A Vow to Keep

“I’m having problems with a house,” he said.

Ah. He saw the flicker of interest in her eyes, and knew, somehow, he had stumbled on just the right way to get to Linda. She loved old houses. The one they were standing in was evidence of that!

“It’s an Edwardian, 1912, Mount Royal.”

She could barely contain a sigh.

“It’s a nightmare.” He told her about the water damage, the bad renovations it had suffered over the years, and especially about the daughter of the previous owner who kept coming over, wringing her hands and crying. “She’s seventy years old and she laid down in front of the bulldozer when we tried to rip off an add-on porch. Now she has the neighbors signing petitions about everything. I’ve had two project managers quit.”

He had not expected this: that it felt so good to unburden himself.

“And what do you want me to do?”

“Take it over. Be my project manager.”

Her mouth fell open. “I can’t do that.”

“Bail me out, Linda. I made a mistake,” he admitted. “I fell in love with the place. I bought it on pure emotion, never a good thing to do.”

Pure emotion, he reminded himself, was always a bad thing. Always. Which is why he had to be very careful around Linda. He felt things he didn’t want to feel, even after just being with her for a few minutes.

She turned away from him, and dumped her coffee in the sink, but not before he’d seen the look in her eyes.

Memories.

This was the problem with having come to see her. Their lives intersected and crossed, drifted apart and then intersected again. In her eyes he had seen the memory as clearly as if it had flashed across a video screen.

Him and her and Blair, so young, at the very beginning, buying those horrible old houses, slapping on paint, filling flower boxes, making cosmetic changes and then keeping their fingers crossed when the For Sale sign went up.

“Flip-flop,” he remembered out loud. That was what she had called it. Blair had wanted a more sophisticated name for the company, the one they had gotten from combining both their surnames.

She turned from the sink and smiled weakly. In her eyes, he saw yearning. For the way things had once been? For the laughter and excitement of those first few sales? Of those early years?

Bobbi had asked him to help her. More than asked. She had begged him. And Linda still loved these old houses, as much as he did, maybe more. He wanted to walk away from her, for his own self-preservation. But he did not think a man who would walk away from a woman who needed something just to protect himself was a man he wanted to be.

“Will you come?” he asked. “At least have a look at the house I’ve invested your daughter’s college fund in?”

What he saw in her eyes was way more powerful than that.

“I don’t think I should.”

It wasn’t the out-and-out no that he’d expected to hear.

“You do still own half the company,” he reminded her.

“No, really.” She pointed at the unpacked boxes. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do. Really.”

It was the fact that she said really twice that made him know what she really wanted.

“Come,” he said softly, foolishly. “Just help me talk to this woman. Look at the house. See if you get a feel for it.” He knew if he got Linda over to that house the rest would be a done deal.

“You don’t need me,” she said.

She was not the only perceptive one. Because in those words he heard how she longed to be needed, how the death of her husband and the departure of her daughter had set her adrift.

Bobbi had been right. He had abandoned Linda when she most needed a friend. It did not make him think highly of himself.

“No,” he said. “I don’t need you.” He wagged his eyebrows devilishly at her. “But I want you.”

She laughed, just as he had hoped she would. It was a good sound and a bad one both. It was the kind of sound a man could get addicted to, that could stop him in his tracks when he was way too sure he was doing the right thing.

She threw up her hands in surrender. “Okay,” she said, and he could tell the answer shocked and surprised and frightened her nearly as much as it shocked and surprised and frightened him.

CHAPTER TWO

“I’LL have to go change,” Linda said, looking down at herself. She could actually feel a blush rising in her cheeks. Her pajamas looked worse for the wear. And the sweatshirt! Why had she picked something that made her look so frumpy and frazzled?

Shock, she realized. She was in shock. That was why she had said yes, she would go look at that house with Rick when it made no sense at all to do that.

Not that her mind was making sense right now.

Rick Chase was having the oddest effect on her. Looking at him—his large frame filling the tininess of her kitchen, his scent, richly masculine and amazingly sensual, filling her senses—she felt her belly do a dizzying drop. She’d known Rick for twenty years. She’d never reacted like this to him before!

Of course, she had never been single and available before.

Available? How did she know that he was? How could he be? Why wouldn’t he have been snatched up by someone? He wasn’t remarried, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t involved. It was a different world than the one in which she had gotten married. Marriage was only one choice of many these days. She’d assumed he was alone, but she had learned, the hard way, assumptions were very bad things on which to base decisions.

Bobbi stayed in touch with him, her honorary uncle, her godfather. Would Bobbi have told her about Rick’s relationships? Or would she have considered the romantic doings of old fuddy-duddies well outside that small range of things that interested her? Would Linda have heard if Rick was with someone? Suddenly she regretted all those phone calls from people in the office not answered.

“Rick, are you—”

The words stuck in her throat when he looked at her quizzically.

It was none of her business! She didn’t care.

“Am I what?”

Don’t ask, she pleaded with herself, especially not standing there in devil-embossed pajamas and an oversize sweatshirt. Especially not with her hair going every which way and not a smidgen of makeup on!

“Are you in a, um, relationship?”

There. She’d gone and asked. This was why she had become reclusive. She knew darn well she could not trust herself. Her interest could only be interpreted one way.

“No.”

She could feel the blush deepening in her cheeks and she rushed away from him, down the hall and into the safety of her bedroom.

She closed the door and leaned against it, taking a deep, steadying breath. Bobbi had been insinuating lately that Linda was losing her mind. Was she losing her mind? Why was she having this reaction to Rick?