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The clock’s hands twirled around, the hours passed. When Carson heard a slight, quickly stifled yawn, he looked up to see that it was nearly seven o’clock. Beth was still working, but it was clear that she was starting to droop. Her eyes looked tired. She even looked thinner, if that were possible.
“Enough for today.”
She glanced up at him and blinked, staring at his outstretched hand as if she didn’t quite comprehend what he meant.
“I’ll buy you dinner,” he offered.
Instantly she looked alert, wary. “No, that’s all right,” she said.
A flash of anger ripped through Carson. At himself. Was he looking at her as if he expected something more of her than an after-business dinner between colleagues? It was possible.
“Just food,” he clarified. “I’m not proposing anything indecent, Beth.”
Automatically she rose, looking flustered. “I didn’t think that.”
He could swear she was lying, but he didn’t intend to engage in a battle of wills. Carson lifted a brow. “Beth, I don’t know what you’ve heard about me…I’m not an exemplary man, but I can assure you that I don’t assault my employees and I don’t engage in personal relationships with them.”
“I know. I know. It’s not you. It’s just…nothing. I would love to have dinner. I’m absolutely famished.” Her voice grew stronger, bolder. The Beth of the meeting had returned and she ended her speech with a smile that transformed her face. For a moment he had the fanciful thought that the light coming in through the window picked up golden glints in her russet hair, turning it a remarkable color that made him itch to touch the soft stuff.
Damn it. Carson was forced to remind himself of what he’d just told her. Was he already going back on his word?
No, he wasn’t. He wouldn’t. “I know a nice place,” he told her as she obliged him by placing those pretty fingers in his grasp. A very public place, he told himself.
He refused to keep having improper thoughts about Beth. He had plans. She undoubtedly had plans, too, and plenty of reservations.
He was going to change his life, settle down and provide the long-awaited Banick heir. She would eventually go back to her safe working class family in Chicago.
No one was going to get hurt here, Carson promised himself. That meant no touching, no wanting, no anything beyond business.
And that was the end of that.
Well, she had certainly made a fool of herself back there, Beth mused, acting as if he was offering to take her to bed instead of just offering her dinner.
She hadn’t really thought that he was doing any such thing. It was just the notion that if word of her socializing with her boss got back to her brothers, they would be rushing up here to defend her honor or something suitably ridiculous. After all, Chicago might be as different from the resort town of Lake Geneva as her red hair was from something tame but it was still only a ninety-minute drive.
Not that she was afraid of her brothers, but their actions made her feel like a little girl. And she found, looking across the table at Carson, tall and dark and sophisticated in his white shirt and navy tie, that for once in her life she wanted to be taken seriously. She wanted to stop feeling like a girl and start taking her place in the world as a woman. And she couldn’t do that if Carson ever knew that her brothers were watching her and checking up on his background.
How mortifying would that be!
“Is there something wrong?” Carson asked.
Beth almost jumped. Had she said something out loud again? “I—”
“You’re not eating,” he said gently.
She looked down at her plate of perfectly prepared food and realized that he was right.
“Sorry, I guess I’m still getting used to the newness of everything…a new job, a new apartment, a new town. Especially my new town. That probably sounds weird.”
He gave a slight laugh. “No, actually, I can relate completely. My family is from Milwaukee and I’ve been to Lake Geneva many times, but usually for vacations. This is a bit different.”
“For me, too. The few times I’ve been here it was because my brother was making a delivery and he allowed me to tag along.”
Carson nodded. “What were you delivering?”
“Plumbing supplies. Steve’s a driver for a firm that manufactures them. I don’t think he was supposed to be carrying human cargo, but it was summer and it was his day to make sure his little sister stayed out of trouble.” She didn’t want to say more about that so she took a bite.
“You’re the youngest, you said?”
She nodded. “By ten years. Steve’s thirty-five.”
“He the one who tried to match you up with your last boss?”
Beth felt panic welling up inside her. “You don’t have to worry. He wouldn’t try to match me up with you.”
Carson almost choked on a piece of steak.
Beth wanted to crawl underneath her plate. “That didn’t come out the way I wanted it to. What I meant was that he would know that you’re out of my league, that you’d only marry someone rich and sophisticated. If he has any thoughts about you, it’s that I shouldn’t get involved with you at all.”
Which sounded even worse. She closed her eyes and prayed for the flowers on the table to ignite…or anything that would distract Carson and enable her to exit this uncomfortable conversation.
“He’s right,” Carson said.
Beth opened her eyes. “What?”
“I have a bad reputation with women. Your brother is right to have those kinds of thoughts, although…as I mentioned…”
“I know. You don’t get involved with your employees and I shouldn’t worry.”
A grim smile lifted his lips slightly. “Exactly.”
Beth managed to nod. “I’ll tell him that. Not that it will matter. Older brothers tend to be overprotective.”
She said that last sentence in a casual, offhand, flippant way. She was trying for a light, teasing tone, anything to let him know that she wasn’t worried, that she would never think of him in a romantic or lustful manner.
But Carson wasn’t smiling. “Older brothers should be protective,” he said.
She opened her mouth to speak, but he shook his head. “Forget I said that. I was just thinking of my own younger brother.”
He didn’t say more. Carson turned the conversation to business, and soon the meal was over. “I’ll take you to your car,” he said.
“I walked to work. I like to walk.” She didn’t want to add that the reason she had walked had less to do with her love of walking and more with the fact that her beat-up pickup truck looked like something she had gotten from the junk yard. It didn’t fit the image of a successful professional.
“Then I’ll drive you home.”
Panic welled up. “That’s all right.”
“No, it’s not. It’s getting late and we have another big day ahead of us. I wouldn’t want you to fail to get enough rest and end up being late tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t do that.”
Carson sighed. “I know that. I just—let me do this. That line you said earlier about older brothers…I haven’t always been protective of my brother and there have been consequences. Let me do one good, if small, thing today.”
So, what could she say? Reluctantly she gave him her address. To her relief he didn’t say anything negative when they turned into the driveway. There weren’t exactly any bad neighborhoods in Lake Geneva, but there were some houses that were a bit neglected. The room she was renting was in one of those neglected, dumpy houses. Siding falling off, a crack in the window that hadn’t been repaired, weeds turning into a forest.
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