A Crazy Kind of Love (11 page)

“This is how you talk to your papa?” he demanded, his face getting, if possible, even redder than it had been a moment or two before.

“My papa has a hard head,” she countered, lifting her own chin in a mirror of his stance. “Like
me
. You always said that sometimes you had to shout at me just to get my attention. So . . .”

Heartbeats ticked by.

Somewhere a bird called and was answered by a dozen friends. A blessed breeze danced through the tops of the trees and tossed dappled shade across the dusty yard.

Mike held her breath and waited. Her head pounded, her mouth was dry, and a curl of worry kept trying to spread through her as she watched her father. Damn it. When had Papa gotten
old
? Sure, he wasn’t
elderly
or anything. Yet. But when had his hair gone completely
gray? When had the lines around his eyes etched so deeply into his skin? And why the hell hadn’t she noticed?

He’d always been just
Papa
.

Unchanging.

There.

Her rock in the wildly swirling river that was her life.

It terrified her a little to see that rock wearing down. It horrified her to think of that rock one day not being there at all.

“Papa?” she said, her voice softer, less antagonistic. “Please?”

He frowned, then grabbed a handkerchief from his back pocket to wipe the sweat from his forehead. Shoving the cloth back into his work pants, he nodded. “It
is
hot. Maybe me and my girl should go sit in the shade and take a rest.”

Now that he’d given in, she felt better, and wanting to get them both back on their usual track, Mike winked, slung her arm over his shoulders, and steered him for the shade. “Your girl, huh? So, Papa, does that mean
me
? Or Grace?”

He stopped dead, turned his head and looked at her. Narrowing his eyes, he studied her for a long minute before his lips twitched. “Michaela,” he said, lifting one index finger to wave at her. “That smart mouth of yours is going to give you trouble one day.”

She kissed him and laughed. Everything was okay again. He’d never been able to stay mad at his daughters. The man had a heart as soft as his head was hard. “Then
I’ll just run home to my papa.
He’ll
protect me.”

“Yes, he will,” Papa said, wrapping his thick, beefy arm around her waist and giving her a squeeze. “Your sisters? They know, too? About Grace?”

Mike laughed. “Please. We’re Marconis. Of
course
we know everything.”

He sighed and dropped into a lawn chair as Mike poured him some iced tea from the jug in the cooler. The deeply shaded spot was as welcoming as a sweet dip into a chilly pond. Papa accepted a glass, took a long drink, then winked up at her and said, “Girls are so bossy. I should have had boys.”

Grinning at the old complaint that meant absolutely nothing, Mike plopped down on the dirt at his feet and leaned her head against his knee. “You’d have missed us.”

“You’re right,” he said softly, one hand playing with Mike’s long blond braid. “I need my girls—and I wouldn’t change a thing.”

“Me, either, Papa.” Mike closed her eyes and concentrated on the moment, etching this one tiny piece of time into her brain. “Me, either.”

Three days since the last time he’d seen her and Lucas still felt the residual effect of kissing Michaela Marconi. It helped him to think of her as Michaela, while remembering the incredible sensations she’d aroused in him. After all, a lover named Mike wasn’t something he’d ever considered.

He laughed at the thought. Hell, there was absolutely
nothing about Mike that wasn’t completely feminine. She smiled and her eyes lit up. She laughed and everyone around her lit up.

Rocket Man
.

He grinned and caught himself. Damn it, he didn’t have time for this.

Shoving thoughts of Mike to one side, he focused on the computer screen and told himself to concentrate. His desk faced the window, most likely a big mistake. He’d probably spend too much time staring out at the pretty spectacular view.

From the second-story office at the back of the house, he could watch the wind dance across the surface of the lake. From his bedroom at the front of the house, he could almost catch a glimpse of a strip of ocean. When the wind hit the trees just right, they parted long enough for him to see that line of blue water where it met the blue sky and land and air dissolved into each other.

His yard was green and even now being filled with plants by a team of gardeners who spoke such rapid-fire Spanish that he missed most of the conversation, even though he spoke the language. The trees surrounding the house gave it a sense of peace and isolation that he’d been looking for when he left the lab.

A man more used to his own solitary company than to that of hordes of people needed quiet to work. Not that he was getting a hell of a lot of work done.

Scowling, he turned his gaze back to the computer screen, ignoring the near siren call of the wind battering the leaves and the birds singing and the soft sigh of the reeds dancing at the lake’s edge.

At long last, most of the work on the house was complete—so
though he still heard the occasional hammer ringing, there was enough quiet to at least
look
at his research. He adjusted his glasses, then studied the lines of figures and notations scrolling past as he kept his finger on the mouse button. It had taken years of work to get this far—to know so much—and still nanotechnology was nowhere near being ready for general use.

But if they could keep donations coming in, keep increasing the money for research, then maybe, within the next ten years or so, nanotechnology would really be the miracle Lucas thought it could be.

Fund-raising.

The party.

He sat back, forgetting about the book, the work, his dreams, lost in the memory of looking at Mike and hearing her agree to go to the damn fund-raiser with him. Still wasn’t sure why he’d asked her. But it had felt . . .
right
. He’d rather not go alone. And Mike was entertaining, if nothing else.

A shout from downstairs had him jumping up from his desk chair and walking into the hall. Leaning over the wrought-iron railing, he stared down at a burly man in coveralls, standing in the middle of the foyer.

The man tipped his head back and squinted up at Lucas. “Just wanted to let you know, we finished up in the guest bathroom and we’re headed out now.”

“Great. Thanks.”

“No problem.” The man let his gaze wander around the foyer before looking back up. “You sure got a nice place here, Lucas.”

“Yeah.” He nodded and smiled. “Thanks to you guys. You do good work.”

“ ’Preciate it.” The man waved and headed out the front door.

Alone in his house, Lucas forgot about going back to work and instead headed for the guest bathroom, to check out the finished job. He walked through the big, airy room that overlooked the backyard and had its own balcony and set of French doors. Smiling to himself, he kept going, into the adjoining bath. It was the last piece to his house. Once that tub was in, then the job was complete and . . .

He looked down for a long minute, grinding his back teeth together. Then he snatched his cell phone from his jeans pocket, flipped it open and punched in a set of numbers. He’d dialed the damn numbers so often in the last two months, they were branded into his brain.

She answered on the first ring.

“This is not the tub I ordered,” he snarled.

She laughed. “Who is this?”

“Damn it, Mike—” His fingers tightened on the cell phone until he almost expected it to snap in his hand. “This was supposed to be a dark blue tub. Nothing fancy. Just dark blue.”

“Yeah, I know,” she said, “but—”

“
This
tub is green,” he pointed out tightly, waving one hand at it like a cheap magician trying to make too many rabbits go back into a hat. “And it’s got Jacuzzi jets in it.”

“Geez, Rocket Man,” Mike said, “chill out, will ya? The green is much better with the wallpaper.”

Lucas wondered if she’d dropped the tone of her
voice to
raw sex
on purpose. And knew it didn’t matter. She’d done it again. Stepped all over his plans, waltzed through his house in her size 7 combat boots, and left muddy footprints all over the damn place. She hadn’t even had to
be
here to do it!

His chin hit his chest, he felt his eyeballs roll in his head and his blood pressure spike. “Mike,” he said slowly, silently congratulating himself on his forbearance, “there
is
no wallpaper.”

“There will be tomorrow morning. Sam Chaney will be there around nineish—can’t be more specific than that, his wife has line dancing lessons and he has to drop her off at the community center first.” She paused for breath, but not long enough to let him get a word in. “Sam’s great. He’ll do a good job.”

Lucas muffled a snort of what he was really afraid might be hysterical laughter. Dropping down onto the edge of the tub, he sighed. “I’ll thank you later, I suppose?”

“See? You really
are
a genius, aren’t you?”

“Right.” He shook his head and threw one hand high, signifying surrender. He was only glad she wasn’t there to see it. “If I’m so smart, why do I have a Jacuzzi tub I didn’t order?”

There was a long, heartfelt pause before Mike spoke again and this time her voice was even lower, skimming along his nerve endings. Making him think of hot nights and silk sheets and cool breezes drifting across naked bodies. “Rocket Man,” she said, purring out each word softly, breathlessly, “if you don’t know what those jets can do—you really
do
need to get out more.”

Then she hung up.

Lucas’s blood turned to steam and heated him through from the inside out.

“She did that on purpose,” he said and glared at the phone. “She knew damn well what that voice does to a man and she used it to steamroll me.”

He ought to be furious.

What he was, was hard and horny.

“Damn it.”

Alone, Lucas sat on the edge of a damn tub he hadn’t ordered, and didn’t want. The woman had shifted his world completely off its axis and he wasn’t sure how to get it back on again. “I thought life in the country—hell, small-town life—was supposed to be
easier
.”

He turned to get a good look at the thing and damn if he didn’t instantly imagine Mike there. He could see her, wearing nothing but a layer of bubbles and that smile that did some very unexpected things to his blood pressure.

And he could see himself, joining her, and showing her that he knew
exactly
what a Jacuzzi could be good for.

He stood up and let that image dissolve as quickly as popping soap bubbles. Groaning, he left the room and headed for his own bathroom. So he could stand under the stinging spray of an icy cold shower.

For all the good it’d do him.

A few hours at Castle’s Day Spa was enough to improve
anyone’
s attitude.

Nothing quite like being pampered by people who knew what they were doing. Mike sighed and rolled her shoulders on a soft groan of satisfaction. A massage, a facial, and now, a manicure/pedicure. “God, does it get any better than this?”

The question was rhetorical but naturally Jo couldn’t leave it at that. “Why is it when we have a sisters’ day, we end up here?”

Mike opened one eye and looked at her sister. “Because God loves us?”

Sam laughed from her chair on the other side of Jo. “Put a sock in it, you two. You’re ruining the atmosphere.”

True. Mike leaned her head back against the spa chair and let herself relax into the damn near blissful sensations of a foot rub.

Castle’s had started out life as a three-chair beauty parlor. But once Tasha Flynn married Nick Candellano, they’d redone the old Victorian—well, actually, the Marconis had done all the work, and a damn fine
job of it too, if she did say so herself. With Nick’s money and Tasha’s sense of style—not to mention the Marconis’ excellent work—they’d turned the old house into the most plush spa in the county.

On the main floor, there were manicure/pedicures, and a row of hair-styling stations facing large, ornate mirrors. The walls were a soft butter yellow with cream-colored crown molding along the edge of the ceiling. Strains of classical music pumped through speakers discreetly hidden behind copper planters from which ferns and brightly colored flowers tumbled in abandon.

Upstairs were several different massage rooms, each painted in soft, soothing colors, boasting comfy beds and piped-in New Age music designed to slip into every cell of your body and induce relaxation.

And back on the ground floor, muted conversations from contented women whispered through the open spaces. In the far corner of the room, the Leaf and Bean concession boasted plushly cushioned chairs and impossible-to-resist pastries.

In short, Mike thought, a half-smile on her face, it was a little slice of heaven.

“We just did this last month,” Jo complained and jerked her ticklish foot out of the pedicurist’s hands.

But, Mike told herself, even paradise had had a snake.

She glared at her older sister. “I’m amazed that you’re willing to admit you haven’t had a pedicure in a month.”

“I’ve got a few more important things going on.”

“
Nothing’
s more important,” Mike said. “For God’s
sake, Jo, you’re a girl. Try to keep that in mind occasionally, huh?”

“You think of it often enough for all of us.” Jo winced when the manicurist snipped at her cuticle. “Isn’t it enough that I agreed to
you
taking the day off to get ready for your weekend of sin in the sun? Did you have to drag
us
along for the ride?”

Mike straightened in her chair, despite the muttered warnings of her manicurist. “Nobody said anything about
sin
,” she pointed out, and scowled as the woman polishing her toes smirked. “Besides, if I’m gonna sin, I sure as hell don’t have to apologize for it.”

“Who asked you to?” Jo demanded, then added to the girl still happily snipping away, “Hey, I’d like to
keep
that finger, okay?” before turning her gaze back on Mike. “All I’m saying is that just because you wanted to spend a day here—”