Some Like It Hot

She inhaled and blew out a quiet breath, and still a vestige of attitude she simply couldn’t expunge colored her voice when she said, “Sorry. I just spent three-plus hours serving pancakes for a Cedar Village fund-raiser, and I’m tired and thirsty.”

There was an instant of silence. Then Gina Summerville-Hardin said softly, “How did that happen?”

Oh, God, it had been so easy, Harper still couldn’t quite believe it. She’d almost fallen off the picnic bench at Jenny’s dinner party when Max had presented the opportunity. “My boss’s boyfriend’s half brother is Max Bradshaw.”

The sudden silence was so absolute that Harper began to wonder if they’d lost the connection. “Mom?”

“Yes, I’m still here. The same Max Bradshaw who’s on the Cedar Village board?”

“Yes.”

“I was quite impressed with his dossier, being both a deputy and a veteran and all. He sounds like a very responsible man. Still, I must say I’m stunned at the coincidence.”

For a few seconds, her thoughts got hung up in that touch they’d shared over the sangria pitcher. Then she shrugged it off. “Well, Razor Bay is pretty small. It’s tougher to maintain my anonymity in a one stoplight town, but the upside is it’s easier to get to know the players, as there are just plain fewer of them. But, man. I thought I was lucky to get the job at The Brothers.” A dry laugh escaped her. “I had no idea how lucky.”

She’d taken the position because it was right up her alley, considering it was the kind of job she’d done before her dad’s death had pulled her into the nonprofit charity her parents had started when her father retired his engineering degree. But primarily she’d taken it because ever since she had joined the fold, her year-round job had become assessing the worthiness of the less-established charities applying for grants from Sunday’s Child. In this case Cedar Village had submitted a request to the family foundation for a grant that would enable them to hire an additional counselor, fill the gaps in their supplies and fix the roof on the classroom building where the boys kept up with their education even as they learned the skills they’d need to reenter society as fully functional young men.

Her dad was the one who had originated the policy of anonymous evaluations after his first few trips to meet grant applicants had resulted in lavish dog and pony shows presented strictly to impress him. He’d decided a better way to get the true measure of how a charity was run was to assess them anonymously in their day-to-day business.

“I still don’t understand why you took that job at all,” her mother said, pulling Harper from her reverie. “It doesn’t take you thirteen weeks to make your assessment.”

“Mom, I told you—the only other reason to be in a town this size would be to take a vacation, and who’d believe a single woman on vacay had a sudden yen to volunteer at a home for delinquent boys? How would she even hear of it? Besides, I kind of needed a vacation.”

“So you took a job?”

Harper bit back a sigh, because they’d had this conversation before. “I took a fun job, and it’s a break from lying to people. That is a vacation.”

“Yet you’re lying to these people, too, aren’t you?”

Harper was suddenly so weary she could barely hold her head up. What the hell had happened to them that they were so far apart these days? “Yes, Mother. You’re absolutely right. I’m a liar no matter what I do.”

“Darling, I didn’t mean it that way. I simply think if you’re unhappy, you should let someone else do that job and come home.”

“I’m not unhappy.” Yes, she got tired of the subterfuge sometimes, but she genuinely got the reasoning behind it. And she loved the new places, new people aspect of it. Loved getting to help charities that made things easier for kids. But her mother, who wanted her to quit traveling and settle down, would never believe that.

And she really didn’t feel up to justifying her choices yet again. “Whoops. There’s the doorbell. I’ll talk to you soon, Mom.”

“Harper, wait—”

“Gotta go. Bye.” She disconnected. Then, blowing out an unhappy breath, she tossed the phone on the table and flopped back on the couch.

This was the right way to do things, she assured herself. Her dad had done it so, and she still trusted his judgment unswervingly. As for the niggle of doubt her mother’s words had created?

Taking a steady, calming breath, she flicked it away.

CHAPTER FOUR

MAX WAS ON his way to Harper’s cottage the next evening when a movement in his peripheral vision caught his attention. Glancing left, he expected to see someone lounging in the inn’s hot tub. Instead, the spa appeared empty. Then another tiny shift along the water’s already bubbling surface drew his focus, and he saw a woman free-floating, only her neck and head supported by the edge of the tub.

Her warm, gorgeous coloring seized his attention, and it never even occurred to him to question her identity. He knew who she was by the hot jolt of electric pleasure that sparked through his veins. Veering off the path, he made a beeline for the little oasis of plantings where the tub resided just outside the inn’s pool house. This made things both simpler and more difficult.

Simpler because he wouldn’t have to be alone with Harper in her tiny bungalow. And harder because, well, hell—look at her. Close up, he could see the light brown skin of her breasts, framed by the deep V of her black-and-white patterned halter top, rising out of the bubbling water. The uppermost curve of her long, smooth thighs and her orange-tipped toes broke the waterline, as well.

He shook his head impatiently. He’d sworn to himself he would meet with her tonight and not think about sex.

Yeah, it was a stupid promise, but his word was his word, dammit. “How could you have made the pancake breakfast more profitable?” he demanded as he stopped at the tub.

And watched her give a start and damn near go under before she righted herself. Her head came up, and her shoulders shot out of the water as her butt lowered to sit on the submerged seat. And he realized she hadn’t merely been ?berrelaxed. “Aw, crap. Did I wake you?”

“What? No, of course not.” She yawned widely, then dropped the dripping hand she’d raised out of the water to cover her mouth and gave him a tiny lopsided smile. “Well, maybe. What time is it?”

He consulted the big tank watch on his wrist. “Going on eight.”

“It was around a quarter ’til when I climbed in the tub, so I guess I did drop off for a bit.”

He couldn’t help it; deputy was pretty much his default mode. “You know it’s not safe to sleep in a hot tub, right?”

“Yes, Papa.” She started to roll her eyes but apparently thought better of it, for she went all faux solemn-eyed on him and offered a polite smile instead. “Is there something I can do for you?”

A raft of dirty suggestions popped to mind, but since he wasn’t a damn fourteen-year-old—even if that was the way he invariably felt around her—he wisely swallowed them. Particularly since he didn’t know why he’d come to grill her in the first place. Hell, hadn’t he given her his card so she could be the one to get in touch with him?

Whatever his reasons for showing up unannounced, here he was, so he might as well make the most of it. Hooking a hip on the corner of the tub, he braced his other foot against the grass and ignored the splashed water soaking into the seat of his jeans. “You said yesterday morning you could tell me how to make the next pancake breakfast more profitable. How would you do that?”

She merely looked up at him for a moment. Wreathed in steam, moisture beaded her face, and her hair, pulled atop her head in a high ponytail, curled wildly, crazy little corkscrews plastered damply to her temples and nape. “Buy me a Coke and I’ll tell you.”

Good idea. A nice cold drink might cool him down, help him quit thinking about licking the water drops sliding down her silky-smooth cleav—

He surged to his feet. “Be back in a sec.” Fishing his wallet from his back pocket, he crossed to the vending machine in the ice machine room attached to the pool house.

Moments later he was back. He popped the tab on one icy can and handed it to Harper, then opened his own and knocked back half of it as he resumed his perch on the edge of the tub.

She took a long swallow herself and used the tip of her tongue to absorb a drop of soda from her upper lip as she lowered the can. Setting it aside on the little shelf that filled the gap between the back of the hot tub and the pool house’s outer wall, she focused her attention on him.

“One way to make your breakfast more profitable,” she said, “is to host a silent auction. That can be as elaborate or as simple as you want, but you have a captive audience in the people who come to eat, and everyone loves the idea of getting something at a bargain price.”

Pushing against the foot planted on the ground, he straightened. “Is it hard to do?”

“Not really. It can be time-consuming, but that’s where volunteers like me come in. You use us to solicit donations from local businesses and set up a table or two to accommodate the acquisitions. We can also help with things like deciding on a price to start the bidding for each item and at what increments to increase and make individual sheets for them—”

“Wait, wait. Explain what you mean. And pretend I don’t have a clue.”

She laughed. “Because you don’t?”

“Yeah.” His own mouth crooked up in a smile. “I’m a cop—and before that a marine. Stuff like this is way outside my experience.”

“Okay.” She scooted to the edge of her submerged seat. “Say Wendy at Wacka Do donates a haircut and she usually charges thirty-eight dollars. You’d make a sheet that says Haircut at Wacka Do’s, value thirty-eight dollars. And since it’s a service and not, say, a pretty gift basket that visually pops to catch a potential bidder’s attention, you might want to add a photo of Wendy doing a haircut, or a styled wig on a wig stand. You with me so far?”

“Yep.”