upright, he steepled his hands beneath his chin to block the view. He had to get her out of this office.
“Business?” Curiosity got the best of him. What kind of business could bring Julianna Reynolds back to Blackwood?
When she leaned forward, expression earnest, her silky blue blouse gapped slightly, affording him an unwanted glance of creamy skin. Infuriatingly, his body reacted. She was sexy, vulnerable and beautiful, a combination that spelled danger for any man but was deadly for him. She was big city and he was small town. She was rich and he was a working stiff. And she was, as her mother had once said, “too good for that McIntyre boy.”
Criminy! Why he was thinking this way? He didn’t know this woman. Hadn’t known her for years. All they had was the past, and that was better left alone.
The phone emitted a soft buzz, and he barely held back a curse. He was too busy to worry over Julianna Reynolds, and the sooner he found out what she wanted, the sooner she’d be gone and he’d be safe from thinking too much.
Holding up one finger of his left hand in a “wait-a-minute” gesture, he punched a button with the right. “Yeah?”
His receptionist’s voice came out of the speakerphone. “Mrs. Barkley needs you to drive by her place. She’s sure the Peeping Tom is back.”
Taking out his annoyance on the receptionist, he growled, “Where have you been?”
“Even Rita the Magnificent has a bladder, Tate. Don’t get your tail in a twitch.”
He glanced at Julee, saw her struggling with a grin, and was relieved when she rose and starting roaming the room. He swiveled sideways to avoid watching the swish of her blue skirt against silken thighs.
Having Julee in his office was bad enough without the hired help humiliating him. Smart-aleck receptionist. But he knew better than to cross Rita the Magnificent. She was a lot more than a receptionist, and he couldn’t manage without her. “Tell Mrs. Barkley I’ll be there as quick as I can.”
“Oh, she said there’s no big hurry. And she wants to know if you’ll stop by the store and get Penelope some cat food before you come out.”
Tate gave in to a grudging grin. He’d investigated her “Peeping Tom” four times in as many months. Poor old Mrs. Barkley. Anything for a little company. He wondered what kind of cake she’d baked this time and hoped he’d have time to eat a piece of it while she entertained him on the piano.
“No problem.”
From the corner of his eye he could see Julee surveying the row of framed certificates and citations hanging around his small, cluttered office. He hoped she wouldn’t miss the college diploma. She’d had success handed to her on a silver platter, but he’d worked plenty hard for his.
As he started to disconnect, Rita spoke again. “Don’t forget you need to be back in time for Little League practice.”
“Anything else?”
“I left the list on your desk. A meeting with the county commissioner at four, the task force tomorrow morning, Martha’s birthday party and the slave auction at the high school—”
“Hold on.” He scrounged around in the enormous stack of folders and papers. The list lay in plain sight beneath a snow globe paperweight that Jacob, his seven-year-old buddy from the Big Brother program, had given him last Christmas.
“I found it.” He stuck the list in his shirt pocket and shut off the receptionist’s disembodied voice.
Julee’s blue gaze, wide with curiosity, drifted back to him. “You are a busy man.”
“Goes with the job. So if you don’t mind…” He let the words trail off hoping she’d take the ball and run with it. Her visit was starting to get under his skin.
Before she lost her nerve, Julianna settled back into the green chair and plunged into the story she’d rehearsed for days.
“I’ve come home to Seminole County to do some charity work. You know. One of those celebrity things that are good for an income tax break.”
She blasted him with a hundred-watt smile as fake as the words she’d spoken. She’d never done a “celebrity thing” in her life. Though she’d worked tirelessly to increase bone-marrow donors and had even headed a previous drive, celebrity had nothing to do with it. Outside the modeling industry and this small town she had no celebrity status, but Julianna prayed Tate wouldn’t know that. Finding cures for sick children had simply become her passion.
Tate arched an eyebrow. Stacking his hands behind his head, he tilted back in his rather bedraggled roller chair. “What could that possibly have to do with me?”
Julee crossed her arms over her middle. She hadn’t expected a red-carpet welcome after all these years, but his cool appraisal turned her butterflies into swarming buzzards.
Behind him, through the window, Julianna vaguely comprehended the ebb and flow of light traffic out on the street. A single horn honked. Car doors slammed. The quiet, unhurried normalcy of everyday life in a small town soothed her.
Normalcy—a condition she could hardly recollect. For a while three years ago, life had almost been normal. They’d been sure Megan had been cured by the chemotherapy treatments.
Then had come the frightening news two months ago that Megan’s leukemia cells had reappeared, throwing her into the desperate search for a bone-marrow donor, the only hope of cure now that chemo had failed to permanently destroy the disease. Until now they hadn’t even considered this last-ditch, drastic kind of treatment. For the first time Julee had no choice but to involve Tate. Megan was in a second drug-induced remission, but the doctors said it was only a matter of time until the cells began to multiply again. How much time, no one could say.
Not one day since then had they lived a moment without fear. Megan, her beautiful nine-year-old daughter, deserved a normal life, and so did dozens of other children awaiting a bone-marrow transplant.
If she could get Tate to donate blood without him knowing about Megan, everyone would be better off—Megan, Tate and his wife. No wife, however devoted, wanted the shock of discovering her husband had an unknown child by his first love. Plenty of reasons to face Tate’s chilly regard.
Leaning her elbows on a pile of official-looking documents Julianna locked eyes with the man who held Megan’s fate. The air conditioner thumped to life, but even the cool blast of air couldn’t counter the tingle of sweat prickling the back of her neck.
“I’m involved with increasing the number of minority donors for the bone-marrow transplant database. Since my hometown happens to be the tribal capital of the Seminole Indians, I thought this would be a good place to start.”
The chair rollers clattered to the floor. Tate frowned at her, puzzled, but clearly intrigued. The chatty clerk at the motel had been telling the truth; Sheriff McIntyre was a sucker for a good cause.
“Bone-marrow donation?”
“People wouldn’t necessarily be donating their bone marrow. At first, there’s just a blood test and the donor information is put into the data bank. Then if someone needs a transplant, doctors can access the data bank for a suitable match.”
“I
