The sad truth was, Aunt Delia had no business being on her own anymore. She forgot to take her medication. She left the stove on. She wandered off and left the front door standing wide open. It was a wonder she hadn’t been robbed blind. Kevin had never known what to expect when he’d driven over to visit. Most of the time he hadn’t liked what he’d found.
Finally, eighteen months ago he’d insisted Aunt Delia move in with him. He’d actually managed to make it sound as if she were the one doing him a favor. By now, she’d probably figured out that he’d bamboozled her, but they’d both grown comfortable with the new arrangement. That didn’t mean she wouldn’t love to be back in that drafty old house again. Nope, he couldn’t risk going near the place and she wouldn’t allow him to hire a stranger to do the work, not without being there to supervise. It was a Catch-22 of the first magnitude.
“There’s nothing wrong with the place that a little spit and polish cleaning wouldn’t fix right up,” he insisted.
“Then why don’t you take care of it? It’s a crime to allow it to go to ruin. It’s probably riddled with termites and overrun with mice.”
He grinned at her unconscious shudder. “Then I’m surprised you’d want to buy it,”
“I would fix it up,” she said,
She made the declaration in that haughty little way that made him want to scoop her up and kiss her until she went weak in the knees. He settled for an indifferent shrug.
“Sorry, it’s not for sale.”
“I’ve been checking into real estate prices in the area and I’ve come up with a ballpark figure that I think is reasonable,” she went on as if she hadn’t heard him. She snatched a piece of paper off of his desk and scribbled a figure on it, then shoved it in front of him.
“Nice ballpark, if I were playing, which I’m not.”
Scowling at him, she scratched out the amount and wrote another. Kevin stared at the paper and managed to hide his admiration. She’d pretty much nailed down the current market value and tacked on an extra ten thousand. She’d been one very busy woman since hitting town. Most people undervalued the property around here because the town had been slow in grasping its own potential. This outsider had apparently seen it right off. Since she was playing fair with the money, he wondered if she’d be honest about a few other things.
“Tell me, Gracie MacDougal, why are you so hot to buy that particular house? Do you have a husband and half a dozen kids stashed away somewhere?”
“I don’t see how that’s relevant.”
“It would give me a clue about why you’re interested in such a huge old house. Doesn’t seem like the logical choice for a woman all alone.”
“Sometimes logic doesn’t have a thing to do with wanting a piece of property. Sometimes you just fall in love.”
He’d never met a woman less inclined toward indulging a whim. Hot as it was, she was dressed in a suit, hose, and high heels that would have knocked the socks off a New York businessman. For his own purely masculine reasons, he’d have preferred she come calling in a sundress. Be that as it may, Gracie struck him as an exceptionally practical, businesslike lady, which meant she had plans for that house. It didn’t take a genius to figure out what they might be.
“Or sometimes you decide you’d like to start a little bed-and-breakfast maybe,” he suggested quietly and watched the telltale color bloom in her cheeks.
He was glad he’d done a little checking when he’d first heard about Gracie MacDougal and her fascination with Aunt Delia’s house. He knew all about her career with Worldwide Hotels. It hadn’t required a huge leap to figure out what she had in mind for the old Victorian. Without saying a word, she’d just confirmed his guesswork.
“If you think I’ll raise my offer, you can think again,” she said.
“Wouldn’t matter if you did,” he said. “It’s not for sale.”
“Then I suppose I might as well be going,” she said, then met his gaze evenly. “For now.”
“Then you’ll be back?”
“Oh, you can count on it, Mr. Daniels.”
Kevin couldn’t explain the odd sense of relief that stirred in him. He’d intended to rid himself of her, once and for all. He’d been as adamant as he’d known how to be about Aunt Delia’s house. And still, some part of him had obviously relished the first skirmish in what now promised to be all-out warfare. He couldn’t help wondering what wiles Gracie MacDougal had up her sleeve.
Not that it mattered. His cousins were masters of every form of sneaky manipulation in the book. Not a one of them had put anything over on him yet. He doubted Gracie MacDougal would, either.
It would be downright entertaining, though, to have her try.
Gracie had negotiated for supplies and equipment for entire hotel chains with more success than she had in that first meeting with Kevin Patrick Daniels. The man obviously had no idea of the actual worth of that run-down property. Didn’t seem to care, either. Otherwise, he would have recognized her bid for the preemptive strike it was and snapped it up.
All in all, the meeting had been a frustrating waste of her time. She had left his house feeling disgruntled, off kilter, and thoroughly frustrated.
Of course, that might have had something to do with the fact that the man had been half nude, with his shirt undone and jeans so old they were practically threadbare in some very revealing places. She had tried not to look, she really had, but
