“Fine,” Alexa said with forced enthusiasm to his retreating back. “See you then.”
Oh, Lord, she thought as she wheeled her cart slowly out the door. What had she done?
Despite her resolve to be calm and forthright, her knees grew weak as she approached one of the two large SUVs that Vane had insisted they needed for the inn. It was parked in a crowded area in front of the gourmet food store, the last of a row of busy shops in Skytop Lake Village.
Vane sat sideways in the driver’s seat talking animatedly with his prize minion, Minos Flaherty, who was seated behind him.
Alexa took a deep breath. This wouldn’t be easy, but she had to say something now. It would be much too embarrassing to have an argument in front of John O’Rourke when he appeared to claim his room. And with so many people around here, Vane was unlikely to make a big scene.
Vane spotted her. He immediately stopped talking and slipped out the door. A smile lit his face as he approached.
Vane Walters was a man who would make any woman look twice. He was not quite six feet tall and worked out daily, and his attention to his physique showed in the proud way he held himself. He wore a blue button-down shirt tucked into blue jeans. His dirty blond hair was combed carefully to hide the fact that his hairline had begun to recede, and the deep lines that underscored his brown eyes when he grinned made it appear that he had a great sense of humor.
Perhaps he did—at the expense of other people. Alexa included.
“Hi, darling,” he said, and gave her a kiss full on the mouth. She forced herself to respond, even though she knew his attentiveness was for show. Once, his kisses had stirred her—some. She had cared for him, a lot. He had been so kind, so supportive…so deceitful.
She had wished fervently lately that she could simply end their partnership—and their engagement—like any normal woman would. But things were far from simple. And she had been warned.
“Hi,” she responded with forced cheerfulness, stepping ever so slightly back. “Would you mind helping me put the groceries in the car?”
“Minos!” Vane called.
The smaller but even more muscular man, whom Vane had hired only a few months earlier, was surprisingly graceful as he leapt from the car and began unloading the cart. Another shopper pulled into the neighboring parking space and got out of her car.
This was the moment for Alexa to speak. She took a deep breath. “Guess what?” she said brightly, ignoring the nervous unevenness of her voice. “We’ve a new guest arriving tonight.”
“What?” Vane stepped back and stared.
She could see the anger that lurked behind his eyes. But a woman was helping a child out of the car beside theirs, and Alexa saw Vane glance in their direction.
Quickly, Alexa gave an embellished version of what had happened in the store. She ached to flaunt her defiance, but that could be too dangerous. Instead, she acted defensive.
“He’s only planning to stay for a few days,” she lied. “I could hardly tell him to get lost right in front of Marian. I think she knows him.” Sure, that was a fib, but maybe it would fit the man into the group of outside guests whose presence Vane might accept. “It’ll be pleasant to have someone new stay with us for a little while.” She looked tellingly toward the mother and child as they walked toward the stores. “It’s an inn, for heaven’s sake,” she murmured under her breath. “Whatever is going on, surely it would be better for the place to continue to resemble a normal B & B.”
Vane was ten years older than Alexa’s thirty-one, but his features were youthful so he usually didn’t appear much older than she. Right now, though, his scowl made him look every bit his age.
She’d been wrong. He was going to make a scene, Alexa suddenly realized. Right here. Maybe he would even threaten her, as he did when they were alone.
She couldn’t deal with it. Not now. Not here.
Impulsively, she grabbed him and gave him as big a kiss as he had just given her. Stepping back, she forced herself to smile. “I’m sorry,” she said, meaning it because he worried her, and not because she otherwise regretted what she had done. “I won’t do it again without consulting you. But I think it’s a good thing, to make the inn look as busy as it used to.”
“We’ll see,” Vane said. “Now get in the car.”
Alexa turned and opened the vehicle’s door. This was one command—of too, too many—that she would obey.
WHAT THE HELL had he expected? Cole Rappaport watched through the windshield while that little scene played out, his hands fisted on the steering wheel of the luxury car he had borrowed for this assignment.
Alexa and Vane.
Oh, he had known the facts before he’d gotten here. They owned that inn together. They were engaged—the woman he had once loved so consumingly, so profoundly, that he’d considered giving up everything for her, and the man he had considered almost a brother.
But he had been out of their lives a long time. Had allowed them to think he had disintegrated in that damn explosion. For their own good, or so he had believed.
The sound he made into the stillness of the car was more a bark than a laugh.
He watched as Alexa stepped into the late-model SUV, the way her jeans stretched tight over her well-shaped behind. He was fifty times a fool for noticing, but she still looked good. Too good, though he had noticed small wrinkles of strain at the corners of her wide blue eyes. Maybe she had missed him.
Maybe she felt guilty.
Right. And maybe he was really John O’Rourke here on vacation.
When they had been together, her golden-brown hair with its reddish highlights had either been caught up in a tight bun at the back of her head, or, when they were alone, loose around her shoulders. Today, it had been drawn back into a plastic clip at the base of her long, graceful neck.
She was thinner than he recalled. She wore a navy work shirt over her jeans. Had he ever seen her before in anything less than designer slacks and silk blouses? When she was clothed, that is. He had seen her in a lot less, once upon a time.
Even now, his body tensed in recollection of the passion they had once shared. But he pushed it aside. He had a job to do, and that was the only reason he was here.
And it was a damn important reason.
He watched their SUV drive away, Alexa in the passenger seat talking earnestly to her fiancé.
Her fiancé. The man who had a right to kiss her like that. Cole had to remind himself of that little fact over and over, allow it to slice away at all the corners inside him that had eroded every time he had allowed himself, over the past couple of years, to think of Alexa. He needed every edge within him to be hard and sharp now.
He hadn’t planned on running into her just yet, but the chance meeting had worked to his advantage. And he would need a lot of advantages here to achieve all he had to.
She’d apparently thought she knew him—then realized her mistake. He hadn’t expected her to think he was Cole Rappaport,
