“Cotton or silk?”
“Silk. Now it’s your turn.”
The two women turned and stared at the door, waiting for their next victim to walk through. He entered less than a minute later, looking as good as Delaney remembered. Tommy Markham’s brown hair still curled about his ears and neck. He was still lean rather than beefy, and when his gaze landed on Delaney, his smile was still as charming as a wayward boy’s. The kind of smile that could make a woman forgive him almost anything.
“You’re driving my wife crazy. You know that don’t you?” he said as he approached their table.
Delaney looked up into Tommy’s blue eyes and placed an innocent hand on her chest. “Me?” There had been a time when the sight of his long lashes had made her heart flutter. She couldn’t help the smile curving her mouth, but her heart was just fine. “What have I done?”
“You moved back.”
Good, she thought. Helen had spent their whole childhood needling Delaney, driving her crazy.
Turnabout was certainly fair play. “So, where is the old ball and chain anyway?”
He laughed and sat in the chair next to her. “She and the kids went to a wedding in Challis. They’ll be back tomorrow sometime.”
“Why didn’t you go?” Lisa asked him.
“I have to work in the morning.”
Delaney looked across the table at her friend, who was doing the “he’s married” signal with her eyes. Delaney grinned. Lisa had nothing to worry about. She didn’t sleep with married men-ever. But Helen wouldn’t know that. Let her worry.
Nick hung up the telephone and rolled his chair backward. The fluorescent lighting hummed overhead, and a smiled played across his lips as he looked out the plate glass window. The sun had set and his own reflection stared back at him. Everything was coming together. He had three contractors jumping to invest venture capital with him, and he was in the process of talking to several lenders.
He tossed his pencil onto the desk in front of him, then ran his fingers through the side of his hair. Half the town of Truly was going to shit bricks when they learned of his plans for Silver Creek. The other half was going to love it.
When he and Louie had decided to move the company to Truly, they’d known the older residents of the town would resist development and growth of any kind. But like Henry, those people were dying off and being replaced by a whole influx of yuppies. Depending on whom you listened to, the Allegrezza boys were either businessmen or land rapers. They were loved or hated. But then, they always had been.
He stood and stretched his arms over his head. The specifications for a nine-hole golf course and the blueprints for fifty-four two-thousand-square-foot condominiums lay before him. Even with a conservative projected budget, Allegrezza Construction stood to make a fortune. And that was just the first stage of development. The second stage was bound to make even more money, with million-dollar houses built within spitting distance of the green. Now all Nick needed was clear deed to the forty acres Henry had bequeathed him. In June he’d have it.
Nick smiled into the empty office. He’d made his first million building everything from starter houses to lavish homes in Boise, but a guy could always use spare cash.
He grabbed his bomber’s jacket off the coat tree and headed out the back. After he finished with his plans for Silver Creek, he would think about what he wanted to build at Angel Beach. Or maybe he wouldn’t build on it at all. He paused long enough to switch off the lights before locking the door behind him. His Harley Fat Boy sat in the space next to Delaney’s Miata. He glanced up at her apartment, and the green door illuminated by a weak light. What a hole.
He could understand why she’d want to move from her mother’s house. He couldn’t be around Gwen for three seconds without wanting to choke her. But what he didn’t understand was why Delaney had chosen to move into such a dump. He knew Henry’s will provided her with a monthly income, and he knew she could afford a better place. It wouldn’t take much for a man to kick the damn door off the hinges.
When he got the time, he still planned to replace the locks on her shop. But Delaney herself wasn’t his problem. Where she lived or what she chose to wear didn’t concern him. If she wanted to live in a little hole and wear a strip of vinyl that barely covered her ass, that was her problem. He didn’t give a damn. He was sure he wouldn’t give her more than a passing thought if she weren’t living practically on top of him.
Swinging one leg over the Harley, he righted the bike. If he’d seen any other woman in that skimpy vinyl crap, he would have appreciated the hell out of it, but not Delaney. Seeing her shrink-wrapped tighter than a deli snack had made him itch to peel back the plastic and take a bite. He’d gone from zero to hard in about three seconds.
He kicked the stand up with the heel of his boot and pressed the ignition button. The v-twin engine roared to life, shattered the still night air, and vibrated his thighs. Getting hard for a woman he wasn’t planning on taking to bed didn’t bother him. Getting hard over that particular woman did.
He gunned the bike and shot down the alley, barely slowing as he turned onto First. He felt restless and was home only long enough to take a shower. The silence set him on edge, and he didn’t know why. He needed a diversion, a distraction, and he ended up at Hennesey’s with a beer in his hand and Lonna Howell in his lap.
His table looked out onto the dance floor, pitched in darkness and filled with slow shifting bodies, moving to the sensual rhythm and languid blues flowing from five-foot speakers. Slivers of light shone on the band and several rows of track lighting illuminated the front of the bar. But mostly the tavern was as dark as sin so a person could get away with sinful things.
Nick didn’t have any particular sin planned, but the night was still young and Lonna was more than willing.
Chapter Six
Delaney locked her fingers behind her old boyfriend’s neck and moved with him to the slow pulse of blues guitar. Being so close to Tommy again felt a little like deja vu, only different because the arms holding her now belonged to a man, not a boy. As a boy he’d had no rhythm, he still didn’t. Back then, he’d always smelled like Irish Spring soap. Now he wore cologne, not the fresh scent she’d always associated with him. He’d been her first love. He’d made her heart pound and her pulse race. She felt neither of those things now.
“Remind me again,” he spoke next to Delaney’s ear, “why can’t we be friends?”
“Because your wife hates me.”
“Oh, yeah.” He pulled her a little closer, but kept his hands on the small of her back. “But I like you.”
His shameless flirting had started an hour ago, right after Lisa had left. He’d propositioned her twice, but was so charming about it, she couldn’t get angry with him. He made her laugh and made her forget that he’d broken her heart by choosing Helen.
“Why wouldn’t you sleep with me in high school?” he asked.
She’d wanted to-really wanted to. She’d been madly in love and filled with the juices of raging teen hormones. But overpowering her desire for Tommy had been the terror that her mother and Henry would find out she’d been with a boy. “You dumped me.”
“No. You dumped me.”
“Only after I caught you boffing Helen.”
“Oh, yeah.”
She pulled back far enough to look into his face, barely visible on the darkened dance floor. His laughter joined hers when she said, “That was horrible.”
“It sucked. I always felt really bad about what happened, but I never knew what I should say to you after that,” he confessed. “I knew what I wanted to say, but I didn’t think you’d like it.”