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“Is cleaning and scrubbing in your job description?” he asked.
Who’d he think he was? Her boss? She stiffened, then placed her hands on her hips. “I’m not going to apologize for being thoughtful or for showing a bit of small-town hospitality.”
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to sound unappreciative. It’s just that...” He blew out a sigh, then raked a hand through his hair. “Well, let’s just say that this day hasn’t gone the way I’d expected it to.”
Then that made two of them. Megan released a sigh of her own. “It’s been a little out of the ordinary for me, too.”
As the silence stretched between them, she took the opportunity to send the kids downstairs and to tell them to get their things together. Surely it had to be getting close to five o’clock.
As soon as she was alone with Peyton, she said, “Don meant to be here today, but that didn’t work out. I came in to help him on my day off, but some childcare issues cropped up, which isn’t the norm.”
“I understand.”
Did he? She hoped so. She also hoped that he didn’t realize she’d been stretching the truth when she implied the kids weren’t always here in the afternoons. She tried her best to keep them busy in after-school activities, but more often than not, especially with Tyler, one or both of her children ended up spending time at the shop—and in the apartment.
They stood like that for a moment, sizing each other up in some kind of face-off.
With the bed behind her and his masculine frame leaning against the doorjamb, arms crossed in a tense yet sexy pose... Well, he wasn’t exactly blocking her escape route, but that was the problem. She didn’t feel like running off, and she really ought to. Because what she found most troubling was the way her heart rate was zipping along at an arousing pace, setting her hormones on high alert and sending her thoughts drifting in a direction they had no business veering.
Peyton Johnson was a handsome man, and while he was dressed casually, something about him flashed City Boy in neon lights.
Still, she found him attractive. But being attracted to a man wasn’t the same thing as being interested in him. And she definitely was not interested.
Besides, even if she were on the lookout for a husband—or even a romantic interest—it certainly wouldn’t be a corporate yes-man who didn’t even reside anywhere near the same town in which she lived.
After her divorce, she’d left Houston and put down roots in Brighton Valley, where she’d finally been able to give her kids the kind of home she’d always wanted them to have—something she’d never been able to create for them while she’d been married to their father.
Breaking eye contact, she glanced at her watch. “It’s nearly five o’clock. Time for me to lock up the shop and go home.”
As she made her way to the bedroom doorway, Peyton stepped aside and let her pass. As he did so, she caught a whiff of his cologne, something musky and exotic that sent her blood racing, her hormones reeling and her heart thumping.
She had no idea what brand of aftershave he used—or what stores would carry something so...
Well, she had no way of knowing if it was costly, but she’d pay a pretty penny to buy it as a gift for her man—if she had a man and the pennies to spare. She’d never smelled the like.
Maybe it wasn’t just the scent alone. Maybe it was the way it blended with the pheromones he gave off. She didn’t know for sure.
But as intoxicating and alluring as she’d found it to be, that only made her want to steer clear of the man the best that she could.
Because she’d come to distrust her choices when it came to men and sexual attraction. And something told her that Peyton Johnson, like his scent, would linger with a woman long after he left town—a life-changing, heartbreaking memory a woman wasn’t likely to forget.
Chapter Four
The following morning, after dropping Lisa off at school, Megan pulled into her regular parking space in the alley behind the shop.
She needed to deliver this morning’s fresh batch of peach-crumble muffins to Caroline at the diner before starting work. So she took the linen-covered basket out of her backseat and grabbed the oversize breakfast burrito she’d wrapped in foil. Then she locked the car.
As she made her way toward the back entrance of the diner, she risked an upward glance at the apartment over Zorba’s. The shutters were closed. Peyton was most likely still asleep, which meant he’d probably been up late last night snooping through all their files.
She’d stayed up most of the night, too, but her time had been spent in the kitchen, baking and preparing more jams and preserves for the farmers’ market held in town square on the third Sunday of each month. She’d hoped her work would be a diversion for her worries, but she hadn’t been able to keep her thoughts from straying to the sexy and suspicious stranger who’d kept her second-guessing everything he did or said.
Did he have another agenda besides helping them get the new accounting system up and running?
Could he be trusted to do only that particular job and not run back to corporate with reports of how bad things actually were at the Brighton Valley store?
She lifted the basket containing the fruits of her labor, rested it on one hip and strode into the diner through the open back door.
Caroline, who’d been a friend of Megan’s late grandmother, sat at the butcher-block counter, making notes and ordering supplies. Annie, the cook, was busy frying eggs and flipping pancakes, while Sally hollered out breakfast orders through the open window between the front of the restaurant and the kitchen.
After Megan had divorced Todd and moved home to live with her mom, Caroline had suggested that Megan sell some of the extra peaches and plums that grew in the family orchard at the farmers’ market. Since she’d been left in dire financial straits thanks to Todd’s wild and reckless spending habits, she’d jumped on the idea of earning some extra money.
To liven up the boring displays of fruit, she’d set out a few jars of the jellies and preserves she’d canned, along with a few muffins.
As a child and the only girl in the family, she’d spent the summers on Gram’s farm, where she’d learned to cook and bake, memorizing all her grandmother’s recipes, especially the preserves, which had won Gram many a blue ribbon at the county fair each year. Still, she’d been surprised when her preserves had sold out well before the peaches and plums had.
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