A Small-Town Temptation. Terry Mclaughlin

It’s time for you to start acting like you give a damn what happens to it.”

      “Don’t you lecture me.”

      “Someone’s got to.”

      He clenched his jaw, and she knew he wouldn’t budge on this. Not today, anyway.

      “Aw, hell.” She spun away and moved to the window to stare at the wide, gravel-coated yard. Outside, Buzz pulled beneath the batch plant to load his truck for the preschool playground job, and Lenny rumbled by in the transfer with sixteen yards of sand headed for Delores Fregoso’s riding arena.

      “Don’t make this harder than it has to be,” she said in a near whisper. “Don’t sabotage this. Please.”

      “I’m not sabotaging anything. I’m trying to find a way for all of us to get what we want. All of us, Charlie. Not just you.”

      She turned as he stood to pull his jacket off its hanger. “There are going to be some changes around here,” he said. “Whether you like them or not.”

      TWO HOURS LATER, CHARLIE leaned back in her chair with a groan that morphed into a yawn. Time for another dose of caffeine. She tugged her coffee mug from under a stack of Department of Motor Vehicles forms and trudged toward the reception area. Around the corner, she heard a deep murmur followed by Gus’s wheezy chuckle. Someone was busy charming her dispatcher. Someone with a syrupy Southern drawl in his smooth, low-pitched voice.

      That stranger, the guy who’d been staring at her in Earl’s gravel yard that morning. He leaned against the counter as if he’d been born with the laminate attached at the hip. His jeans were white at the seams, poised on the edge between ragged and stylish, his wool shirt faded enough to show some use but soft enough to advertise its pedigree. The outfit may have said everyday working guy, but she suspected the labels whispered weekend leisure wear.

      He straightened and turned to face her, and she couldn’t help but stare at the flesh and blood embodiment of every bittersweet promise and mortifying low point in her brief and forgettable dating career. There was the lean-muscled build of that high school wrestler, the one who’d been such a perfect fit during a long, slow number at the homecoming dance—the one who’d lost his dinner all over her first formal gown. There was the wavy, dark blond hair of that sexy grad student, the one who’d whisked her away for her first taste of grown-up excitement—the one who’d ducked out in the middle of a double date, doubling her mortification. There were the dark blue, crinkle-cornered eyes of the man who’d been her first serious love affair, the one who’d said he was serious about her, too—the one who’d stood her up for Christmas dinner at her parents’ house four years ago.

      And then the lean, sexy, blue-eyed stranger standing at her counter smiled, and his tanned skin stretched and molded in a wonderful combination of sharp cheekbones and square jaw and deeply carved grooves far too manly to pass for dimples. Okay, so the grooves were something new. And that look in his eyes that was making her stomach twist in a breath-robbing knot—no one’s eyes had ever looked at her in quite that way before. As if they were peeling away her clothes and counting every freckle on the skin underneath.

      She hated it when guys made her stomach knot up. It gave her heartburn.

      Gus gestured with his coffee mug. “This here’s Jackson Maguire, Charlie. He says he has an appointment with David.”

      Jackson Maguire thrust his hand forward. “Call me Jack.”

      She placed her hand in his, noting a healing nick on his thumb and the calluses rubbing against her palm. This was a man who used his hands for work, but the careful weight of his grip gave the impression of precise and practiced manners. An interesting man, this Call-Me-Jack Maguire. A man of intriguing contrasts and textures.

      “Charlie Keene,” she said, and then she pulled her hand from his and shoved it into her pocket, where it would be safe.

      “Do you know when David’s due back?” Gus asked her.

      “He mentioned he had an appointment,” she said, “but all I know is that it was set for sometime after lunch.”

      “I’m afraid I’m early,” said Jack. “Y’all just go about your business, now. Never mind me. Gus, here, is keeping me plenty entertained, in between all those phone calls he handles so well.”

      Maguire winked at her. A slow burn kindled in her cheeks, and she knew she’d soon be wearing the same blush he’d seen on her that morning. She covered it with a nod and a shuffle to the coffeemaker.

      “Pretty busy place here, even in the afternoon,” Maguire rambled on in his amiable way. “Trucks coming and going, steady as can be. I would have thought things might slow down some after the morning pours, especially in a town this size. I s’pose most of the traffic must involve gravel deliveries about this time of day.”

      She couldn’t tell if he was simply making conversation or prying into her business affairs. There was something about the sly specificity of his questions—wrapped up in that “aw, shucks” delivery—that tickled the hairs on the back of her neck.

      She turned with a shrug. “Some,” she said.

      “Some.” His mouth turned up at one corner. “But not all.”

      “Nope.”

      Behind her, Gus sputtered through a strangled cough.

      Maguire’s grooves deepened. “Now, that’s as concise, and yet at the same time, as eloquent an answer as I think I’ve ever heard.”

      “And I imagine you’ve heard all kinds,” she said.

      That crooked smile of his seemed to tweak and tease at each of his features before coming to rest in his eyes. Quite a trick. Her stomach was knotting up so tight she wondered if she’d be able to make it back to her office without getting a cramp.

      David sauntered in through the office door. He took one look at Maguire, a second at Charlie, and his golfer’s tan faded several shades.

      Charlie narrowed her eyes. “David?”

      “David Keene?” asked Maguire, although it was obvious he already knew the answer.

      At David’s hesitant and guilty-looking acknowledgment, Maguire extended his hand. “Jack Maguire,” he announced. And then he paused and flashed yet another grin in her direction. “From Continental Construction.”

      Continental. Charlie’s mug clattered down on the counter, and coffee sloshed over the rim. Oh God oh God oh God.

      Maguire tsked at the spilled coffee as he followed David through the doorway to the back offices.

      That damn, cocky grin. The stomach-knotting trademark of the man who had appeared out of nowhere, the one who could get her juices flowing with his easy talk and his rough hands—the one who could hurt her more than any other man had ever hurt her in her life.

      The hell he could.

      Charlie snapped out of panic mode and strode down the hall after them. David’s business appointment was about to get his agenda adjusted.

      JACK TOOK ONE OF THE visitors’ chairs in David Keene’s office and crossed an ankle over a knee. He figured he had about ten seconds before David’s sister came barging in.

      Five seconds later the office door swung open so hard it bounced off the baseboard spring and closed behind her with a smack. His guess had been off. Charlie Keene moved fast when she was in a temper.

      “Don’t let me disturb you,” she said as she dragged the other chair behind David’s desk—to the administrative side of the small room—and tucked it under an anemic-looking potted palm. “Go right ahead and discuss what it was you wanted to discuss. Just ignore the co-owner in the corner.”

      She dropped into her seat and slouched with her arms folded across her nearly flat chest, a fraudulent smile thinning her lips.

      David leaned back