Some Like It Hot

“Why the hell do I have to sweep up his mess?” Big Boy demanded.

“Because we work as a team and I asked you to,” Max replied evenly, giving the teen a level look that had Jeremy slouching away. The remaining boy snickered.

Max turned to him. “I wouldn’t be too smug if I were you, because you’re not off the hook. Go get a dustpan and the mop. After you pick up the glass Jeremy sweeps, you can mop the area.”

“Hey!” The slighter boy adopted a belligerent stance. “He only hadda do one thing. How come I gotta do two?”

“Rules of the road, Owen.” Max’s voice was matter-of-fact yet somehow as calming as cool water poured over scorched earth. “Jeremy wasn’t wrong, you know—you picked up a huge tray of glasses, then backed up without once looking behind you. And the guy going in reverse is always at fault.”

“That sucks!”

Max reached out and squeezed the boy’s shoulder. “Maybe so. But rules are rules, kid. Go grab the dustpan and mop.”

The boy grumbled but did as he was told. Harper picked her tray up off the counter and turned away.

Great. Like it wasn’t bad enough that she already harbored a fascination for this guy. Why did he have to go and be good with kids, as well?

She didn’t understand this damn attraction; it was so not her general M.O. She’d never gone for the big, physical guys—she was usually drawn to older, more sophisticated men. But Max Bradshaw... Lord, whenever he was near she felt like a vampire trying to do the stay-on-the-straight-and-narrow-blood-bank thing.

All the while scenting a juicy vein.

And if that didn’t make everything more complicated, she didn’t know what did. Like things weren’t convoluted enough already...considering the job with The Brothers Inn wasn’t her sole reason for being in Razor Bay.

“You prob’ly better move, lady,” the boy who had refilled her tray suddenly said, shaking her out of her reverie.

“What’s that?” She blinked, then, following his gaze, glanced over her shoulder. Other volunteers, awaiting their turn, had begun stacking up behind her. “Oops.” She flashed them her friendliest smile. “Sorry.”

Picking up her tray, she threw herself back into dishing out pancakes.

When the last patron left, Harper nearly did, as well. She had wiped down her tables and straightened the chairs. And since she’d tucked her driver’s license into her back pocket so she wouldn’t have to deal with a purse, she was good to go.

But looking into the kitchen, she saw Max and his crew still hard at work cleaning up. She could see the boys had about reached their limit of volunteerism, and, with a quiet sigh, she rounded the end of the counter and crossed the kitchen to the teen who was about to carry a stack of plates on which he’d precariously balanced more glasses than was safe. He was the larger of the two boys Max had separated earlier, the one she’d privately labeled Big Boy.

“Let me give you a hand with that,” she said, reaching to pluck the glasses off the plates and efficiently stacking them into two towers.

“Thanks, lady.” The teen pulled an overhead cupboard open and shoved the plates in. He jerked his head to the cupboard next to his. “Glasses go in there.”

“I’m Harper.”

“Jeremy,” he said in a voice that didn’t encourage her to get chatty.

“Nice to meet you.” Stepping alongside him, she reached up to set the glasses in her right hand on the shelf. Apparently she’d stacked them just a little too high, however, for the bottom of the uppermost cup bumped the edge of the cupboard and began to tilt back toward her.

Warmth radiated against her back, even though nothing actually touched it. At the same time a suntanned, white-cotton banded biceps came into her peripheral vision, and Max Bradshaw’s deep voice said, “Hang on, let me take a couple cups off the top.”

It only took him a second, but that moment stretched languorously as a cat after a long nap, her senses bombarded with his heat, with the salty, slightly musky scent of him mixed with that of pancake batter and laundry soap. She eyed the up-close view of the tail end of his tattoos undulating from beneath his sleeve hem with the movement of his arm, then transferred her attention to the muscles and tendons that flexed in his forearm, his rawboned wrist and long hand as he swiftly slid a couple of cups from the stack she still held aloft, dropped them onto the one in her left hand, then removed four or five of those and put them in the cupboard.

“There you go.” He stepped back and Harper put the rest of the cups alongside the minitower he’d placed on the shelf.

Exhaling softly, she glanced at him over her shoulder. “Thank you. You seem to have a knack for rescuing me from glassware accidents-about-to-happen.”

He stilled for a moment, and something hot and fierce flashed in his eyes. Or perhaps she only imagined it, because in the next instant he gave her a faint smile, polite nod and a murmured, “My pleasure.”

Oh, trust me, it was mine, as well.

Probably a less than brilliant idea to go there, however, so she shook the thought aside and injected some starch in her spine. Then, seeing an opportunity and not shy about taking advantage of it, she turned to him fully. “Listen, I only work three-quarter time at the inn. I’d love to volunteer some of my free hours to Cedar Village.”

“Yeah?” He studied her through shuttered dark eyes. “What do you have to offer?”

“I don’t know. What do volunteers generally do? I’m pretty much a jack-of-all-trades. But what I really rock at is organizing activities. And fund-raising.” When he continued to simply look at her with level, noncommittal eyes, she shrugged impatiently. People usually jumped at her fund-raising skills. “If that doesn’t work for you, I could always just provide a woman’s touch.”

“I wouldn’t mind a woman’s touch,” drawled a blond boy who was swabbing down the counter a few feet away, and his tone told Harper he wasn’t thinking motherly thoughts.

“That’s enough, Brandon,” Max said, but it was the look that Harper aimed at the youth that made the boy squirm. It was a thousand-yard stare she’d perfected when she was twelve, a nonthreatening but cool gaze that made the recipient completely question the wisdom of uttering the words that had warranted it in the first place.

“Sorry,” Brandon muttered.

“Not a problem.” She gave him a slight smile that was warmer without encouraging him to repeat his blunder. Then she turned back to Max. “This won’t help for today’s event, but I could tell you how to make your next pancake breakfast more profitable. And while I can’t promise anything until I talk to Jenny, maybe she’d let us offer the occasional supervised use of some of The Brothers’ resources.”

Max dug his wallet out of his back pocket, fished out a card and handed it to Harper. “Why don’t you give me a call and we’ll talk about it. But for now, you should go enjoy the rest of your day off.”

Sliding the proffered card into her own back pocket, she nodded, recognizing a dismissal when she heard one. “I’ll do that.” She glanced at the teen still stacking dishes next to her. “It was nice meeting you, Jeremy.” She nodded at the other boys who had stopped working to watch her.

Then she strode to the kitchen door and let herself out.

“Dude,” she heard one of the boys say as the door closed behind her. “She’s hot. Why’d you let her get away?” There was a beat of silence, then, “Oh, man. It’s not because she’s black, is it?”

Harper froze. Omigawd. Was it? That hadn’t even occurred to her, maybe because she’d spent the majority of her life in Europe where race wasn’t as big an issue—or at least didn’t have the history that it had in the States. But for all she knew—

“Hell, no,” Max’s voice said emphatically. “Listen, kid, men don’t hit on every hot woman they see.” He was quiet for a moment, then said slowly, “Besides, did she strike you as the kind of woman who would welcome me hitting on her?”

Yes! Embarrassing as it was to admit, she definitely would welcome that.

“Nah, I guess not,” the boy said.

“Oh, for c’ris—” Harper cut herself off, blew a pithy raspberry and stalked over to her car.

Her feet hurt from being on them all morning and she was cursing having worn her tallest wedged espadrilles as she blew through the front door of her cottage. Loggins and Messina played “Your Mama Don’t Dance” on the cell phone she’d deliberately left behind, and she crossed the room and snatched it off the little coffee table.

“Hi, Mom.” She kicked off her shoes and headed straight for the mini-fridge, where she pulled out a nice cold bottle of raspberry-green-tea-flavored artesian water. She rolled its cold plastic across her warm forehead.

“Hey, Baby Girl.”

Ever since her dad had died—and that had been a few years ago now—she and her mother had been at odds more often than not. So, hearing the nickname gave her a rush of pleasure. Tucking the phone between her ear and shoulder, she twisted the cap off the bottle and drank half of it down in one large swallow.

“For heaven’s sake, are you gulping something in my ear? Did your Grandma Hardin and I not teach you better manners than that?”

Harper tried not to feel resentful, she really did. She was thirty years old, for God’s sake; long past the age to be either scolded like a child or react as if she were one.