Whatever, she had left Greystone Manor more determined than ever to get her hands on that house…or around Mr. Daniels’s neck.
She had grown very tired of hearing him declare the property wasn’t for sale. Of course it was. Everything in the world was for sale for the right price. She just had to figure out what would be persuasive enough to get his attention.
No, check that. She’d had his attention, all right. There was hard evidence of that, so to speak. Plus, she had caught the speculative, masculine gleam in his eyes, once he’d bothered to open them all the way. She supposed there was a way to use that to her advantage if she were that sort of woman. But, alas, she wasn’t.
No, what she needed to do was to get him focused on business, caught up in the deal, challenged by the negotiations.
Unfortunately, she had a feeling one of those day-long motivational seminars couldn’t stir up Kevin Patrick Daniels. One thing she had to say for Mr. Daniels, he was no Max. Obviously, he had about as much ambition as a slug. Lying around in a hammock in the middle of a workday said a whole lot about the man, none of it good.
Of course, some would say that maybe she ought to take a few lessons in relaxation from him. She’d been on vacation less than a week and already she was caught up in a business deal when she should have been following his example and sipping lemonade and lolling around in a hammock. What was it about her that drove her to succeed? If she could figure that out, maybe she could bottle it and slip a little into Mr. Daniels’s lemonade.
A good shrink would probably tell her that she spent so much time on her career, because she was better at it than she was at relationships. In fact, she’d grown so leery of men in recent years that she’d worked very hard to attain the kind of independence that made a male protector unnecessary. She could count on her career in ways she’d never been able to count on another human being. At least she’d been able to until Max had come along and thrown a monkeywrench into that side of her life, too.
Maybe that was why she had seized on the notion of getting that Victorian and turning it into a bed-and-breakfast. It was just one more way to solidify her independence, to make sure that she alone was in control of her future.
Right now, though, Kevin Patrick Daniels stood between her and the control over her own life that she craved. That put him in a very dangerous position. A woman scorned in love was nothing compared to the ire of Gracie MacDougal when she’d been scorned in business.
Yes, indeed, win or lose, the next few months were going to be very interesting.
4
“Why on earth didn’t you sell it to her?” Aunt Delia demanded of Kevin, after Gracie MacDougal had stalked out of the house, her spine rigid and her cute little behind swaying provocatively despite her annoyance.
“You been listening at keyholes again?” Kevin asked, regarding his eighty-seven-year-old aunt with amusement. She was wearing bright red sneakers, a purple skirt and a blouse with most of the colors of the rainbow in it. Compared to Gracie, she was a fashion nightmare.
Aunt Delia also had the hearing and curiosity of a kid. Nothing much got past her, as he had learned to his everlasting chagrin when he’d tried to sneak Marge Taylor up to his room late one night right after his aunt had moved in. Even though their rooms were in opposite wings of the house, Aunt Delia had apparently heard every creak of the stairs and enough of their whispered exchange to tell her they were up to no good.
Aunt Delia’s disapproving frown over breakfast the next morning—when Marge was long gone—had had a chilling effect on his lovelife. Of course, that scowl might have had something to do with the fact that Aunt Delia regarded that particular branch of the Taylor line as little better than trailer trash. Nothing he could say about Marge’s superb wit, high IQ, and college degree was likely to change her opinion.
“You keep snooping like that, you’ll get a crick in your back,” Kevin told her now.
“Didn’t have to put my ear to the keyhole this time,” his aunt replied, clearly unfazed by the accusation. “You two had the volume up so loud it interrupted my favorite show. It was a lot better than listening to some cross-dressing weirdo on a talk show.”
Kevin shuddered, appalled and thoroughly baffled by her addiction to tabloid TV. “Why do you watch that stuff anyway?”
“A woman my age has to keep on top of what’s going on in the world.”
“Then you must have a mighty peculiar view of the state of affairs,” Kevin said. “You need to get out more. See some normal folks.”
“You took away my car keys,” she reminded him.
“After you mowed down six mailboxes in a row.”
She shrugged. “Accidents happen.”
“A few too many times in your case. I’ll take you anyplace you want to go.”
“So you say.”
“I will.”
She gave him a sly look. “Including that off-track betting parlor on the river?” she inquired a bit too eagerly.
Kevin saw too late the trap he had set for himself and resigned himself to an afternoon of keno and horse racing. “Tomorrow,” he agreed.
Aunt Delia seemed surprised by the easy capitulation. “Must mean you’re hoping to run across that woman again. What did you say her name was?”
“I didn’t. It’s Gracie,” he said, rather liking the way it sounded. Old-fashioned. Prim and proper. Yep, that was Gracie, all right. Getting her to loosen up was going
