The Bachelor Boss (O'Rourke Family 3) Page 9

  That Neil?

  She didn’t want to have any warmer feelings toward him than absolutely necessary, but a treacherous sensation crept around Libby’s heart as she realized he’d not only convinced Margie to return, he’d made her feel better.

  For a long time after she said goodbye, Libby sat and stared at the parcels she’d rushed to get. Several of her co-workers had offered to take over planning for the wedding shower now that she’d been promoted, but she’d insisted on doing a lot of it. A cake and other food would be delivered for the party tomorrow, but she’d needed to get the decorations and favors so they could decorate tonight.

  “A lot on your mind?”

  The question startled her so much she nearly fell off her chair. “What are you doing here?” she demanded, glaring at Neil.

  “I thought we could keep working on our various travel itineraries,” he said smoothly, though a wicked smile curved his mouth as he lifted the bag from the lingerie store with one finger. “One of your errands?”

  Heat suffused Libby’s face and it was all she could do not to snatch the large silver bag away from him. “It’s a wedding shower present. Jeanine Garber is getting married so we’re throwing a party for her.”

  “Jeanine?”

  “Yes. She and her fiancé were the ones in that awful accident during the summer. It’s a miracle they survived.”

  “Oh, right, I remember.” Neil poked in the bag and lifted a cloud of green silk into the air. “Very nice, but I thought Jeanine had blue eyes.”

  Trust Neil O’Rourke to remember the color of a woman’s eyes, but not to recall if she had children or know anything else about her except her waist and bust size.

  “Are they?” There was no way in creation she’d admit the nightgown was for her, not Jeanine.

  “Yes. Didn’t they have any blue ones?”

  “I don’t remember,” she lied. Honestly, Neil was terrible for her morals. She’d never fibbed so much in her life before they’d been assigned to work together. She only hoped he wouldn’t also open the silver gift box that contained a blue negligee set.

  “This is nice.” He lifted the gown higher, so the sheer draped silk over the bodice became obvious. “Really nice. I’m probably not invited to the shower, but I’d like to contribute toward the gift.”

  “That’s all right,” Libby said hastily, giving into temptation and grabbing both the bag and green silk away from him. “But this is a personal gift from me to Jeanine.”

  “I’d still like to contribute. That’s a very pretty nightgown—perfect for a shower gift, I imagine.”

  It was a sexy, utterly wicked nightgown, and he was just using it to tease her since he obviously didn’t believe she’d buy something so provocative for herself. Not Libby Dumont, the preacher’s daughter. Even though her friends and family would make the same assumption, it seemed worse having Neil think so.

  “I may keep it for myself and give Jeanine something else,” she said impulsively.

  “Really?”

  Neil kept from grinning with an effort. It had only taken a single glance at Libby’s embarrassed pink cheeks to realize the “shower” gift wasn’t a gift at all. Honestly, there was something about her that kept making him want to ruffle her up. It wasn’t professional, and he had a sneaking suspicion it was also downright immature. At thirty-five he shouldn’t have such foolish impulses.

  “Really.” She stuffed the green silk out of sight and shoved the bag beneath her desk. “I’ll meet you in your office in a few minutes so we can go back to work.”

  Neil nodded and left, though it was mostly self-preservation because he’d just gotten another immature impulse…imagining how Libby would look wearing nothing more than a cloud of green silk and perfume.

  Only there was nothing about that idea that made him want to laugh.

  Chapter Eight

  “What do you think?” the real estate agent asked.

  They were on the first day of a three day swing through southern Washington and northern Oregon, and Libby stared at the building in front of her, trying to think of a polite way to say it was awful.

  Awful didn’t begin to cover it.

  Though the house had sat empty for a long time, it was in reasonably good shape. There were several bathrooms on each of the main floors, but it was the sheer dreariness of the uninspired boxlike structure that made it impossible.

  “Good, solid construction,” the man said a little too heartily. “And a good price.”

  “Libby?” Neil prompted.

  “It looks like a factory,” she whispered too low for the agent to hear.”

  “Well, it was a factory. Sort of.”

  Libby didn’t have to look at Neil to know he was trying not to laugh. Yeah, the house had been “sort of” a factory. A sex factory. According to Bob Haney, the real estate agent, it had operated as a brothel before being turned into an even more dreary boardinghouse. He’d probably revealed that small bit of early history in a desperate attempt to make it sound more intriguing than it really was.

  “It would certainly make for interesting advertising,” she murmured. “Though we might have trouble drawing the family trade with it.”

  Neil choked and pretended to look at the cracked sidewalk. Not long ago he would have expected Libby to put her back up and get huffy about being shown a former brothel, but he was learning she had a great sense of humor as long as he didn’t get her riled up first.

  As for the former brothel…

  He shook his head. Of course, this was one of the real estate agents he’d dealt with himself. Maybe if Libby had called she could have charmed the guy into showing them something more appropriate.

  “Mr. O’Rourke?” Bob Haney prompted.

  “It really doesn’t meet our needs,” he said bluntly.

  The man’s face fell. He’d probably carried the listing for years and had hoped he was finally going to get someone blind or dumb enough to fork over the money.

  “Mr. Haney, as we drove out here I noticed a house by a little stream,” Libby said, smiling at the agent. “Your office’s name was on the sign. Can you tell us something about it?”

  “Oh, you mean the old Wilton place. You won’t find it suitable. There have been several different additions to the house, none of them very well planned. It’s too big for a single family home and too much of a maze for a business.” Haney was so dispirited he didn’t even attempt to sound encouraging.

  “I’d love to see it.”

  While he plainly considered it a waste of his time, he asked them to follow and got into his own car.

  “I almost feel sorry for him,” Neil said, grinning broadly as he helped Libby into the Blazer.

  “It must be hard making a living around here,” she observed, far more sympathetically.

  But that was Libby. She had a kind heart, though he’d discovered she wasn’t letting it get in the way of business. As a matter of fact, she seemed to have an extraordinary ability to look beyond sagging porches and peeling paint to see if true gold lay beneath…and to get him to see that gold.

  He’d learned to watch her green eyes, and knew if she got that dreamy expression on her face they were in luck. In the past two weeks they’d discovered seven additional properties for the project, and work would begin soon on them.

  Neil followed Haney’s car as he turned around and headed back toward the river. They’d ordered market analyses on the various towns they’d be scouting, eliminating some communities because there was nothing promising in the reports. As it turned out, there were a lot of towns in Oregon and Washington he’d never even heard of, much less visited.

  Curiously, he was feeling a great satisfaction in the project. It wasn’t the large scale he was accustomed to working at, but it didn’t seem to matter. He was even thinking about expanding beyond the Pacific northwest—the gold country in California sounded interesting, and he’d bet there were great places on the east coast to start bed-and-breakfast inns.


  Of course, it might just be Libby’s enthusiasm about the whole thing.

  He’d never had a partner in the international branch. He’d just done what was necessary and answered to his brother alone. But with Libby…he found himself picking up the phone to ask her opinion on something he was working on, only to realize it was late at night and he’d have to wait until the next day.

  Since it was unsettling to think about how often that had happened, Neil motioned to the road ahead of them.

  “I don’t remember seeing this house you asked about.”

  “You were busy driving.”

  They pulled into a circular driveway with a rambling house set well back from the road. The surrounding area was nice, rather pastoral, with rolling hills and trees leaning over a winding stream. But the house…he shook his head. Someone in the distant past had painted the place a bright yellow with turquoise trim that made it look more like a clown’s home than a candidate for an elegant bed-and-breakfast inn.

  “White,” Libby murmured. “With dark green trim. Not black, that would be too stark.”

  She had that look, and Neil wondered why it gave him a warm sensation clear through his chest. It wasn’t even professional of her to reveal so much, because a real estate agent would guess she’d fallen in love and was ripe to spend more money than a place was worth.

  He didn’t care.

  Which just proved he was losing an edge in his thinking, though there were worse things that could happen. Neil wasn’t certain when he’d come to that conclusion, but he was pretty sure Libby was responsible.

  “It’ll take more than one coat of paint to cover that yellow,” he said. “It’s practically neon.”

  Libby flashed him a smile that sent another shaft of warmth through him. “We’ll just use a good primer.”

  “We will, huh?”

  Getting out he walked around to the passenger side of the Blazer. There’d been a couple times she’d jumped out on her own, until he’d bluntly announced it would “look” better if he acted like a gentleman and helped her in and out of the car.

  Neil didn’t actually care what anyone else thought, but no matter how hard he tried to be a modern guy, he’d been taught to behave a certain way with women. His sisters all rolled their eyes and complained about the O’Rourke atavistic male tendencies, yet nothing could change him. And with Libby there was the added bonus of getting to touch her.

  He could tell she was uncomfortable with the ritual, but it didn’t make sense. Didn’t those country boys she’d grown up with have manners? His father had taught him about watching his mouth and standing in a lady’s presence by the time he was two years old. Keenan O’Rourke had followed a code his entire life, a code that said you took care of your family and acted a certain way because that’s what being a man was all about. Neil hadn’t thought about his father’s code for a long time, but it was still firmly engrained in him.

  “Little towns are old-fashioned. They’ll refuse to do business with us if I don’t behave well,” he said again.

  “Really?” she asked dryly.

  “Really.”

  “You don’t know anything about small towns.”

  “I can’t deny it, not with you reminding me every five minutes.”

  Libby cast a glance at Neil, but saw he was smiling. His gray eyes didn’t look nearly as cool as usual and her silly heart did a flip flop. He could be nice when he wanted to be, even when he wasn’t trying to charm his way into a woman’s bloomers.

  “Mr. O’Rourke, Miss Dumont, do you want to see inside?” Mr. Haney gestured toward the front door, which was painted in white and black zebra stripes. The last owner had unique taste, to say the least.

  Libby half-closed her eyes and envisioned how it would look with a shiny all-white door and wrought-iron fixtures.

  Lovely.

  She gulped when a hand settled low on her back, warm and firm. As many times as Neil had done that on their day trips around Seattle, and today as they had headed south, she wasn’t accustomed to it. She also wasn’t accustomed to the idea they’d be spending three whole days together—separate motel rooms at night, naturally, but aside from that they’d be rarely outside of the other’s company.

  “What are you thinking about?” his voice whispered in her ear, his breath lifting a strand of hair.

  Lord…she didn’t know, her brain felt scrambled by sensory overload. “Um…about my cat. I can’t remember if I brought up enough canned food for my parents to feed him.”

  Oh, that was good.

  Now she sounded like a lonely spinster fussing over having enough tuna to treat her only companion.

  “I’m sure it’s fine.” Neil’s fingers moved subtly, like a caress, and tingles spread out in concentric circles. The muscles in her bottom and abdomen tightened and she stumbled slightly.

  “S-sorry,” she gasped.

  “The ground is uneven here. As for the cat, I’ll bet your mother is spoiling him rotten,” Neil assured, moving closer so more of her brain cells could short circuit.

  “Uh…right.”

  Her parents would be much happier babysitting grandchildren instead of a huge Maine Coon cat who wandered around their house in a moody funk whenever she was gone. Libby didn’t know why she’d even said something about Bilbo, yet all sorts of things came out of her mouth these days that surprised the heck out of her.

  Part of it she understood.

  For some unaccountable reason she felt freer with Neil than any other man she’d ever known. She could say what she wanted without repercussions. He wasn’t a member of her father’s church who expected her to behave a certain way. It was obvious there wouldn’t be any professional backlash if she spoke her mind, and despite their kiss on the mountain, they weren’t romantically involved. Or ever would be. His behavior had been irritatingly proper ever since, even if he had teased her over that green silk nightgown.

  But there wasn’t any reason to keep reminding Neil that she was a twenty-nine-year-old unmarried preacher’s daughter.

  Unless…

  A disturbing thought occurred to Libby. Unless she wanted him to revert to that overbearing, obnoxious and arrogant man she’d always known so she could safely dismiss him, getting infatuated with a man like Neil O’Rourke was the dumbest thing a woman could do.

  “What’s your cat’s name?” he asked, perversely doing the exact opposite of what she wanted.

  “Bilbo.”

  “Really?” Neil grinned, looking younger and more carefree than she’d ever seen him. “Bilbo is a character from those books by Tolkien, right? I loved the Lord of the Rings trilogy when I was a kid. I’d completely forgotten.”

  “Yes, but The Hobbit is my favorite,” Libby admitted before she could think better of it. The idea of Neil reading the richly complex fantasies by J.R.R. Tolkien was astonishing.

  “This house almost looks like something out of The Hobbit,” he said softly. “All it needs is a thatch roof and a good paint job. We could call it the Shire and encourage hobbit and elven wannabes to come visit. Don’t you think that’s a great idea for a bed-and-breakfast inn?”

  He might have been talking nonsense for all she knew. His hand had cupped her hip, sending the last vestige of rational thought from her head. Did he realize what he was doing?

  Mr. Haney pointedly cleared his throat, bringing Libby back to earth. “The electricity is off inside. But I have a flashlight.”

  From the corner of her eye she saw Neil’s imperiously raised eyebrow and her mouth twitched. He was annoyed at the interruption, which was peculiar since it was business that had interrupted them.

  “I’m sure we’ll be able to manage,” she said.

  Light filtered through the arching tree branches high above them and a few dry leaves left from the late fall rustled in the breeze. Inside the house the sun proved low enough to send a golden glow into the western windows, and she prowled around with growing delight.

  The rooms were small but charming, w
ith odd corners and twists and turns of passageways that were reminiscent of a rabbit warren—with an English country cottage flavor. But they could capitalize on that. Brer Rabbit, Peter Cottontail, and J.R.R. Tolkien’s hobbits would be right at home in the cozy place. Everything should be homey, like strawberry jam and lemonade on hot summer days. They could serve English tea and scones in the sunny sitting room, and put brass beds in the bedrooms, piled high with pillows and thick comforters.

  “Brass beds, eh?” Neil stood with his hands in his pockets, head cocked quizzically.

  With a start Libby realized she’d been talking aloud, and heat flooded her face. “If we decide the house is what we want, of course.”

  Bob Haney, who was looking much brighter than before, nodded eagerly. “You have some wonderful ideas, Miss Dumont. You’re so right, this would make a fine bed-and-breakfast inn. And the town would benefit so much from a successful business.”

  Drat.

  Neil would be furious, thinking she’d driven the price up unnecessarily. Why hadn’t he kicked her? She’d kicked him when he was doing something she thought was a mistake. But no, he probably preferred yelling at her.

  “I agree, Mr. Haney. And we’d love to hear your ideas about the community,” Neil said calmly.

  Libby’s jaw dropped.

  “You would?” asked the real estate agent.

  “Absolutely. I’m sure you have insight into what would help the most.”

  The agent’s face melted into a genuine smile, far different than the professional, I’m-going-to-be-cheerful-no-matter-what sort of grimace he’d been hiding behind. He launched into a description of everything he thought would help Griffith, the town he’d apparently lived in his entire life. Neil not only listened, he took out his notebook and started jotting items down and asking more questions.

  Deciding she wasn’t needed, Libby continued exploring the old house, but her mind was barely on it.

  Neil had her so confused she couldn’t sleep at night.

  He hadn’t said a word about talking with his secretary about her sick daughter, though he’d led Libby to believe he was only doing it to prove he could be “sensitive.” She’d tried to say something about it, but he’d changed the subject so quickly she’d barely gotten three words out.