Parker again. “Do you even know him, Megan?”
“I met all the Garrisons when I did the consulting job. Cheating runs in their genes.”
“Cheating?” Then Anna recalled the latest Garrison scandal. “I guess you’re right.” She rose and donned an oven mitt to slide the pastry tray out, and as she did, told Megan the whole story of Cassie Sinclair and her unlikely role at Garrison, Inc.
Megan listened, rapt, then asked, “So this woman over in Nassau is John Garrison’s illegitimate daughter?”
“Looks that way. And now she owns twenty percent of Garrison, Inc.”
Megan’s eyebrow notched. “At least he took care of his child.”
At the catch in her friend’s voice, Anna turned from the oven, pastry tray extended, but Megan hid her expression behind the coffee cup.
“Would you like a cinnamon roll?” Anna asked.
Megan put her cup down with a little too much force. “But you see what I mean?” she asked, obviously not hearing Anna’s question. “See what they’re made of? Gorgeous, yes, every last one of them. But can they be trusted? And you, after all you’ve been through, you have to trust the man you love, Anna.”
The tray slipped in Anna’s mitted hand, but she caught it.
Love. Whoa.
“This isn’t love,” she managed to say. “This is a pathetic crush on my part and lust on his.”
Megan’s chair scraped the tile as she stood. “You think? How’s he treated you since you gave him the speech?”
“Well, he’s had a lot of closed-door meetings and placed most of his own calls, so I thought he was trying to avoid me. But…” Her voice trailed off as she tried to think of how to explain what had been happening for the past five days. “But when we’re together, well, to be honest, there’s been a lot of electricity in the air.”
“Oh, really?” Megan meandered over to the counter to help herself to a cinnamon roll. “Like lightning bolts that turn your lower half into liquid and your brain to mush?”
“Yeah.” Anna half laughed.
“And every time your hands casually brush when you exchange papers, you sort of shiver and get all tingly?”
“Precisely.”
Megan took a bite of gooey pastry, nodding like a knowledgeable expert as she chewed. “And,” she added when she swallowed, pointing the roll at Anna, “when he laughs at something you said, the whole room sort of spins and your heart gets all fluttery and your arms get numb from the need to touch him?”
“Every time.”
Megan slid her finger along the top of the cinnamon roll, covering it with icing. “You’re in love,” she pronounced.
“No, I’m not. I’m just in big, fat trouble.”
Megan sucked the icing off her finger with a noisy smack and a knowing grin. “Same thing.”
The last thing Parker wanted to do on Sunday was trudge up to Bal Harbor for the weekly Garrison dinner. Not that driving Collins Avenue with the top of his BMW M3 down and his floorboard-rumbling stereo at full blast was exactly trudging, but he still would rather have spent the evening working on the endless pile of paper that seemed to accumulate on his desk that week.
Because, God knows, he hadn’t gotten anything of consequence accomplished at work since Monday. Unless playing games with Anna Cross was “work.”
He’d planted three separate false trails regarding business development, and not one of them had resulted in sending the Jefferieses on a wild-goose chase.
He’d tried to draw Anna out from her cloak of professionalism, teasing her with the occasional joke and letting the inevitable contact blister into heat between them. But that hadn’t accomplished anything except more than a few restless nights for him and a bad case of unrequited… arousal.
And that, he thought, popping out the classic-rock CD he’d been playing and searching his collection for something that suited his mood, was the problem.
She was getting to him.
Maybe it was her resistance to his obvious interest. Maybe it was the fact that he suspected her of spying and couldn’t seem to catch her. Maybe it was the memory of those few kisses, that promise of so much more in London.
He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, the all-too-familiar southbound rush of blood reminding him that whatever the hell it was about Anna Cross, it had an undeniable effect on him.
No matter which way he cut it, rationalized it or ignored it, he still wanted her. A lot.
His fingers grazed the CD cases restlessly, skipping each one. If not rock or jazz or a decent piano concerto, what did he want to hear?
Broadway tunes.
“Oh, man.” He tapped the steering wheel and yanked left into the stone gates of the Garrison estate. “That’s bad, Garrison. That’s rock-bottom bad.”
He whipped into an open space behind Adam’s smaller model BMW and checked his rearview, raking his hands through his wind-whipped hair in self-disgust. Since when did he have the slightest interest in Rodgers and Hammerstein?
Since that little vixen hummed show tunes while she was filing. Off-key, no less. But when she tapped her toes to some ditty that ran through her head and the tip of her tongue sneaked out between her sweet, soft lips, the next thing he knew he had a sudden need to—
“Don’t worry, you’re perfect.” Brooke leaned over the passenger door of the convertible and offered her brother a friendly grin. “Making all the girls wild, as usual.”
He reached over and gave her hand a squeeze. “I’m afraid it’s the other way around lately.”
That earned him a surprised lift of her shapely eyebrow. “Don’t tell me someone’s finally gotten under big, bad Parker’s skin.”
“Not a chance,” he assured her, popping out of the car and coming around to give her a hug. “But who are you sneaking around with these days?”
All the color drained from Brooke’s usually rosy cheeks. “What?” She half laughed and accepted his hug. “You must have me mixed up with my far more social twin.”
He released the embrace, but held her shoulders tightly and searched her face, a pang of guilt twisting through him. He’d promised Stephen he’d call her this week and he hadn’t even remembered. He’d been so caught up in… Anna.
“Are you okay?” he asked, unwilling to let go of her shoulders. “Stephen told me you’ve been pretty miserable since the whole Cassie Sinclair thing came out.”
Her eyes filled, but she blinked back the tears. “I’m having a hard time, Parker,” she replied. “What Dad did was, well, unforgivable. And to let us know like that. During the reading of his will.” She inched out of his grip with a shudder of anger.
He slid his arm around her as they crossed the brick driveway and approached the massive glass-and-mahogany entrance to the Spanish-style villa.
“I know how you feel,” Parker commiserated. “Mad and hurt and disillusioned. And, hell, we’re still in mourning.
I can’t believe I’m going to walk into this house and he isn’t going to be on the back veranda, drinking in the ocean view, ready to dissect every nuance of the past workweek and plan the attack for the next one.”
She raised her delicate jaw so the sunlight caught the dip of the Garrison cleft in her chin. “That’s your job now, Parker.”