The Boss, the Baby and Me

“What?” She gaped at him.

Chivaree was not one of those adorable little towns people wrote songs about. Things had improved lately, but it was still a windswept, dusty place that the interstate bypassed years ago. People didn’t flock to Chivaree. People cashed in their chips and headed out for brighter lights as soon as they could scrape together the carfare.

From what she’d heard, he’d spent a good number of years in New York City. She’d noticed that his voice still had a nice Texas drawl, but it was subtle. So he hadn’t gone completely citified.

“It’s true,” he went on, his voice low and gravelly. “And when things seemed to fall apart for me out there in the big world, the only thing I could think of was coming back to Chivaree. Coming home.”

Coming home to heal was the feeling implicit in his voice.

For just a moment, she believed him. He sounded so sincere, and there was some sort of emotion in his face, a hint of pain, deep down. For just a flash, she bought it.

But she stopped herself quickly. He was smart, all right. He was giving her exactly the story that was most likely to touch her heart and make her believe. He was playing with her heartstrings in a very disturbing way. She had to get out of here before she fell for this stuff.

He’d turned back, and was pulling off his tie and loosening the neck of his shirt, pulling open buttons as though they were snaps. Darkly tanned skin with just a hint of chest hair appeared before her horrified gaze.

“Is it just me,” he said huskily, his eyelids drooping, “or is it getting hot in here?”

Her pulse was racing. One moment, he set out the emotional trap. Now, the physical one was laid out in front of her, just waiting for her to step into it. And darn it all if her own traitorous body wasn’t swooning like a lovesick puppy, even as she disdained the obvious way he was approaching her.

Turning away abruptly, she quickly changed the subject. “I’m not hot at all,” she said with an emphasis he surely couldn’t miss. “But I am hungry. For food,” she added quickly. Glancing back, she was chagrined to see that his eyes were gleaming wickedly.

“Are you?” he responded.

She turned back to face him, chin-high. “Desperately. I skipped lunch to get those preliminary sketches out to the art department.” She grimaced. “I wish I had my purse.”

“Why?” He pretended to look about the car. “Is there a food machine here I missed?”

“No, I’ve got a candy bar in it.”

“Hmm.” He plunged a hand down into the pocket of his crisply tailored slacks. “Look what I found. A roll of peppermints.”

“Oh.” She looked at them longingly. She really was hungry, and her mouth was so dry.

“Here.” He offered the roll to her after he’d popped one into his own mouth. She hesitated, but hunger overcame her inhibitions.

“Thanks,” she said shortly, taking a mint and sighing as the sparkling sugar did its work.

“You see?” he said softly, as he watched her. “I’m even willing to share my last meal with you.”

She started to say something. It was surely going to be a scathing retort, something that would knock him back on his heels for good. Unfortunately, the words themselves were lost to history, because the breath she took in to help facilitate her clever words shot what was left of the peppermint right down her throat. Now, instead of putting him in his place, she was choking.

“Here.” A man of action, he took matters in hand immediately, giving her a couple of sharp thumps on the back. When that didn’t seem to dislodge the little intruder, he turned her quickly and wrapped his arms around her from behind for the Heimlich maneuver.

“Hey,” she protested with a cough, before he got in a good thrust. “Stop! I’m okay.”

He relaxed, but for some reason his arms didn’t remove themselves from around her waist. “Are you sure?” he said, his voice just a bit husky, and his face so close to hers, she could feel his warm breath on her neck.

“Yes, I’m sure.” She pushed against him, but he didn’t release her. “Kurt, let go!”

Turning her head, she met his gaze. And then something magical happened. It wasn’t just that she suddenly noticed the golden flecks in his green eyes. It wasn’t even the electric sizzle that began to spread everywhere his body was touching hers. But suddenly she was filled with a longing so deep, so overwhelming, it took her breath away. She wanted to be kissed. She wanted to be kissed by Kurt McLaughlin.

“Oh,” she said softly, like a woman in a trance, her gaze fixed on his generous mouth. She tilted her head, her own lips parted, a yearning coursing through her. And for just a moment, she was sure it was going to happen.

And then he was pulling away, leaving her tottering off balance and feeling as though he’d thrown cold water on her. Feeling like a fool.

At least he didn’t laugh at her. Shooting back his cuff, he looked at his wristwatch, suddenly all business.

“Oh, dammit, it is getting late. I’m way overdue for picking Katy up. We’d better get some help so we can get out of here.”

Reaching behind her, she steadied herself with a hand on the railing. What was he saying? “Get some help?” she asked him, still breathless and embarrassed. “What are you talking about?”

Flipping back the tail of his suit coat, he pulled out something that had been attached to his belt. Staring openmouthed, Jodie saw a cell phone in his hand.

“I’ll just make a call,” he said innocently. “Hope the battery is still good. If so, we’ll get out of here in no time.”

She shook her head and blinked to clear her mind, then gave a sound of outrage. “You mean you’ve had that with you this whole time?” she cried. “Why didn’t you say so when I asked?”

“You never actually asked if I had one—you just assumed I didn’t,” he murmured. He opened the phone and began punching in a number. “Hi, Jasper? Sorry to bother you, but we’ve got a problem here at the office. I’m going to have to ask you to come back in and help me get out of the elevator.”

Murder. That was what was called for here. Something quick and painless, when he wasn’t looking. No jury in the world would convict her. Groaning, she closed her eyes and clenched her fists at her side. If she hadn’t despised him before, she now had plenty of reason to start.

But that was his plan, wasn’t it? Abruptly, she opened her eyes again and glared at his pleased smile. Something had to be done about this man!

Chapter Two

Jodie sat back and looked at her family, gathered around the big, antique kitchen table where they had come together for generations. Funny how it felt so familiar and yet so strange. The main thing missing was her mother, who had died of cancer when Jodie was sixteen. Her little brother Jed was also absent, the only family member Matt and Rita hadn’t managed to find and hog-tie to bring back home.

Rita had cooked an excellent meal—as she always did—of chicken and dumplings in the old style. Jodie glanced down the table at where her sister sat. She watched affectionately as the older woman blew a strand of hair back out of her eyes and looked expectantly from one person to another at the table, obviously trying to gauge how they liked what they were eating. When her gaze met her sister’s, she favored her with a warm smile. At least one good thing had come out of all this. Rita was happy to have most of the family together again.

Rita took care of the house and the family the way their mother would have if she hadn’t died twelve years before. She was a wonderful homemaker, and she deserved to have a loving man in her life and a family of her own. Unfortunately, you didn’t meet many great, un-attached men at the meat counter at the Chivaree supermarket these days. And Rita didn’t often veer much farther from home than that.

Matt had been her partner in reuniting the family. But Matt didn’t look happy, the way Rita did. Matt was the oldest male child in the family. He was the one who had shown up on Jodie’s doorstep, in Dallas, a month before and talked her into coming back home, giving her a long spiel about how they all needed to pull together now that their father was ill. These days, he seemed to care about that almost as much as Rita did.

In many ways, Matt had been Jodie’s original role model. After all, he’d been the first to defy their father and leave town, heading for medical school in Atlanta. He’d worked for years in a large urban hospital, and now he was back in his dumpy little hometown. She noted the brooding look on his handsome face and wondered what had put it there. Something was bothering him. She had no idea what it was.

But she didn’t have to worry about things like that with her sunny brother David, the one she looked the most like. They both had blond hair and brown eyes and a sprinkling of freckles over short noses.

Sitting next to Matt and eating everything he could get on his plate with youthful enthusiasm, David was the one who had never really left. Someone had asked her just the other day why such a handsome, happy-go-lucky young man who looked like he should be on a surfboard in Malibu would stay in Chivaree when there was a whole world out there for him. She’d laughed and said he was too lazy to leave. But that wasn’t true. She supposed she might be the only one who knew the real reason why he stayed. Love made people do strange things sometimes.

And then there was dark-eyed Rafe, the brother who was the same age as Kurt McLaughlin, the one now looking at her with a penetrating gaze that said, Hey, Jodie, don’t try to con me. I can see right through this polite little act you’re putting on. I can read your mind.

She stared right back at him with a half smile, hoping he got the message. Mind your own business!

“Hey, Pop,” David said, greeting their father as he entered the room. “You going to try to eat something?”

Leaning on his cane, the gray-haired man shook his head as Rita jumped up to pull out a chair for him. “No. I can’t eat anything. I just wanted to come out and sit with you all and look at your faces.” He sat down heavily, then made a scan of the table. “My pride and joy,” he muttered in a tone that could have been loving, but sounded a little sarcastic.

Glancing at him and then away, Jodie felt a stew of conflicting emotion—love, resentment, anger, pity. What could you do when you disliked your own parent almost as much as you loved him?

“So you all came back to save the farm for the old man, eh?” He laughed softly. “I guess I raised myself a bunch of good ones after all.”

“Hey, Pop,” Rafe said, leaning forward. “I was talking to our Dallas distributor today. Looks like we might have a shot at getting a contract with the whole Wintergreen Store chain. That could be huge for us.”

Jesse Allman nodded, but he wasn’t looking at Rafe. His gaze was trained on his oldest son. He’d been trying to get Matt to fulfill the role of heir apparent in the business for years, without a lot of success. Though Matt had often helped out in the old days when all they had was the tiny, struggling Allman Winery, he’d been away at college when Jesse had developed the plan to become the distributor for all the little wineries of this part of Texas hill country. That had launched all the success, and it was no secret Jesse thought Matt ought to be involved. “You got a dog in this fight, Matt?” he asked.

Matt looked surprised. “What about?”

“This Wintergreen thing.”

Matt shrugged. “It’s up to you, Pop. You know I’m not into the business side of things.”

Jesse’s eyes narrowed. “You oughta be,” he said shortly.

Matt and Rafe exchanged glances. “Talk to Rafe,” Matt said calmly. “He’s the one who knows what’s going on.”

Jodie sighed. It was the same old story. Did nothing ever change? The Allman family business had grown larger, morphing into Allman Industries, and the Allman family had gotten richer, changing from the old scruffy bunch who seemed to skim along just this side of lawbreaking into this vaguely respectable family that provided a good chunk of the local jobs. But the old emotions still simmered just below the surface. She was beginning to wonder if it hadn’t been a big mistake for her to come back.

“What’s eatin’ you, missy?” her father said, looking at her accusingly. “You still trying to get me to get rid of that McLaughlin boy?”

Jodie winced and put a napkin to her lips. “I never said I wanted you to get rid of him,” she protested. “I just want you to be aware of the danger he poses.”

“Danger?’” David looked up with a grin. “Ole Kurt McLaughlin? He’s a pussycat.”

“I don’t trust the McLaughlins any more than you do,” Matt chimed in. “But I’ve got to admit, Kurt is doing a fine job with marketing. We’re lucky to have him.”

She glanced quickly around the table, realizing with a sense of astonishment that she didn’t have anyone on her side at all. Not one of them understood how dangerous it was to let a man like Kurt into the power structure of their family business.

“I know your game, missy.” Jesse grinned at his daughter. “You’re like me. You can’t forget or forgive.” He slapped the flat of his hand down on the table. “But I’m not getting rid of him. Hell, no. He’s good at what he does. I don’t care if he is a McLaughlin. In fact, I love that he’s a McLaughlin. I love the looks on their pompous faces when I’m in town, or at the chamber of commerce meetings. I can smile at them and say, ‘Your fair-haired boy is workin’ for me now. Because I’m the one who’s making it in this town. You McLaughlins are done for.’”

She was reminded of all the reasons why she’d run away from this man in the first place, when she was a rebellious eighteen-year-old. She’d planned never to come back. And she might have stuck to that plan if Matt hadn’t found her and talked her into coming home again.

“He’s old, Jodie,” Matt had told her earnestly. “Old and sick. He needs us. All of us.”

She noticed with a start that her father’s hands were shaking, and her gaze flew to his face, searching for evidence. To her surprise, her heart began to race with something close to fear. Matt was right. He was old and sick. She might still be angry with him for things he’d done in the past, but he was still her father and, deep down, she cared for him. Okay, it was good that she’d come home. And despite everything, she had to stay, at least for a while.

And that meant she had to deal with Kurt McLaughlin.

A memory sailed into her head of how it had felt with his arms around her in the elevator car, and she almost gasped aloud. She definitely had to harden herself to his lethal charm. She was stuck working for him, and maybe that was for the best. After all, somebody had to look out for the good of the family.

An hour later, she escaped from the tensions in the house and took a brisk walk toward the newly renovated downtown. The sky was velvet-blue, with a full moon rising. The air was warm and dry. She could smell newly cut hay somewhere nearby.

She’d paced these same streets when she was eighteen and trying to figure out what she was going to do. And just around the corner was the little park where she and Jeremy used to meet secretly to plot how they were going to escape from Chivaree together. That seemed so long ago.

Jeremy. Had she ever really loved him? When she looked back now, she saw more excitement than love. They had needed each other for support at the time. But that wasn’t really true. She’d needed him. It turned out he hadn’t needed her at all. But that was always the way with the McLaughlins, wasn’t it?

Her steps slowed as she reached Cabrillo, the main street. The area was less familiar now, with new store-fronts on some of the buildings, and a few new structures housing a boutique and a crafts store. It was good to see the town looking prosperous, she supposed, though it did give her a twinge to see how things had changed.

Millie’s Café was just ahead, and that looked exactly the same. Maybe she would go in and have a cup of coffee and say hello to Millie, the mother of Shelley, her best friend in high school. Lights from the café spilled out onto the sidewalk, and Jodie began to anticipate how warm it was going to be once she’d gone in and snuggled into her old favorite booth.

But as she neared the corner, she got a glimpse of the people inside. It startled her to discover the place was packed. There were people crowding the entryway, waiting for seats, while others filled the booths, and still more sat at the counter. For a fraction of a moment, she got a flashing glimpse of a man who looked enough like Kurt to make her heart jump in dismay. Not wanting another possible run-in with that infuriating man, she just kept walking.

Darn! Was she really going to spend all her time reacting to Kurt? She couldn’t live this way. Looking back over her shoulder, trying to see if that really was him inside the café, she stepped off the curb and started across the street.

The thing was, there had never been a stoplight on that corner when she’d lived in Chivaree before. There had never been enough traffic to warrant one. Somehow, it hadn’t registered with her that there was one there now.

Brakes screeched. Fear flashed through her and she looked up, frozen for a few seconds. Then, she jumped, her whole body moving in a twitch reflex that somehow got her out of the way. But at the same time, her mind processed the fact that Kurt couldn’t be in Millie’s Café because that was Kurt’s face behind the wheel.

Kurt! After veering to miss her, he tried to regain control of his vehicle. And she watched in horror as his truck swerved just enough to get caught by a car coming in the other direction. There was a smash, a crunch, the horrifying shriek of metal in distress.

It wasn’t much more than a fender bender, but Jodie ran forward, apprehension flashing through her system, her heart in her throat. The driver of the car jumped out, swearing. But Kurt didn’t move. Dread building, Jodie yanked at the handle on the truck door. It came open, and she stared at the contorted way Kurt’s body lay in the cab. She gasped, and his green eyes opened.

“Hi,” he said, his wide mouth twisted, obviously in pain. “Uh, Jodie? Think you could call the paramedics? Something’s wrong with my leg.”

She was doomed, that was all there was to it. Every time she turned around, there was Kurt McLaughlin, interfering with her peace of mind. It was enough to make her want to scream.

Or at least complain a bit. But how could you complain about a man when you’d just crippled him?

Looking at him lying in his bed in the cozy house he shared with his baby daughter, Katy, she swallowed hard and wished she were anywhere else. Her brother Matt was using an automatic sander gizmo to smooth out a rough spot in the fiberglass cast he’d applied at the town clinic an hour or so before. Her brother David, who had helped get Kurt home, was standing around with his hands shoved down in the pockets of his jeans, looking very amused with it all. And she was standing in the shadows, between the bookcase and the closet, wishing the earth would open and swallow her whole.

“I knew Jodie had it in for me,” Kurt drawled, his voice half teasing, but with just enough of an edge to set her nerves twitching. “I just didn’t realize how far she was prepared to go.”

She moaned softly, but David couldn’t resist expanding on the joke.

“You know, sis, if you really want to take a guy out, you’re supposed to be the one in the car. He should be the one in the street, running for his life.”

She ignored him. She’d spent too many years fending off the pestering of big brothers—she knew better than to rise to the bait. Besides, she did feel terrible for what had happened, and she wanted to make sure Kurt knew it.

“I just don’t know how I could have been so stupid,” she began, and not for the first time.

Kurt looked up at her and groaned. “Jodie, if you try to tell me how sorry you are one more time, I’m going to have your brother use that surgical tape on your mouth.”

“We’d have to tape up her hands, too, or she’d be using them to give you apologies in sign language,” Matt said with a smirk.

“Do that, and she’ll have to resort to tapping out her pleas for forgiveness in Morse code with the toes of her shoes,” David threw in teasingly. “Let me tell you something. This sister of ours doesn’t give up easily.”

Jodie flushed as they all laughed. It was obvious her brothers both liked Kurt. She didn’t know how they could be so blind.

But another thing that stumped her was how well Kurt had taken the whole thing. She would have expected a little snarling, a few insults about watching where she was going, and a whole lot of swearing. But there had been very little of that. Maybe if he’d been grouchier about it all, she would feel better. At least then she could get mad instead of feeling so wretched.

Kurt had wanted paramedics. She only wished she could have obliged. But there were no paramedics in Chivaree. There was Old Man Cooper, who answered the phone at the fire department and then called around to the volunteers if there was a fire. He supposedly had a little first-aid training. But he certainly wasn’t competent to deal with a broken leg. So she’d called Matt. After all, he was the best physician in town as far as she was concerned. He’d come right away, bringing David with him, and between them they had carried Kurt to the clinic so that Matt could X-ray the leg.

No major bone was broken, but the patella was cracked, a situation that could be very painful and required a cast that held the knee immobile.

“We’ll have to keep you in the cast for a couple of weeks,” Matt had told him. “Then we’ll take it off and do some X-rays to see if you can transfer to a knee brace. That will give you a lot more freedom of movement.”

It had all gone pretty smoothly. They’d brought Kurt back to his house and installed him in his bedroom, where he was right now. Matt had given Kurt some sort of painkiller when he’d worked on him. Maybe that was why Kurt seemed to be taking it so calmly. Maybe he was just groggy from the medicine.

She wanted to go home. She ached to leave this behind. But she couldn’t really leave. After all, the accident had been her fault.

“Jodie is a licensed physical therapist,” Matt was saying. “That will be handy. She can help in your rehabilitation.”

“I’d forgotten that,” Kurt said. He grinned at her, knowing it would bug her. “That will be useful.”

Jodie felt numb. Everything that happened seemed to tie her more firmly to this man in one way or another. As she’d said before, she was doomed.

Matt rose to get something from his bag and, to Jodie’s surprise, he stopped in front of a framed picture of a cute baby girl, that was set on the top of an antique dresser.

“This your daughter?” he asked gruffly.

Kurt looked up and nodded proudly. “Yes, that’s Katy. She’s at my mother’s for the night.”

Matt was still staring at the picture in a way Jodie found a little odd. She couldn’t imagine when her big brother had become a child person. Considering that none of the six siblings in her family, including herself, were married or had children, she’d assumed they all felt pretty much the way she did. She didn’t dislike children, but she felt a lot more comfortable keeping them at a distance, avoiding too much up-close-and-personal interaction. Maybe she’d been wrong about Matt.

“It’s a good thing the baby wasn’t with you when you had the accident,” Matt said with feeling.

“Yes,” Kurt agreed. “That’s one blessing, at least.”

Jodie agreed, though she didn’t say it aloud. Just imagine if she’d been responsible for hurting Kurt’s baby. She shuddered, not wanting to think about it.

Still, Matt lingered, staring at the portrait. “She’s a beautiful baby,” he said. “About how old?”

“Sixteen months.”

“A little over one year.”

“Yes.”

Jodie frowned, wondering what was eating her brother. This just didn’t fit with the image she had of him. Then she turned to look at Kurt lying back against the pillows, and immediately wished she hadn’t. All thoughts of Matt flew out the window, and unwelcome reactions to Kurt took their place.