Millionaire on Her Doorstep (13 page)

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Authors: Stella Bagwell

BOOK: Millionaire on Her Doorstep
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“I don't know, Adam, I—”
He threw up his hands in a conciliatory gesture. “I promise I won't lay a finger on you. I'll simply be there to offer my help.”
Could she trust him? she wondered. Or more important, could she trust herself?
What are you thinking, Maureen?
a voice inside her screamed.
You have to trust the man. You have to work with him. You have to get over this obsessive desire for him or you're going to make a fool of yourself.
With a sigh of surrender, she said, “All right, Adam, I'll accept help from you. But nothing else. Understand?”
Adam understood only too well. She didn't want to get involved with him in any way for any reason, and the knowledge cut him to the bone.
Trying not to sound as wounded as he felt, he said, “Perfectly. You can keep yourself wrapped safely in ice. You won't find me trying to melt it!”
He brushed on past her, and as Maureen watched him leave the room, a bitter laugh lodged in her throat.
Oh, Adam,
she silently wailed,
don't you know you've already melted my heart?
Chapter Seven
M
aureen stood in the middle of the living room, staring bewilderedly at the mound of boxes stacked on both sides of her. She hadn't remembered having this much junk in her apartment back in Houston.
From the looks of this room alone, Adam had been right, she thought. She needed help. But so far today, she'd neither seen nor heard from the man. Before she'd left the Sanders building that evening, Maureen had briefly considered dropping by his secretary's office to see if he was in, but she'd decided against it. The last thing she wanted was for Adam to think she was chasing him.
Oh, well, she told herself, it really didn't matter whether Adam showed up or not. She would eventually get all these things put away. Besides, it was probably for the best he wasn't here. After last night, she didn't know what to expect from him, or herself. The one thing she did know was that she'd have to
get a grip on her emotions or she was going to wind up in love with the man.
The sound of a slamming door interrupted her worried thoughts and she walked over to the front door and peered out. In spite of all her earlier misgivings, her heart clenched at the sight of Adam climbing up the stone steps to the front of the house.
Like last night, he was dressed in jeans and boots and a black T-shirt. Nestled in the crook of one muscular arm was a large grocery sack. But it was the grin on his face that caught Maureen's real interest. She'd expected his anger from their argument last night to still be with him. It was a pleasant surprise to see she was wrong.
“Did you think I'd forgotten?” he asked.
She opened the door and ushered him inside. “I thought you weren't coming,” she confessed.
“I had to go to Eunice this morning and just got back less than an hour ago,” he explained, then looking around the room, he let out a low whistle. “Boy, you really do need help! Are you a pack rat?”
Maureen's soft laugh drew his eyes back to her. She was wearing white leggings and a long, loose top of pink-and-white stripes. Her hair was twisted into a loose knot and clamped at the back of her head with a large tortoiseshell barrette. Pink tinged her cheeks and lips, and Adam decided she couldn't have looked more beautiful if she'd been wearing diamonds and furs.
“I didn't think so until I walked through the house and looked at all the boxes.” She sniffed the air as smells from the paper bag in his arm began to permeate the room. “Is that food?”
He nodded. “Have you eaten yet? I stopped by a deli before I started out here.”
She motioned for him to follow her into the kitchen area. “No. I didn't take time,” she told him. “The moving van was here and I wanted to make sure all the large pieces of furniture were put in the right rooms before the men left.”
Adam placed the sack down on the countertop and began pulling out an assortment of luncheon meats, breads, cheeses, accompanying condiments and cold cans of soda. “I brought paper plates and plastic utensils, too. Just in case you hadn't found yours yet.”
“Actually, I've found the dishes, but I need to line the shelves before I put them in the cabinets.”
She helped him carry the groceries over to an oak dining table set in a small alcove off the kitchen. As she took a seat across from him and they began to make sandwiches, Adam looked curiously out the window.
“This is a beautiful place, but don't you think you'd feel a little safer in town?”
She cast him a vague smile. “I'll feel safe enough. And anyway, I'd like to get a dog. A big outside dog. Like a Doberman pinscher.”
He chuckled with dismay as he piled cold cuts and cheese atop a slice of sourdough bread. “You don't want a dog, you want a killer.”
Maureen wrinkled her nose at him. “Not at all. Dobermans are sweet, affectionate animals. I had a friend who lived in the country who had one. I loved it.”
Adam cut her a sly glance. “Was this friend a male?”
“The dog friend or the human friend?” she asked.
“The human friend.”
“It was a married couple, actually. He'd retired from the same gas company I worked for in Houston.”
“Oh. I thought it might have been a young, handsome friend.”
Her expression dour, she shook her head. “I told you, Adam. I don't date.”
“Are you telling me you haven't dated since your divorce?”
She popped the lid off the soda can and took a long swallow. “That's exactly what I'm telling you.”
She wasn't yet thirty and she was beautiful and sexy. Why was she wasting her life? he wondered. But then he had to remind himself that he, too, had turned his back on love.
“Then I'm afraid my parents are in for a difficult task.”
She glanced at him sharply. “What are you talking about?”
He swallowed a bite of sandwich, then said with a measure of sarcasm, “They want to introduce you to some eligible bachelors.”
Maureen's sandwich stopped midway to her mouth. “I hope you're kidding.”
“They think you're lonely.”
Lonely
. Adam or any of his family couldn't know what the past few years of her life had been like. Many nights she'd deliberately worked herself to the point of exhaustion just so she wouldn't have to go home and face an empty apartment.
She figured many people would probably say she had only herself to blame for her solitary existence. But none of them really knew or understood what
she'd gone through with David. Maybe a stronger woman could have forgotten and moved on. But so far, Maureen hadn't found the courage.
“Don't your parents realize there are other hobbies besides the opposite sex?”
“No. They've been deliriously in love for twenty-five years.”
Maureen forced herself to take another bite of her sandwich. As she chewed, she studied Adam's grim expression. He appeared to be far more disturbed about his parents' plan to find her a love interest than she did.
“You're their son. Why aren't they focusing on finding you the right partner?”
His lips turned down at the corners as he reached for his soda. “Because they've given up on me.”
Why? Maureen desperately wanted to ask. But she kept the one word inside her. It would never do for them to keep harping on this subject.
“Well, it's very nice of them to be concerned about me. But they'll soon learn I'm just not interested.”
Last night, she'd kissed him as though she was more than interested, Adam thought. But he wasn't going to point that out to her right now. He was here to help her unpack, not to seduce her.
Darkness had fallen by the time they finished their simple meal. While Maureen put the leftovers away in the refrigerator, Adam went through the house, turning on lights and stacking boxes to one side so they could have clear walking paths.
They started in the kitchen by lining shelves and putting away dishes, utensils and pots and pans. Maureen was surprised at Adam's understanding of where things should go and how the working order of the
room should be laid out. She hadn't expected him to know about such things, and he laughed when she told him so.
“I'm a man of many talents,” he assured her with a cocky grin. “You're going to realize that once you really get to know me.”
She climbed down from her perch on the countertop and dusted her hands against the sides of her thighs. “I'm about to see how good you are in the interior decorating department,” she told him, then asked, “Do you have any patience at all?”
“I was standing behind a door when God was handing out patience.”
She chuckled. “Well, I'll try not to test the little you have. I only need you to hang a few pictures on the wall.”
“Hang pictures! Woman, are you crazy? You've got dozens of boxes to unpack and you're worried about hanging pictures?”
She gave him a mocking smile. “Already trying to get out of the job?”
He shook his head as though he'd never understand women, then motioned her out of the kitchen. “If we're finished in here, we'd better get started or we'll never make it to work by eight in the morning.”
 
As it turned out, hanging Maureen's oil paintings and watercolors didn't take as long as Adam first expected. In no time, the two of them had also cleared out the boxes in the living room and arranged the furniture and lamps into a comfortable setting.
“Are you sure this is the way you want everything?” Adam asked as they stood back and surveyed the long room.
“Yes. I like it. Don't you?”
He glanced at her with dismay. “Yes. But I figured you'd want to change your mind at least two or three times before we called it quits in here.”
She frowned at him. “I'm not a fickle woman. Once I make up my mind about something, it stays that way.”
Adam's expression grew serious as he searched her brown eyes. “Does that include me?”
“What does that question mean?” she asked warily.
He wanted to close the two steps between them. He wanted to take her into his arms, pull the clasp from her hair and kiss her lips until neither one of them could think about the right or wrong of it.
“Have you really made up your mind to keep your hands off me?”
She turned away from him quickly but not before Adam caught a glimpse of torment on her face. “I thought we went all through this last night. You told me you wouldn't—”
“I'm not going to try anything with you,” he interrupted sharply. “I just thought...” He stopped and shook his head with self-disgust. “Hell, I don't know why I even want you to change your mind.”
She twisted around to face him and he could see her eyes were filled with anguish. “I don't know why, either. I'm sure there are all sorts of women out there who'd be more than willing to have an affair with you.”
An affair. The word had never really seemed distasteful to Adam before. Playing the field had always seemed the natural thing for him to do. But now, when Maureen merely said the word
affair,
he inwardly
cringed. “I don't want to just bed a woman, Maureen.”
She groaned and shook her head. “You don't want love or marriage, either, Adam. So what's left? What do you want?”
I want you
. The realization struck him with such force he could only stare at her.
“That's exactly what I thought,” she went on before he could make any sort of reply. “You're out for a good time. And that's all.”
Frowning with disgust, he said, “You really think poorly of me, don't you?”
She forced herself to smile and lighten the tension that had been building for the past few moments. “No. Just wisely,” she said, then motioned for him to follow her.
Adam had helped her unpack several boxes of clothes and shoes when Maureen decided she would go to the kitchen and put on a pot of coffee. While she was gone, Adam opened the last two boxes marked Miscellaneous and began to place the items out on the bed so Maureen could see what else she had to find storage space for.
There was a small cedar jewelry box, several clumps of silk flowers, an assortment of vases and a collection of old college textbooks, all of which were on the subject of geoscience. In the second box, he found several more books, most of which were bestselling fiction. As he sifted through the paperbacks, he expected to find at least one romance, but he didn't.
When Maureen had sworn off love, she must have well and truly meant it, he thought.
With the books piled out of the way, he found two
photo albums, but as soon as he realized what they were, he closed the covers and placed them aside. He didn't know anyone in Maureen's past, so he wouldn't recognize who or what was in the photos. Besides, he felt to look at them would be invading her privacy. And he respected her too much to do that.
Beneath the albums, at the bottom of the box, was a small, hand-sewn quilt with cats and dogs embroidered on each square. Adam didn't know anything about quilts, but he was pretty sure this one was some sort of baby blanket and he wondered if it was something she'd hung on to from her tragic childhood.
He lifted the quilt out of the box, and as he did so he realized something was wrapped inside it. He laid the colorful blanket out on the bed, then carefully unfolded it. Inside was a small yellow baby rattle and a gold-framed photo of a very small baby girl. At the bottom, a lock of dark hair was captured beneath the glass.
He was studying the baby's features, trying to figure out whether the picture was of Maureen, when he heard her footsteps enter the room. Still holding on to the photo, he glanced at her. “Is this adorable baby girl you?” he asked with a grin.

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