all right,” he assured her. “I really don’t have any plans.” And even if he had, he wouldn’t have passed up this opportunity, not if she was going to be there.
“No more midnight-oil burning?” Shana asked innocently.
Her eyes were smiling. He liked that. They seemed to highlight her entire face—making it even more perfect.
“I try not to do that two nights in a row,” he told her as he reached for the still-cold coffee on his desk. “It makes me a little sluggish mentally in the morning.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll make sure you get to bed early,” she promised.
He’d just raised the coffee cup to his lips and taken a sip. Hearing her comment caused the coffee to slide down the wrong way. He started coughing.
Instantly alert, Shana quickly crossed over to him and began to pound him on the back. Still coughing, Travis held up his hand, signaling that he was all right.
“Excuse me?” he finally got out, albeit rather hoarsely.
Shana replayed her last words, then grinned. If she realized how he’d interpreted the line, she gave no further indication.
“Dad has a tendency to do a lot of buttonholing at the restaurant. Sometimes he doesn’t know when to stop. He’s got a thousand stories to tell,” she explained. “I’ll just make sure you go home at a decent hour so you get some sleep.”
“Oh.”
The single word echoed simultaneously with enlightenment and just a touch of disappointment. For a moment there, he’d let his mind drift and her words conjured up an image he’d found both infinitely pleasing and damn arousing.
Of course that was what she meant. He knew that. What was the matter with him? “That’s all right,” he told her. “I come from a large family. I know how to make an exit without hurting anyone’s feelings.”
“Then I’ll look forward to seeing you tonight,” Shana said. “We’re right in the middle of the block. You can’t miss us.” Humor curved her lips and then she winked. “We’re the ones with a shamrock in the sign.”
With that, she left the room and joined her father. Travis heard them walking away, their voices growing fainter as they made their way down the hall to the elevator.
Shana’s wink had repercussions. Travis felt as if he’d just been shot with another arrow. Unlike the ones that had assaulted his temple earlier, this one had a soft tip and went straight to his heart.
He slid bonelessly back into his chair.
To the best of Travis’s recollection, he’d never responded to a woman like this before. Oh, there’d been attractive, even beautiful women who had crossed his path, but he couldn’t recall a single one making him feel as if he’d been struck by lightning. And been happy about it.
Shifting to slip his hand into his pocket, he pulled out his wallet and took out the card Shawn had handed him. He stared at it, committing the address to memory just in case he lost the card between now and this evening. It was a date he intended to keep. For a number of reasons. And humoring a client was way down on the list.
“You’re checking out another restaurant?” Even over the phone, Trevor’s voice sounded incredulous when Travis called him later that afternoon.
“Not checking it out, I’m seeing a client there,” Travis explained.
So far, Travis hadn’t been able to get to the crux of why he’d called. Trevor sounded a bit harried and definitely put out that he was asking about another restaurant.
“Why don’t you bring him over to mine?” Trevor suggested. “I’ll make your personal favorite,” he coaxed, adding, “on the house. You can pretend to pick up the check to impress your client and I’ll reimburse you the next time I see you. See, the best of all worlds. Besides, you’ve been so busy, I haven’t had a chance to see you lately.”
“Look in the mirror,” Travis quipped. “That’s almost like seeing me.”
“We’re not mirror images of each other,” Trevor reminded him. There was a noise in the background and for a moment, Travis heard the sound of a hand being placed over the receiver. Trevor’s muffled voice called to his assistant, Emilio, to take care of a late delivery. When his attention returned to his telephone conversation with Travis, he said, “You, Trent and I are identical images of each other.” And then a thought obviously struck Trevor. “Unless you don’t want him to see me because it might confuse him. It is a him that we’re talking about, aren’t we?”
“It’s a him.” Travis thought it prudent not to mention Shana or the odd, almost overwhelming attraction he felt for her. Ever since his brothers had married, they waited for him to make the set complete. Telling Trevor about Shana would just set his brother off on a tangent that really had no basis in reality. “The restaurant I just asked you about belongs to my client,” Travis explained. “He wants me to drop by to see it.”
“Why?”
“Because I get the feeling that he’s as proud of it as you are of yours.”
There was a slight pause and Trevor capitulated. “What did you say the name of it was again?”
That was more like it. This was the reason why he’d called Trevor in the first place. He’d assumed that, just like lawyers and doctors, restaurant owners had their own little network, keeping tabs on one another and being more in the know about a particular restaurant than the average person on the street.
“Shawn’s Li’l Bit of Heaven,” Travis told him. “Have you heard of it?”
“Rings a bell,” Trevor admitted. The silence told Travis his brother was trying to remember something. “They specialize in Irish food—and in Tex-Mex. To each his own, but it’s a strange combination if you ask me.”
“Not if you know the owner,” Travis told him. “The man’s from Texas and he had ties to Ireland somewhere along the line in his ancestry. His last name’s O’Reilly.”
“Ah. And another mystery has been laid to rest,” Trevor cracked. “I can ask around if you want,” he offered. “Just what is it you want to know?”
“If the restaurant is doing well. If there were any health code violations in the last year, things like that. The usual. I need to assess its present value,” he explained.
“Is the owner selling it?” Trevor asked, mildly interested. He’d been toying with the idea of opening a second restaurant and leaving Emilio to run the one presently open.
“No, he wants to put it into a living trust for his daughters.”
There was a low whistle on the other end of the line. “Nice,” Trevor commented. “But instead of taking the roundabout route, why don’t you just ask to look at his books?”
“I will, but I thought I’d get a heads up first so that I’d know what to expect,” Travis confided. “O’Reilly invited me to drop by for a meal tonight. It’s strictly social.”
“All
