Prodigal Prince Charming

“Baked goods and sodas.”

His broad shoulders lifted in a dismissing shrug. “Then, I’ll pay you the other two-thirds for every day you’re without the right kind of truck.”

He clearly didn’t see a problem. He also seemed to think that all he had to do was open his checkbook and her little crisis would be solved.

Wondering if life was always that easy for him, and suspecting it must be, considering who he was, she forced patience upon her growing unease. “This isn’t just about money. Money isn’t going to feed my customers or get me my work back,” she explained, needing him to understand that dollars couldn’t begin to replace the structure of her carefully ordered life. “I get up at three o’clock in the morning to do my baking and make sandwiches. At eight-twenty I load my truck and leave for my first stop. I finish my breakfast-and-break run, come back for lunch restock and finish the lunch run by twelve-forty. After that, I gas up my truck, drop off leftovers at the seniors’ center, stop at the produce market and come back here so I can clean up the truck, refill the dispensers and get my dry ingredients mixed up for the next morning’s baking.

“All I’m going to be able to do now is a breakfast-and-break run,” she continued, only now allowing herself to consider what tomorrow would bring. With all she’d had to deal with that day, she had managed to avoid that prospect so far. With her sense of anxiety growing, she truly wished she could avoid it now. “That means I won’t have to bake nearly as many cookies and I won’t make sandwiches at all. And I won’t have my lunch run to make, or my truck to take care of when I get back, so that means I won’t have nearly as much to do when I get back in the afternoon.”

She shook her head, wondering how many hours that left unfilled. Not wanting to know, self-recrimination lowered her voice to a mutter. “If I hadn’t wanted the money for that stupid chafing dish, everything would be fine.”

Cord watched the pretty, sable-haired woman across the booth from him rub her forehead. Her short, neat nails were unpolished, her slender fingers ringless, her dark and shining hair pulled back and clipped casually at her nape. Her lush mouth was unadorned, free of the shiny sticky gloss worn by so many of the women he knew. There was a freshness about Madison O’Malley that wasn’t terribly familiar to him, a lack of studied polish that spoke of interests beyond the hours he knew some women—his own mother and sisters included—spent being manicured, pedicured, highlighted, waxed, masked and massaged. On the other hand, it didn’t sound as if she had time for such fussing. From what he’d just heard of her schedule, she barely had time to sleep.

That she also now seemed as upset with herself as she was with him wasn’t lost on him, either.

Overlooking the fact that anyone else would be grateful for the break, and hoping to cash in on the blame she seemed to be feeling toward herself, he focused on the chafing dish she’d just mentioned. He had no idea how it figured into what had happened, but he’d buy a gross of them for her if it would help fix this little mess.

“This chafing dish,” he said, ducking his head to see her eyes. “Is it something you need for your business?”

“It’s one of a lot of things.” Absently pulling a napkin from the holder, she lifted her head. “I’m trying to expand my catering business, but I don’t have the equipment and serving pieces I need for parties. If I’d had a couple of good double chafers I wouldn’t have had to turn down Suzie Donnatelli’s wedding last week. Not that she asked,” she admitted, sounding as if she were talking more to herself than to him as she rolled the napkin’s edges, “but I know she would have if I’d told her I could do it.

“That’s why I took the coffee and muffins to the trailer,” she hurried on, her racing thoughts leaving him in the conversational dust. “It wasn’t worth being off schedule for twenty dollars worth of coffee and food, but a fifty-dollar tip would make a serious contribution to my equipment fund. As it was, the tip you gave me would almost buy the blasted thing, but it wound up costing me my truck.”

For a moment Cord said nothing. He just sat there wanting very much to keep her away from her last thought.

“Okay,” he said, buying himself a few seconds while he weighed the new information she’d more or less given him. If he read this woman correctly, she was actually more upset about having time on her hands than she was her loss of income. She also had something more she wanted to do, but hadn’t been able to because she hadn’t had the extra income to do it with.

“If I get you equipment and catering jobs, would that help?”

Madison opened her mouth, blinked and closed it again.

“I can buy you whatever you need,” he said, thinking that anything he had to pay would be a bargain compared to what it would cost him if he couldn’t make her happy enough to stay away from insurance companies and lawyers. “And I know lots of people who entertain. You can work on that end of your business until your new truck gets here.”

His expression mirrored hers when her eyebrows pinched.

“What?” he asked, needing to stay up with her, if not one step ahead.

“It’s not just the equipment I lack. Not exactly,” she confessed, sounding as if one set of concerns had just given way to another. “It’s the experience. I’ve done a few small parties,” she explained. “I’ve just never done anything of any size that wasn’t just hors d’oeuvres.” Suddenly looking a little self-conscious, she dropped her voice another notch. “I’m sort of still in the planning stages.”

Cord drew a slow, deep breath. When he’d walked in, he had thought that he could write out a couple of checks, make sure she got an even better truck than the one she’d had so she would have no cause for complaint, and hope that would be the end of it. There was also the little matter of getting her to sign a release of claim for Callaway Construction, but there were details to iron out first.

“You can practice on me,” he concluded, tightening his grasp on the only negotiating tool he’d been able to find. “I’m having a few people in this weekend. Saturday night. Nothing formal,” he assured her, since that seemed to be a concern. “I’m not a formal kind of guy.” That was his family’s forte. He could hold his own with a wine list, and he enjoyed the finer things as much as the next man. He just didn’t like having to put on a tux to do it. “I thought I’d call a restaurant and have them deliver, but the job is yours if you want it.”

When Madison felt excited, nervous or uncertain, she needed to move. Needing to move now, she slid from the booth, took a step away, then turned back.

“You want to hire me?” she asked, looking incredulous, sounding doubtful.

“It works for me, if it works for you.”

Madison promptly started to pace. Three steps one way, three steps back. Cord Kendrick had connections in circles it would take a miracle for her to enter on her own. And there he was, his impossibly blue eyes following her every move while he waited for her to accept or decline the offer of her lifetime.

His mother had been royalty.

His older brother was the governor of the state.

His father was related to the Carnegies or the Mellons. Or maybe it was the Vanderbilts. All she knew was that he’d come from old money that had made tons more.

Granted, from what she’d read, the Kendrick family had little to do with Cord himself, but the circle he reputedly ran in wasn’t that shabby, either: Grand Prix racers, supermodels, platinum recording artists. Owners of large, multimillion-dollar construction companies.

“I don’t know,” she murmured, pacing away from him. “I’d planned to practice more on my friends first.” It was one thing to help them out with their parties. She knew what it took to please them. But catering was all about referrals. “What if your dinner is a disaster? If I’m really not ready, I could end my career before I even get started.”

Because she kept turning away, and because her voice was still low, Cord was having trouble catching what she said. Wishing she would stand still, he levered his long frame out of the booth and caught up with her two empty booths down.

“You’ll be fine,” he assured her.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve tasted your cooking.”

Her tone went flat. “You had a muffin,” she reminded him over the scream of race cars on a motor oil commercial. “That’s not exactly chicken Florentine.

“Can you make chicken Florentine?” he asked as she paced the other way.

“I can make lots of things.” She tried out new recipes and new twists on old ones on her family all the time. “There are just some things I’ve never made for more than four people.”

“This will only be for seven or eight. And Florentine would be great. Throw in some pasta, a salad and something for dessert and you’re home free.”

Her uncertainty remained as she turned back. “What kind of pasta?”

He shrugged, took a step closer. One dinner party disaster would hardly be the end of the world for him. But if it wasn’t a disaster and he could help her get more business, he would have made up for the loss of work she was so upset about now. “Something northern Italian. White sauce, not red.”

She started pacing the other way. Grabbing her arm, he turned her right back. “Will you stand still?”

Her faint frown met his. “I think better when I’m moving.”

“Well, you’re making me dizzy.”

“Hey, Madison. Everything okay over there?”

Apparently grabbing her hadn’t been the wisest thing to do. Dropping his hand, Cord turned to see the burly bartender scowling at him from the other side of the bar. The two men bellied up to it weren’t looking too friendly toward him, either.

“Everything is fine,” Madison assured the man. “We’re just talking.”

“You sure?”

“Positive.”

The ledge of Mike’s brow lowered with the glance he gave Cord before looking back to her. “You just let me know if you need anything.”