Their Unfinished Business

Harlequin Romance® presents…

Jackie Braun

Her believable characters and fresh voice will pull you into the drama…and have you turning the pages all night long!

Saying Yes to the Boss #3905

Books by Jackie Braun

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3897—A WOMAN WORTH LOVING*

Dear Reader,

A woman’s first love holds a very special place in her heart. All these years later, I can still remember what I was wearing when I received my first real kiss, as well as the maudlin songs I played over and over on the stereo when that boy dumped me for someone else.

Ali Conlan’s childhood sweetheart broke her heart, too. First loves never last. Or do they? In exploring that question I came up with Their Unfinished Business.

As the title implies, Luke and Ali have not quite gotten over their past relationship. Of course, both of them like to think they have. Luke is now a successful businessman, but when he returns to Trillium Island as an investor in the Conlans’ resort, he soon realizes that what he and Ali once shared is exactly what his life has been missing the past ten years. My headstrong heroine takes some convincing, though.

I hope you enjoy the second story of my CONLANS OF TRILLIUM ISLAND trilogy. Just wait till you find out what I have in store for Dane. His story, Saying Yes to the Boss, is coming from Harlequin Romance in August.

Best wishes,

Jackie Braun

Their Unfinished Business

Jackie Braun

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Jackie Braun earned a degree in journalism from Central Michigan University in 1987 and spent more than sixteen years working full-time at newspapers, including eleven years as an award-winning editorial writer, before quitting her day job to freelance and write fiction. She is a past RITA® Award finalist and a member of the Romance Writers of America. She lives in mid-Michigan with her husband and their young son. She can be reached through her Web site at www.jackiebraun.com

“I envy Ali Conlan her lake view. Okay, Trillium Island is fictional, but Lake Michigan is real. Anyone who has had the privilege of watching the sun sink into that vast Great Lake knows that no camera has yet been invented that can capture the pure magic.”

—Jackie Braun on Their Unfinished Business

This one’s for the girls: Monica, Kelly and Teresa. Enduring friendships are a rare gift.

Thank you.

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

PROLOGUE

“NO. NO way. Absolutely not!”

Ali Conlan crossed her arms over her chest and glared at her twin sister across the dinner table.

“What’s the big deal?” Audra asked. Arching her brows, she added, “I mean, unless you’re not over him. Alice.”

It turned out a person really could see red when mad, Ali realized as her vision tinted crimson.

Through gritted teeth, she said tightly, “Don’t call me Alice. And I am over Luke Banning. I was over him five minutes after he left town with you eleven years ago.”

If her sister wanted to fight dirty, she would fight dirty right back, Ali decided.

But Audra didn’t so much as blink before replying blandly, “And you’ve forgiven me for leaving and for that little…misunderstanding. Why don’t you give him the same break? It was a long time ago. You need to move on.”

“I have moved on!” Ali hollered, tossing down her napkin and rising slightly from her chair. She sounded defensive even to her own ears, but it didn’t help that her one-time, two-bit actress of a sister said sotto voce, “Me thinks she doth protest too much.”

Reeling in her temper, Ali glanced around the table where her brother, Dane, and Audra’s husband, Seth Ridley, sat. Clearing her throat, she said more calmly, “I am over Luke Banning. I haven’t spent the past eleven years pining for the man. In fact, I’ve hardly given him a second thought. I’ve been too busy.”

“Oh, yeah? When was the last time you had a date?” Audra asked.

It felt good to be able to say, “I have one this weekend, as a matter of fact. With Bradley Townsend.”

“The developer?” Dane made a face.

“Actually, he’s a man,” she drawled.

“I’m not sure I like him,” her brother said. Audra, amazingly, did not offer an opinion. In fact, she had become suddenly engrossed in rearranging the cutlery at the side of her plate.

Her husband, however, seconded Dane’s view. “Me, either.”

Ali exhaled sharply in frustration. “Look, my personal life is not the issue here and neither is Luke Banning. The resort’s future is what’s important right now.”

Dane, always the voice of reason, smiled and nodded. “I couldn’t agree more.”

Ali returned his smile, glad to have him on her side in this matter. That made it two Conlans to one. End of discussion. She picked up her coffee cup and had just taken a sip when he added, “I think the resort needs Luke Banning.”

Somehow she managed to choke down the hot liquid, but an undignified coughing fit ensued. When it had passed enough for her finally to speak, she demanded, “How can you say that, Dane?”

“We need another investor, Ali. It’s as simple as that. If we want to buy that extra acreage when it comes on the market and put in a championship-caliber golf course and clubhouse, we need more capital. So our choices are either take out a loan to finance the expansion or take on another partner.”

“There is a third option,” Audra interjected sweetly before winking at Ali. “I could bankroll it.”

Ali felt her lip curl at the suggestion. Audra knew Ali wouldn’t allow her sister to sink any more of her vast personal wealth into their three-way partnership.

“Don’t even go there, Aud. We’ve discussed it before. The answer is still no.”

Glancing at her sister, Ali wondered again how it was possible for two people who had once shared a womb to turn out so differently. Not just physically, although even in that regard they were night and day. Audra was a blue-eyed bombshell of a blonde who had more curves than should be legal, while Ali was tawny-eyed, brunette and athletically slender. They barely looked like siblings let alone twins. In temperament, though, they were even more divergent. Ali was generally the more sedate, studious and practical of the pair. She left being flamboyant, frivolous and outrageous to Audra. In fairness, though, her sister was really none of those things any longer.

Since returning to Trillium Island a year earlier after a life-altering and nearly life-ending event, Audra had become much more subdued and centered. Now she was also much happier thanks to her recent marriage to Seth Ridley.

Audra and Ali had ended a decade-long estrangement, and Ali was delighted to have her sister back. Even so, the two women managed to lock horns on everything from fashion to politics.

Differences aside, though, Ali knew Audra and Dane were right about Saybrook’s. If they hoped to make the resort not just profitable once again, but to put it back on the map as a hot vacation destination, then they needed a golf course. It was the only way to compete with the upscale mainland resorts that had lured away so much of Saybrook’s business over the past decade.

A bigger investment from Audra was out of the question if the Conlans’s business venture was to remain on relatively equal footing. As it was, Audra had sunk in more money than either one of her siblings.

A loan wasn’t in their best interests either since the economy remained soft, gas prices were up and the experts were already predicting traffic would be down when the summer tourist season officially kicked off at the end of the month.

“We need another investor,” Dane said quietly.

Ali sighed in defeat. “I know we do, but Banning? Does it have to be him?”

Dane shrugged.

“When we first talked about this idea, we agreed we wanted someone with ties to Trillium Island. Someone who would appreciate Saybrook’s charm, as well as its importance not only to the island’s history but to its overall economy. Luke fits the bill, especially since he’s done very well for himself since leaving,” he said patiently.

“I know.”

Of course she did. Not because the man who’d broken her heart had called or written to her, but because she couldn’t pick up a magazine or turn on the nightly news without seeing just what a huge success he’d become.

Dane wasn’t finished driving the point home.

“Luke Banning’s name on this project will give Saybrook’s the kind of international exposure it hasn’t had since the resort’s heyday in the 1940s and 1950s when members of the Rat Pack and other Hollywood legends made it their Midwest destination.”

“I thought that was part of Audra’s appeal,” Ali said nastily.

But her twin didn’t rise to the bait. “I’m old news, sweetie. Now that I’m married and haven’t appeared on a tabloid cover in nearly a year, I’m a has-been.”

Audra grinned at her husband of three months after saying it, clearly pleased to be passé after nearly a decade of generating headlines with her infamous antics.

Ali damned herself for being so practical. Their arguments made perfect sense, and if it weren’t for her personal history with Luke, she would be the first to suggest approaching him. The fight had nearly gone out of Ali, but she decided to make one last stand.

“Who’s to say Luke will want to have anything to do with the island? He left here more than a decade ago and has been pretty happy to stay away from it since then,” she pointed out. “Now that he’s such a big shot, he’s probably forgotten all about this place. It certainly doesn’t hold many happy memories for him given his childhood.”

Dane cleared his throat and glanced toward Audra, who said, “Luke’s interested.”

“You’ve spoken to him?” Ali’s incredulous gaze cut to her twin. “So this family dinner to discuss the future of the resort is really just a formality. You and Dane made the decision for Conlan Corporation behind my back.”

“Not behind your back, Ali. We…um, actually, I made a phone call to Luke about a month ago and merely tossed the idea out to him,” Audra said. “He got back to me a couple weeks ago, having decided the idea has merit, at which point I told him I needed to discuss it with the pair of you before things could go any further. I discussed it with Dane last week and now we’re discussing it with you.”

“You guys talked about this last week and you’re just now getting around to clueing me in? How thoughtful,” Ali muttered.

“I can always call Luke back and tell him you can’t handle the idea of doing business with him,” Audra offered.

Ali’s vision blurred red once again.

“I can handle doing business with him,” she snapped. “Although I doubt I’ll actually have to. I’m sure Mr. Entrepreneur of the Year will delegate this project to some minion or another. We might not speak to him other than a conference call every now and then.”

She was feeling better already about the prospect. Surely a businessman of Luke Banning’s stature would not jet in from NewYork City to dirty his hands with a project as relatively small as this one, even if sentiment apparently had him opening his wallet to help finance it.

“So, it’s agreed,” Dane said. “The Conlan Corporation is offering Luke Banning a stake in the resort.”

Ali begrudgingly grunted her consent while Audra flashed a triumphant smile.

It wasn’t until Ali was pulling on her jacket at the end of the evening that Audra said, “By the way, the meeting will be a week from Wednesday.”

“What meeting?”

“The meeting with Luke. That was the earliest he could get here to look over our plans for the golf course and clubhouse.”

Ali didn’t waste her breath giving voice to the scathing retort that came to mind. She banged out the side door and was in her car before Dane could rush after her and attempt to play peacemaker.

“I think that went rather well,” Audra said, grinning at her brother as they stood by the side door and watched Ali’s car speed up the long driveway that led back to the main road.

“Yeah,” he replied dryly. “No one’s bleeding.” Audra’s thoughts turned to Luke Banning. “Not yet anyway.”

CHAPTER ONE

THE sun was hot for mid-May, but Ali tipped back her head as she knelt in the small flower bed that ringed her mailbox and took a moment to enjoy the way it felt on her face. Northern Michigan’s winters were always long, especially when lake-effect storms were added in. This winter had felt interminable. Just a few weeks earlier the last of the snow had finally melted from the woods that bordered the northern edge of her property. Trillium, the three-petaled flower for which the Lake Michigan island was named, bloomed there now, offering a much warmer carpet of white.

It was Sunday, which meant she had just three days to reconcile herself to seeing Luke again. She was over him, no matter what Audra seemed to think. But he’d been Ali’s first love, which made him impossible to forget. And he’d left her behind after three years of dating without a second thought, which made his desertion impossible to forgive. So of course the prospect of seeing him again had her on edge. That was only natural.

It didn’t help that Audra had ideas for this reunion that clearly went beyond business. In the past week, her twin had hinted broadly that Ali might want to do something with the shoulder-length hair she always wore pulled into a simple ponytail. And she had tried to convince Ali to wear more fashionable clothing than the conservative button-down blouses and straight, below-the-knee skirts that populated her wardrobe.

Ali ignored the unsolicited advice. This was business, not a social call. She wasn’t going to doll herself up for Luke Banning’s return. No, indeed.

Indifference, that’s what Wednesday’s meeting called for. Nonchalance.

Ali yanked a weed out of the flower bed and tossed it atop the small heap of wilting interlopers next to her, warming to her strategy.

She would be ruthlessly polite and exceedingly casual when she and Luke were finally face-to-face. She would show him, Audra and everyone else who thought otherwise that the past was ancient history, and that the fact he’d spent the past decade in New York City growing wealthy and respected and enjoying the tabloid-documented attentions of supermodels and liposuctioned socialites was of absolutely no concern to her.

She snatched up her gardening trowel and hacked at the hard ground with its daggerlike metal point.

On Wednesday, she would be professional and businesslike. She would be cordial, but in a detached—hack! hack!— and disinterested—hack! hack!— way.

She swiped at the sweat beading on her brow and then set aside the trowel so she could wrap her fist around the base of another weed. As she knelt there locked in an intense tug-of-war with a deep-rooted dandelion, she heard the motorcycle. The mere sound of the engine reeled her back in time, as it always did, resurrecting the bittersweet memories she’d just convinced herself were safely buried and of no threat to her emotional well-being.

Even as her heart seemed to kick out an extra beat, she told herself she was being foolish. It wasn’t Luke. It couldn’t be Luke. She still had three days, nearly seventy-two hours, before she would see him again. Besides, he wouldn’t still be driving a damned motorcycle after all these years. He probably traveled in a limousine, a stretch one so long it would barely fit on the ferry that brought vehicles over from the mainland.

But as she shielded her eyes from the sun with one grimy hand, a Harley Davidson Sportster crested the hill and rumbled into view.

In the years he’d been gone, sightings of Trillium Island’s most famous son seemed to be about as common as sightings of Elvis, and they’d proved to be as reliable. There was no mistaking the Harley rider’s identity, though, especially since he was flouting state law by forgoing a helmet.

Even with the space of thirty yards and the span of more than a decade separating them, Ali knew him at a glance. Wind ruffled the almost-black hair she’d once run her fingers through. He was wearing it shorter these days, looking more like a respectable adult than the rowdy teenager and young man he’d been. Aviator sunglasses obscured his eyes, but she remembered that they were the same shade of blue as the cool waters of the great lake that surrounded the island.

A dozen feet from her driveway the bike slowed and all hope that Luke would somehow fail to spot her evaporated.

Indifference, she reminded herself.

Disinterest.

Nonchalance.

And yet all she felt was mule-kicked when he brought the bike to a stop in front of her mailbox, grinning for a long moment in that sexy way that had haunted her dreams and taunted her heart.

Finally he switched off the engine and swung one denim-encased leg over the seat.

“Hi.”

The sparseness of his greeting jolted her back to her senses. He’d been gone nearly a dozen years and the first word out of his mouth was hi? She wasn’t sure what she had expected him to say, but he didn’t even have the decency to look contrite or uncomfortable or babble his way through an apology, which she would of course decline to accept. No. He was smiling, as handsome and overconfident as ever, and acting as if he hadn’t sped away on that same damned Harley more than a decade earlier without so much as a backward glance.

Studying him, Ali wondered what she had ever seen in the man…beyond his staggering good looks. Those, she noted sourly, had only improved with age. It wasn’t fair. He should be balding or overweight, but the photographic images she’d seen of him over the years hadn’t been airbrushed or otherwise doctored. His hair was still thick, his physique lean and muscled, and his face chiseled and gorgeous.

It dawned on her then that she was still on her knees gazing up at him like the same starry-eyed girl whose heart he’d broken.

Pride fired Ali to her feet. She wiped her soiled hands on her jeans and inwardly cursed her habit of not wearing gardening gloves. There was no help for her dirty cuticles or her perspiration-damp appearance beneath the ball cap she wore, but she damn well wouldn’t kneel like some supplicant before Luke Banning of all people.

“Hello.”

To her relief her voice sounded normal, its tone just this side of cool, but he was smiling as if he thought she were delighted that he’d rumbled down her lane, disturbing her peace and nature’s quiet on this sunny Sunday afternoon.

“God, you look the same as I remembered…give or take a dirt smudge.”

Laughing, he reached out and touched her cheek, presumably to wipe away some errant soil. His smile dimmed when Ali backed up a step and crossed her arms over her chest.

“Believe me, I’ve changed.”

“I guess we all have.” He slipped off the glasses and she felt lost in those blue eyes until he added, “Ten years will do that.”

“It’s been eleven.”

He nodded and one side of his mouth crooked up. “Eleven. How have you been, Ali?”

“Fine.”

“I read in the paper last year that Audra had married again. When I spoke to her on the telephone a couple weeks ago, she seemed very happy.”

“Yes. Apparently the fourth time is the charm,” Ali replied. And because the words seemed somehow disloyal given the vast metamorphosis her twin had gone through, she added, “Seth’s a great guy. I think this one will stick.”

“I’m glad for her. What about you? Anybody special in your life these days?”

She hadn’t expected him to come right out and ask her such a personal question, and so she spluttered, “I—I’m seeing someone.”

Did one date actually count as “seeing”? Bradley had asked her out again since then, twice in fact. But she’d put him off. Standing in front of Luke, she decided there was really no reason she shouldn’t take Bradley up on his offer of dinner the following Saturday.

“Is he an islander?”

“No. In fact, he’s relatively new to the area. He lives on the mainland, just outside Petoskey.”

Luke nodded. “Speaking of the mainland, there’s a lot of new development along the waterfront. I barely recognized parts of it when I flew over.”

When Ali glanced in bafflement at his bike, Luke caressed the motorcycle’s handlebars. On a shrug he said, “One of the perks of having my own aircraft is that I always have room for my Harley.”

His priorities apparently hadn’t changed, but she kept that thought to herself. No reason to dredge up the past. Indeed, she planned to keep the conversation as impersonal as possible.

“Those new developments on the mainland are giving Saybrook’s some stiff competition, which is why we want to buy the property adjacent to the resort and add a golf course as soon as we can manage it.”

Luke shook his head and grinned again. “I still can’t believe you guys bought the resort.”

The comment rankled, so much so that her determination to remain impersonal began to waver. After all, he wasn’t the only one who had made something of himself. Ali had graduated cum laude with a degree in business and was now part owner of one of the Midwest’s most storied resorts.

“It’s prime real estate and despite the fact that the previous manager drove it to the brink of bankruptcy, it’s already starting to rebound,” she said. “A couple of good seasons and we’ll be operating in the black. But then I’m sure you already know that or you wouldn’t be considering entering into a partnership with us.”

“I’m not questioning the soundness of the investment,” Luke said, holding up a hand. “It’s just that back when we were kids who would have guessed that the Conlans would someday own Saybrook’s?”

“Yes, and who would have guessed that a high school dropout would go on to be called Entrepreneur of the Year by a respected national business journal?” she replied.

The words came out snide rather than tinged with the begrudging admiration she felt. Ali could tell Luke realized that. He slipped his sunglasses back on, his happy-go-lucky grin receding into a taut line of compressed lips.

“Yeah. I guess the kids at Trillium High who voted me most likely to wind up incarcerated are eating their words about now. Makes me almost sorry I didn’t make it for the last class reunion.”

Ali felt too small for reminding him of his rocky adolescence to point out that since he hadn’t graduated, technically he would not have been invited to any of his class’s reunions.

“That was a long time ago,” she murmured, realizing even as she said it that she certainly hadn’t let go of the past.

It was a moment before Luke broke the awkward silence. “I did get my diploma, you know.”

She blinked in surprise as much at his words as at the quiet pride with which they were spoken. He’d dropped out of high school during his senior year, and although Ali was three years his junior and they hadn’t started to date until she was nearly a senior herself, his lack of a diploma had been the cause of more than a few arguments. She had urged him repeatedly to go back to night school or earn a general equivalency degree. He was too smart not to, she’d told him.