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Seeing the mayor suck up to Wes made her sweat. There’d be no hometown advantage here for her mother.
Her only option was to bluff...hard...until her mom came back with the cash.
She knew Jay Meacham mostly by reputation, but she had met him a few times at downtown business-booster events she’d attended with her mom. He wasn’t exactly a thought leader, but he got the job done and kept people happy. In a town like Kirkland where the citizens were involved and motivated, the mayor needed to be better at making friends than he was at making policy.
It had been bad enough that Chloe Chastain would be thrilled to expose Trish as a swindler. On top of that, her mom had stolen from a charity that actually seemed to do good work. Watching Wes sign a hat for the mayor brought it home that he and his brother were both minor celebrities. Her mom didn’t stand a chance if she got caught.
“I think Posy and I should head to my office,” Wes said. “Nice to meet you, guys. See you on the courts.”
He seemed to remember the T-shirt in his hand. “I brought you a shirt, Jay. Almost forgot to give it to you.”
Jay thanked him much more sincerely than was necessary for a white T-shirt that wasn’t even autographed.
Then Wes was right up close to her and she registered just how tall he was. At least six-six. She’d known the number, feet and inches, from her internet...research...but pictures and a few statistics had done a terrible job of preparing her for Wes in real life. His shoulders alone, broad and straight, deserved their own section in Google. She was used to looking down at people or looking even tall men in the eye, but Wes was a good six inches taller than her and built on a large scale. The dark stubble on his jaw and a military-style buzz cut made him look older and more commanding than the long, thick dark hair he’d had in his photos.
She swallowed.
Puppy Pete would have dropped to his belly if Wes loomed over him like this, but Posy straightened her shoulders, happy for once that they made her look even bigger.
Bluff. Hard. Game time.
“I don’t mean to interrupt. If you and the mayor want to talk about basketball, I can wait in your office.” She smiled her professional helpless-lady smile, all teeth and bright eyes with a deferential tilt to her head. When she went incognito on quality control visits for her job, that smile came in handy for assessing concierge service. Some men fell right into that particular smile and never noticed that she was grading them on everything from their attitude to their knowledge of the local hot spots.
“I think we’re about finished,” Wes said easily. “But thanks.”
He had not fallen for the clueless smile.
He motioned for her to go first and then followed her out and down the hall.
“I’m sorry I didn’t bring a hat,” she said, switching tactics on the chance his ego was big enough to let her distract him. “I didn’t realize you’d be signing merchandise.”
He glanced down at her. “It’s probably better you didn’t have one.”
“Really?”
He stopped in front of a door and opened it. “Yup. I charge five bucks for an autograph. I only did the mayor’s for free because he’s an old friend.”
Her eyes widened. His ego was that big he charged for his autograph?
“Somebody has to keep me in solid-gold sneakers.”
When she’d seen him sign the hat, she’d actually hoped he might be a dumb jock. It would have made her job so much easier. But, true to form, she could not catch a break. Wes was sharp. And funny. And capable of laughing at himself.
“Good to know. I’ll bring a five when I bring my hat.”
“Until then, maybe you’d like a shirt or a sticker.” He bent toward a box near his desk, and shallow, objectifying creature that she was, she admired the view. Wes knew how to wear a pair of jeans.
He handed her the promo items and she thanked him.
There was only one chair in the room and it was behind the desk. She didn’t know quite what to do so she stood near the window, pretending to look at the park while she gathered her thoughts.
Wes leaned on the desk at the front of the office, his long legs stretched in front of him and arms crossed on his chest. “My brother and I wanted to thank your mom for her efforts on behalf of the Fallon Foundation.” Apparently they were finished joking around. “The money she raised is going to make a difference to a lot of kids.”
She felt as if she was being lectured, but she reminded herself that he didn’t know anything. He might be suspicious—in fact, she was now fairly certain he was suspicious—but he didn’t know anything. Posy forced herself not to look at him. She was an innocent woman, admiring the view of the parking lot.
“My mom is a very kind person. I’m sure she’ll be thrilled to meet you. Unfortunately, she’s been called out of town.”
“So you brought the check?”
CHAPTER FOUR
S HE PULLED HERSELFtogether. He was good-looking, but she’d known that going in. If he was also sharp, that only meant she had to be even more on her game. What she cared about was keeping him distracted and semisatisfied until her mom returned.
“She wants to give you the money in person. She’s very eager to meet you and your brother.”
“In person, huh?” He straightened his back. “My brother said your mom’s been out of touch for a couple days. Is everything okay?”
“With my mother?” Posy pulled the strap of her bag tighter across her shoulder, praying her voice would hold steady. “She’s fine.”
“Oh, good to know. I thought she might be sick or having some other kind of trouble.”
“No.” She needed to give him the file she’d brought and get out of here. “She was called out of town unexpectedly to visit my aunt. She asked me to watch her store and dog-sit—and keep this appointment with you. She’ll be back in a few days and she really wants to meet you both.”
It was mostly the truth.
Her cell was in her bag. If only it would ring with a call from her mom to tell her the wire was going through.
“I read your website last night,” she blurted out. “I really admire the work you’re doing. Kirkland is lucky you guys are coming here.”
Wes raised his eyebrows and smiled, and she was surprised to find herself smiling back at him. She’d never actually experienced an infectious smile before.
“The foundation is all my brother. This is my first day on the job and all I’ve done so far is sign a hat.”
She was definitely going to have to watch out for this guy. Good-looking, charming and sure to file a police report if he found out what her mom had been up to with her checkbook in the back room of Wonders.
Time for phase two of her bluff.
She’d considered trying to skate along for the next few days without giving him any information, but then she’d decided a better plan would be to give him too much of the wrong sort. If she had any luck, he would be so overwhelmed by the thorough records her mom had kept that he wouldn’t care that she was a few days late with the check.
“My mom did make you a list of donors and all the amounts. Everything is categorized and you can see where and how they donated.” She handed Wes a one-inch binder stacked with printed pages. “She asked me to deliver this.”
“Thanks.” He opened the binder and flipped the pages, then glanced behind him at the one chair. “I’m not set up for meetings yet.” He ducked behind his desk and grabbed a basketball out of the bag on the floor. “There are tables outside near the court. How would you feel about moving this conversation outside?”
She would feel a heck of a lot better if they ended the conversation, instead.
“I’m not sure what we’d have to meet about, Wes.”
“We’re meeting about the foundation.” He tapped the binder. “All the money these people donated. I thought I’d get to thank your mom, but since she’s not here, looks like you’re on the hook.”
Wes dribbled the ball once, the long muscles in his arms flexing as he caught the ball again with unconscious skill. The smack of the ball on the tile floor echoed in the empty office. “You ready?”
She closed her mouth. Bluff. Hard. She had a job to do here and it had nothing to do with Wes’s many physical charms.
CHAPTER FIVE
“P EOPLE ARE AMAZING,” Wes said. “Look how many are for less than twenty bucks.” They’d spread Posy’s binder out on a picnic table under a tree that was covered in pink blossoms. The petals kept drifting down onto the paper. He brushed his hand across the page, knocking another blossom to the ground.
“It’s been a remarkable experience for my mom.” Her voice had lost the no-nonsense tone. There was something going on with Posy, he thought.
She’d had one foot out the door since they stepped into his office, but Wes wasn’t about to let her off that easy. For one thing, he didn’t think she was telling him everything she knew. Posy was all business when they were going over the details, but he’d seen a quick flash or two of uncertainty, mostly when he’d said anything touching on the subject of her mom.
She closed the binder and slid it across the table closer to him.
“What about the other blogger?” he asked, refusing to take her big hint that their meeting was over. “Chloe, right?”
“Chloe Chastain.”
“She and your mom are an unbeatable team. Do you know her?”
“We grew up together.”
“So Kirkland is the ultimate hometown—everybody helps everybody else.”
“I left a long time ago,” Posy said. “But don’t believe everything you hear.”
He’d assumed she lived in town. Why was she here, otherwise? “You don’t live in Kirkland?”
“Rochester. I’m a quality control inspector for the Hotel Marie chain.”
“Quality control? Now I’m imaging you checking in with a fake name and making all kinds of crazy requests to see if the staff is up to snuff.”
“We call them personas, not ‘fake names.’ And my requests are always reasonable.”
“Extra towels, not chocolate fountains?”
Had Wes ever ordered a chocolate fountain? Maybe with one of those beautiful women she’d seen in the pictures last night. She stared at a pink petal on the table next to her pinky.
“Look, Wes,” Posy said as she stood, “I’m staying at my mom’s house so I can watch her dog. I’m in charge of her store, and I really should at least check my work email while I’m here. You’ve got all the data and as soon as my mom gets back, she’s dropping off a check. That’s about all I can tell you.”
She was brushing him off. Definitely something strange going on. Wes went into foster care when he was two and came out when he was eight. In those six years, he’d been bounced from five separate placements. He didn’t remember the details about many of them, but he’d learned to tell when someone was lying to him.
“I’m just going to say this and you can say what you know and we can move on, okay?”
She flinched. Not much, but he saw it.
“The situation seems off to me. Not just to me, frankly. Chloe Chastain had some questions for my brother. Your mom is sitting on a lot of money she raised in our name,” he said. “Our reputation is on the line and we’re still negotiating here in Kirkland.”
“I’m not surprised you have questions, but my mom will deliver your money. I promise.”
She didn’t flinch that time. She met his eyes, and he couldn’t make himself call her a liar. He didn’t want her to be a liar.
“Well, I’m looking forward to meeting her,” he said. “My brother put his heart and soul into the Fallon Foundation, and this new project in Kirkland means everything to him. Neither of us could believe that your mom, a stranger, would go out of her way to do this kind of fundraising. He’s floored and so am I. People like her don’t get enough credit.”
* * *
P OSY DIDN’ T WANT HIM to say nice things about her mom. She didn’t want him to say nice things about anything. She wanted to not like him and for him to work for some horrible corporation. Not a foundation that did good for the community. She didn’t want to respect him, because she had to keep lying to him.
She hated lying and the longer she talked to Wes, the more she hated herself. She shouldn’t have let herself get dragged into her mother’s mess. She knew better. This was the last time. It had to be.
“You play basketball?” he asked.
She waited for the obligatory comment about her height, but it didn’t come. He just waited for her to answer.
“I did.”
“High school? College?”
“Both.”
“I did, too,” he offered as he leaned down and grabbed the ball from the ground. “High school, college, then in Europe. But I got hit by a truck so I’m retired now.”
When he mentioned his accident, he touched a spot on his head behind his right ear. She noticed the scar there, a thin line of red flesh visible through the dark stubble.
“I read about the accident.” He looked up. “Google. I was trying to get ready for our meeting. I’m sorry.”
“A dog ran into the road,” he said.
“The articles didn’t mention that.”
He lifted one shoulder. “It was a little dog.”
Wes was getting more dangerous by the second. Pete hadn’t understood humor.
“So this job with the foundation, where does it take you after Kirkland?”
“It’s only a temporary gig. My brother asked me for help and I was at loose ends. It worked out.” He touched his scar.
Funny that they’d both been thrown into this through an obligation to family.
“Want to shoot around?” he asked.
She stared up at him. He was serious. “Play basketball with you?”
“I just moved to town,” he said. “I don’t know any of the other boys yet.”
He dribbled the ball deliberately while giving her that slow, sweet smile. He knew what he was doing with that smile.
Which irritated her. She was supposed to get in and get out. She’d had to buy a three-hole punch just to make that binder full of papers. She wasn’t supposed to hang around and shoot baskets with him.
“I was in Mayor Meacham’s office when you signed up for his lunchtime league.”
“Well, he’s not here right now.” He caught the ball and without the rhythmic pounding, the playground was too quiet. He leaned toward her, tilting his head. “Besides, I want to play with you.”
Oh. In that case.
“Come on, Posy. I’ll go easy on you.”
She’d been sitting at the picnic table, but now she stood. He was close enough for her to feel the height difference and to see the strength in his shoulders and arms. Wes might be named after a skinny Star Trek geek, but he was...well... There was a reason basketball players had as many groupies as rock stars. And her best fantasies had always been about guys who were built on a bigger scale, guys who were broad and tall and strong. Like Wes.
On the first day of school, her kindergarten teacher lined the class up by height to teach a lesson about big and small. Posy was the tallest kid in line. She towered over most of the girls and had a half inch or so even on the two boys in the class who were already six because they’d been held back. She’d been so proud to be the tallest kid, to have something no one else did that was hers all alone. That day on the playground at lunchtime, the girls were all pretending to be fairy princesses, but Chloe Chastain told her she couldn’t be a fairy and made her be the giant instead. That was the first time she realized her height didn’t make her special, it made her abnormal. She’d thrown herself into the game, though, and been such a successful giant that one of her classmates had to go to the nurse after she burst into tears and hyperventilated. Her mom had been so disappointed. She’d known she’d done something wrong but hadn’t understood what.
Here on this playground with Wes, she didn’t feel quite so out of step.
“Okay,” she said, taking the ball from him. “I’ll play you. But don’t even think about going easy on me.”
His smile widened, no longer the flirty weapon he used so well. She’d been with him for less than an hour and already she’d seen the serious businessman, the professional flirt, and now, a guy who looked as if he’d be an awful lot of fun at a water park.
He jogged to the foul line, clapped and held his
hands out.
“I’m the new guy. I get first ball.”
“I’m the lady. We’ll shoot for it.” She tossed it back to him and to prove she had manners said, “You can go first. Since you’re the new guy.”
While he set up for his shot, she took a long look at his...form. She had no chance in this contest. He went up for the shot and she bent to pull the laces on her sneakers tighter. The ball clanged off the metal rim of the hoop and she looked up, confused. How the hell had he missed that shot? He was staring at her. When her eyes met his, he shook himself and went to get the ball. Ah.
His miss gave her confidence, so she squared up to the basket and shot. Her ball sank so sweetly the net barely fluttered.
It might be the last shot she made, but it felt good.
* * *
H E COULDN’ T BELIEVE he’d missed his shot.
He’d had it completely under control and then Posy leaned over to tie her shoe. A perfect view down the front of her shirt. She was wearing a lacy, hot-pink bra.
Pink.
He was still getting a handle on Posy, but he hadn’t figured her for a pink kind of person. Since it practically smoldered against her dark skin, he figured hot pink was a very, very good call.
When she sank her shot, she arched one black eyebrow at him and the corners of her mouth went up in a smile that she tried to hide. He knew the feeling—no matter how trapped he’d felt by his life while he was a pro, he’d never stopped loving the game. When things went right on the court, the power felt amazing.
She took the ball out at half court and waited for him to get set. Then she checked it to him and he passed it back. Her pass had been quick and accurate. He wasn’t going to play her hard, but he was glad she’d been telling the truth about knowing how to play.
While he was thinking about how to keep the game close without letting her catch on that he wasn’t going more than half speed, she darted past him, hell-bent for the hoop.
She was a lot faster than he expected and she’d caught him entirely flat-footed. He took off after her. He could make excuses all day but it wouldn’t change the fact that she put an easy layup in while he was half a step behind her.
Another quick smile flashed across her face and the ball felt uncomfortable in his hands as he realized she was pretty. Not gorgeous like Fabi, but fresh. Like someone you’d see in a Coke commercial.
She checked the ball to him and settled in to play defense and the smile was gone as quickly as it had come. She didn’t mean to lose without a fight. Okay, maybe not a Coke commercial for Posy, Nike was more her speed. He glanced at her again and her dark eyes tracked him.
Maybe instead of commercials, she could host one of those shows where people stalked wild animals.
He didn’t have a chance to consider any more about her best match for product representation because he needed his attention on the game.
She wasn’t as good as him, obviously. He had her by more than six inches and at least fifty pounds, for starters. He’d also been playing and practicing with a professional team right up until a month ago, so he was in near-peak shape. But she had no give. Wouldn’t admit that she couldn’t muscle through him.
With the aggression she was throwing his way, he sensed Posy was taking this game to his body because she was carrying that load of anger he’d seen earlier. This was a place she could let it out.
Sure, he could have backed off, but the first time she put her hand on his back and tried to shove him off his dribble, the impression of her fingers felt good. He was aware of the scent of her hair and after a few minutes, of her sweat. When she took the ball out for the third time, he saw a bead of moisture at the base of her throat, right where the tendons in her neck came together in a vulnerable V. The sweat slid down her neck, headed for that lacy bra and he missed her head fake. She scored again.
It hadn’t been that long since he’d been with Fabi.
He was attracted to a woman who was playing him harder than he’d ever been played outside a professional game. And she didn’t seem overly concerned if she hurt him during the process. Of all the screwed-up things he’d been turned on by, he was turned on by playing basketball with Posy.
He shook his head when she blew past him again and then he settled down to play. Attraction or not, he wasn’t going to let her beat him that easily.
* * *
T HE FIRST TIME she bumped him, it was an accident. He was guarding her tight and she wanted to move him off the ball, but her elbow connected with his stomach more sharply than she intended. Ashamed that she’d let her frustration toward her mom bleed over onto her game, she immediately paused to apologize.
He stole the ball from her and put it in, obliterating the small lead she’d snagged with her first shot. He hadn’t even noticed that she’d hit him despite the fact that her elbow stung from the contact.
Posy almost called time-out. She’d been apologizing for being too big, too rough, too much her whole life. Over and over she’d gotten the message that she wasn’t just physically too big, she was too competitive and wanted too much. People got angry when she didn’t keep herself in check.
Wes pumped his fist and pointed at her, glee, not anger, on his face. “You done?”
She shook her head, energy humming through her. No. No, she was most definitely not done. She was just getting started.
She took the ball and when he moved in to guard her, she bumped him again, not that much harder, but deliberately this time. She leaned into his chest with her shoulder and pushed off, registering his solid strength. Again, he didn’t seem to notice. He didn’t lose a step.
Her focus slipped and she double-dribbled. He could have called her on it, but he didn’t.
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