She regarded him blankly. “Why?” she asked, when she should have been shrieking to the high heavens about the gall of any man who would walk back into a woman’s life after six years and drop a marriage proposal on the table as if it were a simple hello.
“Why?” she asked again, wondering if there was a snowball’s chance in hell that she would get the simple, three-word answer she’d always dreamed of hearing cross his lips.
“My son needs a mother. You need somebody to put this place on a sound financial base again. We always got along. I think we could make it work.”
Not three words, but a litany, Katie noticed in disgust as Luke ticked off the reasons matter-of-factly. He’d probably made a damn list of them. His businesslike tone made her grind her teeth.
“You sound as if you’re negotiating for the merger of two companies with compatible products,” she accused.
The idiot didn’t even have the decency to deny it.
“That’s one way of looking at it, I suppose,” he agreed, looking pleased that she had grasped the concept. “We both get something we need. I knew I could count on you not to get all sloppy and sentimental about this.”
Katie was just itching to reach for the cast iron skillet that was sitting atop her twenty-year-old stove, when she made the mistake of looking again into Luke’s eyes for a second time. Those blue eyes that had once danced with laughter were flat and empty now. Lonely. Lost.
Katie had always been a sucker for a lost soul. And from her twelfth birthday, when he’d brought her a wilted, but flamboyantly huge bouquet of wildflowers, she had been a sucker for Luke Cassidy. Regrettably, nothing in the past six years they’d been apart had changed that.
She drew in a deep, steadying breath and realized that she was going to do it. She was going to say yes and damn the consequences.
“Oh, what the hell,” she murmured, furious with herself for not having the willpower to resist this man or the son he’d just turned up with. Maybe she’d just been a spinster too darn long. More likely, she’d just missed Luke too much, something she wouldn’t tell him if he hog-tied her and dragged her through town in full view of every single person who’d watched the two of them grow up. Cursing herself for being a pathetic, love-starved wimp, she tried valiantly to list all the reasons to say an emphatic no. There were dozens of them, but she couldn’t seem to force her lips to form the first one.
At her continued silence, a faint suggestion of a grin tugged at Luke’s mouth. “Was that a yes?”
It was and they both knew it, but she wouldn’t make it easy on him. Katie knew she didn’t have Luke’s business acumen, but she did have an instinct for self-preservation. She couldn’t just cave in and accept his first offer. If he wanted a coldhearted business deal, then that’s what he’d get.
“We need to discuss terms,” she said, keeping her voice as matter-of-fact as his, even though her heart was thundering wildly.
She couldn’t believe what she was about to do. She was standing in her own kitchen, negotiating with a man she’d loved forever, about a blasted marriage of convenience. She ought to have her head examined. She was apparently every bit as loony as he was.
Then again, as everyone who knew her well would understand, her head had never had much to do with her feelings for Luke. It was her heart he had stolen and apparently intended to claim now as his own.
Still, there was a definite call for putting some emotional distance between them, for hanging on to a shred of dignity. She would not rush into his arms, allowing herself to think for one single instant that he actually cared a whit for her. He wanted a mother for his child. She would be a baby-sitter with unusual benefits. That was it. She supposed people had gotten married for less rational reasons, but she’d never met any of them.
A few centuries back marriages like this had even been arranged by doting, practical fathers. She’d always considered such arrangements barbaric. Now she found herself in the unique position of working out such terms for herself. Well, Luke could be darned sure that she was going to adequately protect herself from any more of his foolish whims.
She went to the kitchen counter, picked up a pad of paper and a pen, then sat down at the table, pen poised. “I’m ready. Let’s talk.”
“Okay,” he said, suddenly cautious. “What did you have in mind?”
“A contract with everything all spelled out on paper. Didn’t you remind me just a few minutes ago that that’s how business is done?” she asked sweetly.
“Katie,” he began in a warning tone.
She ignored the warning. “This is my boarding house. I run it as I see fit.” She jotted that down before he could say a word.
“Now, wait a minute,” he protested. “Running it how you see fit is what got you into this mess.”
She looked him straight in the eye. “I run it. I deal with the guests,” she insisted. “You can handle the business end of things, if you want.”
“Thank you so much,” he said.
She frowned at his mocking tone. “This won’t work, if you’re going to be surly.”
“I am never surly.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “You haven’t changed that much, Luke Cassidy. You were always surly, especially when you weren’t getting your way.”
She studied him consideringly. He wasn’t exactly dressed for success today, but she wasn’t fooled by the faded, skintight jeans, the rumpled yellow shirt or the battered sneakers. She knew the kind of money the man had made. She’d saved every one of the clippings from the local paper enumerating his financial achievements. Luke might not have been back in Clover for years, but his press releases had been.
“I’d say an investment in the Clover Street Boarding House would
