The Rich Girl Goes Wild

Dorothy clapped her hands together. “How fortuitous. I happen to have the perfect place for you to wear it.”

Dread crept up his neck. “Oh?” he flatly echoed Ashley’s earlier question.

Her green eyes twinkling in the dining room chandelier’s light, Dorothy said, “I need Ashley to fill in for me at a dinner next Friday night—that is all right with you, isn’t it, darling?”

“But you’re receiving an award, Grandmother. Are you certain you can’t make it?”

Dorothy waved her off. “Oh pish. You deserve that award more than I do, and something more important has come up.”

Ashley hedged, “Well, if you’re certa—”

“You are such a dear.” Dorothy patted her granddaughter on the arm. “And Mac, you can be her escort.”

Not a good idea. Spending an evening with Ashley would not equal backing off. Mac shook his head. “I can’t—”

“You know,” Dorothy cut him off. “It has been too long since I spoke to your parents. How are they?”

On to her game, Mac dropped his chin and obliged. “They’re fine. I’ll tell them you said hello. And actually, I’d be delighted to escort Ashley Friday night.” Realizing he might still have an out, he added, “Assuming, of course, that it’s all right with Ashley…”

Instead of screaming foul as he’d hoped, Ashley raised her chin a notch and met his gaze, her eyes glinting with determination. “I think that would be fine, Grandmother, because I know it is customary for the recipient to have a…an escort.”

Mac nearly laughed at her refusal to say date.

“Oh, thank you, darling. Now you two sit down to your dinner. I won’t be joining you after all. Thelma Jacobson has returned from her trip to the beach and is having an impromptu clam feed, so I’m off to stuff myself on steamers. It was a pleasure to finally get to meet you, Mac,” she ended lightly, though ominously to his ears, before she hurried back out of the dining room.

Mac rolled his shoulders beneath his new suit jacket. Great. Not only did he have to contend with Ashley, but now he was being blackmailed by a granny.

He looked to Ashley. She wore a pleasant enough expression, but he could tell she was itching to dare him to complain about ol’ Dorth. He decided to make her pay, instead. The MacDougal way.

Because it seemed he’d jumped from one meddling clan to another, and damn if he wasn’t attracted as hell to their fair young ringleader.

Chapter Four

“Boy, this veranda sure has a gorgeous view.”

Mac’s deep voice breaking the morning silence behind Ashley startled her so much she jerked. A good portion of the hazelnut-flavored coffee she’d been seeking consciousness in slopped onto her cup’s saucer.

She turned in her chair, away from the view of the sprawling back lawn, to find Mac, dressed in a white, short-sleeve T-shirt tucked into black knit sweatpants above high-tech, all terrain hiking shoes, and standing just outside one of the many French doors opening on to the veranda.

He was looking directly at her, not the view.

Her system received the sort of jolt caffeine could never give her.

She pretended to misunderstand his statement. “The gardeners have done a stunning job with the grounds, haven’t they?”

He moved toward her, plowing a hand through hair that appeared damp in the morning sun, with the comb lines still visible on the side he wasn’t disrupting, like he’d just showered. His smile was lopsided and devastating. “Wouldn’t know.” He shrugged. “Haven’t noticed.”

She hid the heat his appreciation generated in her cheeks, along with the annoyance at herself and at him for affecting her so, by turning back toward the view of the lawn and taking a sip of coffee. She did make a quick check that her navy-blue skirt hadn’t ridden too far up her thighs and that the pointed collar of the matching blouse hadn’t opened too wide, though. No reason to let him think she was a willing participant in his pointless game. She did not need the flirtatious attention of some gorgeous wild man to know she had value.

When she felt certain her voice would remain steady, she offered with an encompassing wave of her hand, “Feel free to take a hike—or a stroll, if you’d prefer—around the grounds, then. They really shouldn’t be missed.”

He strolled right up to her instead. Releasing a noisy breath and looking out across the lawn, he leaned his sweats-clad hip against the side of her chair back and crossed his arms over his broad chest. The cedar deck chair creaked in protest. In the stillness of the morning she could easily smell his clean, slightly spicy scent and feel the heat radiating from his big body. He had indeed just showered, and she had never smelled anything so good in her life. She would have groaned if she could.

Instead she pulled in a bracing breath of crisp morning air, ignoring his smell. She focused on the faint scent of mowed grass, newly bloomed roses and the silent river flowing at the opposite end of the sloping lawn from where she sat on the raised, white veranda.

But every nerve ending she possessed tingled from his nearness. She shifted away on the cushioned patio chair and tried to regain her equilibrium by concentrating on the sun glinting off the new, shiny, dark leaves of the ancient oak tree that served as the lawn’s centerpiece. Of its own volition, her gaze dropped to the base of the old tree, a favorite spot for Nathan’s endless array of outside toys. She could see an oversize, orange plastic bat and a dragon pull-toy lying around the tree’s massive trunk.

The yearning for a child of her own that had begun when her nephew entered their lives last summer pulsed in her womb. She yanked her gaze away. Longing for a man’s touch was bad enough. She had to get a grip. Nothing but biology at work, she told herself.

And her determination to put such wants behind her was stronger. She would behave like the pleasant, mature adult she was, without letting Mac’s appeal affect her.

She turned to look up at him, forcing herself to meet his gaze directly. “Did you need something?”

His mouth quirked and his topaz eyes grew hot as his gaze traveled over her, but instead of the suggestive response she’d accidentally set herself up for, he blinked lazily, looked out at the lawn and declared, “You owe me.”

“Excuse me?”

He heaved a noisy breath and glanced down at her like she was a child. “I said, you owe me.”

Uncomfortable with the notion of owing Mac anything, she lowered her brows. “What could I possibly owe you?”

“If I have to do something that you like, then you have to do something that I like. And while off the top of my head I can think of—” he eyed her wickedly “—a lot of things I’d like to do with you, today, I’d like to go mountain biking.”

Certain she’d suffer a cardiac arrest if he shared even one of those other things he’d thought of, she closed her eyes, shutting out the sensuous curve of his mouth and her body’s response to all the possible uses he might find for it.

She should have had Marie make the coffee double strength, because she clearly wasn’t her usual self yet. She shook her head and sent her pearl drop earrings swinging. “I’m not following you.”

“Oh, on a bike, you definitely will, and I imagine you won’t mind the view too much, either,” he quipped. Her eyes snapped open in time to see his mouth curling in a suggestive smile.

What that view would entail presented itself quite clearly in her imagination, so she adverted her eyes to erase the image and said succinctly, “I do not owe you anything, let alone a bike ride.”

“Oh, yes, you do. If I’m going to escort you to that charity thing Friday—”

Her gaze leapt back to his. “That’s not because of me. Grandmother is the one—”

“Why? Does she think you can’t get your own date? Oh wait,” he supplied before she had the chance to do more than open her mouth to protest, “I forgot, you don’t date. You don’t have time.”

The burn of indignation had her out of her seat in a flash. Unfortunately she still had to look up to meet his mocking gaze. “I don’t have time to commit to a serious relation—”

“So your grandma has to fix you up. I understand.” He patted her shoulder, his hand big and warm and obnoxiously patronizing.

It took all she was worth not to kick him. “My grandmother does not have to fix me up.”

“Oh, really? If your grandma hadn’t appointed me to the job, who would you take, then, since you said it was customary to have an escort to this shindig?”

Her gaze trapped in his tiger-eyed stare, she stammered, “Well, I—I—”

His eyes narrowed. “Tell the truth.”