her to house a collection of trees. Palms, miniature oranges and even a red maple she’d been given as a housewarming gift but hadn’t quite gotten around to planting in the historic brick building’s postage stamp of a backyard. Her know-it-all brothers had assured her that the tree would die after being inside over a week, but months later, it still thrived.
Giving the soup a stir, she mused that a lot of people—especially her overprotective father and two big brothers—had thought her business would die. But it’d been ninety days since she’d opened her doors and while she wouldn’t say her business was thriving, it was holding its own. Just like her and Anna.
Together, they were learning to weather grief, life’s toughest storm.
What about the storm you’re about to face in partnering with Dalton Montgomery?
A burning, sweet scent filled her nostrils a second before the telltale sizzle of liquid hit the gas burner’s flame.
Rats. In all her daydreaming, she’d forgotten her soup. She twisted off the heat and cleaned the oozing red mess. So much for supper.
Grabbing saltines from the pantry, she plopped into her favorite overstuffed armchair. She knew it’d sound silly to anyone else, but the chair had been John’s, and sitting in it was akin to getting a hug. At times, she’d have sworn she still smelled his citrus aftershave on the brown leather.
She switched on the local news, but when the bulk of the broadcast consisted of an extended sports segment, she turned it off, and her eyes drifted shut….
“Ahem. Ms. Vasquez?”
Rose jerked to attention only to find Dalton Montgomery standing less than twelve inches away!
“Sorry,” Mr. Montgomery said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”
Rose scooted to an upright position and tried to quickly pull herself together. Her hair was probably a mess and she did her best to shove it back into a metal clip.
“Don’t,” her uninvited guest said, eyeing her in his annoyingly direct way.
“Don’t what?”
“Fix your hair. It looks…fine. Like that.” He swallowed hard. “Down.” Wild. While he hadn’t voiced that last part, she sensed that was what he’d meant. Which was why she went ahead with the task of smoothing her hair back and purposefully snapping the clip.
His tone made her do a quick check to ensure her nap hadn’t resulted in a wardrobe malfunction. Nope, all was well with her formfitting black dress. It was her mind that seemed in trouble. What was it about him that left her off balance?
“Why are you here?” she asked, adopting the coldly professional tone she used with unruly junior-high students forced to take waltz classes by their parents.
“I have a lesson. Remember?” He tapped his watch. “It’s already seven-fifteen. I smelled something burning and worried there was a problem, especially seeing how all the doors were unlocked but no one was there.”
“So you barged into my home?”
“Whoa. Look, lady, I don’t know what you’re so defensive about all of a sudden, but I was only trying to be a Good Samaritan. Your door was wide open. I thought your place might be on fire. I came in to make sure you were okay. End of story. Now, are we going to dance, or what?”
Or what? Good question.
As was the matter of why she was so snippy.
She rarely slept through the night, which left her napping during the day. Usually to be poked awake by her assistant, Rachel—currently on maternity leave. Which was why she’d left the door open out of habit. Mr. Montgomery’s explanation had been plausible. Even admirable. His small-town brand of ingrained, instantaneous caring was a large part of the reason she’d packed up Anna and made the move from their impersonal Dallas high-rise to the town of Hot Pepper. She’d moved because she wanted to raise her daughter in a place populated with friendly folks. Double-checking her barrette, Rose stood. “I’m the one who should be sorry. With prom season right around the corner, I’ve been giving more private lessons than usual. All the overtime has me not quite myself.”
“It’s okay. When under pressure, I tend to go all grizzly on folks, too.” A quirky bear growl escaped his lips as he held up his fingers, feigning ferocious claws.
“Do you?” she asked, for whatever strange reason needing to know that he did truly understand.
He answered with a sad laugh as his lips fell into an unmistakable frown. They were firm lips. Yet soft. Intriguing, as if he held the power to kiss a woman senseless…Assuming she wanted to be kissed. Which she didn’t. Just that—
“Yes, Ms. Vasquez, I understand more than you could possibly know on the subject of how too much work affects people.” With a light sigh, he gestured to the floral-print sofa. “Mind if I have a seat?”
“Of course not. Please…” She gestured for him to make himself comfortable.
Dressed as he was in loose-fitting faded jeans and a chest-hugging orange-and-black Princeton T-shirt, he was a different man from the suit she’d met the previous night.
“Whew,” he said. “It feels good taking a load off. Down at the bank I’ve been pacing my office floor. A company my investment group is interested in acquiring tanked big-time. I can’t understand it. One minute, it was up by two, the next, down by ten. My guess is that it’s a soured subprime loan issue, but it could just be a poor review of stock option grants. It’s frustrating, you know. That feeling that there’s nothing you can do to resolve a situation.”
Rose flashed a wishy-washy grin. Dance was—had always been—her life. Aside from his sense of helplessness with which she was intimately acquainted, he might as well have been speaking Chinese.
“You didn’t understand a bit of what I just said, did you?”
“Nope,” she said with a surprisingly easy grin. “I didn’t get a single word.”
“That’s okay. No one understands what I do. Half the time, even I’m confused. Hey—” he pointed to the blackened saucepan still on the stove “—I know we’re supposed to be working on my dance moves, but how about grabbing a quick bite to eat first?”
Warning bells rang.
Yes, she should be professionally courteous with the man. But sharing a meal sounded suspiciously like a date.
It wasn’t, though, not really.
Besides, which sounded more ominous to her already thudding heart? Being held tightly in the man’s arms as he swept her across a dance floor, or sitting across a booth from him at downtown Hot Pepper’s usually crowded sandwich shop?
Seeing the situation in that light put a whole new slant on the matter. By all means, she should put off dancing for as long as possible.
“Let’s eat,” she said, already scrambling from her chair to find her purse.
“You seem hurried. Hungry?”
“Starving.”
“Great.
