Flip This Love (23 page)

There might be something to the whole Earth-friendly housing thing. It simply wasn’t what he’d ever wanted for himself. He liked his condo fine. He slept there, occasionally ate there, but he never saw himself living there forever. The loft wasn’t the place for the kind of life he hoped to have. He wanted something with more permanence.

So he’d waited, knowing there were only a dozen or so properties that would fit the bill for him. He watched, knowing eventually he’d have a chance at one of them. It wasn’t his fault Delaney’s father was the first to fuck up. And he wasn’t about to apologize for being in the right place at the right time to do the right thing for everyone involved.

Holding tight to his conviction, he pulled his keys from the ignition and pushed the door open wide with his booted foot. Laney jumped a little but didn’t take off. By the time he reached her car door, she was staring straight ahead at the corner of the carriage house visible from this angle.

He didn’t wait for permission. He reached for her door handle and yanked it open. After all, she was on his turf now. She could either deal with him face-to-face or get the hell off his property. Stepping back, he gestured for her to exit the car. “You rethinking my idea for a plaque on the carriage house?”

She swung her legs from the car. It took a minute for him to realize she was wearing the same clothes she’d had on the previous night. A shiver shook her long, lean body. She crossed her arms over her chest, but it was too late. He’d caught sight of her pebbled nipples pressing against the fabric of her shirt. The lacy bra he’d stripped off her lay forgotten on the passenger seat. She wet her lips, then glanced over her shoulder at the front door again.

“It’s solid mahogany, you know.” She hesitated for a second. “Hand-carved.”

“I know,” he replied, keeping his voice neutral.

“Of course you do,” she murmured, turning her face away again.

Harley hesitated, half afraid to extend an olive branch for fear she’d beat him with the damn thing. But when it came to Laney, he seemed to have an infinite capacity for punishment. “Do you want to come in?” He jangled the keys in his palm, his heart in his throat. “There’s coffee, and I’d like to ask about a few things.”

She bit her bottom lip, then shrugged as she let it go. “I’m not sure I’d be the one to ask. You’d probably have better luck with the Historical Society.”

He watched, transfixed, as color rushed back into the abused flesh. “You knew the door was solid mahogany,” he pointed out quietly.

A faint smile tugged at the corner of her mouth. “My great-aunt Trudy was awful proud of that door. Used to go on and on about the ‘ar-tee-san’ her daddy commissioned to make it.”

She met his eyes at long last and his heart dropped back into his chest. A determined gleam lit her dark eyes, but he saw no signs of anger or bitterness. Only heart-wrenching resignation. She hadn’t come to fight, but she hadn’t exactly come for him. Afraid if he allowed himself full reign he’d spill his heart out at her feet again, he restricted his word count to only what was necessary to keep her beside him. “It’s beautiful.”

Her smile widened fractionally. “Mama suspected Trudy and Mr. Abramson—he was the man who did the carving—had a torrid affair the summer he came to work at Tarrington House.”

Harley blinked, surprised she’d shared a bit of family lore with him. “The scandal,” he murmured.

“You don’t know the half of it. Mr. Abramson was a Yankee.” She paused for effect. “And of the Jewish persuasion,” she added in a genteelly mocking whisper.

“I’m appropriately shocked and appalled,” he replied with a grin that marked him a liar. “You said he worked here a whole summer? Did he do the work on the chair rails as well?”

This time, it was Laney’s turn to be taken aback. “Why, yes. Not many people notice those.”

He smiled down at her, his insides warming. “Not many people do what I do.” He gestured for her to precede him to the porch. “Please. It’s chilly out here, and there’s a coffee maker in there. I’ll make a cup of the sissy-boy coffee my foreman likes and you can tell me more of the secrets hidden in Tarrington House.”

The breath he’d been holding seeped from his lungs as Laney started toward the door. By the time he caught up with her, she was running her fingertips over the intricate scrollwork cut into the precious wood. Afraid she might change her mind, he chose a shiny new key from his ring and quickly went to work on the locks.

“When we’re doing a restoration, I like to get as much information on the place as I can,” he said in a rush. “Things other people might see as imperfections are the parts I think actually give an older home character.” The heavy door swung inward and he held out a hand, inviting her to go ahead of him. “Obviously, if something is rotting or crumbling, we fix or replace it, but we try not to take all of the...” He paused as they stepped into the black-and-white tiled foyer and let his gaze drink in his surroundings. “Life. There’s life in an old home.” Turning to face her, he waited until she met his gaze. “I don’t want to strip that away. I want to breathe fresh, new life into this place.”

“Harley, I—”

He pressed his fingertips to her lips to stop her. This crazy back-and-forth they’d been doing had gone on long enough. Too long. “We have to stop, Delaney.”

Her dark eyes widened, then went bright with panic. “No,” she said, forcing the word out from behind his fingers.

“Stop tearing each other down, I mean.” Lowering his hand, he took a step back and started to work the key from his ring. “I want us to build something together. A life together. You’re why I bought the house.” Finally he slid the key free and pressed the cool metal into her palm. “Here. It’s yours.”

Her fingers closed reflexively around his, but when he tried to pull away, she wouldn’t let go. “I, uh...” She stammered a little, then gave her head a helpless wag. “I want the same thing.”

He quirked a sardonic brow at the key trapped in their combined clutches. “I figured.”

“Not only the house, but the future.”

“You do?”

Her smile was shaky but genuine. As were the tears filling her eyes. “God, Harley,” she muttered, swiping at her eyes with her free hand. “You ever think maybe this might be a bit much?” He chuckled and took a step closer, but she held him off with a palm planted in the center of his chest. Then she ducked her head, hiding her face behind a curtain of midnight hair. “You know, most guys give a girl a ring.”

“I have one of those, too.”

Her head popped up. “You do?”

“Bought one the day after I saw you at the crawfish boil. I knew then I was done letting the line play out. I wanted to reel you in.”

She wrinkled her nose in distaste at the analogy. “Like a fish?”

He smirked, glad to have gotten a rise out of her. Tucking a hunk of heavenly hair over her shoulder, he smoothed his knuckles down her cheek. “More like a mermaid.”

“Better,” she conceded with a sniff.

Her fingers flexed and he instinctively pulled his hand away, afraid he’d permanently embedded the key into her delicate skin.

“I’m not ready for this, Harley.”

Her softly spoken words landed like a blow, but he didn’t double over. No point in trying to protect vital organs he’d already exposed. Bile rose in his throat, though, and he was about to make some caustic comment when she saved him from himself.

“Yet.” Opening her hand, she looked down at the key he’d given her. “I’m still working on...me.”

“You?” He asked the question mainly to buy time, because while this whole thing sounded like a rejection at first, he was starting to think maybe it wasn’t. “What do you mean?”

“I’m just....” She shrugged, then gave him a wan smile. “I’m only now getting started, and you’re about ten thousand steps ahead. I want to have more.” She frowned, then shook her head. “Have more to offer, I mean. To you.”

She stared straight into his eyes when she explained, and for a moment Harley was afraid his knees would go out from under him. Didn’t she know it made him feel like he’d won the damn lottery when she looked at him like that?

Clearing his throat of any embarrassing lumps of emotion, he returned her gaze with equal solemnity. “You’re everything I want.”

“But I want to be more,” she whispered. “For you, and for me.” She dropped the key he’d given her into the pocket of his work shirt, then rested both hands lightly on his chest. “I want to get my business up and running. I need to get the rest of this mess with the banks and the bills and my dad straightened out. As much as I appreciate the whole knight in shining armor thing, I can’t let you make everything all better.” This time he opened his mouth and she muzzled him. “I want you to be with me, not handle things for me. Do you understand what I’m saying?”

He nodded, but her reasoning sounded damn ridiculous to him. Particularly because it sounded like she was going to make him wait. “I don’t wanna wait.”

Laney smiled and a pearly-pink blush rose in her cheeks as she curled her fingers into her palm and let her hand fall to her side. She glanced down, those sooty lashes veiling her eyes as she made a slow inspection of the harlequin-patterned entryway. Without a word, she turned and crossed to the wall behind the door. He watched as she squatted in front of a gouge in the oak wainscoting lining the entry walls.

“I did this.”

She spoke so quietly, he was compelled to move closer to be sure he caught her words. “You did?”

“With a pedal.”

“Pedal?” He frowned, wondering if she was talking about flowers or the kind you pushed with a foot. Either way, he couldn’t quite make out how either one of those could be responsible for the mark in the paneling.

She tucked a fingernail into the scratch and traced the length of the scar. “I had a new bike and it was so cool,” she said, a fond smile curving her lips. “Pink streamers on the handlebars and those little clickety-clackety plastic things on the spokes. I was out riding up and down the drive when it started raining. I didn’t want to stop, so I brought the bike inside.” She gestured to the large foyer with its sweeping staircase rising to one side. “I was doing pretty well until Anita—she was our cook—came in and yelled at me. I lost my balance as I was taking the turn and skidded. The pedal scraped the wall.”

Harley nodded as the pieces finally fell into place. “So, I’d say the spot stays.”

She beamed as she straightened to her full height. Her movements jerky and unsure, she offered him her hand. He took her chilled fingers in his, but made no move to pull her closer or cement his hold on her. Laney was making the moves at last. The right kinds of moves. He wasn’t about to screw up now.

His inaction paid off in spades when she laced her fingers tightly with his and moved in to lean against his arm. “Come on. Fix me a cup of sissy coffee and I’ll take you on the nickel tour.”

The nickel tour included such highlights as the spot where the uncomfortable floral couch held court in the parlor and a little borderline sexual stroking of the aforementioned chair rails in the dining room. She added in a dose of wild speculation about possible shenanigans between the very proper Miss Gertrude Tarrington and Mister Ephram Abramson,
ar-tee-san
, then gave Harley a peek into the coat closet where she supposedly spent seven minutes in heaven with Joe Bartlemas. She also confessed that she and Joe spent most of those minutes complaining about Mrs. Beecher, their seventh grade English teacher.

The conversation was flowing by the time they wandered into the kitchen. As if he hadn’t snatched her family home out from under her. Never mind the bit about saving her from certain financial ruin. If she tried hard enough, she might be able to put their abortive attempts at sex behind her, but given the infamous delicacy of the male ego, could he?

She stood back and watched as he jammed overpriced pods into the single-serve coffee maker and shoved a crimson-and-white Cade Construction coffee mug under the spigot. Then a horrifying thought struck her.

“You’re not a ’Bama fan, are you?”

“I’m gonne take the fifth.”

“You are.” Eyes wide, she clutched at an imaginary strand of pearls at her throat. “Oh, sweet baby Jesus in the manger, I slept with a Gump?”

“We have fake sugar and fake milk,” he said, gesturing to the powdered creamer and sweetener containers on the counter.

She didn’t bother concealing her shudder. “Black is fine.”

Harley smirked as he removed the mug, handed warmed ceramic to her, and started the process all over again. “It’s not like I went to school there or anything.”

“First Brooke, then me.” She took a cautious sip of the hazelnut coffee. “This is not what’s supposed to happen to Auburn girls who’ve been brought up right. You boys are practically Yankees.”

He chuckled as he watched the coffee stream into a second mug. “Well, at least I’m not a probably-Jewish
ar-tee-san
. Think that'll be enough to keep the ancestors snug in their graves?”

A heavy silence descended on them the moment he said the word ‘graves.’ He opened his mouth then snapped his jaw shut again. His gaze remained glued to the gurgling machine.

She saw her chance to bridge one of the many gaps between them and offered up a little something about the kitchen itself to get the tour back on track.

“My mama didn’t cook, you know.”

To her relief, the man recognized an olive branch when one was waved in front of his face. He glanced over at her as he claimed his own mug. “No? Not at all?”

“Not really. We always had Miss Anita.”

He blew across the brew to chase the steam away. “Seems odd for a Creole girl.”

“A Creole
lady
,” she corrected. “Her family had money.”

“So I assume you don’t cook, either.” He raised his eyebrows, making the statement a question.

Pleased he’d leaped to the wrong conclusion, as expected, she smiled sweetly at him, then trailed her fingers over the worn countertop. “If you assumed so, you’d be making an ass of yourself, Harley Cade.”

“You
do
cook?”

“I cook very well. Southern and Creole. I even added a little Latin flavor to the repertoire when I lived up north. One of my roommates was from El Salvador.”