Loe raamatut: «Blame It On Christmas»

One

“The answer is no!”

Mazie Tarleton ended the call, wishing she had a good old-fashioned receiver she could slam down on a cradle. Cutting off a phone conversation with the tap of a red button wasn’t nearly as satisfying.

Behind her, Gina—her best friend and coworker—ate the last bite of her cinnamon crunch bagel and wiped cream cheese from her fingers. “Who’s got you all riled up?”

The two women were in Mazie’s office, a cramped space behind the elegant showroom that drew tourists and locals to All That Glitters, Mazie’s upscale jewelry store in Charleston’s historic business district.

Mazie dropped into a chair and scowled. “It’s J.B.’s real estate agent again. He’s making her badger me.”

“You mean J.B. who wants to offer you a ridiculous amount of money for this building that’s falling down around our ears?”

“Whose side are you on anyway?” Mazie and Gina had met as freshmen at Savannah’s College of Art and Design. Gina was aware of Mazie’s long-standing feud with Charleston’s highly eligible and incredibly sexy billionaire businessman.

Gina flicked a crumb from her cashmere-covered bosom. “We have dry rot in the attic. A heating system that dates back to the Civil War. And do I need to mention that our hurricane policy rates are set to triple when the renewal is due? I know you Tarleton people are richer than God, but that doesn’t mean we should thumb our noses at a great offer.”

“If it were anybody but J.B.,” Mazie muttered, feeling the noose of inevitability tighten around her neck.

J.B. Jackson Beauregard Vaughan. The man she loved to hate. J.B. Vaughan had been on her personal hit list since she was sixteen years old. She loathed him. And she wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.

“What did he ever do to you?” Gina asked. Her perplexed frown was understandable. J.B. Vaughan was the prototype for tall, dark and handsome. Cocky grin. Brilliant blue eyes. Strong features. And shoulders that were about a million miles wide.

“It’s complicated,” Mazie muttered, feeling her face heat. Even now, the memories were humiliating.

Mazie couldn’t remember a time when J.B. hadn’t been part of her life. Way back when, she had even loved him. As an almost-brother. But when her hormones started raging and she began seeing J.B. in a whole new light, a spring formal at her all-girls prep school had presented itself as the perfect opportunity to do some very grown-up experimentation.

Not sex. Oh, no. Not that. She was aware, even then, that J.B. was the kind of guy who knew things, and she wasn’t ready to go down that road.

She called him on a Wednesday afternoon in April. With her nerves humming and her stomach flopping, she blurted out her invitation.

J.B. had been oddly noncommittal. And then, barely four hours later, he had showed up on her doorstep.

Her father had been locked in his study with a nightcap. Both Jonathan and Hartley, her brothers, had been out on the town doing something or other.

Mazie had answered the front door.

Because she felt weird about inviting J.B. inside—though he’d been there a hundred times before—she stepped out onto the wide veranda and smiled at him tentatively.

“Hey, J.B.,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

He leaned against a post, his posture the epitome of cool, high school masculinity. In a few weeks he would be eighteen. A legal adult. Her heart beat faster.

“I wanted to talk to you face-to-face,” he said. “It was nice of you to ask me to the dance.”

“Nice?”

It seemed an odd choice of words, especially coming from J.B.

He nodded. “I’m flattered.”

Her stomach curled defensively. “You didn’t actually give me an answer on the phone,” she said. Suddenly, her hands were ice, and she was shaking all over.

J.B. shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re a cute girl, Mazie. I’m glad you’re my friend.”

He really didn’t have to say anything else. She was smart and perceptive and able to read between the lines. But she’d be damned if she’d let him off so easily. “What are you trying to say, J.B.?”

Now a dark scowl erased some of his cocky charm, but none of his brooding sexuality. “Damn it, Mazie. I can’t go to that dance with you. You shouldn’t have asked me. You’re little more than a baby.”

Her heart shriveled. “I’m not a child,” she said quietly. “I’m only a year younger than you are.”

“Almost two.”

The real surprise was that he had kept track. Because of the way their birthdays fell on the calendar, he was right. She took three steps toward him. Inside, she was falling apart. But she wouldn’t let him see what he was doing to her self-esteem. “Don’t make excuses, J.B. If you won’t go out with me, please have the guts to say so.”

He cursed vehemently. With both hands, he scraped his slightly-too-long blue-black hair from his face. “You’re like a sister to me,” he said.

The words were muttered, barely audible. In fact, he spoke them in the direction of the floor. A less-convincing lie would have been hard to find. Why was he throwing up walls between them?

Mazie was breathing so rapidly she was in danger of hyperventilating. Clearly she had misread the situation. J.B. hadn’t come here tonight because he was fond of her, or because he wanted to see her.

He was standing on her front porch because he was too much of a Southern gentleman to say no to her over the phone.

A nicer person might have made the situation easier for him. Mazie was tired of being nice. She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his broad chest. He was wearing a navy T-shirt and faded jeans with old leather deck shoes. Decades ago, he would have been a classic James Dean. Bad boy. Rule breaker.

When she touched him, his entire body went rigid. Nothing moved. Except one thing. One startling and rather large thing.

Jackson Beauregard Vaughan was aroused. Since Mazie had plastered herself against his front, it was rather impossible for him to hide. She found his mouth with hers and threw every ounce of her undiluted teenage passion into an eager, desperate kiss.

J.B. tasted wonderful, exactly like he did in her dreams, only better.

For a moment, she thought she had won.

His arms tightened around her. His mouth crushed hers. His tongue thrust between her lips and stroked the inside of her mouth. Her legs lost feeling. She clung to his shoulders. “J.B.,” she whispered. “Oh, J.B.”

Her words shocked him out of whatever spell he’d been under. He jerked away so hard and so fast, she stumbled.

J.B. never even held out a hand to keep her from falling.

He stared at her, his features shadowed in the unflattering yellowish glare of the porch light. The sun had gone down, and the dark night was alive with the smells and sounds of spring.

Very deliberately, he wiped a hand across his mouth. “Like I said, Mazie. You’re a kid. Which means you need to stick to the kiddie pool.”

His harsh words, particularly coming on the heels of that kiss, confused her. “Why are you being so mean?” she whispered.

She saw the muscles in his throat work.

“Why are you being so naive and clueless?”

Hot tears sprang to her eyes. She wouldn’t let them fall. “I think we’re done here. Do me a favor, J.B. If you ever find yourself in the midst of an apocalypse—zombie or otherwise—and if you and I are the only two humans left on the planet, go screw yourself.”

“Mazie...hello... Mazie.”

Gina’s voice shocked Mazie back to the present. “Sorry,” she said. “I was thinking about something.”

“About J.B., right? You were ready to tell me why you loathe the man after all these years, and why you won’t sell this property to him, even though he’s offered you three times what it’s worth.”

Mazie swallowed, shaking off the past. “He broke my heart when we were teenagers, and he was kind of a jerk about it, so yeah... I don’t want to hand him everything he wants.”

“You’re being illogical.”

“Maybe so.”

“Forget the money. Hasn’t he also offered you two other properties that are prime locations for our shop? And he’s willing to do a trade, easy peasy? What are you waiting for, Mazie?”

“I want him to squirm.”

J.B. had bought up every single square foot of property in a two-block strip near the Battery. He planned a massive renovation, working, of course, within the parameters of historic Charleston’s preservation guidelines. The street-level storefronts would be glitzy retail space, charming and Southern and unique. Upstairs, J.B.’s vision included luxurious condos and apartments, some with views of the picturesque harbor and Fort Sumter in the distance.

The only thing standing in J.B.’s way was Mazie. And Mazie’s property. And the fact that he didn’t own it.

Gina waved a hand in front of Mazie’s face. “Stop spacing out. I understand wanting to torment your teenage nemesis, but are you seriously going to stonewall the man just to make a point?”

Mazie ground her teeth until her head ached. “I don’t know if I’m willing to sell to him. I need time to think about it.”

“What if the agent doesn’t call you back?”

“She will. J.B. never gives up. It’s one of his best qualities and one of his most annoying.”

“I hope you’re right.”

J.B. slid into the dark booth and lifted a hand to summon a server. He’d worn a sport coat and a tie for an earlier meeting. Now, he loosened his collar and dispensed with the neckwear.

Jonathan Tarleton was already sitting in the opposite corner nursing a sparkling water with lime. J.B. lifted an eyebrow in concern. “You look like hell. What’s wrong?”

His friend grimaced. “It’s these bloody headaches.”

“You need to see a doctor.”

“I have.”

“Then you need to see a better one.”

“Can we please stop talking about my health? I’m thirty, not eighty.”

“Fine.” J.B. wanted to pursue the issue, but Jonathan was clearly not interested. J.B. sat back with a sigh, nursing his beer. “Your sister is driving me crazy. Will you talk to her?” He couldn’t admit the real reason he needed help. He and Mazie were oil and water. She hated him, and J.B. had tried for years to tell himself he didn’t care.

The truth was far murkier.

“Mazie is stubborn,” Jonathan said.

“It’s a Tarleton trait, isn’t it?”

“You’re one to talk.”

“I’ve literally put my entire project on hold, because she’s jerking me around.”

Jonathan tried unsuccessfully to hide a smile. “My sister is not fond of you, J.B.”

“Yeah, tell me something I don’t know. Mazie refuses to talk about selling. What am I supposed to do?”

“Sweeten the pot?”

“With what? She doesn’t want my money.”

“I don’t know. I’ve always wondered what you did to piss her off. Why is my little sister the only woman in Charleston who’s immune to the famous J.B. Vaughan charm?”

J.B. ground his jaw. “Who knows?” he lied. “I don’t have time to play games, though. I need to break ground by the middle of January to stay on schedule.”

“She likes pralines.”

Jonathan drawled the three words with a straight face, but J.B. knew when he was being taunted. “You’re suggesting I buy her candy?”

“Candy...flowers... I don’t know. My sibling is a complicated woman. Smart as hell with a wicked sense of humor, but she has a dark side, too. She’ll make you work for this, J.B. You might as well be prepared to crawl.”

J.B. took a swig of his drink and tried not to think about Mazie at all. Everything about her flipped his switches. But he couldn’t go there. Ever.

He choked and set down his glass until he could catch his breath.

Hell’s bells.

The Tarleton progeny were beautiful people, all of them. Though J.B. barely remembered Jonathan’s poor mother, what he recalled was a stunning, gorgeous woman with a perpetually sad air about her.

Jonathan and Hartley had inherited their mother’s olive complexion, dark brown eyes and chestnut hair. Mazie had the Tarleton coloring, too, but her skin was fairer, and her eyes were more gold than brown. Amber, actually.

Though her brother kept his hair cut short to tame its tendency to curl, Mazie wore hers shoulder length. In the heat and humidity of summer, she kept it up in a ponytail. But during winter, she left it down. He hadn’t seen her in several months. Sometimes J.B. dropped by the Tarletons’ home on Thanksgiving weekend, but this year, he’d been tied up with other commitments.

Now it was December.

“I’ll take the candy under advisement,” he said.

Jonathan grimaced. “I’ll see what I can do,” he conceded. “But don’t count on any help from me. Sometimes if I make a suggestion, she does the exact opposite. It’s been that way since we were kids.”

“Because she was always trying to keep up with you and Hartley, and you both treated her like a baby.”

“I suppose we could have been nicer to her. It wasn’t easy growing up in our house, especially once Mom was gone. Poor Mazie didn’t have any female role models at all.”

J.B. hesitated. “You know I would never do anything to hurt her business.”

“Of course I know that. Don’t be an ass. Your wanting to buy her property makes perfect sense. I can’t help it if she’s being deliberately obstructive. God knows why.”

J.B. knew why. Or at least he had a fairly good idea. One kiss had haunted him for years, no matter how hard he tried not to remember.

“I’ll keep trying. Let me know if anything works on your end.”

“I’ll give it my best shot. But don’t hold your breath.”