too hard. But that’s the nature of the beast.”

When their dinners arrived, Reece was pleasantly surprised. His shepherd’s pie was delicious, flavored with a delicate blend of seasonings that weren’t at all hot as he’d anticipated. He did pick out a few suspiciously unidentifiable purple things, but other than that it was fine.

He declined dessert, but Sara ordered a gooey pastry, and he thoroughly enjoyed watching her eat it. She did so with gusto, relishing every bite with her eyes closed.

After watching her lush lips close around the fork a few times, however, he started thinking about things he shouldn’t, and he had to force himself to look away.

“Let me pay it,” Sara said when the check arrived. “I’m the one who ate a lot.”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” He snatched the bill from her hand. “Dinner was my idea.” And he knew she didn’t have a lot of disposable income. Although her room and board were taken care of, her various temporary and part-time jobs couldn’t net all that much extra cash.

“Let me at least leave the tip.” She reached into her big straw bag and pulled out what could only be described as a money ball. She peeled a few ones from it and set them on the table, then dropped the rest back into her bag.

“You don’t have to—”

“It’s done.”

He didn’t want to argue with her, but it seemed less like a date if he let her pay even a small amount. Maybe that was her true purpose. Maybe she wanted to subtly let him know that just because they’d shared dinner, he shouldn’t have any expectations.

Of course he didn’t. Sara was as friendly as a puppy, but that didn’t mean she had any designs on—or interest in—his person.

When they returned to the B and B, they went immediately to the kitchen, where Reece got a taste of just how much work a gourmet breakfast required. Sara had made it look easy—almost effortless—in the past as she’d delivered plate after plate to the dining room. But Reece had never ventured into the kitchen during the preparations.

First Sara made up the dough for two loaves of bread.

“It’s quick bread,” she explained, “so it doesn’t require a lot of rising time.” She popped it into the oven, then went to work making up the batter for blueberry and cranberry muffins.

He remembered when he was a kid his mom had occasionally made muffins from a box, but this was altogether more complex, with lots of chopping and folding.

Sara let Reece chop nuts—for a few minutes, anyway.

“Good Lord, you’re going to lop off a finger using a knife that way!” She took the knife away from him. “Here, why don’t you whip some eggs for the frittata.”

“The fri-what?”

It turned out “frittata” was just a fancy name for eggs and fresh vegetables, bacon, cheese and spices. When the eggs were whipped, Sara put Reece to work grating cheese, a job he couldn’t mess up too badly except when he grated his knuckles.

She sliced fresh strawberries and added sugar. By now she was out of jobs he could do, so he just watched. Her hands were small, quick and clever. The knife moved so fast it was a blur. Most interesting was her face. As she worked, she wore an expression of such contentment and serenity he thought she looked like an angel.

A mischievous angel, maybe, with that halo of brown curls around her face and the smudge of flour on her cheek.

“The fruit is in case anyone wants cereal or oatmeal, which they usually don’t.”

“Oatmeal?”

She laughed. “Oh, now surely you can make oatmeal. You eat it every morning.”

He shook his head. “Honestly, I don’t cook. Nothing.”

She sighed. “Don’t offer oatmeal, then.”

When they were finally finished, it was close to midnight. They tidied up the kitchen and turned out the light.

The bulb popped just as Sara switched it off, and they were plunged into darkness.

“Oh, hang it, that lightbulb burns out all the time,” Sara said, her voice coming to him soft and velvety in the dark, sending a pleasurable chill up his spine.

“I’ll change it tomorrow morning,” Reece said. “Let’s not worry about it now.”

“Yeah, but what happened to the lamp in the living room? It’s on a timer, and it always comes on at night.”

“I’ll check it tomorrow, too.” But for now he would enjoy the darkness. It seemed so…sexy.

“But I can’t see.”

“Hold on to me. I can see well enough.” As his eyes adjusted, he could make out the outlines of furniture and pictures on the wall.

She grabbed on to his arm. “What are you, a bat? It’s pitch-dark in here.”

“Men have better night vision than women. On average,” he added as they made their way slowly through the dining room to the living room. After hours of feeling like an idiot in the kitchen, Reece was pleased to be in charge of something, even if it was only navigating them through a dark house.

“Is that true?” she asked, sounding genuinely curious.

“I read it somewhere. It must be true.”

Halfway up the stairs, light from the upstairs landing illuminated the steps. But Sara didn’t let go of his arm. They’d created a bond, caring for Miss Greer, sharing the adventurous dinner, then working together in the kitchen. He felt close to her in a way he hadn’t felt close to a woman in a long time, and it was nice.

Very, very nice.

They paused in front of Reece’s bedroom door, and she still didn’t let him go. He grabbed the opportunity with both hands.

“Sara, I just want you to know that I admire the way you took care of Miss Greer and volunteered to handle things for her. Not everyone would be that generous.”

She smiled up at him. “Miss Greer has been kind to me. I know she’s a little bit gruff and abrupt, sometimes, but she really does love me like a granddaughter. The B and B is my home, and we take care of each other.”

“What about your family?”

“My parents aren’t exactly the nurturing kind. They’re both military—spit ’n’ polish, no crying allowed, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. I don’t ask them for help and they don’t offer.”

“Where do they live?”

“At MacShane—you know, the army base about fifty miles inland?”

Reece nodded. He’d seen it on a map, but that was about it.

“I’m not a military brat in the usual sense, though,” she said. “They didn’t move around. Both of them spent almost their entire careers at MacShane. Don’t get me wrong, they’re good people and they were good parents. But I’m so different from them. They don’t get me and I don’t get them, but we love each other in our own ways.”

Reece understood growing up with less-than-warm-and-fuzzy parents. His were rigid, also, especially with him. Whatever nurturing instincts they had got used up on his older brother, Bret.

“I don’t exactly get you, either,” he said. “But I think you’re…unique.”

She wrinkled her nose. “Unique? Is that the best you can do, Reece Remington?”

All right, so sweet-talking women had never been his strong suit. He possessed other good qualities. Like kissing. He’d been told he was a very good kisser.

Before he could chicken out, he pulled off his glasses, slipped his arms around her and brought his mouth to hers.




Chapter Three


Sara sank into the kiss, which was like melted butter on a warm biscuit—better than she could have dreamed. His mouth was demanding but somehow gentle as he coaxed her lips open, one hand buried in the hair at the back of her neck, angling her head just how he wanted it.

He teased her upper lip with his tongue, then did the same with her lower lip. She entwined her arms around his neck, at first to draw closer, then to keep from sinking to the floor as her knees turned to jelly and she lost all feeling in her extremities.

The kiss seemed to go on forever as their tongues met and performed a mating dance. It was, hands down, the sexiest, most provocative kiss she’d ever experienced, and she loved it that he didn’t immediately press for more. He didn’t touch her breasts, he didn’t grind his pelvis into hers.

He just kissed her like it was the last kiss either of them would ever have. Oh, God, she hoped not.

Finally he pulled back and looked down at her, faintly amused. “Unique, and you have really soft lips.”

“O-okay, that’s better.”

“Go get some sleep. We have a busy day ahead of us.” He released her, brushing his lips against her forehead before disappearing into his room.

Huh. She wanted so badly to go in there with him. But he hadn’t invited her.

She headed for the attic stairs that led to her bedroom, but her legs refused to carry her up them, and she sank onto the second step and stared at Reece’s door.

Wow. That had been a surprise.

Maybe she should have forced him out of his comfort zone sooner. Certainly that Bulgarian restaurant hadn’t been a comfortable place for him. Neither had he felt at home in the B and B’s kitchen. He’d bungled around like…well, like a macho man in a kitchen.

She’d been surprised each time he’d risen to her challenges. He’d tried the slightly strange food. He’d allowed her to show him things in the kitchen.

And then he’d kissed her. Connection?

The only problem was, what was she going to do now? Had she started something she wasn’t prepared to finish?

She used to take romance lightly, easy come, easy go. If a relationship didn’t work out, she might be sad for a short time, but there were always new men to be found.

Recently, however, she’d been wondering whether she had a soul mate out there. Allie, who only a few weeks ago had been confirmedly single, had found love with Cooper Remington, and Sara had begun to feel left out.

But if she were to “settle down,” it would take a special kind of guy, one who was as adventurous as she was, who loved traveling and trying new things.

She had to admit, Reece didn’t strike her as the least bit adventurous. He was ultraserious, a buttoned-down CPA who loved to talk about risk management and long-term projections.

Her projections usually didn’t extend past what she planned to have for lunch that day.

And yet…he was so delicious. Not only that, but he was a good guy. He hadn’t balked—not really—when she’d volunteered him to handle the B and B finances while Miss Greer took care of her health. Delicious men came and went, but ones with character—they were a bit more rare.

Maybe she ought to decide what she wanted from Reece before she did something crazy.



SARA WAS UP before light the next day, but when she reached the kitchen, she found Reece already there, pondering the workings of the coffeemaker. She liked seeing him there. His very male presence balanced all the Victorian froufrou.

“You already changed the lightbulbs?” she asked, instead of saying good morning.

He jumped. “Oh. Yeah.” He looked everywhere but at her.

He was probably regretting last night’s moment of weakness. Fine. If that was how he wanted to play it, she could pretend it never happened. “I’ll get the coffee ready. You can preheat the upper oven to three hundred ten degrees, and the lower one to four twenty-five.”

“Okay.”

That took him all of twenty seconds. When he was done, he intently watched her make coffee, as if committing every step to memory. His attention, so focused, gave her a delicate shiver.

“Are you cold?” he asked. “I opened the window when I came down because it seemed stuffy, but I can close it.”

“No, the fresh air is nice.” She chuckled. “I’m surprised you were able to get the window open at all. Miss Greer has a phobia about fresh air. Even in the dead of summer, she’s sure everyone will catch their death of cold if there’s a draft.”

“Well, Miss Greer isn’t here, and what she doesn’t know won’t hurt her.”

Sara’s heart thudded hard as she chanced a look over her shoulder at Reece. His brown eyes sparkled with mischief. Was he trying to tell her something else? Did he know that she’d been holding back a bit because he was a guest, and hitting on guests was frowned upon?

Now that Reece was sort of part of the management, did that change everything?

She looked away quickly, wondering if it was too late to undo last night’s kiss. For the first time in her life, she was a bit scared of getting involved on any level with a man, and she wasn’t quite sure why. Would she get out unscathed if she and Reece got carried away with this attraction thing?

He was just so different from the guys she usually went for, and she felt she didn’t know the rules anymore.

“Why don’t you set the table?” she suggested brightly. “Linens are in the buffet, dishes in the china cabinet. Set six place settings.”

“What about me?” he asked. “Don’t I get to eat?”

“You’re the hired help now. We eat in the kitchen.”

“I don’t see how I can be hired help if I’m not getting paid,” he pointed out good-naturedly, though he moved to the dining room to follow directions.

She pushed the coffeemaker’s on button as she realized what he said was perfectly true. She was getting free room and board, but no one had promised Reece a similar deal for helping out.

She poked her head through the doorway. “You’re absolutely right. But I’m sure Miss Greer doesn’t expect you to pay full price for staying here when you’re running the place.”

Reece shook his head as he took out a floral tablecloth and laid it over the huge mahogany dining table. “I was only kidding. I don’t need to be paid. I don’t mind helping out, and it gives me something to do.”

“Don’t you have to work on the accounting for Remington Charters?” Sara asked.

“Well, yeah, but that’s not exactly a full-time job.”

“I thought you’d be done with all that by now.” She helped him straighten the cloth, then dug out coordinating place mats while he grabbed a stack of plates from the china cabinet.

“I have a few more things to set up, then I have to train Allie and Cooper how to use the program.”

“Train Allie, you mean,” she said. “Cooper doesn’t have the patience for dealing with numbers.”

Reece looked at her quizzically. “That’s true, but how did you know that?”

“Duh. You guys lived here for more than a week before Cooper and Max found their own places. I observed you. I watched conversations. I can tell you a lot about your cousins.”

Reece crossed his arms. “You eavesdropped?”

“Absolutely not.” She hoped she wasn’t blushing. Maybe she’d listened to Reece more than was strictly accidental because of her fascination with him. “Hired help is often invisible. People talk as if I’m not there, though I make no effort to sneak around. Sometimes I can’t help overhearing.”

“You weren’t invisible to me.”

“Ha. When you have your nose in your laptop with some accounting program, you wouldn’t notice an atomic blast going off in the next room. I used to vacuum right under your chair and you never twitched.”

“I did notice,” he insisted. “I noticed lots of things about you.”

“Like what?”

“Like some guy named Ike from Santa Fe called you at least three times a day on your cell phone. You didn’t want to encourage him, but you didn’t want to hurt his feelings, either.”

She blinked in surprise. “Now who’s eavesdropping?”

“Sometimes I couldn’t help overhearing,” he said, echoing exactly what she’d just said to him.

Gracious. He wasn’t nearly as oblivious as she’d guessed. Here she thought she hadn’t even registered on his radar, and he’d been listening to her conversations.

“What else do you know about Cooper?” he asked.

“Aren’t you more curious as to how much I know about you?”

He looked away. “I don’t give off that many clues.”

“You’re thirty-four years old. You’re the youngest of two brothers, your brother is named Bret, and he dumps a lot of work on you.”

Reece opened his mouth, but no words came out.

“You’ve never been married,” she continued. That was more of an educated guess than actual knowledge, but she could see the moment she said it that it was true, and she felt unaccountably relieved. “Bret is already married and has two kids, a boy and a girl…Bret Jr. and Jessica.”

“Not bad.”

“You like things neat, and you make your bed every morning even though that’s my job. You get seasick and you have seasonal allergies.”

“How do you know that?”

“I’m the maid. I clean your bathroom and I’ve seen the medicine you leave out on the counter.”

“You’re a snoop!” But he softened the comment with a smile. “I bet you wouldn’t want some man looking at your private things.”

She shrugged. “You can look in my bathroom any time you want. Especially if you’re willing to scrub the toilet.” He wouldn’t find anything shocking. The most controversial thing in her medicine chest were birth control pills, which she often forgot to take because lately there hadn’t been any compelling reason to. She and Ike hadn’t made it that far because she’d quickly realized he wasn’t for her.

He’d finally gotten the message, too, thank God.

The antique clock on the buffet chimed the half hour, and Sara realized she needed to get a move on. “The frittata comes out of the oven at six-fifty,” she said. “The muffins, in about five minutes. You’ll need to make the orange juice from frozen—we don’t have any fresh oranges today, but I’ll stop at the grocery on my way home. Is there anything else you need to know?”

“Um, Sara?”

“Yes?”

“How were you planning to get to the hospital?”

Oh, damn. The automotive fairies hadn’t magically materialized a new car for her last night. She gave Reece a beseeching look. “You won’t let me borrow yours?”

His expression told her exactly what he thought of that idea. Some men were a little funny about loaning out their cars, and she didn’t really blame him, since the Mercedes was so new.

“Miss Greer needs me,” she said. “I’m a very good driver. I’ll drive like my grandmother, I swear.”

He wavered, then finally, looking resigned, reached into his jeans pocket and pulled out a set of keys.

She took them, then impulsively threw her arms around him and kissed him—on the cheek at the last minute instead of his mouth, since another kiss like last night’s was apt to addle her brains so thoroughly she would drive into a lamppost.

“Thanks, Reece, you’re a peach. If you need anything, my cell number is stuck to the fridge.”

“Tell Miss Greer I hope she’s better soon.”

“I will. Bye!” She got out of there before he had a chance to change his mind.



REECE PEEKED out the lace curtains at the front windows and watched as Sara jumped into his car, gunned the motor and sped off, gravel flying. She hadn’t taken the time to adjust the seat or the mirrors.

Too bad he couldn’t call the Department of Motor Vehicles and check her driving record, but he had a sneaking feeling that being a “good driver” was all in Sara’s mind.

He had no more time to think about his poor car, though. Breakfast called. He remembered the muffins just in time. While they cooled he mixed up some frozen orange juice—luckily the instructions were on the can.

Then it was time to take out the frittata, which he had to admit smelled pretty good. But those little bits of green and red floating around in the eggs were peppers, and peppers were scary.

He poured himself some coffee, then remembered he wasn’t supposed to drink it on an empty stomach, so he located last night’s bread. The golden loaves made his mouth water, but they were unsliced.

He got out a cutting board and bread knife—at least, he was pretty sure it was a bread knife—and started slicing. But his slices were thick and ungainly, nothing like the thin, regular slices he was used to seeing at the Sunsetter’s breakfast table.

The first guests arrived for breakfast right at seven. The Taylors were a young couple who were planning to visit the nearby wildlife refuge.

Reece brought out the coffeepot. “Breakfast will be ready shortly,” he said as he poured the husband’s coffee. But the wife stopped him.

“I’d like hot tea, please.”

“Tea.” Sara hadn’t mentioned anything about tea. “Coming right up.”

“And do you have skim milk for the coffee?” the husband asked.

Blech. “I’ll check.”

Tea required boiling water. A kettle sat on the stove, so Reece filled it and turned on the burner. He found a carton of skim milk in the fridge and started to bring it out to the dining room, but he remembered that both Sara and Miss Greer always put everything in nice dishes. He had to rummage for a cream pitcher.

Then the water was boiling. Oh, God, what should he do with it? Where were the tea bags?

The toast popped up, but he didn’t have time to eat it. He put in more of his lumpy, uneven slices for the guests, brought the whole kettle to the dining room and poured it into Mrs. Taylor’s cup as she looked on, puzzled.

“I suppose you’d like a tea bag,” he said.

Mrs. Taylor pointed at the buffet. “They’re right there.”

Thank God.

He brought out the frittata just as the second couple, the Silversteins, arrived. They, of course, wanted coffee right away, but with half-and-half, not skim milk.

“Could we get something to serve the frittata?” Mr. Taylor asked, when Reece returned with the half-and-half carton—he couldn’t find another cream pitcher, though he knew there must be one somewhere.

“Just scoop it up with your hands,” Reece said in a lame attempt at humor. When no one laughed, he retreated, found a spatula, and brought it to Mr. Taylor.

The third couple, the Benedicts, arrived. They were elderly, and Mr. Benedict started clamoring for prune juice.

Reece realized he hadn’t offered any of them juice. The toast had popped up and was getting cold.

He found the prune juice, poured orange juice, buttered toast and set it on the table. Someone asked for jam, and he had to find all the different flavored jams, put them in jam pots as he’d seen Sara and Miss Greer do a dozen times, and set them out.

Coffee refills. Juice refills. The muffins! He’d forgotten all about them. It took him precious time to find a basket and a cloth to line it with. He dumped the muffins into the basket and set it on the table.

“Do you have any yogurt?” Mrs. Silverstein asked.

“What about oatmeal?” Mr. Benedict asked. “Don’t you usually serve oatmeal with fresh strawberries?”

“No oatmeal today,” Reece said apologetically. “Miss Greer is having surgery this morning and Sara, her helper, is with her. I’m doing the best I can, but I know it’s not what you’re used to.”

“As long as you don’t serve us those cream puffs,” Mrs. Silverstein said with a sniff. The cream puffs were Miss Greer’s specialty, and everyone despised them, though no one had the heart to tell her they weren’t very good.

By the time the guests had eaten their fill and left the table, Reece was exhausted, his stomach burned, and he had a whole new respect for Sara’s skills.

Well, okay, she did have an alarming tendency to spill things on him, but other than that, cooking and serving breakfast appeared as effortless as breathing to Sara.

He still had a lot of work ahead of him, he realized. The dining room looked like the cafeteria scene from Animal House.

He’d just started stacking dishes to carry into the kitchen when the phone rang. He went to answer it. “Hello? I mean, Sunsetter Bed-and-Breakfast, can I help you?”

“It’s me, Sara.”

Reece was amazed at the rush of relief and pleasure he got from just the sound of her voice. “Hey, Sara. Is everything all right?”

“Miss Greer just got out of surgery, and the doctor said it went fine. She’s in recovery. It looks like I’ll be here a while longer, though.”

“No need to hurry home,” he said. “I have everything under control.”

“Really?”

“You sound surprised.”

“I didn’t peg you for the domestic type.”

“Nothing to it,” he said as he wedged the phone under his chin and started shoving dishes into the industrial-size dishwasher. “Did you have any trouble with the car?”

She greeted his question with a long silence.

“Sara?”

“Define trouble.”

Reece’s stomach renewed its churning. “Sara, what happened to my car?”

“Miss Greer is waking up now, I have to go. Bye!”




Chapter Four


Sara disconnected the phone, her heart pounding. She’d only delayed the inevitable; sooner or later she would have to tell Reece she’d had a wreck in his car.

It was just a minor fender bender, and not her fault, either. She’d been innocently looking for a parking space, and another car had backed right into her. But since she’d been in a hurry, and both cars were drivable, she’d quickly exchanged information with the other driver and gone on about her business.

Reece’s previously pristine car was now caved in on the right side, the passenger door inoperable.

Well, Reece would just have to understand. It could have happened to anyone, and the important thing was that no one was hurt.

She hoped he would see it that way.

Sara dropped her cell phone into her bag and went back inside to check on Miss Greer. She didn’t know if the older woman was waking up yet or not, but she might be. She really ought not to have fibbed to Reece, though. That was a bad habit, telling little white lies. As her father always said, a lie was a lie and the size was immaterial.

Miss Greer woke a short time later, but she was in a lot of pain. Sara spent the rest of the morning tracking down a doctor who could prescribe something that would make the poor woman more comfortable, then hanging around to make sure the nurses gave it to her. After that, when Miss Greer’s lunch was delivered, Sara had to coax the elderly woman to eat a few bites.

It was something of a full-time job, making sure Miss Greer got the care she needed. By the time she was fully awake, adequately fed and reasonably pain-free all at the same time, it was almost dark.

Sara probably should have checked in with Reece again, but she’d aggressively put him out of her mind while she kept busy with Miss Greer. She hoped he was getting along all right taking care of the guests; he’d sounded okay earlier. Breakfast was the hardest part; she was sure he could make up beds and run the vacuum.

Although, come to think of it, she hadn’t reminded him he needed to do those things. Since he’d been a guest for some time, he probably knew the drill. But men were a little dense when it came to housework. Some she’d known obviously thought the elves came in at night and cleaned.

It was almost dark by the time she pulled Reece’s Mercedes onto Magnolia Street and parked it across the road from the Sunsetter, close to some bushes. Maybe the damage wouldn’t look so bad in the dark. Reece wasn’t an excitable type; he would probably be calm and reasonable about the whole thing.

Her hopes were dashed when she spotted him pacing on the front porch, his cell phone glued to his ear.

He saw her then and snapped his phone shut. He had started toward her as she got out of the car, and she quavered a bit at the thunderous expression on his face.

“Sara, where have you been? I’ve been worried sick about you. I’ve been calling your cell phone all day.”

“I can’t keep it turned on inside the hospital,” she reminded him.

He stopped inches from her and placed his fists on his lean hips. “You couldn’t check your messages every once in a while?”

“Sorry. I guess I was pretty focused on taking care of Miss Greer.” Yeah, right. She was such a saint. She’d deliberately left her phone off because she knew Reece would be frantic about his car.

“So what happened to the car?” he asked, finally taking his laserlike gaze off her and aiming it at the Mercedes.

“I had a—” she swallowed, her mouth feeling as if it was full of shredded wheat “—a small accident.”

“Accident?”

“Just a small one.”

Reece eyed the car from bumper to bumper and, apparently seeing no damage, walked around to the other side.

Sara knew the moment he saw the crunched-in door. She longed to flee to the safety of her room, where she wouldn’t have to endure his anger. But one thing her parents had taught her—and that had sunk in—was that she had to take responsibility for her actions.

“How did this happen?”

“Someone backed into me in the parking lot.”

A muscle twitched in his jaw. “So it wasn’t your fault?”

She shook her head. “The guy apologized all over the place.”

“You have a police report?”

Again she shook her head. “We exchanged information.” She reached into her bag and pulled out a rumpled piece of paper onto which she’d written the man’s name, phone number and driver’s license number.





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