Business or Pleasure? (4 page)

For him, life was clear-cut: he got what he wanted. Which made this compromise feel like a very dangerous journey into a great, uncharted wilderness.

But it appeared he had no choice. He'd simply have to manage her as closely as she managed the job. Not that managing her closely would be a hardship exactly, he thought as he stared at the light glinting off her soft hair, at the deep vee of her T-shirt and everything it revealed—

“Is it a deal, Alec?” she asked, interrupting his wayward thoughts as she thrust out a hand.

He took it automatically and held it in his own for a moment. It was warm, her skin was terribly soft and he knew he was in trouble. “Tell me again what I'm agreeing to?”

“A raise, the comanager position, respect for my decisions, the freedom to leave at the end of the project and that other thing you offered.”

He frowned. “What other thing?”

A perfect smile stole across her face. “C'mon. You couldn't have forgotten already.”

Desperation had lured him into giving away the farm, that was for sure, but when he searched his memory for anything else he'd offered, he came up empty. He shook his head. “Remind me.”

She pumped his hand in a firm handshake. “You offered to be my errand boy,” she said with that relentlessly cheery smile. “And, believe me, Alec, that
is
a deal breaker.”

D
aisy was still smiling three days later as she gazed out beyond the helicopter's enormous curved front windows and took in the vastness of the shimmering Pacific Ocean below. She simply couldn't believe the turns her life had taken in the past week. From love-besotted fool and unemployed home-improvement junkie to ruthless negotiator and comanager of a coveted architectural redesign project all in a matter of days.

Now that's what she called progress.

She cast a quick glance over her shoulder. Alec sat in the helicopter's back seat, tapping away at his laptop. Their luggage was piled high on the seat beside him and Bam Bam was in a cat carrier at his feet.

Alec didn't look up, but she was starting to get used to that. In the last few days since he'd left her kitchen with
her list of conditions stuck in his craw, their relationship had been strictly business. From the moment she'd walked back into the office the next day until they'd stepped into this helicopter ten minutes ago, she'd been working with a stranger.

In fact, the changes in their relationship were so striking that she found she couldn't even enjoy some of his initial errand boy gaffes. The process of securing this helicopter charter, for instance, should have been hilarious. After all, shortly after their arrival at the Long Beach airport, it had become very clear that Alec thought that helicopters were standing by to take commuters to Santa Margarita in the same abundance as taxis waited at the airport's curb. But after forty tense minutes—when he'd finally found and bribed an off-duty pilot he'd chased down on the tarmac—she realized she had a weak stomach for revenge. Not, she thought with a quick grin, that she was going to let him off the hook. He'd made a promise and she was going to enjoy it.

She sighed. In a way, their new relationship was all for the best. When she'd committed to the project, she'd firmly placed her pathetic crush in the bottom drawer of her emotional file cabinet. Now all she really wanted from Alec was the opportunity to do an extraordinary job so she could enrich both her résumé and her bank account—and get the invaluable experience that would help her get one step closer to her dream.

And I'll just keep telling myself that every time I encounter that bone-melting smile of his.

The pilot, a thirty-ish, sun drenched, California-cool character named Troy reached over and touched her knee, then pointed out the front window. “There's the island,” she heard
him say through the elaborate headset that allowed all three of them to communicate freely despite the scream of the turbine engine.

Her breath hitched as the coastline of the small, lush island came into view. From their vantage point, the hills and valleys looked seductive and curvaceous, one flowing into the next like soft waves. Instinct drove her to look back at Alec to see his reaction but wasn't really surprised to see his head was still tipped down over his laptop.

“Alec,” she said into the microphone that hovered near her lips. “Look. Isn't it beautiful?”

When he looked up at her, his jaw was set so tight she wished she could see what was in his eyes behind those dark sunglasses. “I can't see quite as much from back here,” he said flatly, then returned to his task.

Oh-kay,
she thought. So the distance between them was going to take a lot of getting used to. But no matter what, she absolutely was not going to slip back into the role of his adoring doormat. She simply couldn't.

“Well, you can have shotgun next time,” she said cheerfully, then turned back around, intent on enjoying her first helicopter flight in spite of Alec's sour mood.

“You see all those buildings around the bay down there?” Troy asked. “That's the town of Paloma. It's not much to look at from here, but it's Santa Margarita's biggest town and its main port.”

“Do you live there?” Her voice sounded muffled in her headset, but the knowledge that Alec could hear every word she was saying made her nervous and heightened her pitch.

Troy nodded. “My friends and I have rented a place in town for years, but I only live here full-time in the spring and sum
mer. The resident business is slow and it's worse in the off season.”

“We were lucky you were headed home this afternoon. I don't think there were any more charters available today.”

“You got that right,” he said, and rewarded her with a big grin. The contrast of his white teeth against his tanned skin was stunning. He looked like something out of a J. Crew catalog. “And I got to make a little extra cash. Looks like I'll be able to stock the bar for our party tonight after all. Hey,” he said, “if you guys want to come…”

Alec made a choking sound, but she ignored him and said, “That's sweet of you, Troy.”

“But we're here to work,” Alec added in a growly voice.

“Oh, you've got to take some time off,” Troy went on, undeterred. “I've got a friend who runs the Jet-Ski concession at the dock.” He looked over at Daisy. “Maybe we could go out one day. What do you say?”

While Daisy was no expert on the matter, she was pretty sure Troy was flirting with her and, dammit, she was going to enjoy it. Just because Alec had never noticed her didn't mean she had to die on the vine, did it?

She turned her back on Alec, put on her friendliest smile and said, “I'd love to.” Then, resisting the temptation to see how her mutiny had landed in the back seat, she continued to chat with their pilot about island life.

Well, at least she'd have one friend here, she thought as they talked on as if Alec had fallen out of the helicopter a few miles back. No, two friends, she amended. She'd had several great phone conversations with Mrs. Baldwin in the last few days. The older woman, who'd insisted on being called Virginia, hadn't seemed surprised that Daisy was coming along,
nor had she seemed particularly surprised when she'd been told about Daisy's new position.

“Good for you,” Virginia had said. “People grow in extraordinary ways when they're handed a big challenge.”

Daisy loved that Virginia Baldwin was going to be her friend. She had a soft spot for kindly, mothering types, and it didn't take an analyst's couch to figure out why.

“Almost there,” Troy said, then pointed to the island. “Hey, check it out. Buffalo.”

Daisy looked down to see a herd of the lumbering, dark, shaggy beasts roaming a hilltop and felt as if she were flying over a Remington painting. “Are they friendly?”

“I don't know any personally,” Troy said with a wink. “But I've heard they're in a bad mood most of the time.”

As he spoke, the airport came into view, a tiny paved oasis on a mountaintop which lay roughly at the center of the dog-legged island. Several small buildings were scattered beside the runway and there was one larger building that had Buffalo Bill's painted in huge letters on its roof.

“Best buffalo burgers on earth right there,” Troy said as he hovered the noisy copter above the helipad that jutted out from the runway at an angle. “And forty different kinds of beer.” His words were almost drowned out by the thwackity-thwacking of the blades as they landed. “Hang on just a minute until I get her shut down, then I'll get you both out of here.”

As the turbines whirred down, Daisy chanced one more look at Alec. He was still poring over his computer, seemingly oblivious to the world around him—except for that muscle jumping at his jaw. That, she knew from years of working at his side, was a sign that he was very much aware
of his surroundings—and that he was very much annoyed by them.

Alec was positive that he was going to grind his teeth down to powder if he didn't get out of this noisy, glass purgatory really soon. For starters, the junior-high style flirting going on up front for the past twenty minutes had been driving him freaking crazy. Who did that aging surf rat think he was? For all Troy knew, he and Daisy were a couple, for chrissakes. They weren't, of course, but what made him think Daisy was the, “Hey, wanna come to a kegger?” type, anyway?

And as for her, what was with all the blushing and giggling and “Oh, Troy”ing? Didn't she know what guys like that wanted from a girl like her? And he shouldn't even get started on what she was wearing. The heat rose in his veins as he took another look at her form-fitting black pants and high boots that made her legs look miles long and that sleeveless shirt that both clung to her toned back and made her breasts look—

“Sir?” Troy said, pulling him from his dangerous thoughts. Alec looked to his left and saw that Daisy's new little friend had opened the door and was extending a hand to help him out of the helicopter.

Oh, hell no,
Alec thought as he picked up the cat cage and thrust it at Troy. The cat hissed at Alec and took a swipe at the bars of the little prison. “Here. And the luggage, if it's not too much trouble,” he said, ignoring the cat and tipping his head toward the leaning tower of black leather and canvas to his right.

“Sure, sir,” Troy said, setting the cage down next to the now quiet helicopter. “Let me just help Daisy first.”

And before Alec could say another word, Troy had
sprinted around the front of the helicopter and opened Daisy's door. Alec watched as the their pilot reached up and put his hands on Daisy's waist, watched as she grinned down at him, watched as she laughed and let herself be lowered to the ground.

Three months. He and Daisy were going to be on this island together for three long months. Suddenly, without even understanding why, he felt like he'd been consigned to an eternity in hell.

 

Twenty-five endless minutes later, after winding down a narrow road lined plentifully with wild sumac and other assorted weeds, their shuttle bus came to a halt in front of the Hotel Margarita which was nestled up against the foothills of Paloma. Fortunately, Alec had been spared the company of Troy who'd elected to stay for “a coupla brewskis” up at the airport.
Un
fortunately, they hadn't gotten away before their pilot had given Daisy directions to the party he and his friends were hosting later that night.

“Oh, Alec,” Daisy said as she emerged from the bus behind him. “It's beautiful.”

Alec, who had somehow managed to sign himself up to be Daisy's damn Sherpa during their negotiation, stopped stacking their luggage long enough to look up at the quaint Spanish Revival structure, its balconies strewn with bright bougainvillea, its courtyard lush and vibrant. Even through his annoyance, his artist's eye couldn't fail to see the charm of the place.

He glanced at Daisy and saw her face sparkling with excitement and knew he was being a world-class jerk. But he also knew that this distance between them was necessary.

After he'd left Daisy's house the other day, he'd spent the rest of the afternoon at the driving range trying to force her from his mind. It didn't work even a little bit, and as he'd sped along Pacific Coast Highway toward home, he'd finally had to admit to himself that his attraction to her wasn't going to go away. Which was
insane
since she'd quit on him and held him hostage with that long list of provisos and was making his life miserable by taking advantage of his stupid offer to do her errands. And besides, she was the wrong kind of woman. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

So that was why, sometime between standing in her kitchen negotiating their deal and arriving at the office the following morning, he'd decided that keeping their relationship rigidly businesslike was the best and safest route. And he was confident that he could maintain an all-business, all-the-time, no-nonsense relationship with her, no matter how great her rear end looked in those pants or how her dark hair—normally pinned back tight—was now tumbling down her back in curly waves or how her legs—

“Why don't you go inside and check us in,” he said, turning away. “It's under my name.”

When Daisy returned a few minutes later, he noticed she was worrying that bottom lip of hers with her teeth as she approached. He'd known her long enough to know that was a bad sign. “What?” he asked.

“I got our key,” she said, dangling a key chain shaped like a margarita glass from her fingertips.
“Key,”
she emphasized and her meaning began to sink in.

In spite of the mild, summer temperature, Alec went cold. “Tell me the other rooms aren't ready yet, please.”

She shook her head and her silly curls bobbed and danced
about. “Apparently, you booked their suite,” she said as she bent down and stuck her fingers between the bars of her cat's cage and made a kissing noise that was so distracting he almost forgot what they were talking about. “Although Bill—he's the desk manager—says we're really going to like the layout. Two sleeping areas off one common room which we can use as our office and—” she glanced up at him “—one bathroom.”

“Didn't you ask if they had anything else?” The panic in his voice was plain even to him.

She shot him that “Oh, please” look she did so well. “Of course, but they don't have anything right now. Bill says they may be able to find us another room in about a week but this is the beginning of the high season on an island that desperately needs hotel space. Unless we have another solution for our field office, this is it.” The key dangled from her fingers, taunting him for his ham-fisted handling of their arrangements so far. “If you'd like some training for your new assistant position, Alec,” she said with a smug smile, “you should let me know.”

He let his gaze wander from the key in her hand, up her lean, tanned arm, to her shoulder and long, slender neck, then up to her mouth where, he noticed, she'd applied a hint of pale lipstick. Her lips were full, shaped like a cupid's bow and were so thoroughly kissable he couldn't believe he'd never seen it before. How could she have changed so fast? And, dammit, why'd she have to do it now?