Blame It On Christmas
Janice Maynard
All she wants for Christmas is him!After he broke her heart, Mazie Tarleton is definitely immune to the charms of J.B. Vaughan. Now she has him right where she wants him and it's payback time—until a moment of white-hot desire takes them both by surprise!
All she wants for Christmas...
is to make him beg!
After he broke her heart, Mazie Tarleton is definitely immune to the charms of J.B. Vaughan. Now she has him right where she wants him and it’s payback time—until a moment of white-hot desire takes them both by surprise! Suddenly, revenge is getting complicated. Maybe she can just say yes to a holiday fling...or is she already in way too deep?
USA TODAY bestselling author JANICE MAYNARD loved books and writing even as a child. After multiple rejections, she finally sold her first manuscript! Since then, she has written fifty-plus books and novellas. Janice lives in Tennessee with her husband, Charles. They love hiking, traveling and family time.
You can connect with Janice at
www.janicemaynard.com (http://www.janicemaynard.com)www.Twitter.com/janicemaynard (http://www.Twitter.com/janicemaynard)www.Facebook.com/janicemaynardreaderpage (https://www.facebook.com/JaniceMaynardReaderPage/) and www.Instagram.com/janicemaynard (http://www.Instagram.com/janicemaynard).
Also by Janice Maynard (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
A Not-So-Innocent Seduction
Baby for Keeps
Christmas in the Billionaire’s Bed
Twins on the Way
Second Chance with the Billionaire
How to Sleep with the Boss
For Baby’s Sake
His Heir, Her Secret
On Temporary Terms
Discover more at millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Blame It On Christmas
Janice Maynard
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ISBN: 978-1-474-07700-2
BLAME IT ON CHRISTMAS
© 2018 Janice Maynard
Published in Great Britain 2018
by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF
All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.
By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.
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www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
This book is for every guy or girl who has
found the courage to ask someone out
and then been shot down. It hurts.
But true love finds a way.
Contents
Cover (#uae0e7962-353e-5ac3-befd-e04ecd4992ea)
Back Cover Text (#u0377d585-4a0a-59af-892f-a9d4730e5d49)
About the Author (#u77062978-6c4e-549f-b440-5956ef2e50a0)
Booklist (#u7249eb6b-7c30-5304-8a8f-2a909dbdbb94)
Title Page (#u04f65b9e-dd32-569a-86e0-237c8fb94fdd)
Copyright (#u5bbb7987-ea3f-55e8-a061-69812fa73706)
Dedication (#uaf79dbd8-7a79-5a25-9397-816627fd376c)
One (#u8ba77f3e-1b91-50e5-95be-0a4e6b9899f1)
Two (#uc8345a54-fece-52b5-ad08-4a4bfa2b4158)
Three (#u351d6ddc-438e-5f0b-abdc-7bc2f58defc7)
Four (#u21908b87-373c-5c94-aa4c-d20736412c83)
Five (#u2be9b8f8-0d90-5042-b9dc-1d249597934a)
Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Eighteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
One (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
“The answer is no!”
Mazie Tarleton ended the call, wishing she had a good old-fashioned receiver she could slam down on a cradle. Cutting off a phone conversation with the tap of a red button wasn’t nearly as satisfying.
Behind her, Gina—her best friend and coworker—ate the last bite of her cinnamon crunch bagel and wiped cream cheese from her fingers. “Who’s got you all riled up?”
The two women were in Mazie’s office, a cramped space behind the elegant showroom that drew tourists and locals to All That Glitters, Mazie’s upscale jewelry store in Charleston’s historic business district.
Mazie dropped into a chair and scowled. “It’s J.B.’s real estate agent again. He’s making her badger me.”
“You mean J.B. who wants to offer you a ridiculous amount of money for this building that’s falling down around our ears?”
“Whose side are you on anyway?” Mazie and Gina had met as freshmen at Savannah’s College of Art and Design. Gina was aware of Mazie’s long-standing feud with Charleston’s highly eligible and incredibly sexy billionaire businessman.
Gina flicked a crumb from her cashmere-covered bosom. “We have dry rot in the attic. A heating system that dates back to the Civil War. And do I need to mention that our hurricane policy rates are set to triple when the renewal is due? I know you Tarleton people are richer than God, but that doesn’t mean we should thumb our noses at a great offer.”
“If it were anybody but J.B.,” Mazie muttered, feeling the noose of inevitability tighten around her neck.
J.B. Jackson Beauregard Vaughan. The man she loved to hate. J.B. Vaughan had been on her personal hit list since she was sixteen years old. She loathed him. And she wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.
“What did he ever do to you?” Gina asked. Her perplexed frown was understandable. J.B. Vaughan was the prototype for tall, dark and handsome. Cocky grin. Brilliant blue eyes. Strong features. And shoulders that were about a million miles wide.
“It’s complicated,” Mazie muttered, feeling her face heat. Even now, the memories were humiliating.
Mazie couldn’t remember a time when J.B. hadn’t been part of her life. Way back when, she had even loved him. As an almost-brother. But when her hormones started raging and she began seeing J.B. in a whole new light, a spring formal at her all-girls prep school had presented itself as the perfect opportunity to do some very grown-up experimentation.
Not sex. Oh, no. Not that. She was aware, even then, that J.B. was the kind of guy who knew things, and she wasn’t ready to go down that road.
She called him on a Wednesday afternoon in April. With her nerves humming and her stomach flopping, she blurted out her invitation.
J.B. had been oddly noncommittal. And then, barely four hours later, he had showed up on her doorstep.
Her father had been locked in his study with a nightcap. Both Jonathan and Hartley, her brothers, had been out on the town doing something or other.
Mazie had answered the front door.
Because she felt weird about inviting J.B. inside—though he’d been there a hundred times before—she stepped out onto the wide veranda and smiled at him tentatively.
“Hey, J.B.,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”
He leaned against a post, his posture the epitome of cool, high school masculinity. In a few weeks he would be eighteen. A legal adult. Her heart beat faster.
“I wanted to talk to you face-to-face,” he said. “It was nice of you to ask me to the dance.”
“Nice?”
It seemed an odd choice of words, especially coming from J.B.
He nodded. “I’m flattered.”
Her stomach curled defensively. “You didn’t actually give me an answer on the phone,” she said. Suddenly, her hands were ice, and she was shaking all over.
J.B. shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re a cute girl, Mazie. I’m glad you’re my friend.”
He really didn’t have to say anything else. She was smart and perceptive and able to read between the lines. But she’d be damned if she’d let him off so easily. “What are you trying to say, J.B.?”
Now a dark scowl erased some of his cocky charm, but none of his brooding sexuality. “Damn it, Mazie. I can’t go to that dance with you. You shouldn’t have asked me. You’re little more than a baby.”
Her heart shriveled. “I’m not a child,” she said quietly. “I’m only a year younger than you are.”
“Almost two.”
The real surprise was that he had kept track. Because of the way their birthdays fell on the calendar, he was right. She took three steps toward him. Inside, she was falling apart. But she wouldn’t let him see what he was doing to her self-esteem. “Don’t make excuses, J.B. If you won’t go out with me, please have the guts to say so.”
He cursed vehemently. With both hands, he scraped his slightly-too-long blue-black hair from his face. “You’re like a sister to me,” he said.
The words were muttered, barely audible. In fact, he spoke them in the direction of the floor. A less-convincing lie would have been hard to find. Why was he throwing up walls between them?
Mazie was breathing so rapidly she was in danger of hyperventilating. Clearly she had misread the situation. J.B. hadn’t come here tonight because he was fond of her, or because he wanted to see her.
He was standing on her front porch because he was too much of a Southern gentleman to say no to her over the phone.
A nicer person might have made the situation easier for him. Mazie was tired of being nice. She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his broad chest. He was wearing a navy T-shirt and faded jeans with old leather deck shoes. Decades ago, he would have been a classic James Dean. Bad boy. Rule breaker.
When she touched him, his entire body went rigid. Nothing moved. Except one thing. One startling and rather large thing.
Jackson Beauregard Vaughan was aroused. Since Mazie had plastered herself against his front, it was rather impossible for him to hide. She found his mouth with hers and threw every ounce of her undiluted teenage passion into an eager, desperate kiss.
J.B. tasted wonderful, exactly like he did in her dreams, only better.
For a moment, she thought she had won.
His arms tightened around her. His mouth crushed hers. His tongue thrust between her lips and stroked the inside of her mouth. Her legs lost feeling. She clung to his shoulders. “J.B.,” she whispered. “Oh, J.B.”
Her words shocked him out of whatever spell he’d been under. He jerked away so hard and so fast, she stumbled.
J.B. never even held out a hand to keep her from falling.
He stared at her, his features shadowed in the unflattering yellowish glare of the porch light. The sun had gone down, and the dark night was alive with the smells and sounds of spring.
Very deliberately, he wiped a hand across his mouth. “Like I said, Mazie. You’re a kid. Which means you need to stick to the kiddie pool.”
His harsh words, particularly coming on the heels of that kiss, confused her. “Why are you being so mean?” she whispered.
She saw the muscles in his throat work.
“Why are you being so naive and clueless?”
Hot tears sprang to her eyes. She wouldn’t let them fall. “I think we’re done here. Do me a favor, J.B. If you ever find yourself in the midst of an apocalypse—zombie or otherwise—and if you and I are the only two humans left on the planet, go screw yourself.”
“Mazie...hello... Mazie.”
Gina’s voice shocked Mazie back to the present. “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about something.”
“About J.B., right? You were ready to tell me why you loathe the man after all these years, and why you won’t sell this property to him, even though he’s offered you three times what it’s worth.”
Mazie swallowed, shaking off the past. “He broke my heart when we were teenagers, and he was kind of a jerk about it, so yeah... I don’t want to hand him everything he wants.”
“You’re being illogical.”
“Maybe so.”
“Forget the money. Hasn’t he also offered you two other properties that are prime locations for our shop? And he’s willing to do a trade, easy peasy? What are you waiting for, Mazie?”
“I want him to squirm.”
J.B. had bought up every single square foot of property in a two-block strip near the Battery. He planned a massive renovation, working, of course, within the parameters of historic Charleston’s preservation guidelines. The street-level storefronts would be glitzy retail space, charming and Southern and unique. Upstairs, J.B.’s vision included luxurious condos and apartments, some with views of the picturesque harbor and Fort Sumter in the distance.
The only thing standing in J.B.’s way was Mazie. And Mazie’s property. And the fact that he didn’t own it.
Gina waved a hand in front of Mazie’s face. “Stop spacing out. I understand wanting to torment your teenage nemesis, but are you seriously going to stonewall the man just to make a point?”
Mazie ground her teeth until her head ached. “I don’t know if I’m willing to sell to him. I need time to think about it.”
“What if the agent doesn’t call you back?”
“She will. J.B. never gives up. It’s one of his best qualities and one of his most annoying.”
“I hope you’re right.”
J.B. slid into the dark booth and lifted a hand to summon a server. He’d worn a sport coat and a tie for an earlier meeting. Now, he loosened his collar and dispensed with the neckwear.
Jonathan Tarleton was already sitting in the opposite corner nursing a sparkling water with lime. J.B. lifted an eyebrow in concern. “You look like hell. What’s wrong?”
His friend grimaced. “It’s these bloody headaches.”
“You need to see a doctor.”
“I have.”
“Then you need to see a better one.”
“Can we please stop talking about my health? I’m thirty, not eighty.”
“Fine.” J.B. wanted to pursue the issue, but Jonathan was clearly not interested. J.B. sat back with a sigh, nursing his beer. “Your sister is driving me crazy. Will you talk to her?” He couldn’t admit the real reason he needed help. He and Mazie were oil and water. She hated him, and J.B. had tried for years to tell himself he didn’t care.
The truth was far murkier.
“Mazie is stubborn,” Jonathan said.
“It’s a Tarleton trait, isn’t it?”
“You’re one to talk.”
“I’ve literally put my entire project on hold, because she’s jerking me around.”
Jonathan tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “My sister is not fond of you, J.B.”
“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Mazie refuses to talk about selling. What am I supposed to do?”
“Sweeten the pot?”
“With what? She doesn’t want my money.”
“I don’t know. I’ve always wondered what you did to piss her off. Why is my little sister the only woman in Charleston who’s immune to the famous J.B. Vaughan charm?”
J.B. ground his jaw. “Who knows?” he lied. “I don’t have time to play games, though. I need to break ground by the middle of January to stay on schedule.”
“She likes pralines.”
Jonathan drawled the three words with a straight face, but J.B. knew when he was being taunted. “You’re suggesting I buy her candy?”
“Candy...flowers... I don’t know. My sibling is a complicated woman. Smart as hell with a wicked sense of humor, but she has a dark side, too. She’ll make you work for this, J.B. You might as well be prepared to crawl.”
J.B. took a swig of his drink and tried not to think about Mazie at all. Everything about her flipped his switches. But he couldn’t go there. Ever.
He choked and set down his glass until he could catch his breath.
Hell’s bells.
The Tarleton progeny were beautiful people, all of them. Though J.B. barely remembered Jonathan’s poor mother, what he recalled was a stunning, gorgeous woman with a perpetually sad air about her.
Jonathan and Hartley had inherited their mother’s olive complexion, dark brown eyes and chestnut hair. Mazie had the Tarleton coloring, too, but her skin was fairer, and her eyes were more gold than brown. Amber, actually.
Though her brother kept his hair cut short to tame its tendency to curl, Mazie wore hers shoulder length. In the heat and humidity of summer, she kept it up in a ponytail. But during winter, she left it down. He hadn’t seen her in several months. Sometimes J.B. dropped by the Tarletons’ home on Thanksgiving weekend, but this year, he’d been tied up with other commitments.
Now it was December.
“I’ll take the candy under advisement,” he said.
Jonathan grimaced. “I’ll see what I can do,” he conceded. “But don’t count on any help from me. Sometimes if I make a suggestion, she does the exact opposite. It’s been that way since we were kids.”
“Because she was always trying to keep up with you and Hartley, and you both treated her like a baby.”
“I suppose we could have been nicer to her. It wasn’t easy growing up in our house, especially once Mom was gone. Poor Mazie didn’t have any female role models at all.”
J.B. hesitated. “You know I would never do anything to hurt her business.”
“Of course I know that. Don’t be an ass. Your wanting to buy her property makes perfect sense. I can’t help it if she’s being deliberately obstructive. God knows why.”
J.B. knew why. Or at least he had a fairly good idea. One kiss had haunted him for years, no matter how hard he tried not to remember.
“I’ll keep trying. Let me know if anything works on your end.”
“I’ll give it my best shot. But don’t hold your breath.”
Two (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
Mazie loved Charleston during the holidays. The gracious old city was at her best in December. The sun was shining, the humidity occasionally dipped below 60 percent, and fragrant greenery adorned every balustrade and balcony in town. Tiny white lights. Red velvet bows. Even the horse-drawn carriages sported red-and-green-plaid finery.
She’d be the first to admit that summer in South Carolina could be daunting. During July and August, tourists had been known to duck into her shop for no other reason than to escape the sweltering heat.
She couldn’t blame them. Besides, it was the perfect opportunity to chat people up and perhaps sell them a gold charm bracelet. Or if they were on a tight budget, one of Gina’s silver bangles set with semiprecious stones.
Summer was definitely high season. Summer brought an influx of cash. The foot traffic in All That Glitters was steady from Memorial Day until at least mid-October. After that it began to dwindle.
Even so, Mazie loved the holiday season best of all.
It was funny, really. Her own experience growing up had certainly never been a storybook affair. No kids in matching pajamas sipping cocoa while mom and dad read to them in front of the fire. Despite the Tarleton money, which provided a physically secure environment, her parents were difficult people.
But she didn’t care. From Thanksgiving weekend until New Year’s Day, she basked in the season of goodwill.
Unfortunately, J.B.’s sins were too heinous to include him on Santa’s good list. Mazie still wanted to find a way to make him suffer without putting her own business in danger.
When the real estate agent called the following day with another offer from J.B., Mazie didn’t say no.
Not immediately.
Instead, she listened to the Realtor’s impassioned pitch. When the woman paused to catch her breath, Mazie responded in a well-modulated, exceptionally pleasant tone of voice. “Please,” she said politely, “tell Mr. Vaughan that if he is hell-bent on buying my property, perhaps he should come here and talk it over with me in person. Those are my terms.”
Then once again, she hung up the phone.
This time, Gina was polishing an enormous silver coffee service they kept in the front window.
She hopped down from the stepladder and capped the jar of cleaner. “Well,” she said. “You didn’t hang up on her. I suppose that’s progress.”
Mazie frowned at a smudge on one of the large glass cases. “I thought I was nauseatingly nice.”
“Most people think being nice is a good thing.”
“True. But not always. We’ll see what happens now. If J.B. wants this place, he’s going to have to show his face.”
Gina blanched and made a chopping motion with her hand.
Mazie frowned. “What’s wrong with you?”
The other woman was so white her freckles stood out in relief. And her eyes bugged out of her head. She made a garbled noise.
When Gina continued her impersonation of a block of salt, Mazie turned around to see what was prompting her friend’s odd behavior.
A gaggle of middle-aged women had entered the shop together. The tiny bell over the door tinkled, signaling their presence.
While Mazie and Gina were deep in conversation, J.B. Vaughan had slipped in amid the crowd of shoppers, topping the women by a good six inches.
“I think she’s surprised to see me,” he said. His smile was crooked, his gaze wary. “Hello, Mazie. It’s been a while.”
His voice rolled over her like warm honey. Why did he have to sound so damn sexy?
The man looked like a dream. He was wearing expensive jeans and a pair of even more expensive Italian leather dress shoes. His broad shoulders were showcased in an unstructured, raw linen sport coat that hung open over a pristine white T-shirt. The shirt was just tight enough to draw attention to his rock-hard abdomen.
Oh, lordy. She had demanded he come in person, but she hadn’t realized what she was asking for.
She swallowed her shock and her confusion. “Hello, J.B.” A quick glance at her watch told her there was no way he could have gotten there so quickly. Unless he had already decided to challenge her refusal to sell face-to-face. “Have you talked to your real estate agent this morning?”
J.B. frowned. “No. I just came from the gym. Is there a problem?”
Mazie swallowed. “No. No problem.”
At that precise moment, J.B.’s phone rang.
Mazie would have bet a million dollars she knew who was on the other end of the line. Because she saw his expression change. A huge grin flashed across his face. The Realtor had just passed along Mazie’s message.
Damn the man. She had wanted to call the shots...to make him come plead his case in person.
Instead, he had cut the ground from beneath her feet. J.B. had walked into her shop because it was his idea, not because he was toeing some imaginary line or meeting a challenge she had thrown down.
Her temper sparked and simmered. “What do you want, J.B.? I’m busy.”
He lifted an eyebrow. “Cleaning a glass counter? Isn’t that above your pay grade, Ms. Tarleton?”
“It’s my shop. Everything that happens here is my business.”
Gina squeezed past Mazie. “Excuse me,” Gina muttered. “I need to check on our customers.”
Mazie should have introduced her redheaded friend to J.B. The two of them might have met at some point in the past, though it was unlikely. But Gina seemed bent on escaping the emotionally charged confrontation.
J.B. held out a red cellophane bag. “These are for you, Mazie. I remember Jonathan saying how much you liked them.”
She stared at the familiar logo. Then she frowned, sensing a trap. “You brought me pralines?”
“Yes, ma’am.” His arm was still extended, gift in hand.
It might as well have been a snake. “You realize the shop is half a block from here. I can buy my own pralines, J.B.”
His smile slipped. The blue irises went from calm to stormy. “A thank you might be nice. You weren’t spanked enough as a kid, were you? Spoiled only daughter...”
She caught her breath. The barb hit without warning. “You know that’s not true.”
Contrition skittered across his face, followed by regret. “Ah, damn, Mazie. I’m sorry. You always bring out the worst in me.” He grimaced and pressed the heel of his hand to his forehead. “The candy was a peace offering. Nothing sinister, I swear.”
She grabbed the bag of pralines and set it on the counter behind her. She and J.B. were standing at the far back of the store in front of a case of men’s signet rings. Hopefully, all of the current customers were shopping for themselves.
“Thank you for the candy.” She straightened her shoulders. “Is that all?”
J.B. stared at her, incredulous. “Of course that’s not all. Do you really think I wander around Charleston dropping off candy to random women?”
Mazie lifted one shoulder. “Who knows what you do?”
Watching J.B. rein in his temper was actually kind of fun. It helped restore her equilibrium. She enjoyed getting the upper hand.
After a few tense moments of silence, he sighed. “I’d like to show you one of my properties over on Queen Street. You could double your square footage immediately, and the storage areas are clean and dry. Plus, there’s a generously sized apartment upstairs if you ever decide to move out of Casa Tarleton.”
The prospect of having her own apartment was tempting, but she and Jonathan hadn’t been able to leave their father on his own. Stupid, really. He’d been a less-than-present parent, both emotionally and otherwise. Still, they felt responsible for him.
Over J.B.’s shoulder, Gina telegraphed her concern like a flamingo playing charades.
Mazie decided to play J.B.’s game. At least for a little while. What she really wanted was to make him think she was seriously considering his offer. And then shut him down. “Okay,” she said. “I suppose it couldn’t hurt to take a look.”
J.B.’s reaction to her quiet statement was equal parts pole-axed and suspicious. “When?”
“Now is good.”
“What about the shop?”
“They don’t need me.” It was true. Mazie was the owner and CEO. In addition to Gina, there were two full-time employees and three part-time ones, as well.
J.B. nodded brusquely. “Then let’s get out of here. I’m parked in a loading zone.”
“You go ahead. Text me the address. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes. All I need to do is grab a coat and get my purse.”
He frowned. “I can wait.”
“I’d rather have my own car, J.B.”
His eyes narrowed. He folded his arms across his chest. “Why?”
“Because I do, that’s why. Are you afraid I won’t come? I said I would, and I will. Don’t make a big deal out of this.”
He ground his jaw. She could almost see the hot angry words trembling on his lips. But he said nothing.
“What?” she whispered, still very much aware that they had an audience.
J.B. shook his head, his expression bleak. “Nothing, Mazie. Nothing at all.” He reached in a pocket and extracted his cell phone, tapping out a text impatiently. “I sent you the address. I’ll see you shortly.”
J.B. should have been elated.
The first hurdle was behind him. He had finally convinced Mazie Tarleton to look at another location for her jewelry business. That was huge. And it was certainly more than his real estate agent had been able to accomplish in the last twelve weeks. Even so, his skin felt itchy. Being around Mazie was like juggling a grenade. Not only was she an unknown quantity, he was in danger of being sabotaged by his own uneasy attraction.
He was determined to keep his distance.
Nothing with Mazie was ever easy, so he paced the sidewalk in front of the empty property on Queen Street, praying she would show up, but fearing she wouldn’t.
When her cherry-red Mazda Miata turned the corner at the end of the street and headed in his direction, he felt a giant boulder roll from his shoulders. Thank the Lord. He was pretty sure Mazie wouldn’t have come today unless she was ready to take him up on his offer.
She parallel parked with impressive ease and climbed out, locking her snazzy vehicle with one click of her key fob. He saw her, more often than not, in casual clothes. But today, Mazie was wearing a black pencil skirt with an ivory silk blouse that made her look every inch the wealthy heiress she was.
Her legs were long, maybe her best feature. She walked with confidence. In deference to the breezy afternoon, she wore a thigh-length black trench coat. To J.B. she seemed like a woman who could conquer the world.
As he watched, she tucked her car keys into her coat pocket and joined him. Shielding her eyes with one hand, she stared upward. He followed suit. Far above them, etched in sandstone, were the numerals 1-8-2-2, the year this building had been erected.
He answered her unspoken question. “The most recent tenant was an insurance firm. The building has been sitting empty for three months. If you think it will serve your purposes, I’ll bring in an industrial cleaning crew, and we can get you moved with little to no interruption of your daily business.”
“I’d like to see inside.”
“Of course.”
He’d made sure there was nothing to throw up any red flags. No musty odors. No peeling paint. In truth, the building was a gem. He might have kept it for himself if he hadn’t so badly needed a carrot to entice Mazie.
For years he had tried to make up for his youthful mistakes. Becoming a respected member of the Charleston business community was important to him. The fact that he had to deal with Mazie and a very inconvenient attraction that wouldn’t die was a complication he didn’t need. He’d learned the hard way that sexual attraction could blind a man to the truth.
“Look at the tin ceiling,” he said. “This place used to be a bank. We’re standing where the customers would have come to speak to tellers.”
Mazie put her hands on her hips. Slowly she turned around, taking in every angle, occasionally pausing to use her smartphone to snap a picture. “It’s lovely,” she said.
The comment was grudging. He knew that much. But at least she was honest.
“Thanks. I was lucky to get it. Had to scare off a guy who wanted to use it for an indoor miniature golf range.”
“Surely you’re joking.”
“Not really. I’d like to think he’d never have been able to get the permits, but who knows?”
“You mentioned storage?”
“Ah, yes. There’s a finished basement below us, small but nice. And more of the same above. The best part for you, though? There’s a safe. We’ll have to bring in an expert to get it working again. But you should be able to secure your high ticket items overnight, and thus eliminate any concerns about theft when you’re not open.”
When he showed her the ten-foot-square safe—stepping aside for her to enter—she lifted an eyebrow. “Kind of overkill, don’t you think? My jewelry is small. I don’t need nearly this much room.”
He followed her in. “Not the way you do it now. But you’ve been removing every item and putting it all back each morning. If you use the shelves in this safe, you can carry entire trays in here at night and save yourself a ton of hassle.”
Mazie pursed her lips. “True.”
Her lips were red today, cherry red. It was impossible not to think about those lips wrapped around his—
“Tell me, J.B.,” she said, interrupting his heated train of thought. “Is a bank safe this old really secure?”
He swallowed against a dry throat. “Well, it hasn’t been used in some time but...”
Mazie pushed on the door. “It’s crazy heavy. I suppose it would make a good hurricane shelter, too.”
The door was weighted more efficiently than it seemed. Before J.B. could intervene, it slipped out of her grasp and slammed shut with a loud thunk.
The sudden pitch-black dark was disorienting.
Mazie’s voice was small. “Oops. Guess I should have asked if you have the keys.”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said. “They told me this thing isn’t operational.” He stepped forward cautiously. “Stand back. I’ll grab the handle.” That part was easy. Unfortunately, when he threw all his weight into it, nothing moved. “Damn.”
He heard a rustle as Mazie shifted closer. “Isn’t there a light?”
“Yeah.” Reaching blindly, he slid his hand along the wall until he found the switch. The fluorescent bulb flickered, but came on.
Mazie stared at him, eyes huge. “I am so sorry. I didn’t mean to close it.”
“I know you didn’t.” His heart raced. Aside from the uncomfortable situation, he didn’t want to get too close to Mazie. The two of them. In the dark. Very bad idea. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We’ll be fine.” He tried the handle a second time. Nothing budged. He pulled out his phone. “I’ll call somebody.”
He stared at the ominous words on the screen.
No service.
Of course there was no service. The vault was constructed of steel-reinforced concrete, designed to keep out intruders. And the building itself was of an era when walls were built several feet thick. The nearby coffee shop he frequented had terrible cell service because it also was housed in a historic structure.
“So you really don’t have keys?” Mazie gnawed her lower lip, her arms wrapped around her waist.
“I have keys to the building. Not the safe.”
“Someone will notice we’re missing,” she said. “Gina, anyway. She and I text twenty times a day. What about you? Did you tell anyone you were coming here?”
“I called your brother.”
Mazie frowned. “Jonathan? Why?”
J.B. grimaced. “Because he knew I was having a hard time convincing you to sell. I told him you had agreed to at least consider this Queen Street property as an alternative.”
“I see.” She stared at him. “How often do you and my brother talk about me?”
“Almost never. Why would we?”
Mazie shrugged. “Maybe Jonathan will want to know whether or not you convinced me.”
“If he calls, it will just go to voice mail. He’ll assume I’m busy and leave a message.”
“Well, that sucks.” She exhaled sharply and kicked the wall. “You realize that if we die here, I’m going to haunt you for eternity.”
“How can you haunt me if I’m dead, too?” He swiped a hand across his forehead, feeling the cold sweat. Her nonsense was a welcome distraction. He would focus on the woman in touching distance.
“Please don’t ruin my fantasy,” she said. “It’s all I’ve got at the moment.” She wrinkled her nose. “We don’t even have a chair.”
J.B. felt the walls move inward. He dragged in a lungful of air, but it was strangely devoid of oxygen. “Fine,” he stuttered. “Feel free to haunt me.”
Three (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
For the first time, Mazie noticed that J.B. seemed decidedly tense.
“Are you okay?” she asked, moving closer and putting a hand on his forehead.
She almost expected to find him burning up with fever, but he was cool as the proverbial cucumber. To her alarm, he didn’t move away from her touch or offer even a token protest, and he didn’t make some smart-ass remark.
“I’m fine,” he said.
“You’re definitely not fine.”
She got in front of him and put both hands on his face. “Tell me what’s wrong. You’re scaring me.”
His entire body was rigid.
He swallowed, the muscles in his throat rippling visibly. “I’m a tad claustrophobic. I might need you to hold me.”
Fat chance. Her heart stumbled at his teasing. And then she remembered. When J.B. was eight years old, he’d been playing in a junkyard with some friends and had accidentally gotten closed up in an old refrigerator during a game of hide-and-seek. He had nearly died.
The incident traumatized him, understandably so. His parents had hired a therapist who came weekly to their house for over a year, but some deep wounds were hard to shake.
She stroked his hair, telling herself she was being kind and not reveling in the chance to touch him. “We’re going to be okay. And I’m here, J.B. Take off your jacket. Let’s sit down.”
At first she wasn’t sure he even processed what she was saying. But after a moment, he nodded, removed his sport coat, and slid down the wall until he sat on his butt with his legs outstretched. He sighed deeply. “I’m not going to flake out on you,” he muttered.
“I never thought you would.” She joined him, but it was far less graceful. Her skirt was unforgiving. She shimmied it up her thighs and managed to sit down without exposing too much.
For an eternity, it seemed, they said nothing. J.B.’s hands rested on his thighs, fists clenched. He was breathing too fast.
Mazie was no shrink. But even she knew he needed to get his mind on something else besides their predicament. “How are your parents?” she asked.
J.B. snorted and shot her a sideways glance. “Really, Mazie? I’m having an embarrassingly public meltdown, and that’s the best you can do?”
“You’re not having a meltdown,” she said. “You’re fine.”
Maybe if she said it convincingly enough, he would believe her. They were sitting shoulder-to-shoulder, hip-to-hip with less than twelve inches separating them. It was the closest she had been to J.B. in forever. Close enough for her to catch an intoxicating whiff of his aftershave mixed with the entirely ordinary and yet exhilarating man smell of him.
He was big and strong and darkly masculine. Her stomach quivered. This was exactly why she normally kept her distance.
J.B. was dangerous.
When she glanced toward the ceiling, she saw tiny air vents up above. They were in no danger of suffocating. Even so, J.B.’s response was understandable. Her skin crawled, too, at the thought of being stuck here for hours.
J.B. was expending every ounce of concentration on not surrendering to the phobia. So any chitchat or small talk would have to be initiated by her. The trouble was, she knew J.B. too well, and not well enough.
Charleston wasn’t that big a place. Anytime there was a charity gala or a gallery showing or a theater opening, Charleston’s elite gathered. Over the years, Mazie had seen J.B. in formal wear on dozens of occasions, usually with a gorgeous woman on his arm. Not ever the same woman, but still...
Because he and Jonathan were best buds, she had also seen J.B. half-naked on the deck of a sailboat and at the basketball court and by the beach. If she really applied herself to the task, she could probably come up with a million and one times she had been in the same vicinity as J.B. and yet never exchanged two words with him.
That was her choice. And probably his. He had been inexplicably cruel to her at a vulnerable point in her life, and she had hated him ever since.
Now here they were. Stuck. Indefinitely.
The tile floor underneath her butt was cold and hard. She drew her knees up to her chest and circled them with her arms. J.B. was right beside her. It wasn’t like he was going to look up her skirt.
She sighed. “You doin’ okay, stud?” His shallow breathing was audible.
“Peachy.”
The growled word, laden with surly testosterone, made her grin. “Why have you never married again?”
The words flew from her lips like starlings disturbed by a chimney sweep. They swirled outward and upward and hung in the air. Oh, crap.
Her muscles were paralyzed. Out of the corner of her eye she saw J.B.’s head come up. He went perfectly still. Not looking at her. Gazing straight ahead. The seconds ticked by. A minute passed. Maybe two.
“My parents are well,” he said.
It took half a second for the subtext to process, and then she burst into laughter. “Very funny. Message received. The oh-so-mysterious J.B. Vaughan doesn’t talk about his private life.”
“Maybe I don’t have a private life,” he said. “Maybe I’m a workaholic who spends every waking hour trying to coax beautiful jewelry merchants into selling their property to me.”
With one carefully placed adjective, the dynamic in the room changed. J.B. added flirtation to the mix. Did he do it on purpose? Or was he so accustomed to schmoozing women that the word beautiful slipped out?
She pretended not to hear. “If you’re a workaholic at this age, you’ll be dead before you’re fifty. Why do you work so hard, J.B.? Didn’t you ever want to stop and smell the roses?”
“I tried it once. Roses have thorns.” He sucked in a breath of air. “Are you going to give me your property or not?”
“Did you lock me in here on purpose to make me say yes?”
“God, no. Even I’m not that desperate. Try your phone,” he said. “You use a different carrier. Maybe it makes a difference.”
She glanced at her cell. “Nope. Nada.”
J.B. groaned. “How long have we been in here?”
Mazie peered at her watch. “Twenty-two minutes.”
“Maybe your watch stopped.”
She reached out and squeezed his hand. “Think about something else. Do you have all your Christmas shopping done? What do your sisters want?” J.B.’s two siblings were both younger and female. That’s probably why he spent so much time hanging around the Tarleton house when he was growing up.
“They’re great,” he said. “Do we have to do this?”
“You’re the one who didn’t want to talk about anything serious.”
“Are those my only two choices?”
She hesitated half a beat. “We could talk about why you were such an ass to me when we were teenagers.”
J.B. cursed beneath his breath and leaped to his feet. “Maybe we shouldn’t talk at all.”
For the next five minutes, he paced the small space like a tiger in a cage. Mazie stayed where she was. His body language shouted louder than words that he was unraveling.
At last, he paused in front of the impregnable door and slammed it with his fist. He bowed his head, his shoulders taut.
“I can’t breathe,” he whispered.
The agony in those three words twisted her heart. J.B. was a proud, arrogant man. Having her witness his weakness would make his frustration and anger and helplessness worse.
Without overthinking it, she scooted to her feet and went to him. “Listen to me.” Fluorescent lighting was the most unflattering lighting in the world. It made both of them look like hell. His skin was sallow, cheekbones sharply etched. She took his face in her hands again. “Look at me. I want you to kiss me, J.B. Like you mean it. If you can’t breathe, I might as well join you. Do it, big guy. Make me breathless. I dare you.”
He was shaking, fine tremors that racked his body. But gradually, her words penetrated. “You want me to kiss you?”
“I do,” she said. “More than anything.” She touched her lips. “Right here. I haven’t been kissed in ages. Show me how J.B. Vaughan woos a woman.”
He blinked and frowned, as if sensing danger. “You’re not serious.”
She went up on her tiptoes and brushed her mouth over his. “Oh, yes I am. I’m so damn serious it ought to be against the law.” She slid her fingers into his silky hair, cupping his skull, massaging his neck. “Kiss me, J.B.”
If this worked, she was going to write a book about curing claustrophobia.
His hands landed on her shoulders, but she wasn’t entirely sure he knew what he was doing. There was still a glassy-eyed element to his gaze.
“Mazie?” The way he said her name made the hair on her nape stand up. She knew exactly the moment his arousal broke through the grip of the visceral fear.
This time, the shudder that racked him was entirely hedonistic.
She didn’t have to ask again for a kiss.
J.B. took control as if he had been kissing her always. His mouth settled over hers with a drugging sensuality that took the starch out of her knees and left her panting and helpless in his embrace.
Her arms linked around his neck. “This is nice.”
“Screw nice...”
His rough laugh curled her toes. No wonder she had kept her distance all these years. At some level she had always known this could happen. She wanted to kick off her shoes and drag him to the floor, but everything was dusty and cold and hard. Not a soft surface in sight.
Once upon a time she had fantasized often about kissing J.B. Vaughan. The reality far outstripped her imaginings.
He was confident and coaxing and sexy and sweet, and she wanted to give him everything he asked for without words.
Thank God there wasn’t a bed in sight. Otherwise, she might have done something really stupid.
His tongue stroked hers lazily. “I know what you’re doing, and I don’t even care. I should have kissed you years ago.”
“You did,” she reminded him.
“That didn’t count. We were kids.”
“Felt pretty grown-up to me.” In fact, the adult J.B. was reacting much as the teenage J.B. had. His erection pressed against her belly, making her feel hot and dizzy and very confused.
This wasn’t real. All she was doing was taking his mind off their incarceration.
He tugged her shirt loose and slid his hand up her back, unfastening her bra with one practiced flick of his fingers. Stroking her spine, he destroyed her bit by bit. “I always knew it would be like this,” he groaned.
“Like what?” The two words were a whisper, barely audible over the loud pounding of her heart.
“Wild. Spectacular. Incredibly good.” He put just enough space between them to let him cup her breasts in his hands. “Ah, Mazie.”
His hands were warm. When he thumbed her nipples, the rough caress sent fire streaking throughout her body.
“Wait,” she said. “My turn.” She tugged at his soft shirt and sighed when she uncovered his muscled rib cage and taut abdomen. He was smooth and hard and had just enough silky hair to be interesting. She stopped short of his belt buckle.
J.B. nibbled the side of her neck. “Have you ever had sex standing up?”
“Um, no.” Her brain was screaming at her to slow things down, but other parts of her body were having so much fun that sensible Mazie didn’t stand a chance. “Have you?”
“No. I think it’s one of those movie things that might not be so great in real life.” He paused, his chest heaving. “But I’m willing to give it a try.”
This was insane. They had gone from Mazie trying to distract J.B. from his claustrophobia to jumping each other’s bones at warp speed. Though she knew it was suicidal, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“Kiss me again,” she begged. Anything to keep his mind off doing something they both would surely regret.
He granted her wish and then some. First it was her breasts. He bent and tasted each one with murmurs of approval that did great things for her self-esteem. Then he moved up to her neck and her earlobes, and finally, her lips.
Oh, wow, the man knew how to kiss. She didn’t even care how many women he had practiced on. The result was mesmerizing.
There were really only so many ways a man and a woman could put their lips together. Yet somehow, J.B. managed to make each ragged breath and groaning caress new and desperate.
He tasted her, and shuddered when she slipped her tongue between his lips and returned the favor. Need—hot and heavy—poured through her limbs and pulsed in her sex. It had been an eternity since she had experienced this level of arousal. Suddenly, she knew she would die if she couldn’t have him right here, right now.
Trembling and weak, she clung to his broad shoulders. “I’m not on the Pill,” she said. “I don’t have any protection.”
He bit her bottom lip, tugging it, turning her legs to spaghetti.
“Condom,” he moaned. “Wallet.”
“Yes.” One part of her stood as an onlooker, marveling at her reckless behavior.
Really, Mazie? J.B. Vaughan? After he shot you down all those years ago and ignored you ever since?
Do you really want to do this?
She did. She really did. Maybe she always had.
J.B. removed her top and bra and draped them carefully over the door handle of the safe. Then he turned and stared at her.
She crossed her arms over her chest, unable to pretend sophistication. There had been two men in her life. Not a big number.
He ran his hand from her bare shoulder down her arm, manacling her wrist and reeling her in. “You’re exquisite, Mazie.”
The recollection of a teenage J.B. had always messed with her head. The popular boy with the raw sexuality and the wicked grin had rejected her and made her feel less than feminine, less than desirable.
It was difficult to reconcile that memory with the present.
“I’m glad you think so.”
His slight frown told her he recognized her equivocation. He kissed her temple.
“I love your hair.” He ran his hands through it. “It bounces with life and passion. Like you, Mazie.”
The sudden segue from frantic hunger to tenderness unsettled her. It was one thing to get caught up in the moment. She didn’t trust J.B.’s quiet gentleness. A man could use sex to get what he wanted. Maybe in the midst of their madness, J.B. had recognized her vulnerability where he was concerned. Maybe he hoped to use it to his advantage.
“Kiss me again,” she begged. Boldly, she cupped the length of his sex through his pants. He was hard and ready, so ready that the evidence made her want to swoon like some fainthearted Victorian maiden.
Mazie had been abstinent by choice for the past two years. No man had tempted her, not even a little. Now here was J.B. All wrong for her in every way. But at the moment, oh so right.
When she touched him intimately, he shuddered. This time, she knew the tremors that racked his big frame had nothing to do with a fear of enclosed spaces. J.B. wanted her. Badly. The realization was exhilarating.
They were still mostly clothed, though her bare breasts nestled delightfully against his warm, hard chest. It should have felt weird and odd to be standing here like this. Instead, it was the most wonderfully terrifying thing in the world. In his embrace, she felt torn in a dozen dizzying directions.
She hated this man. Didn’t she? Or was this a delightful dream?
The illusion was worth any price. She had waited a decade and more for J.B. to admit that he wanted her. Surely the fates would grant her one outrageous walk on the wild side.
She could call it off. The end would be ugly and awkward and far more scarring than what had happened when she was sixteen. But J.B. would never force himself on a woman, even if Mazie had been the one to initiate the encounter.
“I want you, darlin’ Mazie.” When he whispered her name and touched her thigh beneath her skirt, she knew the moment was at hand.
It was no contest. “I want you, too, J.B.”
What happened next was sheer madness. He scooped her up and backed her against the wall. Her hands tangled in his hair. They were both panting as if they had run a marathon.
He cupped her bottom, grinding his lower half against hers until she wanted to scream with frustration.
He slid his hands beneath her skirt and found bare skin. “Put your legs around my waist.”
“The condom,” she said. “Don’t forget the condom.”
“In a minute.” He kissed her wildly, his teeth bruising her lips. She pulled his hair, fighting to get closer. Her bikini panties were damp. Her entire body wept with the need to have him inside her.
She crossed her ankles behind his back, ripping at his shirt. “Take this off,” she pleaded.
He managed it without breaking the kiss. Now she could run her hands over acres of warm male skin. His body was toned and tanned and sleekly muscled. For a man who supposedly spent a lot of time with spreadsheets and architectural plans, he had the build of an athlete.
“Hang on tight,” he demanded. With a muffled groan, he ripped her underpants and held the scraps aloft. “Mission accomplished.”
“Those were new,” she protested.
J.B.’s grin was feral. “I’ll buy you more.”
Now he could go where no man had gone in a very long time. He caressed her intimately, inserting one finger...feeling the embarrassingly welcome state of her sex.
“Oh, wow...” She dropped her head to his shoulder and closed her eyes.
J.B. chuckled. “If you like that, I’ve got lots more.”
Without warning, a thunderous pounding on the huge door reverberated in the enclosed space. A muffled shout sounded. “Anybody in there?”
“Holy damn. Lord have mercy.”
J.B.’s incredulous response would have been hysterically funny if Mazie hadn’t been poised on the brink of a really spectacular orgasm. She groaned and buried her face in his neck.
The voice came again. “Stand back. I’m going to open the door.”
“Oh, my God.” She jerked out of J.B.’s arms and grabbed for her bra and shirt.
J.B. stared at her, his gaze hot enough to melt all of her inhibitions. “Saved by the bell...”
She should be glad—right? Glad that she hadn’t done something stupid and self-destructive?
What was he thinking? His expression was grim.
Her heart sank, incredulous at the way she had let herself fall into old patterns. Suddenly, the situation seemed a thousand times worse.
Four (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
J.B. cursed beneath his breath, stunned at his run of bad luck. Then again, maybe he should admit the truth. No matter his physical frustration, he had escaped certain catastrophe. He’d spent years avoiding Mazie Tarleton, and yet he’d come perilously close to doing the very thing he knew he couldn’t do.
His beautiful enemy was barely decent when a loud scraping ensued, and the heavy door began to swing inward. At the last second, J.B. shoved her torn underwear into his pocket and slipped his shirt on again.
The lights from outside the vault were so bright they both blinked. Their rescuer crossed his arms over his chest. Jonathan Tarleton. Mazie’s brother. With a smug smile on his face. “Well, look at you two.”
J.B. took a step forward, shielding Mazie in case she had anything else she needed to tuck away. “What are you doing here?”
Jonathan moved back, allowing them to exit. “I though maybe I could convince Mazie to give you a fair hearing. When I arrived, I saw both of your cars, but neither of you. So I put my CSI skills to work and found footprints leading to the vault. Fortunately for you, this hardwood floor is dusty as hell.”
For J.B., the rush of cool air was blissful. He inhaled deeply, feeling the last tentacles of his brief ordeal slip away.
Truth be told, Mazie had rescued him quite effectively. Her methods were almost beguiling enough to make him drag her back into the vault and shut the door again.
Almost, but not quite.
“Thanks for rescuing us,” he said. “If you hadn’t come by, we might have spent an uncomfortable few hours locked up in there.”
“The mechanism was jammed on the outside. I had to hit it with my shoe to knock it loose.”
Mazie hadn’t said a word up until now, though she had hugged her brother briefly. She edged toward the front of the building. “It was my fault. I didn’t mean to close the door.” She grimaced. “Not to be rude, but I’m in dire need of the ladies’ room. I’ll see you later, Jonathan.” She gave J.B. an oddly guarded look for someone who had only recently been wrapped around him like a feather boa. “Thanks for the tour.”
And then she was gone.
He stared out the window, wondering if the sick feeling in the pit of his stomach was sexual disappointment or something far more alarming.
Had he actually connected with his prickly nemesis? Surely not. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t. The only reason he was spending time with her at all was to seal a deal. He dared not let himself get sidetracked by an almost irresistible attraction.
That kind of thing made a man stupid. He should know.
Jonathan cuffed his shoulder. “Well,” he said. “Did you convince her? What did she say?”
J.B. ran his hands through his hair. “She didn’t say anything. We’d barely started looking the place over when we got stuck. I have no idea if she liked it or not.”
“Of course she liked it,” Jonathan said. “Mazie is a sucker for historic buildings. This one has tons of original features, but unlike the dump she’s in now, your building is rock-solid.”
“Yeah.” J.B. nodded absently, reliving every incredible moment of his incarceration. Now that it was over, the whole thing seemed like a dream. Did Mazie Tarleton really let him touch her and nearly make love to her?
“Hey, J.B.” Jonathan eyed him strangely.
“What?”
“You have lipstick on your chin.”
J.B. froze inwardly. This was a minefield. Mazie wasn’t a child anymore, but Jonathan was very protective. That was part of the reason J.B. had kept a healthy distance from her over the years. “Do I?” he said.
Jonathan’s expression segued into a frown. “What the hell went on in that vault?”
“None of your damn business. Your sister is an adult. Besides, nothing happened. I got claustrophobic, and Mazie tried to distract me with a little kiss.”
“Claustrophobic?” Jonathan’s distrust vanished. “Oh, man, J.B., I’m sorry. You must have freaked. That was nice of her, especially considering she doesn’t like you all that much.”
She seemed to like me just fine a few minutes ago when she had her tongue down my throat.
J.B. swallowed the sarcastic words and managed a noncommittal nod. “Not my finest hour. It’s humiliating as hell to have something that happened almost twenty-five years ago still yank my chain. For a minute in there, I thought I was going to lose it.”
“You should be glad it was Mazie with you and not someone else. At least she won’t ever tease you about it. That girl has a tender heart.”
“She’s a lot like Hartley in that way. The two of them were always bringing home strays. Have you heard from him at all? I still can’t believe he simply vanished.”
“No. But it’s only a matter of time. Hartley was born and bred here. The Lowcountry is in his blood.”
“You don’t sound happy about that.”
“He abandoned the family business...left me to deal with Dad. I don’t have a lot of sympathy for my brother right now.”
“He’s your twin. Twins are close.”
“We were at one time. Not anymore.”
“You say that, Jonathan, but I know you. And I know Hartley. The two of you were practically inseparable when we were growing up. You can’t pretend that tie isn’t there. It always will be.”
“Not if I don’t want it...not if I don’t want him.”
J.B. let the subject drop, but only because he saw beneath Jonathan’s angry response to the deep hurt that still festered.
He rotated his shoulders and took one last look around the room. “I think this will work for Mazie. I didn’t get a firm yes from her, but I’ll follow up.”
“And I’ll continue to put in a good word for you.”
They exited the building. J.B. locked up. “You on for basketball next weekend?”
“Yeah. Seven o’clock?”
J.B. nodded. “I’ll see you then.”
When Jonathan climbed in his car and drove away, J.B. should have followed suit, but he felt oddly out of sorts. Perhaps because he wanted to get this project settled. He needed Mazie’s property.
Who was he kidding? Every bit of his current angst was because of a frustrating, completely off-limits woman who had bedeviled him for years. He wanted her. End of story.
He took out his phone and pulled up her contact info. A short text in this situation would be perfectly acceptable.
Hope you liked the property. Let me know what you think.
But he couldn’t do it. Mazie had muddied the waters. Or maybe they both had. He was accustomed to closing deals. In business. For pleasure. Never both at the same time.
This was exactly why he was screwed. He had resisted temptation all this time, and then in one short afternoon he’d undone all his good intentions.
Thinking about Mazie was a mistake. Half an hour ago, he had been primed to make love to her. His body had been denied satisfaction, and now he was itchy, restless.
One thing he knew for sure.
Kissing Mazie Tarleton was an experience he planned to repeat. Some way. Somehow. Maybe she didn’t know it, but J.B.’s intentions were crystal clear.
Now that he had touched her, tasted her, there was no going back...
Mazie wanted to go straight home and take a long cold shower, but it was too early in the day to be done with work, and besides, Gina was expecting her to return.
There was no choice but to brazen it out.
Which was not easy when a girl was commando under her skirt.
Fortunately, the shop was swamped with customers. Mazie barely did more than wave at Gina and say hello to her other employees before she was pulled into the fray. Thank goodness for tour ships that dispatched groups of passengers ashore, eager to tick off items on their Christmas lists.
At last, the furor subsided. Mazie sent two of her employees on lunch break. She glanced at her watch. It was almost one.
Mazie had advertised heavily during the last year in several of the cruise lines’ brochures. Her print ads were paying off, despite the digital age. Today, she’d had several customers come in clutching their maps of the historic district. All That Glitters was clearly marked, along with the small rectangle showcasing a beautiful necklace and the store’s phone number with other contact info.
She glanced in one of the larger cases. “We’re going to need more sweetgrass basket charms in gold.”
Gina nodded. “Yep. One lady bought six of them for her granddaughters. I’ll call Eve this afternoon and place an order.”
They were eating pizza standing up, a common occurrence. Gina swallowed a bite and grinned. “Don’t keep me in suspense. How did it go with Mr. Gorgeous? Did you like the building?”
“Honestly, I did. The place J.B. wants us to have was originally a nineteenth-century bank. He was showing me the vault when we had a little accident and got locked inside.”
Gina’s eyes rounded. “You got locked in a bank vault with J.B. Vaughan? God, that’s so romantic.”
“Um, no. Not romantic at all.” You couldn’t call what happened with J.B. romance. Sexual frenzy, maybe.
“So it was too scary to be romantic?”
The other woman’s crestfallen expression might have been funny if Mazie hadn’t been walking on eggshells. She wasn’t going to betray J.B.’s secret weakness. Instead, she skirted the truth. “Not so much scary as tense. We were awfully glad to get out of there when Jonathan showed up.”
“So are you going to take it? The building, I mean? Will it work for our purposes?”
“It’s perfect. Doesn’t mean I’m ready to give J.B. what he wants. Surely there’s another way.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you’re contrary?”
“You,” Mazie said, finishing her meal. “Every other day.” She wiped her hands on a napkin. “My...conversation with J.B. got derailed when my brother showed up. I’m sure I’ll hear from him soon. J.B., that is.”
“And what will you say when he asks you again?”
Mazie flashed to a mental image of the real estate developer’s chest. His tousled hair. His eyes, heavy-lidded with desire. Her throat tightened. Her thighs pressed together. “I don’t really know.”
Unfortunately, the afternoon crowd picked up, and Mazie never found a moment to scoot home and restock her wardrobe. By the time the shop closed at five, she was more than ready to call it quits.
The Tarleton family had lived for decades on the tip of a small barrier island just north of the city. They owned fifteen acres, more than enough to create a compound that included the main house and several smaller buildings scattered around.
An imposing, gated iron fence protected the enclave on land. Water access was impossible due to a high brick wall Mazie’s grandfather had erected at the top of the sand. The beach itself was public property, but he had made sure no one could wander onto Tarleton property, either out of curiosity or with dangerous motives. Hurricanes and erosion made the wall outrageously expensive to maintain, but the current Tarleton patriarch was by nature paranoid and suspicious, so security was a constant concern.
At times, Mazie felt unbearably strangled by her familial obligations. Perhaps that was why being around J.B. felt both dangerous and exhilarating all at the same instant.
She punched her security code into the keypad and waited for the heavy gate to slide open. She and Jonathan both wanted to move out, but they were trapped by the weight of love and responsibility for their father. She suspected her brother kept an apartment in the city so he could have a private life, but she didn’t pry. Someday she might find a place of her own, as well.
She had let the long-ago debacle with J.B. cast too long a shadow over her romantic life. Heartbreak had made her overly cautious.
It was time to find some closure with J.B., one way or another. Time to move on.
The house where she had grown up was a colossal structure of sandstone and timber, on stilts, of course. Supposedly, it had been built to withstand a Category Four hurricane. Though the family home had suffered damage over the years, the original structure was still mostly intact.
An imposing front staircase swept upward to double mahogany doors inlaid with stained glass. The images of starfish and dolphins and sea turtles had fascinated her as a child. When she grew tall enough, she liked to stand on the porch and trace them with her fingertips.
The sea creatures were free in a way that Mazie couldn’t imagine. All her life she had been hemmed in by her mother’s illness and later, her father’s paranoia. Jonathan and Hartley—when they had been in a mood to tolerate her—had been her companions, her best friends.
And J.B., too.
The Vaughan family was one of only a handful in Charleston as wealthy as the Tarletons, so Gerald Tarleton had condoned, even promoted his children’s friendship with J.B. But Mazie was younger, and Hartley was a loner, so it was always Jonathan and J.B. who were the closest.
Mazie had adored J.B. as a child, then had a crush on him as a teenager, and finally, hated him for years. No matter how she examined her past, it was impossible to excise J.B. from the memories.
Mazie found her father in the large family room with the double plate-glass windows. The ocean was benign today, shimmering shades of blue and turquoise stretching all the way to the horizon.
“Hi, Daddy.” She kissed the top of his curly, white-haired head. Her father was reading the Wall Street Journal, or pretending to. More often than not, she discovered him napping. Gerald Tarleton had been an imposing figure at one time. Tall and barrel-chested, he could bluster and intimidate with the best of them.
As he aged, he had lost much of his fire.
He reached up and patted her hand. “There you are, pumpkin. Will you tell cook I want dinner at six thirty instead of seven?”
“Of course. Did you have a good day?”
“Stupid doctor says I can’t smoke cigars anymore. Where’s the fun in that?”
The family physician made twice yearly visits to the Tarleton compound. Mazie wasn’t sorry to have missed this one. “He’s trying to keep you alive.”
“Or take away my reasons for living,” he groused comically.
Her father had married later in life, a man in his midforties taking a much younger bride. The story wasn’t so unusual. But in Gerald’s case, it had ended tragically. His bride and her parents had hidden from him the extent of her mental struggles, leaving Gerald to eventually raise his young family on his own.
Mazie and her brothers had each paid an invisible price that followed them into adulthood.
She ignored his mood. “I’ll speak to cook, and then I’m going to change clothes. I’ll be back down in half an hour or so.”
“And Jonathan?”
“He’s home tonight, I think.”
After a quick word with the woman who ran the kitchen like a drill sergeant, but with sublime culinary skills, Mazie ran upstairs and at last made it to the privacy of her bedroom. She stripped off her clothes, trying not to think about J.B.’s hands on her body.
His touch had opened her eyes to several disturbing truths, not the least of which was that she had carried a tendresse for him, an affection, that had never been stamped out.
She had spent a semester in France her senior year, only a few months after he had rejected her. The entire time she was abroad, she had imagined herself wandering the streets of Paris with J.B.
What a foolish, schoolgirl dream.
Yet now, when she stared in the mirror and saw her naked body, it was impossible to separate her former daydreams from the inescapable reality. She had allowed J.B. Vaughan to caress her breasts, to touch her intimately.
Had Jonathan not intruded to rescue them, would she have regrets?
Confusion curled her stomach. She wasn’t the kind of person who jumped into bed with a man. Especially not J.B.
Something had happened in the vault.
Yet however she replayed the sequence of events, J.B. didn’t come out the villain. Mazie had been the one to accidentally close the door and lock them in. Mazie had been the one to kiss J.B. Mazie had been the one who decided that a nod to her past infatuation would serve to distract J.B. from his claustrophobia.
Was it any wonder he had taken her invitation and run with it?
She stayed in the shower a long time, scrubbing and scrubbing again, trying to erase every vestige of his touch from her skin. She still wanted to hate him. He was still off-limits. And damn it, she still wanted to see him squirm.
Today had weakened her position in their face-off.
J.B. was a highly sexual man. When a woman gave him every indication she wanted sex, it was no wonder he had obliged.
Mazie had to live with the knowledge that she had done something extremely foolhardy. Self-destructive even.
Circumstances had saved her from the ultimate humiliation.
She didn’t have to face J.B. as an ex-lover. Thank God for that.
But the unseen damage was worse, perhaps.
Now she knew what it felt like to be in his arms, to hear him whisper her name in a ragged groan that sent shivers of raw pleasure down her spine. Tonight when she climbed into bed, she would remember his hands on her breasts, her bare body, her sex.
How could she think about anything else?
Five (#ua4061c73-9f49-5e7a-a9ca-9313ce16030a)
Even now, her hands trembled as she dried herself with a huge fluffy towel that smelled of sunshine and ocean breezes. The housekeeper liked pinning the laundry on an old-fashioned clothesline when weather permitted.
Mazie put on soft, faded jeans and a periwinkle cashmere sweater with a scoop neck. A short strand of pearls that had been her mother’s dressed up the outfit enough to meet her father’s old-school dinner requirements.
Sooner or later, J.B. would call about the property swap. She would have to speak to him as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. And she would have to give him an answer.
His offer was generous. There was no denying the truth.
But she didn’t want to give him what he wanted.
Though it was childish and petty on her part, something inside her wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her. For J.B., that meant she needed to hurt his business. She was certain he didn’t have a heart or real emotions. All he cared about was stacking up more money and more accolades for his financial acumen.
If he really cared about her, he’d had plenty of years to make up for the past. But he hadn’t.
At last, she could delay no longer. The sun had set in a blaze of glory, and darkness had fallen over the island. She heard a car in the driveway and recognized her brother’s voice as it floated up from the foyer.
This mess with J.B. would have to wait.
She had time. Time to come up with a plan. When she saw him again, she wanted to be in control.
Passionless.
Absolutely calm.
There was a very good chance he had used their interlude in the vault to sway her to his side. Though he had not instigated the encounter, he was intuitive and fiercely intelligent. If he had sensed her weakness where he was concerned, he wouldn’t have hesitated to use it against her. Nor would he in the future.
She had to be on her guard. She couldn’t let her vulnerabilities where J.B. was concerned fool her into thinking he might really care about her.
Troubled and unsettled, she made her way downstairs. Jonathan might quiz her about the incident earlier in the day when she and J.B. had been trapped, but her father would be oblivious. If the subject came up, she would steer the conversation in a safer direction.
She walked into the dining room, ruefully aware that as usual, the full complement of china and silver and crystal adorned the table. A low arrangement of red roses and holly nestled in a Waterford bowl. Despite the fact that there were only three of them, the Tarletons would dine in style.
Grimacing inwardly, she stopped short when she saw the fourth place setting.
“Who’s coming to dinner?” she asked Jonathan, a dreadful premonition already shaking her foundations.
Behind her, a familiar velvet-smooth voice replied.
“It’s me,” J.B. said. “I hope you don’t mind another mouth to feed.”
J.B. was accustomed to women’s flirtatious maneuvers and their attempts to secure his attention. Rarely had he seen a woman with an expression on her face like Mazie’s. She recovered quickly, but for a split second, she was startled, her unguarded look revealing a mixture of dismay and sensual awareness.
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