A Small-Town Homecoming

STILL in a temper a quarter of an hour later, Tess shoved her way into her office and then swore when her Macho-Mex mocha sloshed over the edge of the cup. Chocolate spatters layered over the dusty red splotches on her slingbacks. “Aww, for cryin’ out—”

The phone on her desk rang, and she carefully speed-walked to the back of the room, holding the coffee at arm’s length. “Roussel Designs, Tess Roussel speaking.”

“You’ve obviously made it back to work,” Geneva said with a hint of sarcasm.

“Not all my work is done in the office.” Tess set the cup on the desk and reached for a tissue to wipe her hand. “Thank you for returning my call.”

“Anytime, dear.”

Tess frowned as she toed off her shoes. Her grandmother didn’t sound all that upset by what had happened at Tidewaters that morning. Not that she wanted her grandmother to be upset—not unless she was upset with Quinn. Then she could erupt like a Fourth of July fireworks display and fire his nicely shaped ass. “I wanted to touch base with you about what happened at the site this morning.”

“The vandalism,” Geneva said with a disgusted sigh.

“Yes.” Tess tucked the phone between her ear and shoulder and snatched another tissue from her apple-red dispenser. “I understand Quinn has already discussed everything with you.”

“Yes, he has. It’s all terribly distressing, all the trouble and expense involved in setting things right. But he assures me there won’t be any delays. And he’s handled everything quite satisfactorily, with no need for your attention.”

“He may not have needed it, but he got it.” Tess picked up one of her shoes and began to scrub at the stains. “Finding out from one of the shopkeepers downtown that the police had been called to Tidewaters got my attention pretty damn quick.”

“Really, Tess, must you use that kind of language?”

“I beg your pardon. Sorry.” She chipped a nail on her shoe heel and swore under her breath as she tossed the soiled, crumpled tissue toward her waste bin. The wad bounced off the rim and tumbled to the floor. This just wasn’t her day. “I tend to get upset when my job site is the scene of a criminal investigation, and I’m not notified.”

“Although I appreciate your enthusiasm for this project,” Geneva said in a terrifyingly frigid tone, “I must remind you that Tidewaters belongs to me, not to you.”

Tess stiffened and dropped the shoe. “Yes, Mémère.”

“You may be my granddaughter, but you are also, where Tidewaters is concerned, my employee.”

It was that fact, more than her grandmother’s scolding, that heated Tess’s cheeks with embarrassment and guilt. An angry phone call wasn’t the best way to display her professional abilities to her biggest client to date.

She detested being caught making an error in judgment. She despised weakness, especially in herself, and she loathed the shriveling remorse that swamped her at times like this. That was why she worked so hard, took such care, fussed over the details. Stayed in control. There were fewer mistakes that way.

She shut her eyes and rubbed her forehead. “I want—I need—to be kept in the loop. I have to be a part of this, each step of it, all the way through. It’s not just the way I want it. It’s my job. And if I’m going to do a good job, I need to be informed about everything—all the progress and all the problems.”

“I don’t suppose,” Geneva said, “it would do any good to ask you to be civil to Quinn when you discuss this with him.”

“I can be civil.” Tess slowly sank into her chair. “I can be anything I want to be.”

“Except punctual.”

“Except that.” Her smile was faint. “But I’m working on it.”

“Good. Now,” Geneva said with a brisk change of tone, “I have some unrelated news I think will please you.”

“About Charlie’s wedding shower?” Tess had left an earlier phone message asking if she could host the party at Chandler House. Tess’s own house was too small for the event she had in mind, and Addie’s apartment was literally a hole in the wall behind her shop.

“About her wedding,” Geneva said.

“Her wedding?”

“I’ve offered Maudie the opportunity to hold Charlie’s wedding here. There’s plenty of space in the garden, near the pergola.”

“I’m sure she was thrilled. Charlie will be, too.” Tess swiveled in her chair and stared out her windows, seeing white chairs in neat lines and pastel ribbons twined with wisteria instead of the pale wisps of late-afternoon fog drifting across Main Street. “And that means the pressure’s on now. Charlie will have to choose a summer date.”

“That’s what Maudie and I thought, too.”

“She didn’t have a chance, not with you two plotting against her.” Tess grinned. “Besides, who wouldn’t want a wedding at Chandler House?”

“My granddaughter, for one.”

Tess released a silent sigh. They’d had this discussion before. “I never said I didn’t want to get married there.”

“You never said you wanted to get married.”

“There are things I need to do before I’m ready to think about it. And one of those things is finding a man I want to marry.”

“Find one,” Geneva ordered as if she were instructing her gardener where to place a rosebush. “Before I get too old to dance at the reception.”

Tess grinned. “Yes, Mémère.”

CHAPTER FIVE

QUINN GUIDED his pickup to the curb outside Tess’s office door a few minutes before five o’clock and switched off the ignition. He sat in the cab for a moment, banking his temper. It had been a long, frustrating day, and there was plenty of it left—he still had to fix dinner, start a load of laundry and deal with Rosie. But first he had to go another round with the only woman he knew who could scramble his thoughts and senses until he forgot how much he wanted a drink.

She’d been wearing a dark blue suit today, and something that made her smell like a bucket stuffed with flowers. Fresh, white flowers drooping with early-morning water drops, like those tiny, bell-shaped flowers sprouting up from a mass of fat, grassy green in the shade under Mrs. Brubaker’s maple tree.

And pearls, for God’s sake. On the site. Dangling from her pretty pink ears and slipping and sliding between her breasts. With the rumble and clang of Trap’s excavator and the diesel stench of Wylie’s bulldozer failing to block the punches she’d landed on his senses.

She sure knew how to push his buttons—coming to the job in that getup, distracting his crew, arguing with him in public, questioning his judgment. And crawling under his skin, making him so hard he’d had to keep bending over and peering through the level’s scope as if his life depended on what he could see across the footings.

Once she’d left and he’d cooled off, he’d had to acknowledge her point. But the fact was, he’d owed Geneva a phone call. She was the client. The owner. He’d need to meet with her later, to discuss the details and negotiate the financing for the site’s security.

Still, he supposed he should have called Tess.

Which only pissed him off again.

With a curse, he exited his truck. Rue Matson waved as she locked up her tiny gardening shop, and he nodded as he stepped up onto the curb. How someone could make a living selling birdseed and fancy shovels was a mystery. “Evening, Rue.”

“It’s a pretty one, isn’t it?” She squinted at a faded blue sky dotted with dingy white clouds and then glanced at the flower boxes tucked below Tess’s three-sided office window. “Nearly as pretty as those arrangements. Tess sure knows how to put a planter together. There’s a trick to doing it right, you know.”

“Is there?”

“Oh, yes.” Rue rambled on in her friendly shopkeeper voice about color and texture and layers and a bunch of other things Quinn didn’t care about. But he had to admit, as he waved goodbye to Rue, that they were pretty planters. As sassy and colorful as the woman who’d planted them.

And he had to admit, as he stalked through her door, that Tess had made her office space pretty, too. Not too fussy, not too plain. Not too much emphasis on the business, but enough drawings and models to give a quick impression of competence and skill. Just right, just the way an architect’s office should look. The woman had class.

She was also sitting too close to Don Gladdings, who had pulled a visitor’s chair to Tess’s side of the desk. Don was taking advantage of his maneuver to lean over her shoulder and peer at something on her computer monitor, while she made her pitch for redrawing a section of his new car dealership. Clever phrases delivered with a subtle appeal to Don’s pride in his business—architectural design as ego gratification.