He would hate to be in the vandals’ shoes when that happened, he thought as he opened the day care center’s door. Whether the place was wanted by all of the members or not, nobody came in and destroyed any part of their clubhouse without the entire membership taking great exception to it.
“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Gordon,” Kiley said from across the room.
“Take your time,” he said, looking around. Several children sat in pint-size chairs at tables that were just as small. He couldn’t imagine ever being little enough to fit into furniture that size.
As he watched, Russ and Winnie Bartlett’s youngest little girl got out of her chair and walked over to hold up a paper with crayon scribbles for Kiley’s inspection. She acted as if the kid had just drawn the Mona Lisa, causing the toddler to beam with pride.
Josh had never taken much to little kids. For one thing, he had never been around them and didn’t have a clue how to relate to them. But he found himself smiling as he watched Kiley talk to the child as she pinned the drawing to a bulletin board. Only a coldhearted bastard would ignore the fact that she had just made the little girl’s day.
“Carrie, could you take over for me for a few minutes?” she asked a young woman Josh assumed to be the day care worker Kiley had hired not long after the center opened. When the woman nodded, Kiley walked over to him and motioned toward a door on the far side of the room. “Why don’t we go into my office? Otherwise, I can’t guarantee we won’t be interrupted.”
As he followed her to her office, he found himself fascinated by the slight sway of her hips. He had to force himself to keep his eyes trained on her slender shoulders. But that only drew his attention to the exposed skin between the collar of her red sweater and the bottom of her short blond hair—a spot that looked extremely kissable.
His heart thumped hard against his rib cage and heat began to fill his lower belly. What the hell was wrong with him? Had it been that long since he and his last girlfriend parted ways?
“Please have a seat, Mr. Gordon,” Kiley said, walking behind the small desk to sit down in an old wooden chair.
He recognized both the desk and the chair as having been in the storage room for as long as he had been a member of the club and probably for decades before that. If circumstances had been different, he might have felt guilty about the funding committee insisting her office be furnished with the club’s castoffs. But considering none of the members on the panel, with maybe the exception of Nadine Capshaw, expected the center to remain open past spring, it had been decided that the used furniture would be good enough.
“Call me Josh,” he said, sitting in a metal folding chair across the desk from her.
“I assume you’ve come to tell me the funding committee’s decision on my request...Josh?” she asked, sounding as if she already knew the outcome of the vote.
There was something about the sound of her voice saying his name that caused him to frown. “Before we get into the committee’s decision, could I ask you something?”
“I...uh, suppose so.” He could tell by the hesitation in her voice and her wary expression that she didn’t trust him.
“Do we know each other?” he asked, realizing immediately from the slight widening of her expressive brown eyes that they did.
“No,” she said a little too quickly.
“Are you sure?” he pressed, determined to find out what she knew that he didn’t.
“Well, we...um, don’t know each other formally,” she said, suddenly taking great interest in her tightly clasped hands resting on top of the desk.
She was hiding something, and he intended to find out what it was. “So we have met?” he continued.
“In a way...I guess you could say that.” Her knuckles had turned white from her tight grip and he knew whatever she hid was extremely stressful for her. “It was quite by accident.”
Every hair follicle on his head felt as if it stood straight up, and he suddenly wasn’t so sure he wanted to know what she obviously didn’t want to tell him. “Where would that have been?” he heard himself ask in spite of his reservations.
Getting up, she closed her office door, then slowly lowered herself into the chair when she returned to the desk. “You used to date my sister.”
A cold, clammy feeling snaked its way up his spine. “I did?”
When she finally raised her head to meet his gaze head-on, a knot the size of his fist began to twist his gut. “I’m Lori Miller’s sister. Her only sister.”
Josh opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. For the first time in his adult life, he couldn’t think of a thing to say. But his unusual reaction to her suddenly started to make sense. From the moment she’d walked into the meeting room to plead her case to the funding committee, he had been fighting to keep his libido under control. Now he knew why. He might not have realized who she was, but apparently his body had. The chemistry between them that night three years ago had been undeniable and it appeared that it was just as powerful now. Unless he missed his guess, her nervousness had just as much to do with the magnetic pull between them as it did with her reluctance to admit what had taken place.
As he stared at her, it occurred to him why Kiley seemed familiar to him. Although it had been too dark to tell what she looked like that night, he could see the resemblance between her and her sister now. Kiley had the same extraordinary brown eyes and flawless alabaster skin that Lori had. But that seemed to be where the similarities between the two women ended. While Lori was considerably taller and had auburn hair, Kiley was shorter and had dark blond hair that looked so silky it practically begged a man to tangle his fingers in it as he made love to her. When his lower body began to tighten, he swallowed hard and tried to think of something—anything—to get his mind back on track.
“Your last name is different,” he stated the obvious.
She straightened her shoulders and took a deep breath. “I was married briefly.”
“But not anymore?” he couldn’t stop himself from asking.
“No.”
He swallowed hard as a thought suddenly occurred to him. “You weren’t married—”
“No. Not then.”
Relieved that he hadn’t crossed that particular line, Josh released the breath he hadn’t been aware of holding. “That’s good.”
“Look, I’m not any happier than you are about having to work with you on the day care center’s funding,” she said, her cheeks coloring a pretty pink. “But this isn’t the time or the place to get into what happened that night. I think it would be for the best if we forgot the incident ever happened and concentrate on my request for the day care center and the committee’s decision not to give me the extra money I need to keep it running.”
He knew she was right. A day care center full of little kids certainly wasn’t the place to talk over his mistakenly making love to her. And she had a valid point about forgetting that night. It would definitely be the prudent thing to do. But some perverse part of him resented her wanting to dismiss what had arguably been the most exciting night of his life. He’d never been with a woman, either before or since, as responsive and passionate as Kiley had been.
“I agree,” he finally said. “We can take a trip down memory lane another time.” He could tell his choice of words and the fact that he thought they should revisit the past wasn’t what she wanted to hear.
She folded her arms beneath her breasts, causing his mouth to go dry. “Mr. Gordon—”
“I prefer you call me Josh,” he reminded