The C.e.o. & The Cookie Queen. Victoria Chancellor
he said, his gaze taking in her shirt and jeans. She felt extremely overdressed, considering his state, but then reminded herself that she certainly didn’t need to be wearing any less around Greg Rafferty. He’s all wrong for you, she warned herself, even as she stopped her wayward eyes and thoughts from drifting southward.
“I’m glad you came to see me, but I am rather surprised. You weren’t thrilled that I bought your daughter’s steer.”
“My daughter? Yes, my daughter! She’s in the barn. That’s why we came to see you. Both of us. Because she wanted to make sure you knew how to take care of Puff.”
“Both of you,” he repeated, sounding disappointed. He ran a hand through his thick, wet hair.
“Yes. As a matter of fact, I’d better go check on her.” She tore her gaze away from his face and turned around, ready to hurry back to the barn. Ready to drive her pickup down that gravel road as if the devil himself was chasing her.
The devil in a black Speedo.
His hand stopped her, clamped around her upper arm gently but firmly. She felt the dampness through her suddenly thin cotton shirt and shivered. “Wait a minute. Let me get a towel and I’ll go with you.”
So much for making a hasty retreat. “You need more than a towel,” she said before thinking.
He let go of her arm, then shrugged when she looked at him. “I wasn’t expecting company.”
“Apparently not,” Carole murmured, cursing herself for giving him another once-over with her wickedly independent eyes. Why couldn’t her body obey her firm resolve not to pay the least amount of attention to this totally unsuitable man?
“Are you shocked by what I’m wearing, Ms. Carole?” Rafferty asked in a teasing tone.
“You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before,” she replied, folding her arms across her chest and looking over the high fence toward the barn. Not that she could see anything.
She wasn’t about to tell him that she hadn’t seen anything exactly like he displayed. If the rest of him was as good as—Don’t go there, she warned herself. Stop thinking about him that way!
“I’ll bet you don’t have a lot of cowboys running around in competitive swimwear,” he said with a chuckle. “I assume the community is a little more conservative than that.”
“You’ve got that right,” Carole agreed, still not looking at him. “We tend to be a bit more modest.”
“So you think I’m an exhibitionist for swimming in my own pool?”
“I didn’t call you names.”
“You didn’t have to,” he said, his voice coming from very close beside her. She couldn’t resist looking.
“Is this better?” He held his arms out, revealing a partially buttoned cotton shirt and a yellow towel wrapped around his waist.
“Different,” she admitted with a smile. He didn’t look sophisticated and urban at the moment. Tousled and with the strange get-up, no one could consider him a threat to anyone’s peace of mind.
Of course, she still remembered what he looked like without the shirt and towel.
“I do have some questions that you and Jenny can answer,” he said as they started walked toward the gate, “about feeding Puff. What time, how much at a time, that sort of thing.”
He was right behind her, and Carole could swear that she felt his hot breath on her neck. Ridiculous. Her mind was playing tricks on her. The weather was warm, the pool made the breeze humid.
“What’s that perfume you’re wearing?” he asked as he reached around her to open the gate.
“I’m not wearing any,” she managed to answer as she squeezed through the opening.
“Really? You smell like vanilla.”
“I baked this morning,” she admitted, walking quickly toward the barn.
“A batch of Ms. Carole’s cookies?” he asked in an amused tone.
She turned back and frowned at him. “No, coffee cake. There’s more to life than cookies, Mr. Rafferty.”
His gaze roamed over her jeans and shirt, pausing to look her in the eye. “I’m aware of that, Ms. Jacks.”
She set her lips in a thin line and turned back to where her daughter was waiting. Irritating man. She should have said, “There’s more to life than cookies and sex.”
CAROLE WAVED as Jenny scrambled into the back seat of the minivan with her friends Ashley and Meagan. The other two moms had offered to take the three girls to San Antonio for a day at their favorite amusement park, Schlitterbahn. Which was great for Jenny, because it took her mind off the auction and distracted her from the present location of Puff. Carole was pretty sure she’d want to go over there twice a day if possible.
Jenny had giggled yesterday at Greg Rafferty’s towel-wrapped ensemble, but Carole hadn’t laughed. Not when she remembered how he’d looked before he’d covered up. There was only so much potent male she could tolerate before retreating to the safety of her home. And staying there.
Except today he was invading her space, courtesy of the invitation she’d grudgingly extended. Jenny had insisted on open-mindedness, and Carole wouldn’t disappoint her daughter. That didn’t mean she would agree to whatever Rafferty was suggesting.
As soon as the minivan was out of sight, Carole sighed and walked into the house. The absolute silence reminded her that in another week, Jenny would be gone to camp and every day would sound like this. Quiet. Still. After growing up in a small house with two sisters, then having a baby of her own, she wasn’t accustomed to what some people called peaceful. She much preferred the sound of her daughter’s chatter, the ding-ding of electronic games, the singsong nature of children’s music.
Even Puff was gone, living at the rented house with a man from Chicago who didn’t know alfalfa pellets from sweet feed.
And said stranger was going to arrive here in less than an hour.
With a sigh, she switched on the radio and let the sound of soft rock—since she no longer listened to country music—fill the silent kitchen as she gazed outside. A side bay window overlooked the pasture, but there wasn’t much there to see today. The Texas sun had bleached the grass to a pale golden beige, and until the rains came again in September, the fields would remain lifeless.
“Why did I agree to meet with him?” Carole mumbled as she smelled the coffee still simmering in the bottom of the glass carafe. She wrinkled her nose at the foul odor, quickly pouring out the dark liquid. She wasn’t mean enough to serve that gunk to Rafferty, even if they were adversaries.
Of course, she thought with a smile, she might be able to convince him that “real cowboys” drank that kind of hot acid, but she wasn’t about to subject her stomach to such abuse. She’d make a fresh pot right before he arrived, but darned if she was going to bake any cookies to go along with the coffee. No way. This was strictly business.
GREG PULLED TO A STOP in the gravel driveway behind the nondescript white pickup truck that Carole had driven to his rental property yesterday. Perhaps today they could focus on the issue to Huntington Foods’ image problem—if they could ignore the sexual attraction that simmered right below the surface of her incredibly smooth, vanilla-scented skin.
He promised himself he’d try as he exited the air-conditioned interior of his rental car for the sauna heat of Texas in August. How did these people stand it? At least he had the pool to help him cool off. He enjoyed the luxury of swimming anytime he wanted, although he felt a bit guilty about not working harder on getting this situation straightened out. He hadn’t become C.E.O. of his family’s business by lying around a pool—much less daydreaming about Carole Jacks.
And he wouldn’t solve Huntington’s problem by lusting after