Second-Chance Seduction

“But...the hotel suite.” She let go of the breath she didn’t know she’d been holding. “Okay. But...never mind. Good. Fine. That’s fine.” She stopped talking as she felt heat rise up her neck and spread to her cheeks. She tended to turn bright pink when she was embarrassed, so Connor probably noticed it, too. Even though he’d made it clear he didn’t want to sleep with her, she’d assumed...well. That’s what she got for assuming anything. Apparently he just wanted to keep tabs on her.

If she’d thought about it for a second or two, she would’ve realized that he could have any woman he wanted. They probably waited in line outside his door and threw themselves at him wherever he went. Why would he want to sleep with Maggie, especially after he’d spent all these years thinking she had betrayed him? All he wanted was a date, someone who knew something about the brewery business. And that description fit her perfectly.

“I misunderstood,” she admitted.

“Yeah, you did,” he said, his tone lowering seductively as he approached her. “Because if you and I were to do what your mind is imagining, Maggie, there wouldn’t be much sleeping going on.”

Staggered, Maggie felt her mouth drop open. “Oh.”

“So it’s settled,” he said, breezily changing tempo again as he tugged her arm through his and walked her to the door. “I’ll pick you up Sunday morning and we’ll drive together. Be sure to pack something special for the gala and a few cocktail dresses. We’ll be dining with a number of important business associates, and I want them to walk away impressed.”

She refused to mention that she only owned two simple cocktail dresses and nothing formal, having given away most of her extensive wardrobe to the local consignment shop three years ago. Instead she turned and jabbed her finger in his chest for emphasis. “Just so we’re clear, Connor. I’m not going to have sex with you.”

He looked down at her finger, then up to meet her gaze. “Still negotiating, huh?”

She whipped her hand away and immediately missed the sizzle of heat she’d gotten from touching his chest. She told herself it meant nothing. It had just been a while since she’d touched a man. Like, years. No wonder she was getting a contact high.

“I’m serious, Connor,” she said, hating that her voice sounded so breathless. “I’ll share your room with you, but that’s it.”

“It’s a suite,” he corrected, and slowly leaned over and kissed her neck.

Dear Lord, what was he doing? She knew she should slap him, push him away, but instead she shivered at the exquisite feel of his lips on her skin.

“Say it with me,” he murmured. “Suite.”

“Suite,” she murmured, arching into him when he gently nipped her earlobe. This had to stop. Any minute now.

“Sweet,” he whispered, then pulled her into his arms and kissed her.

Three

The heat was instantaneous. Maggie felt as if she were on fire and she reveled in the warmth of his touch. She couldn’t remember feeling this immediate need, not even years ago when she and Connor first made love. And certainly not in all her years with Alan Cosgrove, her less than affectionate ex-husband.

Good grief, why was she thinking about a cold fish like Alan when Connor’s hot, sexy mouth was currently devouring her own?

She gripped his shirt, knowing she ought to put an end to this and leave right now. Talk about taking a risk! This was madness. She had to stop. But oh, please, no, not yet. For just another moment, she wanted to savor his lips against hers, his touch, his strength, his need. It had been much too long since any man had needed her like this.

Connor had always been a clever, considerate lover, but now he was masterful as he maneuvered her lips apart and slid his tongue inside to tangle with her own, further melting her resistance. His arms encircled her, his hands swept up and down her back with a clear sensual awareness of her body as his mouth continued to plunder hers.

And just at the point where she was ready to give him anything he wanted, Connor ended the kiss. She wobbled, completely off balance for a moment. She wanted to protest and whine for him to kiss her again. But she managed to control herself, taking time to adjust the shoulder strap of her bag and straighten her jacket.

Then she glanced up and caught his self-satisfied smile. He looked as if he’d just won a bet with someone, maybe himself.

She remembered that smile, remembered loving it, loving him. Times changed, though, and just because they’d shared an amazing kiss didn’t mean she had any intention of sleeping with him. Still, at least she knew what she was up against now. Was she crazy to have such strong feelings for him after so many years? No, it would only be crazy if she acted on those feelings. She needed to remind herself of the only thing that mattered: getting the loan, by almost any means necessary. Which meant that she would walk through fire to get it. And Connor MacLaren was fire personified.

She took a deep breath and struggled to maintain a carefree tone. “I guess I’ll see you Sunday, then.”

“Yes, you will.” And with a friendly stroke of her hair, Connor opened the office door. “Drive home safely.”

“I will. Goodbye, Connor.”

She strolled from his office in a passion-soaked haze. But despite her earlier concerns, she somehow found her way out of the large office maze and down to the parking garage. And before she knew it, she was driving toward the Golden Gate Bridge and heading for home.

* * *

The kiss meant nothing, Connor assured himself as he closed his office door. He’d just been trying to teach her a lesson. Testing her. Keeping her on her toes. He’d wanted to prove she was lying when she claimed she wouldn’t dream of having sex with him. And, he told himself, he’d done a hell of a job. She had practically ripped his shirt off right there and then. Hell, if he hadn’t put an end to the kiss when he did, they would be going at it naked on his office couch by now.

And didn’t that paint a provocative picture? Damn. The image of her writhing in naked splendor on the soft leather couch was stunning in its clarity, causing him to grow rock hard instantly. In his mind’s eye, he could almost touch the gentle slope of her curvaceous breasts, could almost taste her silky skin.

“Idiot,” he muttered, straining to adjust himself before settling back to work. “Explain again why you stopped kissing her?”

At the time, it had made sense to stop, he argued silently. But now, as he hungered for more...he shook his head. Maggie had always had the ability to tie him into knots and now she was doing it again. Damn it, he was a different man than he was ten years ago. Stronger. Smarter. He wasn’t about to let her call the shots again. He would be the one in control of the situation while they were together next week.

But the voice inside his head began to laugh. Control. Good luck with that.

He ruthlessly stifled that mocking voice. So maybe he hadn’t always had a firm grip on things when he was with Maggie before. Things were different now. He still didn’t trust her as far as he could throw her, which was pretty far, seeing as how she’d lost some weight since he’d last seen her. She was just as beautiful, though. Maybe more so. When he first looked up and saw her standing in his office doorway, she had taken his breath away. She’d always had that power over him, but he was older and wiser now and not about to fall for her charms again.

He wouldn’t mind kissing her again, though, and was momentarily distracted by the searing memory of his mouth on hers. And it went without saying that he would do whatever it took to get her into bed with him. He was a red-blooded man, after all. Didn’t mean he cared about her or anything. It was just something he’d be willing to do if the occasion presented itself—and he had every intention of making sure that the occasion presented itself.

Absently, Connor checked the time. Damn, he only had twenty minutes before Jake would show up to drag his ass out to shop for a new suit. He figured he’d better get some real work done in the meantime so he’d be ready to go when Jake got here. His brother had already warned him that he’d be on the phone with the Scottish lawyers this afternoon, and that always put Jake in a foul mood.

The lawyers from Edinburgh had been trying to convince one of the MacLaren brothers to fly to Scotland to take care of the details of their uncle Hugh’s estate. Whoever made the trip would be stuck there for weeks. But that wasn’t the real reason none of them wanted to go there. No, it was because Uncle Hugh had been a hateful man. Jake, Ian and Connor couldn’t care less about the terms of Hugh’s last will and testament, despite the fact that they were his beneficiaries, in a manner of speaking.

Even though Connor and his brothers had grown up around Point Cairn in Northern California, they’d been born in the Highlands of Scotland. They were the sons of Liam MacLaren and heirs to Castle MacLaren. But when Connor was a baby, their uncle Hugh, an evil bastard if ever there was one, swindled their father out of his inheritance.

Their dad never recovered from the betrayal and died a few years later, leaving their mother, Deidre, a widow with three young boys to raise. Unwilling to live in the same area as her despised brother-in-law, she moved with her boys to Northern California to be near her sister. Connor had no memory of any other home except the rugged hills that overlooked the wild, rocky coast of Marin County.

Connor stared out the office window at the stunning view of the Golden Gate Bridge and the Marin shoreline beyond. Maybe in some small way, their uncle had done them all a favor because Connor couldn’t imagine living anywhere else in the world. Hell, he never would have met Maggie Jameson otherwise, he thought, and then wondered if that was a good thing or a bad thing. He wasn’t ready to decide on that one, but he couldn’t help smiling in anticipation of spending the following week in a hotel suite with the gorgeous woman.

* * *

By the time she arrived home, Maggie felt relatively normal again. Her heart had finally stopped hammering in her chest, and her head had ceased its incessant buzzing. All that remained from Connor’s onslaught was a mild tingling of her lips from his devastating kiss.

Mild? That was putting it, well, mildly. But never mind his kiss. What about his demands? For someone so risk-averse, Maggie still couldn’t believe she’d entered the lion’s den and put herself in such a perilous position. After all the lectures she’d given herself and all the positive affirmations she’d memorized, she had taken one look at Connor and practically rolled over, allowing him to take hold of the situation and make choices for her.

She pulled her car into the garage next to the barn and walked across the circular drive to the large ranch-style home she shared with her grandfather. The afternoon sun barely managed to hold its own against the autumn chill that had her tugging the collar of her old suede jacket closer to her neck. She still took a moment to appreciate the land that rolled and dipped its way down to the sheer bluffs that overlooked the rough waves of the Pacific Ocean. Despite some sorry choices in her past, she had to marvel at her own good luck. She was home now, living in a beautiful house in a magical location. Her darling grandfather, despite some tricky health issues, was still kicking, as he liked to put it. She was proud of herself, proud of how she’d finally arrived here, both emotionally and physically.

Connor MacLaren had no idea how much it had cost her to show up at his office door with her hat in her hand, and Maggie had no intention of ever revealing that to him. She’d fought too hard to get to where she was today, and she wasn’t about to gamble it all away on some tingling feeling she’d received from a simple kiss.

She jogged up the porch stairs and into the house, where she checked the time on the mantel clock. Her grandfather would be out in the barn milking his goats. Dropping her bag on the living room chair, she went to her bedroom to make a phone call. She was determined to avoid sharing a hotel room with Connor—even if it was a luxurious penthouse suite, as he had emphasized more than once.

But when she called the convention hotel to make a reservation, she was told that they were sold out, just as Connor had warned. And when she called the next closest hotel, she was quoted a price that was so far out of her range she almost laughed out loud at the reservationist.

She merely thanked her instead and hung up the phone. Then she spent a few minutes at her computer, searching for information. Finally, with nervous fingers, she dialed Connor’s number.

“MacLaren,” he answered.

“It’s Maggie and I’ve been thinking, Connor,” she began. “It’s probably best if I commute to the festival from home after all. Grandpa isn’t well and I’d rather be home each night to see him.”

“I’ve already talked it over with my mother, Maggie,” Connor replied dryly. “She plans to stop by your place twice a day and spend the night there, too. I know Angus won’t put up with two women fussing at him day and night, so you’ll be doing him a favor by staying away for the week.”

“I’m not sure if—”

“And besides,” he continued in steamroller fashion, “you’ve already agreed to be my date for the week, remember? In exchange for which I’m going to give you a lot of money. I think that’s a pretty good deal for you.”

“Pretty good deal,” she echoed darkly.

“Maggie, I explained all this to you and I thought you had agreed. I’m going to need you to accompany me every day, starting with breakfast meetings and going into the late evenings with all the social events I’ve got to attend.”

She frowned into the phone. “You never liked all that social stuff before.”

“That was true ten years ago,” he said smoothly. “Now I figure it’s a small price to pay to get what I want.”

“The price of doing business?”

“Exactly. And it won’t hurt you to be seen with me, Maggie. It’ll be good for your business to meet the people I know, too.”

She knew he was right about that. But still. “Okay, but I’m not going to the dance.”

“You’re going with me, Maggie.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

There was a moment of silence, and then Connor said, “Are you saying this is a deal breaker?”

Her shoulders slumped as she recognized that hard-nosed tone of his. She wasn’t about to break their deal, but she still had no intention of attending the stupid dance. Especially because it wasn’t just a dance. Maggie had looked it up on the festival website. The dinner dance was actually a formal affair, a gala event, meant to celebrate the culmination of the festival year and probably as snooty as any high-society ball she had ever attended in Boston. But since she didn’t want to argue anymore, she left it alone for now. After a minute more of conversation, she disconnected the call.

She couldn’t tell him that she didn’t mind being his date for all the events during the week. That wouldn’t be any problem at all. But the thought of having to share his hotel suite with him? It made her want to run through the house screaming. She didn’t know how she would manage it, but unless another hotel room opened up in the next few days, she would soon find out.

But even another hotel room wouldn’t fix the somewhat smaller dilemma of her not attending the dance. Maggie groaned and pushed that little problem away. If they managed to make it through the week together, Connor would just have to understand.

None of this would’ve been necessary if the banks hadn’t turned down her loan. But the money was critical now. Even though Grandpa insisted that he was still hale and hearty and fit as a fiddle, Maggie was so afraid that one of these days he would need more care than she could afford to give him. She had gone through most of her meager settlement money fixing the roof of the house and then she’d bought a number of replacement items for the brewery.

She had been hoping to use the remaining funds as collateral, but now that Angus needed expensive medication and possibly even surgery someday, she’d reached the point of desperation. Her business was on the verge of expanding into a wider market, and that would bring in more money eventually, but before that happened, she needed to raise some capital to keep things going. And that was where Connor came into the picture. Negotiating and trading her beer formulas for cash was better than going to the bank. This way, she wouldn’t have to pay back a loan.

She suddenly felt so tired and gazed at her comfortable bed longingly. How nice it would be to climb under the covers and take a long nap, but first she wanted to help Grandpa feed the goats.

As she stripped out of her “nice” jeans and pulled on her old faded pair, she had to laugh at herself. A few years ago, she wouldn’t have dreamed of wearing jeans to a meeting in the city. Not even her “nice” jeans. But happily, jeans and work shirts had gradually replaced most of the clothing she’d worn during her marriage.

Alan, her ex-husband, had expected her to dress up every day, usually in smart skirts and twin sweater sets with pearls. It didn’t matter what she was planning to do that day.

“You must always be seen wearing fashionable yet sensible clothing,” her ex-mother-in-law, Sybil, was forever reminding her, usually in a scolding tone of voice.

Three years ago, when Maggie first arrived back in Point Cairn after her divorce, she’d had no idea what an emotional mess she was. She just knew that her marriage had gone disastrously wrong and she was determined to get past the whole experience and move forward. She wanted to catch up with old friends and explore the town she’d missed so dearly. So one day, shortly after she’d returned, she drove into Point Cairn to do the grocery shopping.

While at the store, she ran into some of her old high school friends she hadn’t seen in years. She was thrilled to reconnect, but they quickly put her in her place, telling her they wanted nothing to do with her. They were still resentful that she had turned her back on the town. More important, they were livid that she’d hurt Connor so badly all those years before. Her friends had made it clear that while Connor was still universally loved and admired by one and all, Maggie was most assuredly not. One friend put it more succinctly: Maggie could go stuff it as far as they were concerned.

It was another blow to Maggie’s already fragile self-esteem and she had limped home to cry in private. For a full month afterward, she lived in her pajamas, wandering in a daze from her bed to the couch to watch television and then back to bed again. The thought that she might’ve hurt Connor was devastating to her, but the notion that Connor had lied to her old friends about their mutual breakup was just as bad. Why would he do that?

She remembered tossing and turning at night, unable to sleep for all the pain she might have caused—without even meaning to do so!

Then one day, her grandfather told her he could really use her help with the goats.

Maggie’s spirits had lifted. Grandpa needed her! She had a reason to get dressed and she did so carefully, choosing one of her many pastel skirts and a pale pink twinset with a tasteful gold necklace and her Etienne Aigner pumps.

When she walked into the barn, Grandpa took one look at her and asked if she thought they were going to have a tea party with the goats. He chuckled mightily at his little joke, but Maggie jolted as if she’d been rudely awakened from a bad dream. She stared down in dismay at her outfit, then ran from the barn and stumbled back to the house in tears. Poor Grandpa was bewildered by her behavior and blamed himself for upsetting her.

But Maggie knew where to place the blame. It was her own damn fault for being so weak, so blind and so stupid. She’d been well programmed by her manipulative ex-husband and could still hear his sneering voice in her head, telling her what to do, how to behave, what to wear and what she’d done wrong. As soon as their wedding vows were exchanged, Alan’s disapproval began and never let up. It had come as such a rude shock and she realized later that she’d been in a terribly vulnerable state after leaving Connor. Otherwise, she might have recognized the signs of cruelty behind Alan’s bland exterior.

During her marriage, she’d occasionally wondered why she ever thought Connor’s love of extreme sports was too risky for her when compared to the verbal assaults she received constantly from her husband and his mother.

Maggie still couldn’t get the sound of their menacing intonations out of her head.

She had thought that by moving three thousand miles away from her ex-husband and his interfering mother, she would be rid of their ruthless control over her. But the miles didn’t matter. Alan and Sybil were still free to invade Maggie’s peace of mind with their disparaging comments.

That moment in the barn with Grandpa provided Maggie with a sharp blast of reality that quickly led to her complete meltdown. For days, she couldn’t stop crying. Grandpa finally insisted on taking her to the local health clinic to talk to a psychologist. But how could she make sense of something so nonsensical? All she knew was that everything inside her was broken.

Gradually, though, Maggie came to realize that she was not to blame for succumbing to Alan’s masterful manipulations. Through the outpatient clinic, she met other women who’d survived similar relationships. And she discovered, quite simply, that if she stayed busy with chores and projects, she didn’t have time to worry and fret about the past. Oddly enough, it was Grandpa’s quirky flock of goats that helped her get through the worst of it.

Lydia and Vincent Van Goat, the mom and dad goats, didn’t care what Maggie was wearing or whether she was depressed or flipping out. They just wanted food, and Lydia and the other girls needed to be milked. The milk had to be weighed and recorded, then taken to the local cheesemongers to be turned into goat cheese and yogurt. The goats demanded fresh water to drink and clean straw to sleep on. Their hooves needed trimming. The newest goat babies needed special care and eventually, weaning.

They couldn’t do any of it by themselves; they needed Maggie to help them survive. Maggie soon realized that she was dependent on them for her survival, too. The goats gave her a reason to get out of bed every morning. She had priorities now, in the form of a flock of friendly, curious goats.

For the next six months, much of Maggie’s energy was spent tending the goats. She filled out her days by preparing meals for Grandpa and taking long walks along the cliffs and down on the rough, sandy beach. She grew a bit healthier and happier every day.

Eventually she was able to acknowledge that Grandpa was perfectly able to do most of the work with the goats himself. Thanks to Grandpa, Maggie was nearly back to being her old self, which meant that it was time for her to find a real job and make some money. Sadly, the idea of working in town where she could run into her former friends was just too daunting. That’s when Grandpa suggested that while she was figuring things out, she might enjoy dabbling in her father’s old family beer-making business.

The microbrewery equipment lay dormant in the long, narrow storage room next to the barn. Her father had called the room his brew house, and it was where he used to test some of the beers they served at their brewpub in town. The storage room had been locked up for years, ever since her dad died.

Maggie had fond memories of following her father around while he experimented with flavors and formulas to make different types of beers, so the idea of reviving his brew house appealed to her. Within a week, she was hosing down and sanitizing the vats, replacing a few rusted spigots and cleaning and testing the old manual bottling and kegging equipment her father had used. She spent another few weeks driving all over the county to shop for the proper ingredients and tools before she finally started her first batch of beer. And it wasn’t half bad.