Jill Shalvis - Messing With Mac

“Of course it is.”

“The building is deserted, and in obvious renovation. You know damn well this street gets heavy foot traffic on a daily basis. You never know who’s going to come pawing through here looking to steal supplies or tools.”

“I lock up.”

He let a rough snort.

“I’m staying, Mac.”

“There are going to be times where there’s no electricity. No water. No gas. This isn’t going to be the Ritz, Princess. This is going to be little more than camping at best.”

She hadn’t had luxuries in months, but hell if she’d admit that. Or the fact that she was slowly selling off her beloved antique collection just to keep afloat here. He thought her a spoiled princess, so be it.

What he thought was no skin off her nose.

And if he really believed she was going to back off the first challenge in her entire life, the first chance she’d ever had to prove herself, to get by on her own, he was sorely mistaken. She’d continue her spaghetti and canned tomato diet for as long as it took. She was going to do this, and do it right, and not even for him, the first man to make her feel a twinge in the heart region in ten years, would she give it up.

“I’ll make sure I have batteries and drinking water,” she said.

He stared at her for one, long, unwavering heartbeat, then shook his head. “Are you always impossible and stubborn, or is it just me?”

Trick question, that.

He certainly hadn’t been the first man to find her difficult, and she doubted he’d be the last. But only one thing mattered to her, her battered pride. No way was she going to admit she couldn’t afford to go anywhere for the duration of the renovation, not to him, not to anyone. “I’m staying, Mac.”

“Through the dirt and noise, through the inconvenience, through the danger?”

The only possible danger came from him and him alone, but she doubted he’d appreciate the irony. “Through the dirt and noise, through the inconvenience, through the ‘danger.”’

“Taylor-”

“Wow, my name,” she marveled, cocking her head. “You do know it.”

His jaw tightened. “You’re doing this, aren’t you? No matter what I say.”

“I’m doing this.” She had no choice. “No matter what you say.”

SOUTH VILLAGE’S NIGHTLIFE rivaled the Sunset Strip as the busiest, most energetic area in Southern California. And yet the crowds it attracted weren’t wild or aggressive. Instead the attitude was a sort of laid-back and easygoing elegance.

The town’s founders had perpetrated this atmosphere with one goal in mind.

Wealth.

The old adage turned out to be correct-build it and they will come. The place had roared in the twenties, declined in the thirties and forties and rebelled in the fifties and sixties. True to the circle of life, it had been given a face-lift, slowly over the past twenty years, and had been turned into a gold mine.

As a result, there was never an available parking spot. Swearing, Mac circled the block. Then again. Damn it, he’d had a long day, all he needed was one little spot. Somewhere. Anywhere.

The heat was going to kill him. If Taylor didn’t kill him first, that is. She could do it with just her eyes, those amazing green eyes she thought hid everything from to the world and yet seemed so expressive to him.

Then there was her calm and cool, sophisticated, elegant exterior, which he hated. But he also was be ginning to understand all that was really just a front for a boiling pot of stubborn orneriness, and where there was stubborn orneriness, there was heat and passion.

And damn if he wasn’t a sucker for heat and passion. Oh yeah, he enjoyed a woman who knew what she wanted and how.

Or at least, he used to.

But his and Taylor’s fate was sealed, no matter how explosive he figured they’d be in bed, because she was everything he would never go for again.

And she was hiding something, he knew it. Some thing more than living in the building when he’d told her not to. God help her if it had something to do with this job, which he was depending on far too much for his own comfort.

Damn, letting himself feel again was a bitch.

And what he felt right now was hungry and tired, but attending tonight’s monthly Historical Society meeting was necessary. Rubbing elbows with the powers that be made him want to grate his back teeth into powder, but it had to be done, because though no one would ever admit to it, it truly wasn’t what you knew, but who you knew.

He needed to mingle.

Much to his perpetual disgust, the meetings were always run more like a cocktail party than the gathering and exchange of information they were supposed to be.

He hated cocktail parties.

The “meetings” were held at city hall, a building that could trace its roots to 1876, when it had been built as a grand hotel. In its day, it had housed miners, western settlers and Spanish royalty. Tonight the Spanish-style building was decorated in gold and silver, with froufrou food on platters that made him wish for a beer and a sloppy piece of pizza, New York style. The music came from a live quartet of musicians who didn’t understand that being able to talk was important.

But at least air-conditioning blasted through the place. Early summer in Southern California hadn’t disappointed, the temperature was in the nineties, the humidity off the scale.

In spite of the heat, anyone who was anyone in South Village was already there, schmoozing away. He counted three city councillors, the commissioner and the mayor before he worked his way past the entry hall.

There was a good reason for the crowd. Besides official business, and South Village did take its official business very seriously, the meeting’s true underlying purpose was as a meat market.

The single meat market.

His mouth twisting cynically, he looked around.

Oh yeah, singles galore, mostly hungry-looking socialites, circling the crowd, checking out the potential fixer-uppers-meaning the men they could live with, the men they could make putty in their well-manicured hands, the men whose names and expensive bank accounts they could take and be set for life.

Mac should know. After all, it had been a meeting just like this one when he was doing a little contracting on the side where his ex had scoped him out.

She’d decided his last name was synonymous with money, and without bothering to figure out that Mac lived his own life as he damn well pleased despite his family’s money, Ariel had gone after him with dollar signs in her eyes.

He was still ashamed to admit she’d caught him with little more than a toss of her perfect hair, a come-do-me smile and a crook of her red-tipped pinkie finger.

Damn memories.

Beating them back, he pasted a smile on his face and moved forward, determined to make nice and be seen.

AN HOUR LATER, Mac figured he’d done his job. He’d nodded, talked, even smiled with the board members he knew mattered most-Mayor Isabel W. Craftsman, known as a ruthlessly tough bitch, but widely tolerated because she’d done the city better than any mayor in history, Councilman Daniel Oberman, a man who used to be a builder, and was known for his genuine love of the renovation projects.

And so many others his head spun.

Not only spun, but pounded. It was little wonder, when he considered the hours he’d put in this week, and now that he’d bared his teeth into a smile and played nice, he was out of here.

Or would have been, except that he saw her. Taylor Wellington, current bane of his existence.

She wore a haltered shimmery dress that came to midthigh in the exact color of a summer sky. Her legs were bare and tanned, and longer than the legal limit. She stood surrounded by a group of women who also looked as if maybe they made a career out of looking spiffed up and polished. Each of them could have graced any cover of a glossy magazine, and yet to Mac they all looked plastic.

Taylor, too. He wanted her to be plastic. He really wanted that.

Then she looked up, her eyes unerringly finding his. And in a flash that came so quick he figured he had to be seeing things, she shifted from cool as a cucumber to hot as a wildfire.

His heart clutched. It wasn’t a pleasant sort of clutch either, but the kind that took hold and squeezed.

What was she doing, looking at him like that?

Her gaze stayed locked on his, despite the fact that people were talking to her, despite the fact there were people smiling and nodding at him as they passed. The music, the hum of conversation, everything, seemed to fade away.

Then she controlled that flash of heat, smoothing her expression as if it’d never happened, leaving her cool as rain. She had a real talent for that, for hiding her thoughts.

Good, he decided. He didn’t want to know them.

But she kept looking, every bit as much as he was, and as if he was attached by a bungee cord to her eyes, her body, he started moving toward her, away from the front door he’d been so eager to get out only a moment ago.

She watched him come.

And when he was close, his other senses came back. He could feel the cool air, could hear the sculptured, glamorous redhead on her left say, “I’m surprised to see you here tonight, Taylor. We’d actually heard you’d…how should I put it? That you’d come down on the social ladder a bit.”

“All the way down,” said the perfectly groomed country club woman on her right. “Like to the bottom rung.”

Several of the other women laughed, the kind of laugh that assures everyone you’re only laughing with the person at the butt of the joke, but was really a crock because there was no doubt.

They were laughing at Taylor.

She broke eye contact with Mac to stare at them, her eyes distant and assessing as if she felt far above such mockery.

“We heard about the will,” Country Club Chick said, making an effort to look solemn instead of cruelly gleeful, and failing miserably. “Did your grand father really cut you off without a cent and give everything to your mother?”

Taylor gave her a long stare. “What does it matter?

I don’t need anyone’s money.”

As if she’d told a great joke, they all burst out into collective laughter.

Taylor simply tightened her glossy mouth.

“You’re so funny,” the redhead said. “You always make me laugh.”

“Your mother looks good,” Country Club Chick number two said, looking out into the crowd at someone Mac couldn’t see. “No doubt she’s guaranteed a successful campaign for the next election with all her daddy’s money.”

“No doubt,” Taylor said.

Mac didn’t know what the hell they were talking about, but as he hadn’t taken his eyes off Taylor, he saw something that shocked him.

Though it didn’t show in her casual stance, he saw it in her eyes. She was letting them get to her. She cared what these women thought. She cared a lot.

Oh, man. He should have run out the front door and never looked back. Why hadn’t he done that?

Another of the Sorority Bunch patted Taylor’s arm. “Well, I for one think it’s very brave of you to keep your chin up.”

“And at least you still have all your amazing clothes.” This from the redhead, who was eyeing Taylor’s gorgeous dress. “You can just learn to repeat wear.”

“Hey, and don’t worry, we’ll pick up your tab on our monthly lunches,” offered yet another.

Mac’s fingers itched to wrap themselves around a few necks. The urge made no sense, as only a few moments ago he’d have sworn Taylor fit perfectly into this not so cozy little circle.

But suddenly she didn’t look plastic like the others, she looked…real.

And, damn it to hell, she also looked hurt.

“Really, it’s touching how concerned you are about my financial affairs,” she said in a voice dripping with chill. “Truly touching.”

No one but Mac grinned.

“But don’t worry about me. I’m going to be just fine.” She turned and walked away, away from the women, away from him.

Head high, she avoided any more conversation by striding with direct purpose to the veranda doors, which led to the botanical gardens kept by the Historical Society.

She walked right out the doors and into the night. And like a puppy needing a belly rub, he followed.

TAYLOR DREW A DEEP BREATH as she stepped into the hot, hot summer night, refusing to react. If she remained numb, then she wouldn’t feel her burning throat and eyes, or the ache in her chest. If she remained numb, she wouldn’t feel the fist around her heart, squeezing, squeezing.