ONCE UPON A VALENTINE Read online

  The amusement in his dark brown eyes turned to something else. Something softer. Something unexpected. He pulled on his shirt. “How long have you had her?”

  She managed to look away from him and focused on the wooden model ship sitting on the table. She didn’t know much about boats, but the gleaming structure looked like it belonged in an art museum. “Since she was a kitten. My, um, my stepfather Ken gave her to me.” Ken had been number three in the line of her mother’s seven marriages. He was long gone now, but Marsha-Marsha was still here.

  “Well then,” Pax said, as if the decision were easy. “You need to get home.”

  Her car hadn’t started the day before. She doubted sitting in a storm gathering ice would have cured its ills. “You think the buses are running again?” Everything had ground to a halt the afternoon before.

  His smile was immediate. “Doesn’t matter if they are or aren’t. As long as the roads are passable, I’ll get you home.”

  Again with the swoop inside her.

  She shook it off. “I live on the far side of Fremont,” she warned. Her apartment wasn’t exactly right around the corner.

  “I know.”

  She studied him for a moment. “I don’t remember telling you where I lived.” Their conversations, outside of any interviews he’d given her, were light-hearted in the extreme, usually ending with him suggesting that her life wouldn’t be complete if she didn’t go out with him. He’d invited her out for everything from coffee to a sail around the world.

  She’d never once taken him seriously. It was simply part of his genetic makeup to flirt with women.

  “Just because you get paid to ask questions doesn’t mean you’re the only person who ever does.” His voice was dry.

  “Who’d you ask about me? Mrs. Hunt?” She couldn’t imagine the very elegant, über-wealthy Cornelia Hunt gossiping about anyone, even with the ridiculously charming Paxton Merrick. But then again, Shea could hardly imagine Cornelia’s unusual business venture either, despite having been a witness to its very birth. The woman had no need to ever work because she was married to one of the richest men in the country, yet she’d set up shop to help women succeed in business even when many of them didn’t realize they needed help. And now Shea was a minor contributor because Cornelia had hired her part-time to conduct background checks on her prospective clients. At least she took Shea’s investigative abilities seriously, whereas her boss at the Washtub didn’t.

  “You’ve got an editor at the Tub,” Pax said, as if he’d been reading her mind.

  “Harvey Hightower is an ornery old coot who doesn’t do anything for anyone unless he’s getting something out of it.” He called Shea “cupcake” and wouldn’t assign her to anything but puff pieces and gossip, no matter how hard or loudly she begged. Didn’t even matter that the twice-weekly independent operated on a shoestring budget. He’d rather pay a “serious” journalist for the “harder” stuff than let Shea stretch her wings. He’d decided she was good at human interest stories and that’s where she’d been stuck ever since she’d started working there after college. But Harvey did love anything to do with Pax and his boat-building partner because the readers loved anything to do with Pax and his boat-building partner. Who was to say that he wouldn’t have answered any question Pax asked?

  She huffed. “You’re an irritating man.”

  He laughed softly. “Glad to know I’m finally having some effect.”

  She grimaced. “Last night wasn’t the response you’ve been going for these past few years?”

  Amusement lit his dark eyes. “I figured it was an early Christmas present.”

  “I don’t give Christmas presents like that.” Truth was, she didn’t give Christmas presents at all, except to her mother. And that was only a gift certificate to her favorite store because Shea knew there was no point in picking out something personal. Her mother thought Shea had abysmal taste.

  “Well, then. Lucky me.” His dimple flashed again as he grabbed up the canvas and loosely folded it.

  It was better to busy her hands than to keep watching him, so she picked up one of the cushions to return it to its rightful position on one of the square, wooden chairs. As soon as she moved it, she spotted her panties beneath, and she snatched them up and shoved them in her other pants pocket.

  She was pretty sure she’d never carried around all of her undergarments in the front pockets of her pants. She was glad her sweater was long enough to cover it all up, and she pretended that Pax hadn’t observed the whole embarrassing thing while she put the cushion back in place. The mugs clanked together when he carried them to the break room. With nothing else to do, she sat down and pulled on her leather boots, zipping them over the legs of her damp pants, not because she wanted to, but because the legs were too narrow to fit over the boots. Then she headed to the windows again, peering out.

  “Phone lines are still down.”

  She glanced back to see Pax tucking his cell phone into his back pocket.

  “I checked the landline too,” he added. “It’s as dead as my cell.”

  “I’m not surprised.” She turned to the window again and pointed to the building across the street. A power pole, laden with ice, was leaning against the three-story warehouse. “There’s ice hanging on everything.” She chewed the inside of her lip. Neither the fact that Marsha-Marsha was waiting nor Shea’s desperation to escape would excuse another act of utter foolishness. “The roads are probably still iced over, too.”

  He closed his hand over her shoulder and squeezed. “We’ll get out there and see,” he said calmly. “If it’s not safe to drive, we won’t.”

  She didn’t look at him. It took too much effort trying to ignore the warmth spreading from his hand through her shoulder. “I’m not worried.”

  “Of course you’re not.” His tone was desert-dry.

  Her lips tightened and she shifted. His hand fell away and it frustrated her no end that she missed his comforting touch. He would forget her the second his gaze fell on another female above the age of consent. It would do her well to remember that.

  “I can probably get a weather report on the car radio. Which is more than we can get staying cooped up in here.” He headed toward the back of the office again, and she quickly followed, stopping long enough to grab her purse and her fake-suede blazer from where she’d dumped them. They both were still damp, too.

  She joined him at the door on the side of the building that opened onto a covered area between his building and Cornelia’s. His red sports car was parked there, protected somewhat from the elements. Beyond the car, she spotted the boats harbored in the marina, swaying in the water. No Merrick & Sullivan boats, though. He’d told her they’d pulled their rental fleet out of the water for maintenance.

  “Stay inside while I get it started.”

  She was glad to. One hint of the cold air outside was enough to make goose bumps sprout on her eyelashes. So she pulled the door closed and waited until she heard the engine running and he gave a quick honk. Then, even though it was his engine, it was still the sound of escape, so she pulled the door closed behind her and ran out to the car. “What about the door? Does it lock automatically?”

  “Yeah.” Air was blowing from the heater vents with a promising hint of warmth and he was fiddling with the high-tech-looking radio. His profile was sharp and clear and more mesmerizing than she wanted to admit. “Seat belt.”

  She jumped a little when he glanced at her, then felt her face flush. She fastened the belt. “Cornelia’s door locks automatically, too,” she blathered. “That’s, uh, that’s why I couldn’t get back in her building yesterday.”

  His gaze slid over her again. “You mentioned.”

  She flushed even harder. Right. She’d been full of excuses when he’d pulled her inside his office the evening before. Including the mistakes she’d
made in not taking her car to the mechanic when it had started making a new symphony of noises and not really believing the weather reports when they warned everyone to take immediate shelter.

  She’d just made one mistake after another.

  Her gaze strayed to the way his thigh bulged against his faded jeans.

  Followed by the biggest mistake of all.

  He put the car into gear and slowly nudged out from beneath the overhang, turning onto the street lined with red brick buildings similar to his and Cornelia’s.

  They drove for three blocks heading inland from the Ballard waterfront before they spotted another occupied vehicle. The heater was doing its job very well now; she imagined her clothes were starting to put off steam. It was a better excuse than thinking she was overheating just from sitting inches away from him inside his hot rod of a car, watching his long fingers, deft and easy on the gear shaft.

  She dragged her eyes away and looked out at the icy city, trying to empty her mind.

  “You’re thinking too much again.”

  How did he do that? “I’m thinking about how I’m going to get to work tomorrow,” she lied.

  He snorted softly. “I’ll bet you Honey Girl that you’re not.”

  She knew that Honey Girl was his 65-foot sailboat. That he’d built her by hand. That he’d received offers from around the world to buy her, and that women all over the city jumped at the opportunity to be invited aboard.

  “Even if you were thinking about work—which you’re not—” he shot her a grin “—I’m pretty certain there won’t be anyone working at the Tub tomorrow. Listen.” He tapped the car radio. “They’re still advising everyone to stay off the roads unless it’s an emergency.”

  “Driving me home to my apartment probably doesn’t qualify.”

  “Sure it does.” His dimple appeared. “Medical emergency.”

  “A feline one.”

  “Doesn’t make it unimportant.” He stopped at an intersection where the traffic lights were all flashing red and, even as slowly as he was going, the car eased sideways a little. But there were no other cars present. “If my dog Hooch needed medicine every day, you can take it to the bank that I’d find a way to get it to him.”

  She’d written eight articles about Pax. She knew he’d grown up in the little town of Port Orchard across the sound, where he and his business partner had first started out building boats, that he now lived on the top floor of a luxury building in trendy Belltown, and that he had a well-known weakness for anything chocolate. “You never said you had a dog.”

  “Would you have said yes the first time I asked you out if I had? Or the second time or the third?”

  Her ex-fiancé, Bruce, had had a dog. He’d dumped her two days before their wedding.

  “No.”

  Pax watched her for a moment, then continued through the empty intersection. “And what about now?”

  “I told you. This was a—”

  “—mistake. Yeah. I remember. Why?”

  She stifled a sigh. “Because!”

  He raised an eyebrow. “Figured a journalist like you would be better in a war of words than that, sweetheart.”

  “Even if I believed in relationships—which I do not—I wouldn’t be foolish enough to expect anything from you. And I don’t have time in my life to play around.” She was busy enough trying to keep her head above water between the Washtub and her gig with Cornelia.

  His lips twisted. “You always have been hard on my ego.”

  “Please.” She folded her arms across her chest. “Flirting is as second nature to you as breathing. Nothing I could say or do would dent your ego.”

  “Why don’t you believe in relationships?”

  She exhaled and looked out the side window again. Thankfully, her apartment was only a block away now. “Who in their right mind does? Just drop me at the top of the hill. If my street is icy, you won’t make it back up again because I’m pretty sure this little toy of yours isn’t sporting four-wheel drive.”

  “I’ll have to let my parents know they’re not in their right minds.” His voice was mild. “Believing in relationships as they tend to do.”

  “They’re the exception rather than the rule.”

  “You’re what? Twenty-five? Twenty-six?”

  “Twenty-eight.” And he was ten years her senior. His birthday had been in August, and Harvey’d had her camping outside the nightclub across from his apartment building with her camera to get photos of any gossip-worthy patrons coming in and out. He’d been practically gleeful when she’d shown him the ones of Pax and his dates. As in plural. He’d had three women clinging to him when he’d finally left the club in the wee hours of the morning. It’d been obvious they weren’t done celebrating when they’d crossed the street and headed inside his apartment building dragging a bobbing trio of “Happy Birthday” balloons behind them.

  “That’s still too young to be so jaded,” he was saying.

  She lifted her shoulder. “I learned early. Wait—” He’d turned onto her street and was creeping down the steep hill. “I said just let me off at the top!”

  “And I ignored you.” The wheels crunched over the road, finally coming to a stop in front of her aging apartment building. He rested his wrist on top of the steering wheel and looked at her. “I do that whenever I hear nonsense.”

  “Whenever you hear something you don’t want to hear, you mean.”

  His lips twitched. “That, too.”

  Her stomach swayed when his gaze dropped to her lips. She pressed them together and tried not to squirm in her seat. “Whether you want to hear it or not, we shouldn’t have, um, you know. Last night. That shouldn’t have happened.”

  “Slept together? Got busy? Had sex?” His brown eyes were filled with devilish mirth. “Made love?”

  She barely kept from clapping her hands over her ears. “We shouldn’t have had sex,” she managed sternly. “It doesn’t change anything.”

  He reached out and twined a tangled lock of her hair around his finger. “Don’t be so sure about that, sweetheart.”

  “I am sure.” She pulled her hair free, unsnapped her seat belt and shoved open the car door. Icy air swept in, overriding the car heater’s efforts, though it didn’t do diddly to douse the heat inside her. “Thanks for the ride home, Pax, but save yourself some time and look elsewhere for your next conquest. Lord knows there are plenty of women waiting to jump at the chance.” She grabbed her purse and leaped out of the car, shoving the door closed again before he could say anything else.

  She hadn’t even begun picking her way across the icy sidewalk to the building entrance when she heard the whirr of the electric window going down behind her. “My parents are having a Christmas party on Christmas Eve. You should come with me. We can start off at my place with a drink.”

  Exasperated, she looked back at him. “Pax—”

  “I told you I ignored nonsense when I hear it. I’ll call you.” Then he gave her that trademark half-smile of his, rolled up the window with another whirr and drove back up the street that, by all rights, a car like that should have never been able to climb.

  She blew out a shaky breath. “Darned shirt.”

  Chapter Two

  February

  “She’s there.”

  Pax looked up from the contract he was reading. His secretary, Ruth, was standing in the doorway to his office. “Excuse me?”

  Ruth raised her eyebrows knowingly. “Shea Weatherby,” she said with exaggerated patience. “I just saw her head into Mrs. Hunt’s building next door. Don’t pretend you haven’t been waiting for her. You’d be over at the boat works if you weren’t.”

  Pax’s fingers tightened around his pen, but he still looked down at the latest contract that Erik had landed as if he had all the time
in the world. “Thanks for the heads up.”

  Ruth let out a sound, half disbelief, half annoyance, and all Ruth. “Play hard to get if you want. It’s Valentine’s Day, so my mother is babysitting the kids and I’m leaving early to have dinner with my husband. I’ll come in tomorrow to finish up that schedule for the sailing camp this summer.”

  He wasn’t worried about the schedule. He knew that she would cross every T and dot every I the same as she always did. “Just don’t go getting so romantic tonight you end up needing another maternity leave.”

  Ruth laughed and walked away.

  He waited until she closed things up for the day and locked the front door on her way out. Then he dropped his pen and turned away from the contract that he hadn’t been able to read a word of and shoved his hands through his hair.

  It was like this nearly every Tuesday and Friday because those were the days that Shea went by Cornelia Hunt’s office to pick up or drop off her latest assignment. The fact that this Friday also happened to be Valentine’s Day was moot.

  Also moot was trying to pretend that he wasn’t going to go next door and bum a cup of coffee off of them. Pretty damn pathetic that it was the only time he had a hope in hell of exchanging a few words with Shea Weatherby.

  Sleeping with her during that ice storm before Christmas hadn’t changed a single thing where she was concerned. She still gave him the brush-off. It hadn’t changed a thing where he was concerned, either, except to cement even more firmly what he’d already known.

  That he wanted her like crazy.

  He had from the very first time she’d approached him with her notepad and pen, looked up at him with her enormous blue eyes and her long blond hair blowing around her shoulders in the breeze, and asked if he minded if she recorded their interview.

  He’d looked into those eyes and felt the world stop. He’d thought that the heavens were really smiling on him when he’d learned that she’d be regularly doing some work for Cornelia Hunt next door. And then that his chances with her were looking up after that ice storm. He was a man used to getting what he went after and one night wasn’t enough.