When she quickly rejoined him, Dillon was still sneezing, although not nearly as violently as before. Hailey realized that he was sneezing because the scent was still around him, thanks to the fact that it had soaked his shirt and was now probably on his chest.
Hailey instantly felt just awful. It was clear that Dillon was suffering.
“Again, I am so sorry,” she apologized with feeling. “I didn’t know you were allergic to the oils we used. Why didn’t you say something?” she wanted to know.
It took Dillon a moment to clear his throat enough to be able to answer her. “Because I’m not allergic to oils,” he informed her almost indignantly. And then he was forced to add, “I just have this reaction sometimes when I pass by a department store perfume counter... I mean, not that I go around inhaling perfumes, it’s just that sometimes there are these overly zealous sales people spraying perfumes into the air and—”
Dillon had to abruptly stop because he’d started sneezing again.
Hailey saw only one solution to end the man’s misery. “You’re going to have to take off your shirt,” she told him.
Her declaration caught Dillon totally by surprise. He stared at the spa manager, certain that he had misheard her. “Say what?”
“Your shirt. It’s soaked,” she pointed out in case he had somehow missed that. “Take it off,” she instructed. It was half a request, half an order. “I can wash it for you.”
The hell she could, he thought. He wasn’t about to strip off his shirt.
“No, that’s all right,” he said as he began backing away. “I can just—”
“What, walk out of here smelling like a flower garden on steroids?” she asked him. There was a skeptical expression on her face. “I don’t think so. At the very least, you might wind up attracting bees and being attacked by them. Besides,” she said, pausing as Dillon sneezed again, “you’re probably not going to stop sneezing until you’re separated from that scent. It’s clearly all over you, and in your case, apparently a little bit goes a long way. So don’t argue with me, Mr. Fortune. Give!” she told Dillon, holding out her hand. “We have a small dedicated laundry area here at the spa. That’s how we get our spa robes so clean and fluffy.”
Dillon still looked really hesitant about surrendering his shirt.
“That’s too much trouble,” Dillon told her. “I can just—”
“Oh, I know what the problem is,” she told him, realizing why he was hesitating so much—or at least she thought she knew why he wasn’t taking his shirt off. After all, he was the spa’s contractor. He didn’t exactly want to be standing around in his semi-bare glory. The man looked as if he had hard muscles rippling under that shirt of his. Still, being shirtless would undoubtedly prove to be somewhat embarrassing for him. She could understand that.
“Oh?” Despite himself, Dillon’s curiosity was aroused by what this woman thought she knew.
“Yes,” Hailey answered enthusiastically. “You need something to put on,” she declared as if she had the inside path to his mind. “Wait right here. I’m going to go find something for you,” she promised, rushing off.
“No, really,” Dillon called after her, “you don’t have to go to any more trouble.”
Especially since she had managed to cause all this trouble just by taking him on a harmless tour of the place to begin with.
But Dillon found he was talking to himself. Hailey Miller, eager beaver par excellence, had rushed off in search of something for him to wear.
Dillon was about to cut his losses and just get out of here before something else went wrong. But his dearly savored escape was quickly aborted when Hailey came hurrying back less than a minute and a half after she had left him standing there dripping.
Instead of a T-shirt with the spa’s logo splashed across the front as Dillon would have anticipated, she came back carrying something white and fluffy.
“Here,” she announced, holding up what looked like one of the spa robes. “It’s the best I could come up with on such short notice—and it does cover everything up.” Although, she caught herself thinking, the man did have a really nice set of muscles on him.
Looking at the robe, Dillon suppressed a groan.
Chapter Two
The next second, Dillon’s mind did a complete 180 degree turn regarding what he was about to do. Although the bubbly manager was holding out the white robe for him to put on, Dillon decided he wasn’t about to put it on.
“No, that’s all right,” he told Hailey, shaking his head. “I’ll just take a pass on putting that on, thanks.” He spared one final look at the offered garment, a disapproving expression on his face. “It’s not exactly my style.” He was rather conservative and the idea of stripping his shirt off in front of a total stranger left him with a bad taste in his mouth.
For a second, Hailey was puzzled. She looked at the robe she was holding out as if she’d never seen it before and reevaluated it.
And then it suddenly dawned on her.
“I didn’t mean that you’d have to wear this when you leave,” she clarified. “This is just something for you to put on temporarily while I’m getting that overwhelming scent washed out of your shirt. C’mon,” she urged, taking a step toward him, holding out the robe again. “The sooner I take the shirt and get started, the sooner you’ll get it back.”
Dillon took a step back, and then another and another. For her part, Hailey just continued coming toward him. He felt like he was being stalked, while for her part, Hailey felt he was being unduly shy. She was only trying to help.
“No, I said it’s okay. Really,” he stressed. He didn’t know how to make his position any clearer to her.
“But it’s not okay,” Hailey insisted. “I can’t have you leaving here like this, with your first impression of the spa being the place where you wound up
