“I’m working.” She gave him her standard answer. Nice that pretty much all she did was work, of one kind or another, so the words were always true.
“Is it something you can break away from?”
“Why?”
“I’m at a festival in Santa Barbara. There’s a great act here. I just caught the tail end of their show, but they’re due to be onstage again in an hour. The show’s about forty-five minutes long. If you like them, I can get with them right afterward and see if we can book them.”
He’d told her about an entertainment cancellation when they’d had a gala meeting on Wednesday. He hadn’t mentioned, when she’d seen him then, that he was on the guest list for the wine tasting at her house on Friday. She’d seen his name. She’d already been toying with the idea of leaving Chantel to act as hostess. Hunter’s name on the guest list had made up her mind for her.
“We’ve got nine great acts lined up,” he reminded her. “Most of them are fairly short. We need a tenth if we’re going to keep the party going long enough to get the money you want...”
The gala was a black-tie affair at a dinner theater in Beverly Hills. Guests paid to be there. That price included dinner and the first three acts. But they could pay more if they were enjoying themselves and wanted the evening to continue. There’d be voting buttons at each seat. If guests wanted another act, they pushed the button. As long as there were button pushes, the gala would continue. And each push of a button served as another pledge.
She wanted ten acts.
If he’d told her about the festival to begin with, skipping the preliminary questions, she could already have been on her way...
Asking for directions, she told him she’d be there in half an hour.
And wasted five of her thirty minutes trying to decide whether she should change from the jeans and the short, waist-hugging black leather jacket she’d worn to brunch with Colin and Chantel in town. By then, considering how long it would take her to get there, she no longer had time to change.
* * *
“NICE JACKET.” HUNTER’S words had Julie cringing even before she was fully out of her BMW. She should have changed.
“My sister-in-law gave it to me,” she said. Which was why she’d had it on. The only time she’d had it on. Sassy was just not her style.
Not anymore.
Not for many years.
“She’s got good taste.”
The look in his eye, accompanied by the grin on his face and the tone of his voice—they made her feel warm.
She didn’t want to like it.
But she did. Sort of.
And that bothered her.
On a day when she’d been all set to enjoy her peace.
As they started to maneuver through the festival crowd at the edge of the beach, he raised an arm and reached toward her, as though he was going to drop that arm casually around her.
She stepped away.
And hated her life for a second.
Hunter always looked good. Great. But in jeans and a blue polo shirt, with that blond hair windblown and just a hint of stubble on his chin, he was drop-dead gorgeous.
The fact that she noticed, that she always noticed, made her nervous. Even if she didn’t have a lifetime of issues to muck her way through, Hunter Rafferty was not her type. At all. He was a charmer. The kiss of death.
Charmers’ smiles were so bright, so compelling, they hid everything beneath them. Everything inside them.
Someday, she might be healthy enough to go out with friends without a panic attack. In a perfect world she might even get healthy enough to date. But she’d never, ever be able to trust a charmer again. One of them had almost killed her.
And he’d condemned her to live in the shambles he’d left behind.
Smyth had taught her something about charmers, though. They smiled even when they were destroying you. She’d never forget his smile as he held her arms above her head...
She turned down Hunter’s offers to buy her a cup of shaved Hawaiian ice, a funnel cake and, finally, a chocolate-covered frozen banana. She kept her distance as they made their way to the stage and sat a chair down from him when they settled in to watch the show.
She gave him her approval of the six nine-year-old girls who sounded like Gladys Knight and the Pips, halfway through their show. After that, she excused herself, knowing he had to wait until the end of the act to speak with the girls’ manager, or parents, or whoever could arrange to have them in the lineup the night of the gala.
She’d tell him when he called her later that she thought the girls should be their opening act. And to thank him for finding them.
What she wasn’t going to tell him was that she’d liked the festival and wished she could have dared enjoy herself with him.
But she wouldn’t.
Because she knew why she was attracted to him. He was exactly her type—in the most dangerous way. And that meant he couldn’t be her type. He was upbeat. Energetic. Always with an idea up his sleeve. Adventurous, like she used to be.
She’d fallen head over heels in love with a man like him, a fun-loving charmer, once before.
And had the fun choked out of her.
Literally.
HUNTER DIDN’T CALL Julie Sunday night. She’d had to leave the festival, which obviously meant she’d had something else to do. Or so he chose to think.
She wasn’t a micromanager. So she didn’t need to be told immediately that he’d hired the girls for her gala.
And...he wanted to call her badly enough that he shut himself down. He wasn’t desperate. Had never had to be overeager.
And to prove that to himself, he called a woman friend of his, one he’d been dating casually on and off for years, and took her to dinner and then to a club. He enjoyed himself just fine. More importantly, she enjoyed herself.
Mandy was fun. Vivacious. She was easy to please, and pleased to be with him. Best of all, like him, she had no expectations beyond having a good time with someone she could trust. Had no interest in more than that. The only reason he’d ended the evening early—when she’d made it clear that the night could extend until morning—was that he had an 8:00 a.m. meeting, followed by a packed Monday and a busy week.
But he’d see her again soon.
He’d assured her of that. And had won a glowing smile and intimate kiss for his trouble.
Mandy was the woman he wanted to be thinking of when he woke the next morning, made his way out to the kitchen of his high-end beach condo to put on the coffee, and headed to the shower. Mandy. Not his festival companion.
Julie Fairbanks was only on his mind because he had to remember to let her know he’d signed the girls, and he hadn’t put the reminder on his phone.
That need to call her, in the middle of such a jam-packed week, was why she was the first thing on his mind when the phone rang just as he was pulling on a polo shirt. Grabbing the sports coat that matched his pants and gave the shirt the business touch it required, he reached for his phone.
Dad.
“Hey, what’s up?” he answered, slipping into expensive loafers and shoving his wallet in his back pocket before picking up his keys from the nightstand. He’d spoken with both of his parents—separately, of course—the