Her Unexpected Detour (Checkerberry Inn) Read online

  “Thanks, Heather.”

  Pixie Cut strutted off, and Kayla eyed her brother. “TJ?”

  His gaze cut from the retreating Heather back to hers, pink returning to his cheeks. “Yeah, you know. Sounds more appealing to the ladies.” He waggled his eyebrows.

  “Since when do you care about the ladies?”

  “Since now,” he said, grinning like a lovesick fool. Heather swung back by with a cup of joe for him on her way to another table. Once she was gone, the playful look left his eyes. “Okay, let’s try this again. Why aren’t you at work?”

  “Let’s just say I got upset.”

  “Upset?” He reached over to snag a sugar packet from the stash of condiments on the window side of their table. “About what?”

  “About being handed a week off with no pay.”

  “What?” Heads turned in their direction. Tommy lowered his voice, but the rage remained in his tone. “Why the hell would they give you a week off? And with no pay? If anything they owe you a week off, all expenses paid.”

  “Trust me, I’m with you on that. But something blew up in our faces this morning, and Jacober thinks I’m behind all of it.”

  “Blew up? What happened, you accidentally miss a few typos in an ad or something? Put a logo in the wrong spot?”

  Kayla offered him a weak smile. “I wish. ’Cause that I could handle. But this? This was the wrong file altogether. Someone took my team’s ad and modified it to include an image of two dogs, um, making puppies. Only, the faces of our biggest client and his wife were superimposed over where the dogs’ heads should be.”

  “Oh, nu-uh.”

  “Yep. Right there, big and bold, smack dab in the center. All the rest of the copy was correct, but who would bother to keep reading after seeing…” Kayla clamped her eyes shut and shook her head. It was going to take years for that image to fade from her memory. Years.

  “So, who did it?” Tommy asked.

  “I don’t know. Someone with a serious bug up his you-know-what.”

  “But it doesn’t make sense—why would Jacober pin this on you?”

  Kayla grimaced. “Because. I was the one who sent the email.”

  Shock clouded Tommy’s normal happy-go-lucky countenance. “You did what?”

  “Keep your voice down,” Kayla said, chancing a quick glance at the tables around them. “It’s embarrassing enough as it is.”

  “Kay, what the hell were you thinking?”

  “It wasn’t like that, all right? Look, when I left yesterday the image looked fine. Better than fine. In fact, it was perfect. One of our best. Then I come in today and there’s a typed note on my desk asking me to double-check a change made to the headline one last time before I forward the ad on to the client for their review. I was a bit miffed someone had gone in and made a change after we’d finalized it yesterday, but last minute changes happen sometimes.

  “When I opened the file to proof the changes, it was saved at a view zoomed in to the title. It looked fine, so I didn’t bother to zoom out and look at the rest of the ad.” She shook her head when Tommy threw her an incredulous look. “You’ve got to understand, I looked it over ‘one last time’ at least twelve times yesterday. And no one’s ever pranked me at work before. So I hit send and half an hour later I’m getting my butt handed to me on a silver platter. I’ve never seen Jacober so mad before. He said if my track record hadn’t been so squeaky clean they would have fired me on the spot. As it is, the board of directors might still decide to do just that.”

  Tommy snorted. “They won’t fire you. You do everything around there. Hell, they’d be lost without you.”

  Kayla couldn’t argue with that. In fact, she’d had that very same thought several times on her way up here.

  “Since Jacober doesn’t seem out to get you, that means someone else wants you gone. Question is: who would stand to gain the most if you got canned?”

  Tommy had a way of seeing past the BS that tripped up other people. Like now, focusing on identifying the who and why, not chastising Kayla for her mistake. It was one of the things she loved most about her little brother, and the main reason she’d come here. It was that or run to her father, but she worked hard enough to keep him from worrying as it was.

  “I have no idea. Even worse, our team’s proposal for the huge Foellinger project is due in two weeks. No one would want me gone right now.”

  Would they?

  No, Kayla decided after a moment, everyone on her team got along great. Sure, she’d met some resistance when Mr. Jacober originally named her a team leader—she’d only been with the company for two years. But any animosity they’d harbored evaporated after that first brutal bidding war for Prairie Farms. Her team had come out on top then, and countless times since.

  “If that’s the case, then maybe it was someone who sits nearby and saw you leave.” Tommy’s features darkened. “Someone who had something to gain by you being fired. Or you getting sidelined at the very least.”

  “You’re probably right. But who?”

  Someone on another team. A coworker who had everything to gain by pulling a stunt like this, and absolutely nothing to lose—one of the perks of being the owner’s stepson. Kayla’s narrowed gaze met Tommy’s as they spoke the now obvious answer in unison.

  “Joe Freimann.”

  “If I ever get my hands on that bastard…” Tommy’s hands balled into fists. “And after all the times you’ve bailed out his sorry ass for missed deadlines and crappy work.”

  “Yeah. Really paid off, didn’t it?”

  Kayla had complained about Joe to her brother before. What she’d left out of those conversations, though, were all the times she’d also deflected Joe’s romantic advances. Over, and over, and over. Maybe if she’d just caved in and gone on a date with the slimeball none of this would ever have happened?

  Doubtful. Joe had a heart of stone and didn’t care who he stepped on so long as he came out on top. He alone had transformed their office culture from a group of highly enthusiastic go-getters into a herd of downtrodden Eeyores. And all while her boss sat back and looked the other way.

  This time, though, Joe had made a serious mistake: he’d singled out the only employee his stepdad couldn’t feasibly fire. And if Joe thought she’d go down without a fight, well, he had another thing coming.

  Thomas Granville set two cans of exterior, oil-based paint down on the counter with a grunt. “I hear there’s a nasty storm moving in.”

  Brent cast a glance out the front window of Granville Supplies. “Yeah, well, I hope the weatherman’s wrong. I hate freezing rain.” He turned back and smirked at the aging widower. “Too bad you’ve got such a long hike home.”

  Tom waved him off with a snort. Not many people knew the brick, two-story shop tucked neatly away in the historic part of town doubled as his abode. Brent could still remember trips upstairs with his late grandfather. He and Miles would drink lemonade and play checkers while the older men exchanged war stories.

  It felt like a lifetime ago.

  “You sure these are what you want, Brent?” Tom said, gesturing toward the paint.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.”

  The Checkerberry’s monster porch was in dire need of a paint job. Miles had done his damnedest to talk Brent out of buying the high-end stuff, but he’d stood his ground. He knew from experience that the rumors about cheaper paints only lasting half as long as the expensive brands were all too true. Since he hated painting, the less often he had to repaint anything the better.

  With a shrug, Tom turned and pulled two more cans of base color off a nearby shelf. “How’s your grandmother?”

  “Fine. She’s fine.”

  “Glad to hear. And glad to see she’s set to open the Checkerberry again in a few weeks. Was worried this weak economy might force her to close permanently.”

  “Oh, the inn’s not out of the woods yet. She had half the customers we usually do last season, Tom. Half. Enough to stay in the black, but not by m
uch. This year’s gotta be better, or…” Brent shook his head. “It’d kill her to lose that place.”

  He felt a stab of guilt as Tom pried the lid off the first can. Maybe Brent should have gone with the cheaper paint. What if the inn didn’t do better this summer? Or the next? This was her savings he was spending here.

  Maybe Miles was right. Maybe she really should think about selling the inn. Get out of the bed-and-breakfast industry altogether, so she could move into one of those little retirement communities.

  He couldn’t help but smirk at that thought. Ruby would go stir-crazy in a place like that her first day there. Hell, her first hour there. No, buying this grade of paint was the right thing to do. He would make the Checkerberry shine like new and pray his grandmother’s guests would somehow find their way back. They had to.

  “Oh, Ruby’s a tough old bird.” Tom’s face softened as he set the paint beneath the color dispenser. “I’m sure she’ll be fine. Plus, she’s got you and Miles to look out for her. And a dedicated staff.”

  Brent shook his head. “Had a dedicated staff. Her chef is on the fence about whether or not to return this season, and our groundskeeper turned in his resignation last month. Ruby just can’t afford to pay them what they’d be making at the casinos in town.”

  “Now that’s a stroke of bad luck. Has she found a new groundskeeper?”

  “You’re looking at him.”

  Tom gave him a fatherly frown. “What about your business, Brent?”

  “Things were slow, anyway,” he lied. “And who can tell Ruby no?”

  Tom chuckled as he replaced the paint can’s lid and moved the pail over to his well-worn mixer.

  The machine jerked to life, and Brent’s collision with the hot little brunette in the diner sprang to mind. All soft, curvy, and completely wrong for him.

  He was a local, and she was anything but.

  If Legs was smart, she’d get back on the road and leave this godforsaken town in her rearview mirror before it tried to sink its claws into her, too.

  “Things will work out, son,” Tom said. “‘Round here, they always do.”

  Brent answered with a grunt.

  Maybe for Tom that’d been true. But for Brent? Not so much.

  Chapter Three

  As she stepped from her car and struggled to find solid footing, Kayla took a quick scan of her frozen surroundings. One minute it’d been plain old rain falling from the sky, the next a curtain of ice. Bolting from Indiana before checking the forecast hadn’t been a very wise decision on her part. Neither had been her assuming Tommy would let her stay over tonight.

  Her second terrible assumption of the day.

  But really, what were the chances of his roommate having a terrible case of the flu at the same time as her visit? She couldn’t blame Tommy for planning a weekend trip over to Windsor with Heather to get away from the germs, but it’d killed Kayla’s plans to crash there for the night.

  Okay, so maybe crash wasn’t the best choice of words right now. Not after her Impala had hit that slick spot in the middle of the intersection, slid into the ditch, and then ate a fence post. Between the ice now coating her windshield and that stupid construction detour, she’d somehow missed her turn to get back onto Business 127. Now she was stuck out here, in the middle of nowhere. In high heels. With zero bars on her cell phone.

  Why did it feel like the whole world had it in for her today?

  She half crawled, half scrambled up and out of the side ditch and squinted through the rain of ice pellets, looking for a passing motorist to flag down. But there were no cars in sight. Apparently, she was the only idiot on the road right now. Or at least, she had been.

  Kayla hitched her purse higher onto her shoulder, eeny-meeny-miny-moed, and then stepped off in the winning direction to search for a house with a functional landline. Hopefully she’d find one before she slipped and broke her neck. Though with the way her day had gone so far, it wouldn’t surprise her if that happened, too.

  This run of bad luck can stop any time now…

  Normally, the trip between Granville’s Hardware and the Checkerberry Inn took Brent all of seven minutes. Eight, if one of Mr. Billings’s alpacas got loose and wandered out onto the road again. But today’s late spring storm had slowed his travels to an annoying crawl. Everything as far as the eye could see was slowly being suffocated by a layer of ice. Salt might have kept the roads from freezing, but unfortunately any of it left on the roads from last winter had been washed away by last week’s rainy deluge.

  Typical spring weather in Michigan.

  The irritation coursing through Brent’s veins intensified when he spotted a car up ahead that had slid off the road into the shallow ditch and taken out one of Ruby’s neighbor’s fence posts.

  “Aw, come on. I just fixed that damned post last week!”

  What was it with the people around here lately? That was the third time this year the post had been hit. Maybe it’s time to find a really big rock to set between it and the road…

  He hated the thought of being delayed any further, but whether the other driver was an idiot or not, Brent couldn’t turn a blind eye to the situation. A quick glance, to make sure they were okay, he conceded. Maybe even an offer to call a tow truck. Nothing more. But as he pulled up alongside the ditch, he could see the car was empty, its driver already gone.

  “Good,” he muttered, and eased his truck forward once more.

  His relief was short-lived. A few hundred yards ahead, he spotted a figure slip-sliding along the side of the road. A small, curvy figure, dressed in a jacket, skirt, and heels.

  Heels? Who the hell walks around in the middle of an ice storm wearing heels?

  At the sound of his approaching truck the figure turned and waved frantically in his direction. The sudden movement compromised her footing, and Brent watched with mild amusement as she did darn near everything but fall while struggling to stay upright. Balance recovered, she turned her face back toward his halting truck and threw him a sheepish grin.

  Oh, no.

  Brent rubbed his eyes.

  Not her. Please God, anyone but her.

  He blinked and looked again, but the view didn’t change. It was Legs, her soaking wet clothes molded to every one of her mouth-watering curves. Temptation incarnate.

  He gave serious thought to hitting the gas, just tearing out of there and never looking back. But that lasted all of half a second before the gentleman in him—the glutton-for-punishment gentleman—decided to do the right thing and help her out. With a silent vow to not get tongue-tied around her again, he drew his truck to a stop and lowered the passenger window.

  “Let me guess,” he called. “Decided to walk off some of that lunch?”

  “Good guess, but no.”

  She brushed a clump of wet hair from her eyes, and those unassuming blues of hers managed to rattle something in him yet again. If she stuck around any longer, he’d have to stop making eye contact with her. Or, better yet, he thought as she stepped closer, maybe he should make sure she didn’t stick around at all.

  “Actually,” she said, leaning her elbows on his truck’s lowered window, “my car went off the road a ways back. And my cell can’t seem to find a signal out here. Do you have a phone I could borrow?”

  Ah, see? She’d make a call and be gone. It was a win-win all around. “Sure. Climb in.”

  Brent shifted in his seat and reached to dig the phone from his front pocket. Legs lowered her arms and took a small step back. He cast her a dark look. What, was his truck not good enough for her? “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” She hugged herself, glanced up and down the street. “Just…waiting for you to get your phone.”

  She didn’t trust him. Though, being female, stranded, and looking the way she did, he couldn’t really blame her. Still, he wasn’t going to let her stand there and freeze to death. He retrieved his phone and held it out toward her.

  Legs didn’t budge.

  A princes
s and stubborn—lucky me.

  “Look, I’d feel a heck of a lot better if you’d come in out of the rain while you make your call. My phone isn’t exactly waterproof, and you’re turning blue.” He angled the dashboard heater vents toward her. “See? Warm you up before you catch pneumonia or something.”

  “F-fine.” She pulled the door open, hesitated, and then shot him a stern look. “Just don’t try anything funny.”

  He worked to suppress a grin at her threatening tone. What harm could a woman who looked to be a hundred pounds soaking wet possibly do to him?

  She still had yet to climb in, so he raised both hands in the air as a sign of defeat. Legs hesitated a second more, then crawled up into the truck and pulled the door shut behind her. Brent watched as water rained down from her drenched body onto his passenger seat, and thanked the good Lord for the umpteenth time he’d gone with leather upholstery.

  “Phone,” she demanded and held out a hand.

  Nope, still didn’t trust him. Ironic, as he was probably the most harmless knight in shining armor around. He handed over the phone, then opened his hand and left it extended toward her. “Brent Masterson, local contractor. Nice to meet you. Again.”

  Her lashes fluttered. “Oh, uh, Kayla Daniels. Rude stranded traveler. Nice to meet you, too. Again.”

  As her soft hand pressed into his, the world around them faded away. The rain, the ice, the worries—everything left his mind but the woman who now sat across from him. She was funny, independent, and, soaking wet or not, hot as hell.

  Which made her all the more dangerous.

  The instant her hand retracted, the spell was broken. So while she focused on dialing, Brent looked away. It was too easy to stare, to imagine what those curves might look like without the layers of wet clothes plastered to them. What they might feel like.

  But he didn’t look anymore, didn’t feel. Kayla shifted from him as she waited for whoever was on the other end to pick up, and Brent was glad for the additional space between them. Because the further he stayed from her, from anyone, the safer his heart would be.