Page 11 of Sexy as Sin
“Wait,” she said. “You need the van, except that it’s full of trays of food. Bugger.”
“You forget that I’m in the Secret Service. The back of that monster folds down, remember? Useful for bicycles, surfboards, and anything else that might crop up in the course of a busy man’s day. You hold them off. I’ll be back.”
Why would you do this?she wanted to ask as he left. Fast, but not running. He probably never ran, not unless he’d planned to and was dressed appropriately, in which case he’d win the race in the last hundred meters, because he’d have moved up one by one on the flashy leaders and overtaken them.
She answered herself, too.It’s his event, he wants it to succeed, and, clearly, he takes the long view. He doesn’t look for blame, he looks for solutions. Which anybody would do. Anybody who’s as bright as this man. Which is almost nobody.
Pity her stubborn heart refused to believe it.
Also, she still didn’t know his name.
One thing Brett could say about his ocean warrior. She had resilience. By the time he got back from Woolworth’s with the back of the SUV loaded down, she had a drink in the hand of every early arrival and the servers circulating with trays of nibbles, toothpicks, and cocktail napkins. Some kind of wonton cups, it looked like, and savory tartlets, all of it finger-and-napkin food. She’d draped streamers of red crepe paper at waist height around the open-sided white marquee and fashioned bows at the corners, as if ready for a ribbon-cutting ceremony. Inside, the tables nearly groaned under temptingly arranged platters, and more than one guest was sneaking a look like a kid at a birthday party wishing it was time for cake. Remembering Willow’s rendition of French toast, Brett couldn’t blame them.
He was a disciplined man with a disciplined waistline, though, and he tried to view food as fuel. When you came from a long line of loggers, you knew that the pleasures of the flesh were temporary, and inadvisable to the point of disaster if they made you unfit. Best to resist.
After an inquiry of one of the waitresses, he found Willow hidden in the trees beside her van, piping whipped cream onto tiny two-bite tarts of the sweet variety. She’d dressed like her servers today, in a white blouse and black pants. It wasn’t nearly as appealing a look on her as a bikini or a sundress, and the hair she’d coiled into a firm knot at the nape of her neck seemed unhappily confined and begging to be set free.
Of course, that could have been his imagination. It had proven fairly unruly today. It could also have to do with being in Australia, a country where “discipline” didn’t seem to be the governing principle, and also, possibly, with the faint sweetness that hung in the air here. Or it could be red hair, nearly translucent skin, sunshine, flowers, and the memory of a sundress falling off a woman who’d been born for pleasure.
He said, “The cavalry has arrived,” and she jumped, missed with her cone of whipped cream, and spoiled a lemon tart.
“You scared me,” she complained, but she was laughing. “How’d you go? I realized, after you’d left, that peoplecouldeat everything I made with their fingers if they had to. Going without plates might be pushing it, though.”
“Come see.”
“Eat this first. Please. I need to know that it works.” She picked up the spoiled lemon tartlet and held it for him. “Smells good, doesn’t it?” she said when he didn’t bite. She waggled it in front of his nose, her green eyes teasing. “Come on. It’s dee-li-cious. You know you want it.”
All right. So he had another of those tricky moments when he was accepting a tiny morsel of temptation off her fingers, all melt-in-your-mouth butter, silky sweet-and-sour lemon curd, and whipped cream, then watching her eat the rest, then stick her index finger into her mouth and suck off the residue while she looked into his eyes and smiled. Slowly. Any man would have had issues with that.
“Good, huh,” she said, her smile growing wider at his expression.
“Yeah,” he managed to answer, and wondered exactly how hot it was out here. She turned away to wash her hands in a portable sink, and he took a breath and got himself under control again.
This day was important. This day was the main purpose of the trip. It was the kickoff in the football game, your best chance to establish your position. He had a joint venture and investors back home to think about, and this deal was out of their comfort zone. Big, expensive, and risky. He didn’t need to add anything to the list. He was a man who focused on the plan, and this was the plan. You decided and you moved on, and he’d already decided.
Entangled. Partially.
And so forth.
While he was still wrestling with his libido, she covered her trays, shut them back into a refrigerated compartment in the van, and then walked down the hill with him. He’d driven around to the far side of the marquee, away from the crowd, and had backed the SUV up as close as he could manage. She took a look at the contents and said, “Oh, perfect on the buckets and flowers. You are sogood.Or you could be amazing. I’m going with ‘amazing.’”
“Tell me where,” he said, trying not to let that sink in too deeply, “and I’ll start moving them in.”
“You have guests. I can get one of the staff to help.”
“I have partners, too, and they’re already on the job. I’ll do it. Ten minutes. Maybe I’m like your gift-wrapped marquee, and I need to make an entrance. The star attraction.” He grinned at her hastily muffled snort of laughter. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear that. And seriously,” he added as he reached for galvanized buckets and an armful of sunflowers and Asiatic lilies in fiery red and orange, “it may work, especially as I’ve been realizing you’re right. I’m overdressed. I’ll need to turn that into an asset. I’m the serious guy who’s bringing the serious money. Something like that.”
“You could take off your jacket.” She’d hopped up inside the SUV and was loading up on buckets and flowers. “And your tie. You’d be closer to ‘not weird,’ anyway. We’re fairly casual around here. It’s a surf town, money or no.”
“Nope. I’m going to roll with it. Here’s a useful phrase. ‘I meant to do that.’ And on that note, they were out of the flag tablecloths, so I improvised.”
“No worries,” she said, and kept moving. “We’re rolling with it.”
She worked fast. He had a hard time keeping up with her. Within ten minutes, she had makeshift bouquets arranged, along with the white wine, in her unconventional galvanized-pail ice buckets, and the tables looking cheerful and inviting. And when he brought her the flag-bedecked paper plates and hot-drink cups, she laughed.
“Awesome,” she said. “Lemons into lemonade and all. We have a theme party here. I meant to do that. See? I’m practicing.”
“One more thing.” He brought it out. A half-dozen packs of bunting flags, the Union Jack and the Southern Cross on each jaunty triangular piece, to hang around the edges of the tables and the marquee entrance. “Also,” he said, showing her, “a staple gun. Better than flag tablecloths, that’s our new position. I’ll staple, and you do your next thing. When you’re ready to open the gates to the mob, bring me a scissors, and we’ll have the mayor declare the marquee open.”
