The Bachelor's Brighton Valley Bride

“I’m so sorry. I’m Megan Adams. I help Mr. Carpenter here in the back office. This is my son, Tyler. He got in trouble at school today, and I’m afraid dealing with all of that made me a little flustered. I’m not normally like this.”

Peyton’s intent stare sent a nervous flutter through her, threatening to scatter her thoughts to the winds, so she averted her eyes from his face, her gaze slipping down to the open black collar that exposed a sliver of dark chest hair.

“So,” Mr. Johnson said, reining in her thoughts from the slight sexual diversion they’d taken, “what exactly do you do here at Zorba the Geek? Are you a computer tech?”

“Ha!” Laughter came from the boy behind her, but before she could turn and shush him, he added, “Mom wouldn’t know a gigabyte from an integrated circuit.”

Peyton’s brows rose, and he looked over Megan’s head, which wasn’t all that hard for him to do, since she stood only five foot two. “And you do?”

“Of course I do. Take this Geekon hard drive right here.” Tyler pointed to one of the black boxes disassembled on an empty workstation against the wall. “This model uses a digital integrated circuit.” He went on to talk about logic gates and signals and values of ones and zeroes, all of which went over Megan’s head. “See, all the Geekon series use digital ICs.”

“What do you think of the Geekon series?” Peyton asked the usually quiet boy, who hadn’t said more than three sentences to her all week.

Tyler perked up and launched into a full discourse on the uses of microprocessors and transistors and everything else that caused Megan to tune him out.

“So basically,” Tyler said, “straight out of the box, Geekon computers are the best you can buy. But they’re not the best that can be made.”

“Tyler, Mr. Johnson works for Zorba the Geek, which is part of Geekon Enterprises, remember?” Megan left the rest unsaid, hoping that her normally introverted son knew better than to insult the product that was responsible for providing her paycheck.

The boy lovingly patted the black hard drive on the table. “Then I’m sure Mr. Johnson would want to see what I can do with this baby to make it run even better.”

Oh, jeez.

“You know what, Tyler? I certainly would like to see that. But I’m here from the accounting department. Maybe when I get finished here, I can call some buddies who run the manufacturing department and set you up with someone who designs this stuff for a living.”

“Sweet!”

Well, at least one person was excited about Mr. Johnson being there.

When Peyton returned to Mr. Carpenter’s desk, he looked at it as if he wanted to pick up the whole thing, mounds of paperwork and all, and throw it in the Dumpster out back.

Shoot. Who could blame him? Whenever Megan tried to tackle the piles of old invoices that had been stacked up months before she’d even started working here, she felt like tossing it all out herself. She didn’t even know where to start sorting out the jumbled mess.

“I don’t even know where to start,” Peyton said.

Great, he was an accountant and a mind reader.

“Things have gotten a wee bit backed up since Mrs. Carpenter got sick,” she admitted.

Of course, in a matter of days—maybe even hours—Mr. Johnson was going to figure it out on his own. But in the meantime, it wouldn’t hurt to try and make the corporate lapdog see that they were all doing their best and that none of them should lose their jobs.

“Do you have a game plan for how long you’ll be in town?” she asked, hoping he’d say it would be for only a few hours.

“As long as it takes. The corporate office got me a room at the Night Owl.”

The motel was right off the highway and near the Stagecoach Inn, a local honky-tonk. Neither seemed to be the kind of place that would appeal to a man like Peyton Johnson, although that was mere speculation on her part—and quite frankly, it was none of her business or her concern.

“Too bad you can’t stay in the apartment upstairs,” Tyler said. “It would make it a lot closer for you.”

The boy’s suggestion took the wind right out of her, making it impossible to respond, let alone object.

“It’s got a bed and stuff up there,” Tyler added. “And it’s also got a TV and a kitchen.”

“Is it vacant?” Peyton asked.

“Yeah,” Tyler said.

Megan’s stomach tightened. How did she go about keeping the boy quiet? “The company has made arrangements for Mr. Johnson to stay at a motel, Tyler. I’m sure they’ve already made a deposit. And if not, there’s probably a cancellation fee. Besides, there’s not much to do in downtown Brighton Valley in the evenings. But at the Night Owl, he’d be so much closer to Wexler and all the bigger-city amenities he’s probably used to.”

She offered a smile, hoping she’d squelched her son’s impromptu suggestion before Peyton got any ideas. It was bad enough that he was going to be spending the next day or so looking over their old accounting system and seeing how bad things had gotten. But having him spending nights here, too?

“You know,” Peyton said, “I think I’ll give the office a call. It would be a lot more convenient to just stay here. And if I can get my job done sooner, I’ll be saving the company money in the long run. They’ll surely see the savings there.”

As Peyton pulled out his cell phone and prepared to dial, Megan’s heart sank. She’d hoped that she could lock him out of the shop each evening, knowing that she’d be present whenever he uncovered the problems facing the store—and that she could explain and maybe soften the blow.

But how could she do that if he had access to the office when she wasn’t around to protect Mr. Carpenter?

She wanted to snatch the cell phone out of his hands, but she’d been raised better than that. So she stood there pretending to smile gamely, feeling absolutely powerless and at her wit’s end as she shot a glance at the one man who had the ability to turn her life upside down once again.

It had taken her three long years after the divorce to put her life back to rights again, and she was finally seeing some light at the end of a very dark financial tunnel. Then in walked Peyton Johnson, who had the ability to jerk the rug out from under her and shake up all she’d fought so hard to build.

But she was up for the challenge. There was no way she’d stand by and let another man dash her dreams again without putting up a fight.

Chapter Two (#ulink_6037a3e9-e1b0-5e86-992f-162d58d68fdc)

Clay pulled out his cell and called Zoe, his executive assistant, who knew where he was and what he was up to.

“This is Peyton Johnson. I’m at the Brighton Valley store, and it’s come to my attention that there’s an apartment over the shop. I’m not sure how that will pencil out for the corporate bean counters, but it would sure be more convenient if I could just stay there. That motel you reserved for me is clear across town.”

“You own the building,” Zoe told Clay. “I don’t have to clear anything—”

“You’ve got that right, ma’am. So would you mind checking into that for me?”

“I...uh...” Zoe paused. “So this phone call is just for show?”

“Yes, it is.”

“And all I’m really supposed to do is listen while you speak?”

“That would be the case. Yes.”

“Very clever. I’ll have to add an extra line to my job description. The executive assistant must be bilingual in both English and in reading the boss’s cryptic telephone conversations.”

“Something tells me that could come in handy, especially while I’m in Brighton Valley.”

“Then I’m on it. Looks like you’re in luck, Clay— I mean Peyton. I can assure you, or rather everyone at the Brighton Valley store, that corporate will approve of anything you suggest.”

“It certainly would be in their best interests to do so.” Clay smiled. “Thanks, Zoe. Then I’ll just wait for you to check into that. How soon do you think you can call back?”