Homecoming: The Billionaire Brothers (22 page)

“You’re not used to anyone standing up to you,” Greta observed.

He would have found it more annoying, if it weren’t for the catch in her breath, and the way her gaze dropped unconsciously to his mouth. That was all the reminder he needed to force himself to back down.

Sliding his hands into his pants pockets, Miles rocked back on his heels. “Not really,” he agreed. “Although it’s not as if I’m careful to surround myself with yes men, either. I appreciate a good debate as much as the next CEO. But when it comes down to it, the buck stops with me. My company turns on my decisions. I can’t afford to waffle or to argue every point with the people I trust to carry out my commands. You must face some of the same issues, running your business.”

The appeal to what they had in common had the desired effect. Greta smiled, a little reluctantly, but he’d take it. “Not exactly. My mother is still in charge when it comes to the big decisions.”

Miles frowned. “Even though you’re the one who puts in the time, working the store?”

“It’s complicated.” A distant expression stole into the velvety depths of Greta’s brown eyes. “My mother is … well. You can meet her for yourself. She’s covering for me at the store today.”

Meeting the parents. That was a step Miles had thus far managed to avoid taking with any woman he’d dated. Still, desperate times and all that. “I look forward to it,” he said, aiming for polite enthusiasm, but falling short, if Greta’s smirk was anything to go by.

She looked him over from head to toe, the sly grin deepening. “If you’re planning to actually help me rehang that porch swing, we’re going to have to get you something else to wear.”

Glad to lighten the mood, Miles flicked open the top button of his shirt and raised a brow. “You don’t approve of the suit?”

Humor mixed with desire hooded her eyes as her gaze traveled over him. “Oh, I approve. But I wouldn’t want it to get messed up. Especially since I bet it cost more than my truck.”

Privately admitting that might be true, Miles glanced back toward the house. “I can probably borrow something from my brothers.”

Greta marched over to the front door and opened it, as casually as if she lived there. “Why don’t you go change? I don’t mind waiting.”

“Now? But…”

“When I said Hackley’s was homey,” Greta informed him, “that was code for ‘dusty and a little disorganized.’ You’d hate to snag that fine Italian wool on a stray pitchfork or something, wouldn’t you?”

She twanged out the word
eye-tally-en
with a slow, exaggerated drawl, and Miles caught himself grinning. She really was the most disarming woman. It was a problem.

“Fine,” Miles agreed, smoothing down his slightly rumpled jacket. “But only because I like the idea of clean clothes. I haven’t worn the same shirt two days in a row since college.”

“Great, I’ll just slip through and chat with Penny until you’re done,” she said brightly.

Miles watched her walk down the hall toward the kitchen, the tanned length of her forever-long legs glowing golden in the dim light. He never would have thought the sight of a woman in ragged-edged cutoffs and thick-soled, tan work boots would do it for him, but Greta wore them as if they were her second skin, as comfortable and confident in her body as any socialite or female executive he’d ever known.

Focus,
he reminded himself again, shoving down the inconvenient swell of lust.
You’re not flirting with this woman because you like her or intend to start something you’ll never finish. You need an in, a source of good intel. Focus on that.

And whatever happens, don’t drink the water.

*   *   *

“I’m not the best-friend ethics police, or anything,” Penny said, wide-eyed over the rim of her coffee cup, “but I believe I’m going to have to cite you for a violation.”

“No way,” Greta protested. “I deserve a medal! The keys to the best friend city! Maybe a tiara and a sash—I am the queen of best friends!”

“You kissed the enemy.” Penny—the woman who used to be able to hold a grudge until kingdom come—broke and giggled into her coffee. “I think we’re going to need a judge’s ruling on this.”

“He’s not the enemy. Or at least, he doesn’t have to be.” Greta shivered even in the warmth of the kitchen, remembering the banded steel of his arms around her, the hard lines of his shockingly muscular body.
He must get up at the crack of dawn and put in a couple of hours at the gym before hitting the office
, she mused dreamily.

Penny’s soft laughter dragged Greta out of her contemplation of what Miles might look like with his perfect hair mussed and sweaty, his impressive chest heaving with the effort of pumping iron.

“Oh, honey,” Penny said, all sympathy. “Be careful. From what I can tell, the Harrington brothers are all dangerous.”

“Please, I grew up with four older brothers. I can handle myself.”

“I don’t mean physically dangerous.” Penny set down her coffee cup, the better to give Greta her Serious Mom expression. “Except in the sense of, well … I know you’ve always intended to wait. Until you found Mr. Right.”

Ignoring the breathless edge to her own laughter, Greta propped her elbows on the scarred pine tabletop. “I don’t need the birds-and-the-bees speech, Penny. Four older brothers, remember? I doubt there’s anything that goes on between a man and a woman that I haven’t heard a million dirty jokes about.”

“Okay, fine.” Penny sat back, looking a little relieved. “But that wasn’t what I was getting at anyway. The Harrington brothers are … well. The word ‘irresistible’ has been used.”

Butterflies swarmed around Greta’s insides. Tracing a decades-old water ring stained into the wooden table, she whispered, “But what if I don’t want to resist?”

Penny’s brows went up. She knew more than most people did about Greta’s situation, but she didn’t scoff. Instead, she stretched her arm across the corner of the table to lightly clasp Greta’s strong wrist in her slim, sturdy fingers. “Protect your heart, sweetie. That’s all I’m saying. I don’t know that you can trust Miles with it.”

“Trust me with what?”

The deep, smooth voice had both women popping up straight in their chairs and turning toward the doorway.

Lounging against the doorjamb like something out of a magazine Mrs. Gooch would insist on selling wrapped in brown paper down at the general store, Miles Harrington hooked his thumbs in the belt loops of his sinfully tight, borrowed jeans and smiled a cool, inquisitive smile.

The jeans obviously came from Logan’s suitcase, since the two elder brothers were about the same height, but Logan was built slightly leaner than Miles’s powerful bulk. Greta swallowed hard.

Miles’s T-shirt, on the other hand … That was all Dylan. Tight enough in the sleeves to strain against biceps Miles sure as hell didn’t acquire from typing away on a computer, the clinging black cotton showed every slab of muscle banding Miles’s chest, every line corrugating his abs. And when he breathed in, the hem rose above the waist of the dark denim, baring a strip of tanned belly and the enticing shadows of two divots on either side of his hips.

“No one had a T-shirt that would fit you, huh?” Greta knew she sounded odd, her voice hoarse and thick, but hell, she was proud of herself for being able to string a full sentence together.

Miles tugged briefly at the hem of the shirt, then shrugged, exposing another brief flash of washboard abs. “All of Logan’s were even tighter. Plus, they had nerdy slogans on them. This one might be short, but at least it’s plain. What’s this about not trusting me?”

Casting Penny a furious, shushing glance, Greta leapt out of her chair and herded Miles down the front hallway and out the door. “Nothing! We weren’t even talking about you. Not every conversation two women have is about you, Harrington.”

“Mmm,” Miles hummed, obviously unconvinced, but thankfully he let it go. “Dylan mentioned he’d been into your store and bought a full tool kit when he first arrived on the island. We should check the shed in the backyard, but he didn’t think we had the right kind of screws to support the weight of the swing. And there might be issues in the ceiling structure, so we should grab the ladder and check that out before we head to the store.”

Relieved to have a clear set of tasks—and ones Greta could perform in her sleep, after growing up hearing her mother advise their customers on home repairs—she hurried down the porch steps and around the side of the house.

The heady perfume of rosebushes in full bloom filled her lungs, and the steady beat of the sun made her glad to slip into the darkness of the tiny shed.

“It’s already hot out there,” she remarked, then felt stupid. The weather—what a fascinating conversationalist she’d turned out to be!

“The heat feels different here than it does in New York,” Miles replied, ducking down to rummage through the clutter piled against the shed’s walls. “Softer, wetter, saltier—but somehow cleaner.”

His words caused an answering heat to beat through Greta’s bloodstream. Clearing her throat, she said, “At least I remembered to slather on the daily moisturizer Mama’s always after me to wear. The one with sunscreen in it.” Greta rubbed a self-conscious finger over the bridge of her nose. “I don’t need any more freckles. I already look like a ragamuffin as it is.”

Miles leaned across her in the small space, the breadth of his warm chest blocking the light from the open shed door for a moment so that Greta felt utterly surrounded by him. Heaving the stepladder up off the floor and over his shoulder with a soft grunt of effort, Miles said, “I don’t know what a ragamuffin is—if I check my phone, will I find it in Webster’s dictionary?—but I like your freckles. They’re like specks of cinnamon in cream.”

“I’ll cream you,” Greta said nonsensically, then cringed. “Sorry. Autopilot response drilled into me by years of dealing with brothers.”

Even in the darkness of the shed, she could see the way his eyes lit with laughter, tinged with a bit of wistfulness. “You have brothers, too? Sounds like you’re close.”

Close in a way Miles clearly wished he could be, with Dylan and Logan. Heart squeezing in empathy, Greta helped him carry the stepladder and the other supplies they’d gathered around the house to the front porch.

But as she followed the tall, wide-backed, lean-hipped form and watch the play of muscles under that sexy black T-shirt when he twisted his torso to deposit the heavy metal ladder on the porch, Greta had to take a moment to remember her friend’s words of wisdom.

Protect your heart.

No matter what else she yielded to Miles Harrington in her quest to live a little, for however long it lasted—she had to defend the one part of her he definitely didn’t want, and wouldn’t know how to care for.

Chapter Four

Being right usually felt more satisfying.

Miles browsed through the shelves of Hackley’s Hardware and contemplated the leaden weight that had descended on his gut when he’d walked in on Penny Little cautioning Greta about trusting him.

Penny obviously had something to hide. Something Greta knew, and hadn’t told him.

Yet,
he promised himself, picking a bottle of grill cleaner off the shelf at random. He stared blindly at the label for a moment before setting it back down next to a stack of gardening gloves.

She hadn’t told him yet. But she would when he stepped up the intensity on this seduction campaign.

If she ever comes back out here.
He sent an impatient glance toward the back of the store, where she’d disappeared behind the counter and into an interior office as soon as they walked into the empty shop.

In the five minutes Greta had been gone, no one else came into the cramped rabbit warren of Hackley’s Hardware. Old wooden shelving units stretched up to the ceiling, forming narrow aisles broken up by the occasional item that was too large to fit on a shelf. He wandered closer to the front of the store to peer out the large display window at the bustling small-town street, and found himself gazing straight into the curious stares of the old men who’d been playing checkers out front when Greta and Miles arrived.

The skinny, whiskery one in flannel scowled, almost as if he were warning Miles off, but the jolly-looking guy wearing the battered gold-painted crown gave him a jaunty wave.

Waving back bemusedly, Miles didn’t hear Greta come up behind him until she was close enough to put a light hand against the small of his back. Her fingers slipped below the hem of the slightly too short shirt, and brushed hot, sensitive skin.

Accidental slip?
he wondered with a pleasurable shiver. He hoped not. He hoped Greta was as into this as he was.

“Are they your store mascots?” he asked, gesturing at the unabashedly interested old men.

Greta laughed. “Pretty much. King and Pete set up their checkerboard out there most every day during the summer, until it gets too hot. They do more gossiping than playing, though. They know everything that happens on this island, and they spread news better than the
Sanctuary Gazette
.”

“Nothing much to see in here—we’re the only customers.”

Greta opened her mouth to reply, but before she could say a word, a soft voice drawled from the rear of the shop. “Bless your heart. Aren’t you funny? Why, surely you know that your sudden arrival by helicopter yesterday is the biggest thing to happen on little old Sanctuary Island in years.”

Miles turned to see the petite, trim figure of an older woman with Greta’s velvety brown eyes behind the pitted wooden counter. When she hoisted herself onto the stool situated by the cash register and smiled at him, the expression made her look exactly like her daughter.

Because who else could this be, but Mother Hackley?

Rushing forward with hands outstretched, as if to help with balance or support, Greta confirmed it by saying, “Mama, wait, let me…”

“Pssh.” Mrs. Hackley waved her away gently. “I’m fine. The day I need help climbing up onto my throne, here, is the day you can put me out to pasture. Until then, remember your manners and introduce me to your friend.”