Thirty Day Affair

“Are you serious about this?”

“The check?”

“The amount,” she said harshly, then added, “I’ve got to sit down.”

And she did.

Right there on the floor.

She pulled her arm free of his grasp and folded up on herself. Leaning her head back against the closest chair, she looked up at him in stunned amazement. “I can’t believe you—”

“It’s just a donation,” he said.

“Of five hundred thousand dollars,” she pointed out.

“If you don’t want it…”

“Oh, no!” She folded the check and stretched out her right leg so she could stuff it into her jeans pocket. Then she patted it carefully and gave him a grin. “We want it. And we thank you. I mean, the whole town is going to want to thank you. This is just wonderful. Completely generous. I don’t know what to say, really—”

“And yet you keep trying,” Nathan said, feeling oddly embarrassed the longer she went on about a simple donation.

“Wow. My head’s still spinning. In a good way,” she insisted, then raised one hand toward him. “A little help here?”

Nathan sighed, reached for her hand and, in one quick move, pulled her to her feet. She flew off the floor and slammed into his chest with a whoosh of air pushed from her lungs. His hands dropped to her waist to steady her and, for a quick moment, he considered kissing her.

Which surprised the hell out of him.

Keira Sanders wasn’t the kind of woman who usually attracted him. For one, she was too damn talkative. He liked a woman who appreciated a good silence. And she was short. He liked tall women. And he preferred brunettes. And blue eyes.

Yet, as she looked at him, her green eyes seemed to pull at him, drawing him in, tugging him closer than he wanted to be.

With her breasts smashed up against his broad chest, Keira felt a rush of something hot and needy and completely unexpected. The man was as closed-off as a dead-end road, and yet there was something about him that made her want to reach up, wrap her arms around his neck and pull his head down for a long, lingering kiss.

And it wasn’t the huge check that was sitting in her pocket like a red-hot coal.

“You’re a very surprising man,” she finally said when she was pretty sure she could speak without her voice breaking.

His hands dropped from her waist and he stepped back so quickly that her shaky balance made her wobble unsteadily before she found stability again.

“It’s just a check.”

“It’s more than that,” she assured him. God, she couldn’t wait to show his donation to the town council. Eva Callahan would probably keel over in a dead faint. “You have no idea what this means to our town.”

“You’re welcome,” he said tightly. “Now, if you don’t mind, I have some work I have to get to.”

“No you don’t,” she said, smiling.

“I’m sorry?”

“You don’t have any work,” Keira said, tipping her head to one side to study him, as if getting a different perspective might help understand why such a deliberately solitary man could give away so much money without even pausing to think about it. “You just want me to go.”

“Yes.” His frown deepened. “I believe I already mentioned that.”

“So you did.” She patted the check in her pocket, swung her hair back from her face and gave him a smile. “And I’m going to oblige you.”

A flicker of something like acceptance shot across his eyes, and Keira wondered about that for a second or two. But then his features evened out into a mask of granite that no amount of staring at would ever decipher.

“Okay then,” she said, starting for the front door, only half surprised when he made no move to follow her. He’d seemed so anxious to get rid of her, she’d just assumed that he’d show her out once he had the chance. But when she turned to glance back at him, he was standing where she’d left him.

Alone, in front of the vast windows overlooking the lake. Behind him, the water silvered under the rising moon and the star-swept sky seemed to stretch on forever. Something inside her wanted to go back to him. To somehow make him less solitary.

But she knew he wouldn’t welcome it.

For whatever reason, Nathan Barrister had become a man so used to solitude he didn’t want or expect anything to change.

Well, Keira wasn’t going to allow him to get away with an anonymous donation. She was going to make sure the town got the chance to thank him properly for what he had done for them with a click of a pen.

Whether he liked it or not, Keira was going to drag Nathan into the heart of Hunter’s Landing.

By the next evening, Keira was running on adrenaline. She’d hardly been able to sleep the night before; memories of Nathan Barrister and the feel of his hands on her had kept her tossing and turning through some pretty detailed fantasies that kept playing through her mind.

Ridiculous, really. She knew the man would be here for only a month. She knew he wasn’t interested—he’d made that plain enough every time he looked at her. But, for some reason, her body hadn’t gotten the message.

She felt hot and itchy and…way more needy than she’d like to admit.

Apparently it had been way too long since she’d had a man in her life. But then, the last man she’d been interested in had made such a mess of her world that she’d pretty much sworn off the Y chromosome.

Then grumpy, rich and gorgeous Nathan Barrister, rolled into her life and made her start rethinking a few things. Not a good idea.

She spun her straw through her glass of iced tea and watched idly as ice cubes rattled against the sides of the glass. It felt good to sit down. She’d been running all day, first calling an emergency meeting of the town council so she could tell them about Nathan’s donation. And, she smiled as she remembered, Eva Callahan had behaved as expected, slumping into a chair and waving a stack of papers at her face to stave off a faint.

Once the meeting was over she’d had to take care of a few other things, like depositing that check, talking to the contractor about the renovations to the clinic, settling a parking dispute between Harry’s Hardware and Frannie’s Fabrics and finally, coming here to the Lakeside Diner.

Being mayor of a small town was exhausting, and it was really hardly more than an honorary office. Her duties consisted mainly of presiding over town council meetings once a month, playing referee to adults old enough to solve their own problems and trying to raise money for civic projects. And yet, she seemed to always be busy. She didn’t have a clue how the mayors of big cities managed to have a life at all.

But then, Keira thought, isn’t that the way she wanted it? Keeping busy gave her too little time to think about how her life had turned out so differently from what she’d expected. She picked a French fry off her plate and popped it into her mouth. Chewing, she glanced around the crowded diner and took a deep breath. Here, no matter what else was going on in her life, Keira could find comfort.

The Lakeside Diner was a tiny coffee shop and more or less a touchstone in Keira’s life, the one constant she’d always been able to count on. Her parents had owned and operated the diner before her and she herself had started working here, clearing tables, when she was twelve.

Then, when her parents died, Keira had taken over, because there was her younger sister, Kelly, to provide for. Now, she had a manager to take care of the day-today running of the diner, but when she needed a place to sit and recharge, she always came here.

The red Naugahyde booths were familiar, as was the gleaming wood counter and the glass covered cake and pie dishes, the records in the jukebox her father had loved hadn’t been changed in twenty years. Memories crowded thick in this diner. She closed her eyes and could almost see her dad behind the stove, grinning out at her mom running the cash register.

This diner—like Hunter’s Landing—was home.

“Hey, Keira. Can I see it?”

She opened her eyes, startled as an older woman slid onto the bench seat opposite her. Sallye Carberry grinned, and held out one hand dotted with silver rings.