A Will and a Way (14 page)

When Monday rolled around, Will found the whole concept of office work much easier to handle. Truthfully, he was too tired to deal with site work. After talking Betty out of going home to her own bed Friday night, he’d kept her naked in
his
bed most of the weekend. They’d only dressed long enough for her to dash home for some clothes. They met up at the corner market for supplies. There, he’d introduced her to Mr. Taylor and Mrs. Walker and stood silent and incredulous while they both warned her away from him.

“This one, he’s a lady killer,” Mrs. Walker cautioned, shaking a bundle of asparagus. “Sweet and charming, but oh! He never keeps one for long.” She patted Betty’s arm. “I know he’s a looker, dear, but a pretty girl like you can surely find a nice fella.”

The old lady turned to the store owner and heaved a sigh. “It’s too bad Gregory just got married.” Returning her attention to Betty, she leaned in and spoke in a whisper loud enough to wake the dead. “Gregory is a nice boy. The one he married the first time around was kind of a cold fish, but this Josie is a real firecracker.”

She smoothed the sleeve of Betty’s coat, then pinched the fabric together to test its quality. “I’m sure you can be a firecracker, too, but you’ll have to ditch this one. Lots of girls have tried to light his fuse, but in the end he turned out to be a dud.”

“I’m standing right here.”

The old woman smiled, showing off preternaturally white dentures. “Sweet boy.” She stretched to kiss his cheek, and he bent to meet the diminutive woman halfway. “Be good.”

Turning back to Betty, she beamed. “Make sure he buys you a nice dinner first, dear. He’s got the money.”

Will rolled his eyes. “Speaking of dinner, I’m going to go pick out a couple steaks.”

“I’ve got some nice T-bones,” Mr. Taylor called after him.

The man hadn’t been exaggerating. There were some beautifully marbled cuts in the case. Will was weighing the decision between the touted T-bones and some thick rib eyes when a hand landed squarely on his ass.

“What do you think of these?” he asked, lifting the package of rib eyes for inspection.

“I think I’d rather take a bite out of you,” a woman who was most definitely not Betty answered in a sultry tone.

Dropping the steaks, he whirled to find Mary Therese Wyczkowski beaming at him. Once, quite literally, the girl next door, M.T. was now a two-time divorcee looking to line up husband number three. For some reason, she’d suddenly decided he was a prime candidate.

“Mary Therese.” In that moment, he spotted Betty standing at the end of the aisle, a plastic shopping basket hooked over her arm, and her eyes narrowed to slits. His gaze darted from one woman to the other. “I didn’t…I wasn’t…Uh….”

He cast a pleading glance in Betty’s direction. To his relief he saw the corners of her mouth quirk, so he stumbled on, doing his best to keep things polite and friendly. “How are you? Your folks doing okay?”

“I’ve been calling you, Will Tarrant,” Mary Therese chastised. “I even tried you at the office. Why haven’t you called back?”

“Have you met Betty?” he said, gesturing for her to join him. “We’re, uh…She’s my….”

“Incompetent secretary,” Betty supplied with a saccharine smile.

“Girlfriend,” he blurted.

The word felt weird on his tongue. Foreign. He hadn’t referred to a woman by the g-word since he was seventeen and learned the importance of keeping one’s options open.

“Girlfriend?” Mary Therese repeated, obviously as perplexed by his use of the label as he was.

“And incompetent secretary,” Betty added helpfully. “I prefer rib eyes, honeylamb.” Turning to Mary Therese, she beamed a blinding beauty queen smile. “So nice to meet you. Will’s been so sweet, introducin’ me around and all.” She turned wide, innocent eyes on him and ratcheted up the Blanche DuBois. “I thought Yankees were supposed to be unfriendly, but everybody’s been so nice. Why, if I’d known you’d be this darlin’ I wouldna fed your number to that mean old paper shredder.”

“Oh yeah, we get a real bad rap.” Determined to get her out of there before she started some kind of Civil War reenactment in front of the butcher case, he snatched the steaks from the case, caught Betty by the elbow, and propelled her toward the front of the store. “See you, M.T. Give your folks my best.”

Betty thought watching him squirm the entire time they checked out was hysterical, of course. She also thought it was funny when she received similar warnings from Marjorie at the bakery and Sam at the pharmacy. Even funnier when Will cut across the street after he spotted Carol Ann Sheridan coming out of the dry cleaners.

“I’d think the fact that I had to buy condoms would prove I’m not as much of a dog as they want to pretend I am,” he grumbled.

“Or it could be proof,” she pointed out. “It’s not like you discovered your supply had expired.”

He rolled his eyes and she grinned, lacing her arm through his.

“Now, don’t sulk. You’re my stud, remember?” She pressed her cheek to his arm as they strolled back toward his house. “I think this is kind of fun, seeing as how I’m a debauched woman and all.”

So he took her back to his place and debauched her some more.

And now, on this lovely Monday morning, Will looked forward to spending the day chasing her around his desk and perhaps convincing her to engage in a few more acts of depravity. Unfortunately, a panicked call from one of his site managers postponed the first heat. But even a surprise OSHA inspection failed to put a damper on his good humor. He wore a smile and waved to the crewmembers as he led the paper-pusher through the project. The lingering effects of sharing sloppy kisses with a sleepy southern belle numbed the sting of the slap on the hand TAS received over some outdated postings in the trailer.

“I picked up cherry danishes,” he called as he swung into the office. “I’ve got some great ideas for things we can do with the filling.”

Betty’s eyes widened and she quickly covered the receiver with her hand. She waved him away with the other, those brilliant blue eyes shooting daggers at him as she spoke into the phone again.

“Yes, I can get that over to them.” She scribbled something on a notepad. “Right. I think I saw that folder. Mm-hmm.” Another note, another sexy-as-shit hum, then a smile. “Oh, it’s no trouble at all, Mr. Stark. Greg,” she amended.

His beautiful Betty shot him another murderous glance, but her voice was all honey and melting butter when it came to making nice with his friend and partner. Will would have to work on that. The poor woman was so sex-stunned she had it all backwards.

“Don’t worry about a thing. I’ll take care of it.”

She wound the phone cord around her finger and flashed another smile that wasn’t pointed at him. Something dark and bitter twisted in his gut. He placed the pink bakery box on the desk. Like he was some kind of supplicant offering gifts to a goddess. Or a love-struck little boy offering up his lunch money to the prettiest girl in class. Teeth clenched, he crossed his arms over his chest and narrowed his eyes.

“You enjoy the rest of your trip, hear?” She hummed and laughed one more time, and a low growl rolled in his throat. At last, she smiled up at him, her eyes sparkling with mischief. “Yes, I look forward to meeting you, too.”

The smile slid into a smirk as she placed the receiver back on the cradle. “This is a place of business, Mr. Tarrant,” she began primly.

He raised one finger to stop her, and when she paused, rewarded her with a smirk of his own. “Three, two—” The phone clipped to his belt buzzed. Without looking, he accepted the call and pressed it to his ear. “Hello, Gregory. Josie finally come to her senses and leave your candy-ass?”

Betty’s smart but sexy little mouth rounded into an O. His blood rushed southward. Damn, but he was coming to love that vowel.

“Are you kidding me? Is that woman’s name really Betty, and does she really talk like Ellie Mae Clampett?”

Greg’s incredulity was laced with just enough wonder to take the barb out of his descriptors. “Uh-huh. Yeah, name is really Betty, but no. I don’t think she sounds much like Ellie Mae Clampett. I’d say she’s more along the lines of Scarlett O’Hara.”

“It’s a damn good thing you don’t spend much time in the office,” Greg muttered. “She sounds like she could be trouble.”

“If you like the way she sounds, you should see how she looks.”

“Oh, God, don’t let her hear you say shit like that.”

“I’m smarter than that.” Will snickered as he ducked the pen she threw at his head. “Remember how hot those girls on
Petticoat Junction
were?” He lifted his leg and sat on the edge of her desk. “Every time I hear her talk, I want to book a room at the Shady Rest.”

“Oh, Christ,” Greg groaned.

Will refused to budge when Betty tried to pry a file folder out from under him. “Looks like the blond one. Was that Betty Jo?”

“Billie Jo,” Greg corrected without missing a beat, proving his worth as a best friend.

“Oh, well.” He turned to Betty and blew her a cheeky kiss. “Betty Jo, Billie Jo, Bobbie Jo, eenie-meenie-miney-mo.” Before his old friend had a chance to recoup, he held the phone away from this mouth and mumbled, “Uh-oh, tunnel. I might—” He ended the call with a flourish, “—lose you.” Leaning back, he sprawled across her desk until he stared up at her. “Your middle name wouldn’t happen to be Jo, would it?”

She gave his hair a sharp tug and pushed him up and out of her way. “In your dreams.”

Chuckling, he rolled up until his feet were under him once more. “Oh, yeah. There will definitely be dreams.” His phone buzzed again. He flipped the bakery box open and pushed it closer to Betty, then pressed the cell to his ear again.

“You’re on your honeymoon, Dickweed. Shouldn’t you be attending to your husbandly duties? Your wife is a lusty woman, if I recall correctly.”

Betty blinked, a puzzled frown bisecting her brows as she froze, one of Mrs. Harter’s delicious danishes millimeters from her lips. He gave her a reassuring smile then ducked his head to finish the calls from Greg once and for all.

“Everything is fine. Stop calling. We’ll see you next week.” With his partner summarily dispatched, he tossed his phone into her inbox. “Shred that for me, will you?”

“How would you know if his wife is a lusty woman?”

“Josie and I dated a little bit about a millennium ago.”

“Ah, one of your many conquests.”

White teeth tore into flaky pastry. Tiny flecks of icing clung to her bottom lip. He couldn’t blame them. He’d camp out there all day if she’d let him. He stared transfixed, watching her mouth move as she chewed and debating the merits of lapping up those crumbs himself. Sadly, she swept them away with the tip of her pink tongue.

“I’ve heard about you, Mr. Tarrant.”

He snorted and plucked a pastry from the box. “Heard what?”

“I hear you’re quite the…elusive bachelor.”

“Elusive bachelor?” He frowned, inexplicably annoyed by the descriptor. “Who said that?”

“Mrs. Walker.” She pinched off another hunk of danish and popped it into her mouth, a smug smile curving her lips. “I believe she made reference to Warren Beatty.”

“Warren Beatty?”

“The movie star,” she prompted, delicate eyebrows lifting.

“I know who Warren Beatty is. I’m just trying to figure out the connection.”

Betty dipped her finger into the cherry filling then held it up. As if she needed a coating of sticky red gel to get her point across. “Notorious womanizer.” With that, she popped her finger into her mouth. Her cheeks hollowed and heat flashed through him. “Difficult to land.”

Desire. Annoyance. Impatience. There might even have been a little fear mixed in there. He wasn’t ready for Betty to write him off. Besides, he had his own ways of driving women away if and when he wanted them gone. He didn’t need the neighborhood watch getting in on the action.

“I am not a womanizer.”

A sly smile curved her lips. She tossed the half-eaten danish into the box and rose from her chair, smoothing the slim skirt until it skimmed the top of her knees. “Would your friend Josie say the same if I asked her about you?”

“Yes.” Though the answer was true, he sounded defensive. “Why do you need to ask anyone about me anyway? I’d tell you anything you wanted to know.”

“Mr. Hankins says a woman has better chance of holding onto a snowflake in July.”

“Mr. Hankins?”

“The mail carrier.”

Indignation broke like a wave inside him. “Bobby Hankins said that about me? That jerk’s been divorced three times!”

She pursed her pretty pink lips and gave an understanding nod. “Mrs. Svenson mentioned something about that.”

“Mrs. Svenson?”

“She lives across the street.”

“I know where Mrs. Svenson lives,” he snapped. His mind was hijacked by the image of sweet, soft-spoken Ruthanne Svenson murmuring apologies and trying to be even-handed in adding another layer of soot to his already blackened reputation.

Betty smoothed the front of his shirt with the flat of her hand. “If it makes you feel better, I did point out that Warren Beatty has been married to Annette Bening for over twenty years now.”

“Did you?”

She nodded, lips set in a solemn line and blue eyes shining with sincerity. “Of course, Sister Laurent said I might have better luck seducing someone named Father Mikhail away from the priesthood than getting you to the altar.”

“Altar? What the hell happened here today?”

She waved another stack of pink message slips at him. “Your harem is looking for you. Oh, some of the neighbors came callin’. They brought the yummiest doughnuts and coffee, and, well, I didn’t want to be rude.” She gave a helpless little shrug then looked up at him from under her lashes. “Do you know this Father Mikhail?”

“He’s an Opus Dei priest who missed his calling to be a monk.” Will spoke the words from clenched teeth. He glanced down at oval-tipped fingers toying with his shirt button. “You want me to set you up?”

“Though I do like a challenge, I’m not really looking to seduce a priest.”

“Good. I’d hate for the building to be struck by lightning.”