Winning His Heart: The Millionaire's Homecoming / The Maverick Millionaire. Melissa McClone

“What are the chances I would find one just as I’m contemplating buying an ice cream store?”

      “Cosmically ordained,” he said.

      She either missed his sarcasm or refused to acknowledge it. “Exactly.”

      “It reminds me of HAL from 2001: A Space Odyssey.”

      “That’s ridiculous. If I remember correctly, HAL was not nice.”

      “You slept through ninety percent of that movie. And you were the one who insisted we rent it.”

      “I was in my all-things-space stage.” She sniffed. “It disappointed.”

      But what David remembered was not disappointment, but that there had been a bunch of them in somebody’s basement rec room gamely watching the vintage sixties movie Kayla had rented.

      Somehow she’d ended up crammed next to him on a crowded couch. And partway through—after gobbling down buttered popcorn and licking the extra butter off her fingers—he realized she had gone to sleep and her head was lolling against his shoulder, and the cutest little pool of drool was making a warm puddle on his shirt.

      And that he hadn’t embarrassed her by mentioning it when she woke up.

      “How much did you pay for this contraption?” he asked gruffly, moving over to inspect it.

      “Fifteen hundred dollars,” she said happily. “That’s a steal. New ones, of commercial grade, start at ten grand. This size of machine is eighteen thousand dollars.”

      He realized, uncomfortably—and yet still grateful to have his focus shifting—that Kayla was way more invested in the idea of owning the ice cream parlor than she had originally let on.

      “Presumably,” he said carefully, “More-moo already has one.”

      “They don’t,” she crowed triumphantly. “They buy their ice cream from Rolling Hills Dairy, the same as you can buy for yourself at the grocery store. There is nothing special about that. Why go out for ice cream when you can have the same thing at home for a fraction of the price?”

      “Exactly. Why?”

      “That’s how I plan to be different. Homemade ice cream, in exotic flavors that people have never had before.”

      She frowned at his silence, glanced back at him. “And, of course, I’ll offer the old standbys for boring people. Chocolate. Vanilla. Strawberry. But still homemade.”

      “So what flavor is this that you’re experimenting with?” he asked, curious despite himself.

      “Dandelion!”

      “And that’s better than rose petal?” he asked doubtfully.

      She nodded enthusiastically.

      “Have you done any kind of market research at all?”

      “Don’t take the fun out of it,” she warned him.

      “Look, fun is playing volleyball on the beach, or riding a motorcycle flat out, or skinny-dipping under a full moon.”

      Something darkened in her eyes when he said that, and he wished he hadn’t because a strange, heated tension leaped in the air between them.

      “Fun is fun, and business is business,” he said sternly.

      And he was here on business. To return a sweater. But ever since he had walked in the door and felt almost swamped with a sensation of homecoming, his mission had felt blurry.

      “That’s not what you said in the article for Lakeside Life,” she told him stubbornly. “You said if a man does what he loves he will never work a day in his life.”

      What did it mean that she had read that so closely? Nothing, he told himself.

      “I’d play with the name,” she said, ignoring his stern note altogether. “That’s part of the reason I like it better than rose petal, well, that and the fact it would be cheaper to produce. I’d call this flavor Dandy Lion.”

      His look must have been blank, because she spelled it out for him. “D-A-N-D-Y L-I-O-N.”

      “Oh.”

      “Cute, huh?”

      “Not to be a wet blanket but in my experience, cute is rarely a moneymaker. Look, Kayla, if ever there was a time to worry, this would be it. I don’t think people are going to line up to eat dandelion ice cream, no matter how you spell it.”

      “Oh, what do you know?” she said, and her chin had a stubborn tilt to it. “They drink dandelion wine.”

      “They do? I can’t imagine why.”

      “Well, maybe not the people you hang out with.”

      “I haven’t seen any of the good wineries with dandelion wine,” he said, keeping his tone calm, trying to reason with her. “And you can bet they do their homework. In fact, Blaze Enterprises is invested in Painted Pony Wineries and—”

      But she turned her back to him, and turned on the machine and it drowned out his advice. He was pretty sure it was deliberate. She freed one arm to open a lid on the top of the stainless-steel machine, then tried to heft the huge bowl up high enough to pour the contents in a spout at the top.

      At her grunt of exertion, he stepped up behind her and took the bowl. He gazed down into the bright yellow contents.

      “Hell, Kayla, it looks like pee,” he said over the loudness of the machine.

      Her face scrunched up in the cutest expression of disapproval. “It doesn’t! It looks bright and lemony.”

      “Which, if you think about it, is what—”

      She held up her hand, not wanting to hear it. He shrugged. “Whatever. In here?”

      She nodded and he dumped the contents of the bowl in the machine through an opening she would have had to stand on a chair to reach.

      Unlocked doors. Precarious balancing on chairs. And no phone to call anyone if she found herself in an emergency. Plus, spending fifteen hundred dollars on an idea that seemed hare-brained, and that should still be in the research stages, not the investing-in stages.

      Why did he feel so protective of her? Why did he feel like she needed him? She had made it this far without his help, after all.

      Though good choices were obviously not her forte.

      It occurred to David that he felt helpless to do anything for his mother. And he hated that out-of-control feeling.

      Not that Kayla would appreciate his trying to control her. But if he could help her a little bit—find her dog, pour her recipe for her so she didn’t risk life and limb climbing on one of her rickety chairs with this huge bowl, save her from throwing away any more money on ice-cream-themed machinery—those could only be good things.

      Right?

      The machine gobbled up the contents of the bowl with a huge sucking sound. David had to stand on his tiptoes to look inside. The mustard-yellow cream was being vigorously swished and swirled, and the machine was growling like a vintage motorcycle that he owned.

      “How long?” he called over the deafening rumble.

      “It’s going to come out here!” She showed him a wide stainless-steel spigot and handle. “It will be six to twelve minutes, depending on how hard I want the ice cream. We’ll try a sample after six.”

      He peered back in the hole where he had dumped the cream. “Is this thing supposed to close?”

      “I’m not sure all the parts were there. I need to look up the manual online. It didn’t come with the manual. I saved over sixteen thousand dollars—I can live with that.”

      The stickler in him felt like now might be a really good time to point out to her that she hadn’t actually saved sixteen