Here Comes Trouble

“He’s not on vacation,” Morgan said. “He owns it, Max.”

“Huh?”

“Our grandfather has purchased an entire town. He now officially owns Trouble, Pennsylvania. One of us has to fly there right away to get him out of this mess.”

One of us. Max could tell by his brother’s voice which one of us he meant. And it sure wasn’t Morgan—or their younger brother, Mike.

He was about to refuse, knowing there was too much at stake with the merger to take off on an unexpected vacation. Then he thought it over. Maybe getting out of town for a while would be a good thing. He could disappear—away from more crazy, horny old moneybags like Mrs. Coltrane. And in the meantime, get the best attorney he could find to stop publication of Grace’s book.

Besides, his grandfather was always a lot of fun. Right now, he could use some fun…not to mention the distraction. A false identity wouldn’t hurt, either, at least until this book thing was taken care of.

Neither would a sip of alcohol.

Forget it. He didn’t do that anymore—couldn’t do that anymore. Not ever.

If the eccentric old man who’d raised him was in a bad way, well, there wasn’t much Max wouldn’t do for him. Wasn’t much his brothers wouldn’t do for him, either. They were family, after all, the four of them. Had been for eighteen years, since Max, Morgan and Mike had lost their dad to the first Gulf War and their mom to cancer.

“All right. I’ll do it,” he said, trying to look on the bright side. “It’s not a bad time for me to get out of Dodge.”

“What’s wrong? Is there a problem?”

Max suddenly didn’t want to talk to his brother about the Grace Wellington situation. Considering his older sibling had been hounding him since they were young about the scrapes Max got into with women, he couldn’t give the other man the satisfaction.

He had to laugh at the irony. His grandfather’s new town was aptly named for Max, too. Though he’d done everything he could to stay out of trouble for the past few years, he just seemed destined to keep landing in it.

“I’m okay,” he finally replied. “After I make some arrangements here, I’ll be getting the old man out of trouble. Figuratively and literally.”

Two weeks later

SABRINA CAVANAUGH had heard the old saying about a place being so small you’d miss it if you blinked. But she’d never realized it could really be true of an entire town.

She couldn’t have driven through Trouble and not realized it, could she? That awkward conglomeration of falling-down houses, boarded-up businesses and doleful people hadn’t been her destination, right? Because she came from a dinky little Ohio town, population twelve, and it still seemed bigger than this.

Pulling her rented car over, she parked on the side of the dusty, two-lane road on which she’d been traveling since leaving the interstate. The road that had none of the shady trees, rolling hills or charming scenery she’d seen since leaving Philadelphia this morning. Then she reached for her map.

“Darn.” She had missed it. That small cluster of buildings she’d barely noticed out of the corner of her eye must have been the town she was looking for.

Maybe it wasn’t so surprising. The closer she’d gotten to Trouble, the more her mind had filled with doubt. The whole idea for this trip had seemed ridiculous when she and her senior editor at Liberty Books had conceived it, and it was much more so now.

“Yeah, right,” she muttered, “a rich, hot pilot is really going to fall down with desire for a small-town minister’s granddaughter turned junior book editor.”

Why on earth had she ever gone to her boss and convinced her that she could do this? That she could stop a womanizing playboy from suing them for libel by proving he was a womanizing playboy?

She really needed to stop watching old movies—this was so Rock Hudson/Doris Day. Maybe it would have worked for Doris, but no way was it going to for Sabrina Cavanaugh.

She was in way over her head. Unless wanting it to happen was enough. Because Sabrina did. She desperately wanted Max Taylor to fall crazy in lust with her. Not so she could have wild, passionate sex with the man—liar, liar—but so she could nail him for the womanizing deviant Grace Wellington’s book made him out to be. The book that was right now in jeopardy since the rich, slimy playboy had hired a shark lawyer to threaten a lawsuit.

“What man wouldn’t want to have his wickedly erotic sexual exploits glorified in a well-written memoir?” she mused.

Okay…sort of well written.

Apparently not this man. He, it seemed, had pulled out an angel costume and hired the best lawyer he could. Taylor’s lawyer was demanding that publication be stopped, threatening a libel lawsuit over Grace’s descriptions of their wild and kinky affair, her subsequent heartbreak and Max’s jaded lifestyle. And in the post–James Frey era of memoirs, Liberty was threatening to pull the book altogether.

“Oh, no, you will not ruin this for me,” Sabrina muttered, determined all over again to out the man for the reprobate he really was.

It was only because of the book—because of how important the success of that book would be for Sabrina. It had absolutely nothing—zero, zilch—to do with the man himself.

Keep telling yourself that, kid.

Sabrina never had been able to lie well, despite having a lot of experience with it as a kid. Lying had been a necessity for a troublemaking rebel trapped in the body of a small-town minister’s granddaughter who wasn’t allowed to wear jeans and had been called a harlot by her grandfather the first time she wiped a streak of pink lipstick across her mouth.

God help her if the old man had ever found out Sabrina was the one who’d put twenty packets of red Kool-Aid mix in the fountain outside his church. And had thrown one of her grandmother’s old wigs in with it so the whole thing resembled a murder scene.

She’d had a vivid imagination as a child.

Glancing in her rearview mirror, Sabrina noticed the buildings a few hundred yards back—a gas station, and a sagging, cone-shaped hut that had once either sold ice cream or developed film. Farther back, she thought she remembered driving by a restaurant, a drug store and a small courthouse supported by a ring of dirty cement columns, pitted with age spots and faintly green with mildew. There had also been an overgrown playground with swings that would require a child to get a tetanus shot before climbing aboard.

It seemed exactly the kind of place that would be called Trouble. Especially considering that the barren landscape surrounding it was too marshy for farming and too rocky for developing. Reportedly there was no coal in the three mountains ringing the small valley or even a decent slope for skiing.

Just one sorry little town with a cocky name, her home for the next week or two. Or as long as it took to track down Mr. Taylor and get him to come out of hiding as Prince Charming and put on his Hugh Hefner robe.

She was about to swing the car around and head back when she got a welcome distraction. Grabbing her cell phone out of her purse, she recognized the number on the caller ID.

“Nancy, I don’t know anything yet, I just got here,” she said. Her boss, senior editor Nancy Carazzi, had called for hourly updates all morning.

“Are you sure he’s there?”

“How could I be sure of that when I’m still in my car?”

“By the trail of women lying in satisfied puddles of lust around the town square?”

Sabrina chuckled at Nancy’s droll tone. She wasn’t surprised by the question. Though her boss—and friend—had no use for men, in or out of the bedroom, even she had been intrigued by the stories about one Maxwell Taylor, the stud of southern California—at least according to Grace Wellington’s book.

Neither of them had seen a decent picture of the man, since his airline Web site only featured a group shot taken from a distance. Posed beside a fleet of planes, the owner of Taylor Made Air Charters had been indistinguishable from his staff. All of them wearing dark glasses against the sun, they had formed a solid block of blue-uniformed flyboys.

But Grace’s descriptions had been evocative to say the least. And Sabrina could picture him in her mind.

He was suave. Sophisticated. James Bond in a pilot’s cap, with an elegant, lean body and smoothed-back dark hair. He had high cheekbones, a strong chin, and deep, knowing eyes. She just knew it. Because she’d seen him in her dreams. A lot.

“You still there?”

Sabrina cleared her throat and pulled her thoughts off the book. That part of it, anyway. “I haven’t spied any women stripping and throwing themselves naked at a man’s feet.”

“Is that your plan?”

“I’m not the least bit…”

“Can it,” Nancy said. “You think I didn’t notice the dreamy look you got on your face when you were reading the Max chapter of the book? You were intrigued, Sabrina. Hell, I haven’t had any use for a penis since I decided as a kid that Betty should end up with Veronica instead of Archie, and I was intrigued.”

Laughing, Sabrina mentally admitted she’d been more than intrigued. She wouldn’t say so out loud, but in her mind she could acknowledge that her curiosity about Grace Wellington’s former lover had become all-consuming.

“It’s just curiosity,” she insisted, not sure which of them she was trying harder to convince. “Plus a lot of skepticism. And a little bit of disgust.” Okay, she could mentally admit it was titillated disgust when it came to some of the seedier details of the wicked pleasures Max had introduced Grace to.

Wiping her brow with the back of her hand, she wasn’t surprised to find moisture there. Even with the car’s air-conditioning, memories of those scenes made her break out in a sweat. But she gamely declared, “I’d never get involved with someone like that.”

“Who said anything about getting involved? That man was born to inspire clothes to drop, not dreams of wedding rings.”

Unfortunately, sex did mean getting involved for Sabrina—she couldn’t help it. Some fire and brimstone had remained burning deep inside her long after she’d shaken off the dust of her hometown and upbringing, and taken off to the big city to go to college. Her single one-night stand a few years ago had left her feeling so guilty that she’d thrown out the sexy pair of slut shoes she’d worn to the bar that night.

Racked with guilt…hmm, her grandfather would be so proud. After he condemned her for the one-night-stand thing.

She shuddered at the thought of the old man with whom she, her mother and her younger siblings had lived since Sabrina was twelve. But, hey, she was lucky. Only one-third of her childhood had sucked. Her first twelve years had been wonderful. Her sister Allie had also been old enough to remember the good times, and they’d talked often about how fortunate they were because of that.

Sadly, their brother and youngest sister had never even known what their real family life had been like, back when they’d lived in New York and Dad was alive. Since he died when they were babies, all they’d ever known was the judgmental narrow-mindedness of their mother’s father. Which might explain why Sabrina and Allie were so much alike—rebellious and anxious to escape—while the younger two were the models of proper youthful behavior.

God, she felt so sorry for them.

“You’re supposed to be tempting the man into misbehaving. At least that’s what you said when you came to me with this whole harebrained scheme.”

“Don’t remind me,” Sabrina said, shaking off the dark thoughts. “I’m still wondering if I had some kind of psychotic break.”

Nancy snickered. “Don’t sell yourself short. You can do it…you’re just his type.”

“Alive and breathing?”

“Yes. But also beautiful, vulnerable…So why not misbehave yourself while you’re at it?” Nancy asked.

“I’m not looking for a fling with a playboy,” she insisted.

“Yeah, yeah. You want someone nice.”

“Exactly. Decent, funny. A combination of Jimmy Stewart, Tom Hanks and every father from every old 1950s black-and-white family sitcom on TV Land.”

“Boring.”

She went on as though Nancy hadn’t spoken. “The kind who’ll be loyal and faithful.”

“Get a Labrador.”

“Gentle,” she added.

“Get a girlfriend.”

“Well hung.”

“Get a dil—”

“Don’t say it,” Sabrina ordered. “I prefer male sexual organs that are actually attached to a body.”

“Strap-on?”

Groaning helplessly, Sabrina muttered, “A male body.”

Nancy sighed. “Picky picky.”

One thing was sure, whoever the next serious guy in her life happened to be, he would not be the type who’d get so angry when a woman broke up with him that he’d seek cruel revenge. Like seducing her innocent younger sister, getting her pregnant and walking out on her.

Her sister Allie was currently waiting out the last two months of her pregnancy in Sabrina’s apartment. Allie’s entire life had been ruined as part of the stupid revenge plot concocted by a guy Sabrina had dumped.

Yes, she’d had enough scumbags to last her whole life. It was nice, decent men from now on. No wicked studs need apply.

So her almost overwhelming need to see this Max Taylor in person had to be about curiosity, that was all. She simply couldn’t believe any man could be a modern-day combination of Valentino, James Bond and a porn star—as Grace claimed.

Skepticism and curiosity, she reminded herself. Not interest. Not in a million years.

She was about to continue arguing that point, but a noise distracted her. A metallic banging split the quiet afternoon air. It came from beyond a small stand of scraggly trees right off the road. Just after it came the loud, familiar tones of a calliope—the plaintive call to come to the circus.

Glancing that way, she caught the sparkle of something brilliantly shiny—a beautiful gleam of light that seemed entirely out of place in this gray-washed landscape.

Sabrina liked shiny things—bright lights, big city, loud music, fun. Just one more holdover from an early childhood with her funny, doting father that life with Grandfather hadn’t been able to extinguish.

Which, she supposed, was why she ended the call, dropped her phone in her purse and stepped out of the car. The music and the colors were calling to her.

And her curiosity wasn’t going to let her head back to Trouble without finding out where they were coming from.

CHAPTER TWO

TROUBLE MIGHT be the name of this town, but as far as Max was concerned, a better one would be The Mental Ward. After two weeks in the Pennsylvania community his grandfather called his kingdom, he was ready to run screaming off a bridge. Anything to escape the sounds of people calling him a savior—or a villain, the rattle of cars on their last piston, or—worst of all—the excruciating chirp of dozens of cuckoo clocks, all cuckooing their black little hearts out when the minute hand struck twelve.

The clocks. They were the tormenting fiends who’d convinced him he was one inch from insanity. At least one—usually more—of the vile things decorated every room of Max’s grandfather’s house, where Max was staying. And his grandfather loved them as much as he loved the dusty old furniture that had come with the place.

A lumpy couch he could live with. A few dozen cackling birds he could not. They’d driven him out early this morning, seeking both peace and quiet and a distraction. Any distraction.

Only not a female one, which was the biggest frustration of all. He was here to live down his reputation. Not add to it.

Coming to Trouble had been about more than talking his grandfather into unloading this bottomless pit he’d dumped a mountain of money into. The man did have a thing for lost causes and a sob story—apparently this tiny town being bankrupted by an embezzling crook had tugged at Mortimer’s heartstrings.

Max couldn’t forget his second objective, however—to lay low and stay out of the limelight while his lawyer took care of this Grace Wellington nonsense. Which was why he’d been here for days and had so far not given so much as a second glance to a nicely curved feminine ass.

Not that he’d seen any. Which was probably a good thing, even though it felt like a bad one.

There were only two things Max liked as well—or did as well—as women. Piloting. And tinkering with machinery.

He’d gone flying this morning, and, as always, the freedom and beauty of an endless blue sky had helped. Zipping and soaring between a few fluffy white clouds provided the kind of mindless delight he otherwise only got with sex. But once back on solid ground, the feeling had quickly disappeared. He was still tense…restless.

Which was why he was now cussing and coaxing the rust-covered engine of an ancient carousel back to life. He’d stumbled across the glorious ruin in the falling-down remnants of what had been Pennsylvania Kiddie World during one of his daily get-out-to-stay-sane walks earlier this week. Something about the place had appealed to him, unlike anything else in Trouble. Certainly unlike the moldering, cuckoo-clock-infested ruin in which he was currently residing with his happy-as-a-pig-in-mud grandfather.

He supposed there were benefits to being the grandson of a town owner, because he’d been able to get the power to this park turned on. Not that it seemed to have done any good. The poor carousel motor hadn’t made so much as one long groan of agony in the days he’d been tinkering with it, even if he had managed to get a few wailing notes of the calliope to belt out.

“Come on, sweetheart, I know you’re tired and old, but you must have one more go-round in you, merry or not.”

“Excuse me?”

Jerking his attention from the control panel, which had required a good quart of WD-40 before even allowing itself to be opened, Max swung his head around and stared over his shoulder. A woman had come up behind him in the tiny, weed-encrusted, abandoned amusement park, which had once been the cubic zirconia jewel in Trouble’s dubious crown.

And speaking of jewels…good Christ, was the woman standing in front of him one. A blonde. She was a blonde. His absolute weakness.

She was also tall, curvy and had the kind of lips that’d make a man howl to the night in pure, primal hunger.

No. No howling. No wolfing at all, remember?

Swallowing his libido, he offered her a smile. “Sorry. I guess you caught me talking to myself.” He stood and brushed his hands off on his jeans, leaving a smear of grease on one thigh. Stepping closer, he forced himself to keep this encounter friendly, neighborly.

When what he wanted was sexy and suggestive.

She smiled back, also noncommittal. Cordial but not flirtatious. Unfortunately. “I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.” Pushing her sunglasses up onto the top of her head, she revealed a pair of bright sky-blue eyes.

Damn. A blue-eyed blonde with a pretty smile and a pair of succulent lips. A smooth-skinned face with soft cheeks and the tiniest jut in her jaw that said she was stubborn. A bright, smiling angel appearing in this private corner of perdition just like the sun coming out on a cloudy, overcast day….

He felt like groaning out loud. Who, he wondered, had he wronged in another life to have such temptation presented to him when he couldn’t—simply could not—give in to it?

She looked him over, head to toe, with that calm, innocent glance women always hid their interest behind. A tiny hint of color appeared in her creamy cheeks and she licked at her lips—those lips—to moisten them.

Just throw a lightning bolt at me and be done with it.

“Talking to yourself—that can be a dangerous thing,” she said, her voice throatier than he’d have expected from such a soft-looking female.

“So can cutting a hand on some of this sharp, rusty metal.” Max grinned. “I feel like I ought to sweet-talk her to make sure she doesn’t scratch me.” Hmm…had that sounded suggestive? He hadn’t meant it to.

Like hell. Knock it off, Taylor.

Her full lips twitching, she gazed at his hands. “Are you hurt?”

“Not yet. But I have the feeling I will be by the time I coax this old sweetheart into action.”

The blonde glanced toward the carousel, one fine brow lifting as she studied the decrepit wreck. The only intact portion was the mini-carousel perched on the top, its mirror-tiled roof still sending out flashes of light when the sun hit it the right way. As for the rest…the once brightly colored circus animals were now mostly a uniform gray, with spots of red or green occasionally showing through. The zebra was missing its front legs, and two jagged shards were all that remained of the lion’s mane. Behind each animal, old-fashioned mirrors—dingy and cracked—provided a distorted, fun-house reflection of the washed-out menagerie, duplicating and emphasizing the sadness of each pitiful creature

He had no doubt what the stranger was looking at—but did she see? He couldn’t help wondering if the blonde saw the same aching, sad beauty that had captivated him the first time he’d spotted this place, set back off the road in a tangled, forgotten clearing.

“I can’t believe this thing hasn’t been torn down.” She kept her words in close, as if talking to herself.

“Me, either,” he admitted. “From the service records on it, I’d say it’s been closed since seventy-eight.” Which meant it was probably almost as old as this woman. Just the right age.

For ignoring. He forced himself to focus on the book. And remember he was here as the boy next door. Not the wolf beneath the porch.

“I caught the sparkle of it out of the corner of my eye and couldn’t resist exploring. I bet a lot of kids around here have had the same impulse.”

“I would have when I was a kid.”

As she met his gaze, her blue eyes sparkled. Her chuckle was as throaty as her voice as she admitted, “Me, too.”

Their smiles and immediate mental connection to mischievous childhoods provided an instant rapport, one that took Max by surprise.

The blonde carefully stepped over the toolbox, which lay open on the ground, a smattering of hand tools jumbled inside.

Not Max’s—it was from his grandfather’s house. Max’s toolbox was immaculate. Some things a man just couldn’t mess around with. Like his tools.

And this woman.

“I guess the clang of metal I heard from the road was you doing some, uh, coaxing with your hammer?”

“Is that all you heard?”

“That and some music.”

“Whew. Glad you didn’t hear me yelling, so you won’t be reaching for the soap to wash my mouth out.”

Her gaze shifted to his mouth. Which made his blood grow one degree hotter and his jeans grow one size tighter.

“Don’t tell me you were cursing at your sweetheart.”

“Guilty. Patience isn’t my strongest attribute.”

He’d like to tell her what his strongest attribute was, but that seemed like a dangerous idea. Besides, if she liked danger, she’d know exactly what he was talking about and would continue the subtle innuendo of their conversation.

She stepped closer to the carousel, focusing only on it, obviously not a danger-seeker. That was probably just as well.

“It is a ruin,” she murmured, running a hand over the flank of a shabby horse whose braided tail was now merely a stump. “But somehow, it’s…it’s almost pretty in spite of that.”

She did see. And just like that, Max realized he liked her. Didn’t know her name or a thing about her, but the woman had vision. He liked a person with vision.

Especially when she also had incredibly long legs nicely hugged by sinfully tight jeans, and a mouthwatering hint of cleavage peeking from the scooped neck of her sleeveless top.

Stop.

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat. “It tells a story.”

“A wistful one.”

“I was thinking more along the lines of pathetic, but I guess ‘wistful’ works.”

“She’s not pathetic. She’s majestic…but worn. Weary.”

“Very weary. I can’t even get a moan out of her, much less a ride.”