What a Woman Read online

  The woman’s bells jangled. “Hello. I’m—”

  “Wearing bells.”

  “Not exactly.” She hefted a pot of delicious-smelling something with a, “Here. Hold this,” at him and he had to shove his crutches into his armpits to balance on them and his good leg. “Actually, I’m carrying them. My grandmother thought you might want them back.” She hefted a leather slab of sleigh bells off her shoulder, knocking her baseball cap askew. “Where do you want ’em?”

  The woman was about five-two, yet entered the house like a tornado. Jangling bells included.

  “I don’t know. I wasn’t planning on bells in my future.” Jared waved the pot toward the left. “Just drop them on the chair over there.”

  She did. Dropped them right onto the chair. Then they slid off and hit the hardwood floor with a nerve-destroying reverberation. He hoped to hell they hadn’t destroyed the floor.

  And then he saw her outfit. Matching green pants and shirt with MANLEY MAIDS embroidered over the left breast pocket.

  Oh shit. He knew exactly why this woman had entered the house like a tornado—she was a tornado. Mac Manley could stir things up like only acts of God and Nature could.

  Liam’s little sister had been the shadow they couldn’t shake their entire childhood, and her crush on him . . . Talk about embarrassing. And annoying. Every time he turned around she’d needed to be rescued because she’d tripped or fallen or hurt herself thanks to the stars in her eyes whenever she’d looked his way. And the nightmare she’d put his dates through . . . Jared shook his head. She’d caused him no end of trouble.

  And if that uniform and her presence meant what he thought they did, he could guarantee she’d end up causing him even more.

  Jared took two crutch-swinging hop steps with the pot, and—yeah. That wasn’t going to work. Some sloshed out from under the lid and damn if it wasn’t hot. Not even five minutes and his prediction had come true. “Hey, a hand here?”

  She looked at him as if he had two heads.

  He picked his crutches up by clenching his arms against his torso and lifting them with his armpits. “Injury?”

  “Oh. Crud.” She grabbed the pot and carried it into the kitchen, steam rising from the pot when she set it on the counter. “Sorry. I wasn’t thinking. You okay?”

  Okay? With busted ribs, a couple titanium rods, a bum knee, and the prospect of arthritis at an early age, not to mention a career on a downward slide thanks to the so-called accident his former girlfriend Camille’s boyfriend had caused, and now Mac, here, in his grandmother’s home where he was recuperating, looking hotter than his best friend’s terror of a sister had a right to?

  No, he sure as hell wasn’t okay.

  * * *

  JARED Nolan had certainly filled out nicely.

  It was Mac’s first thought at her first up-close and personal glimpse of the baseball hero who’d filled her dreams long before that going-away party his parents had thrown to kick off his major league baseball career.

  But he could work those crutches something fierce, and his flexing chest and biceps were a nice result. Abs and thighs, too. Physical therapy had done good things besides getting him upright again because he certainly didn’t look as if he’d come close to death. Matter of fact, he looked to be the picture of health, the perfect cover model for the men’s health magazine he’d been on before the accident.

  She was very sorry to admit to herself that she had looked at that cover. A few times.

  But she wasn’t here to ogle the client. She never ogled clients. She never ogled anyone. Especially Jared. She’d worked so hard to make Manley Maids successful that by the time she could look at anything other than work, her eyes were crossed with exhaustion.

  He, however, definitely straightened them out.

  Get over it, Mac. Remember your embarrassment? Remember his derision?

  The night she’d turned seventeen came back in humiliating clarity. She’d followed him out of the house, certain the reason he’d been at her birthday dinner had more to do with her—finally—than hanging with Liam. She’d just known he was going to give her her first kiss.

  But then he’d headed down the walk and she’d run after him, grabbing his arm before he could leave.

  She still cringed at the memory.

  “What do you want, Mac?” he’d asked, shrugging into the black hoodie that had made his blond hair blonder and his green eyes greener. Not to mention the way it’d hugged his broad, sculpted shoulders and arms that she’d imagined wrapped around her more times than she could count.

  “I want you to kiss me, Jared.” She’d nibbled her lip nervously, unable to believe she’d finally said the words out loud. She hadn’t wanted to be the only girl in school who hadn’t been kissed, but she’d wanted her first kiss to be special.

  To be from Jared.

  He’d stopped putting the hoodie on with his other arm halfway in, and had looked at her with his eyebrows almost in his hairline. “Kiss you? Get real, Mac. I could’ve had my chance anytime I’d wanted. And I didn’t. Doesn’t that tell you something?”

  It’d told her he was cruel. He was uncaring. Had no compassion.

  And didn’t have even one iota of interest in her.

  She’d wanted to curl into her skin and disappear. Or have the ground open up and swallow her whole. She’d never felt so stupid in her entire seventeen years.

  And with Nan Marone, gossip extraordinaire, grinning at her over the hedge, the entire school would know exactly what the hottest guy in town thought of her before she made it back inside to lick her wounds and pretend that everything was all right.

  Thankfully, now, it was. Jared might have been her first crush, but she was a long way from that self-conscious, love-sick seventeen-year-old. “Are you sure you’re okay? The soup didn’t burn you?”

  “I’m fine.”

  That he was.

  Mac rolled her eyes when he turned around and shoved his fists onto his hips—a really good look for him, and one she didn’t need to notice. Because if she did, Gran’s hopes would skyrocket.

  Hey, wait a minute . . . Did Gran actually think she could hook Mac and Jared up like she was trying to do for Liam, Sean, and Bryan?

  Jared leaned against the counter and crossed his arms, his crutches falling against the butcher block. “Are you really here to clean?”

  That was the idea. But was it Gran’s?

  “I’m certainly not here to cook.” Mac nodded at the pot. “That’s from my grandmother.”

  A ridiculous idea because chicken soup was a cold remedy, not a cure-all for broken bones. And even if it was, Jared had been out of the hospital for a while; he was certainly capable of getting around if he’d moved in here to get the place ready to sell for his grandmother.

  “That was kind of her. Please thank her for me.”

  “Or you can give her a call while I get started. I know she’d love to hear from you.” Ever since Mildred’s request for her to personally handle this assignment, Gran had done nothing but regale Mac with Jared’s wonderfulness, seen fully through the eyes of his grandmother. Gran and Mildred loved talking about their grandkids.

  Now Mac was wondering how much of that regaling was because Gran was thrilled Jared was doing okay or because she wanted Mac to be thrilled about Jared. Too bad Gran wasn’t aware of their history. Of the embarrassingly obvious wishes that she’d wished she could take back and pretend had never been. Especially since the object of those wishes had been aware of them all along.

  Mac picked up a misshapen blue ceramic mug. Mr. Davison’s fourth grade art project. She had the same one, though hers was a little more even than Jared’s. “How about if I start upstairs and work my way down? Will that interfere with your schedule?”

  Jared looked at her as if he didn’t understand a word she was saying.

  She
set the mug down next to a picture of thirteen-year-old Jared with Mildred at one of Jared’s Little League games. Mac knew exactly how old Jared was in that picture—actually knew it to the day; that’s how infatuated she’d been with him. Her poor deluded, prepubescent self . . .

  “Princess, what are you doing here?” He laid the dishtowel on the side of the sink, folded up all nice and neat.

  Any gratitude she felt for his neatness was instantly gone with the use of that annoying nickname she’d hated since the first time he’d called her that. “I’m here to clean your grandmother’s house.”

  “No. I mean, why are you really here?”

  “Really here? I don’t understand the question.”

  Jared stared at her as if he were trying to figure her out, but finally shook his head and turned away.

  And winced.

  He stumbled a little and Mac was at his side, under his arm with hers wrapped around his waist before he could protest.

  ”I’ve got this, Mac. I have the crutches. You don’t have to try to carry me.”

  “I’m not trying; I’m doing. I don’t need you breaking something on my watch.” She grunted with the effort it took to keep him upright. He might not be aware of it, but he was no lightweight. All that muscle put some major poundage on him.

  Not that she was paying attention or anything.

  “So you’re saying it’s okay if I break something later?”

  Wow. His tone put Gran’s skin-slicing ability to shame because Mac figured out right away that he wasn’t her biggest fan. Still harboring resentment that she’d practically been his shadow all those years ago? She’d love to tell him to get over himself—that she had—but Gran and Mildred wouldn’t be happy if they were fighting, so it was time to cut her losses.

  Hands up, Mac backed away. “Okay. Fine. I’ll just get started and you go do what you do and I’ll stay out of your way.” Far, far out of his way.

  He gripped the countertop and worked the one crutch under his arm. “Fine. You do that.”

  “Fine. I will.” She should probably hand him the other crutch that was by the sink, but screw it. If he was so “I got this,” let him get his own damn crutch.

  She spun around and strode toward the back steps. She’d find the farthest corner of the house from here, and take out her emotions on the dust—

  Except she needed her cleaning supplies that, between the soup and the bells, she hadn’t had enough hands to carry in. Which meant she had to go back downstairs. Past Jared.

  Great. Fabulous.

  Executing a ninety-degree turn that would stop an army drill sergeant in his tracks, Mac strode toward the front door.

  “Leaving so soon?” He didn’t have to sound so happy about it.

  She turned around and was steamed to find him smiling. “Look, Jared, I’m here as a favor to your grandmother and mine. If you have issues with that, take it up with them.”

  She so would have loved to slam the door behind her, but it was Mildred’s front door, not Jared’s, and she wasn’t about to let him see her sweat.

  Because, damn it all, with that smile, he actually could still make her sweat.

  Chapter Two

  SHE left just as she’d entered: a tight little package of tornado, stirring things up in a way no one else he’d ever met could.

  Jared pinched the bridge of his nose. The grandmothers were nothing if not obvious, and while he hated to hurt their feelings, he wasn’t going to suffer through Mac’s brand of torture long enough to get anyone’s hopes up. Camille’s “little game” of playing up to him to get as much as she could out of him had put him off women even before her supposed ex-boyfriend had tried to mow him down in a jealous rage. So if he ever decided to settle down, the decision would be his, not his grandmother’s. And it definitely wouldn’t be with a pain-in-the-ass who’d made his life miserable.

  The same one who blew back through his front door, swirling grass clippings and leaves in behind her. Some cleaning lady she was.

  “You weren’t raised in a barn, Princess.”

  The old nickname rolled off his tongue as easy as if he’d seen her last week, so he didn’t even think about it.

  But she obviously did because she stumbled on the first step.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  He’d rather have her beg for something else.

  Oh, hell. What was wrong with him? This was Mac. Terror of the tree fort. Tagalong extraordinaire.

  Who’d grown up to be one hell of a gorgeous woman.

  When had she grown up? She’d been a cute kid—well, when she hadn’t been covered in dirt and grime and grass stains—but now . . . Gone were the chubby cheeks and freckles, skinned knees, and her brothers’ T-shirts. Now she had legs and curves and cheekbones and lips . . .

  Jesus. Mac had had a mouth on her back in the day, but it’d been verbal. Now . . .

  “I said that I know for a fact that you weren’t raised in a barn, so would you mind telling me why you left the front door open? Seems to be counterproductive to the cleaning thing you profess to be here about.”

  She stormed back into the kitchen, temper in full view.

  Damn, she was too pretty for his own good when she was angry. Green eyes flashed like emeralds beneath bangs so black they could be blue, the rest of her hair tied back in a ponytail that stretched halfway down her back. It was the same style that she’d worn when she was ten, though she sure as hell didn’t look ten now.

  “Have I ever told you how to play baseball?” She rammed a finger into his chest.

  Jared looked at it, then into her eyes, trying to remember why staying away from her was a good idea. “There was that pickup game when I came home from college senior year—”

  Her hand fluttered. “You were going to run over Nicky. He was a third your size. You were too stuck on winning to see what you were going to do. I had to say something.”

  “So your point is?”

  “I don’t tell you how to do your job; don’t tell me how to do mine. I know how to get this place into shape.”

  Jared laughed. “Only you, Princess, could follow an anecdote of how you told me how to do my job with the declaration that you don’t tell me how to do it. Are you getting the irony?”

  She glared at him. “My name is not Princess; it’s Mac. Use it. And for our grandmothers’ sakes, we have to make this work until this house goes up for sale, so you stay out of my way and I’ll stay out of yours.”

  “Is that like the not telling me how to do my job thing?” He probably shouldn’t tease her, but that’d never stopped him before. She just made it so easy.

  “Fine. Whatever.” She tossed up her hands and spun around, storming off toward the staircase.

  What a view it was.

  Jared uncrossed his arms and gripped the counter. These next few weeks ought to be anything but boring.

  * * *

  MAC counted to a hundred—twice—and she still hadn’t calmed down. That man . . . How could she have ever even thought she’d had a crush on him? Arrogant, self-centered . . . Life was one big party to Mr. Prostrate-Yourselves-At-The-Feet-Of-My-Greatness Jared Nolan. Her teenage self had been such a sucker for a pretty face. She ought to be thankful he’d laughed at her—

  She swatted a cobweb off the floor lamp by the reading chair in one of Mildred’s spare bedrooms. The face was still pretty, but Jared Nolan could take a flying leap for all she cared. No one mocked her and got the chance to do it again. No one. Certainly not Mr. Caveman, alpha, He-Man Jared, all testosterone and muscle, ordering everyone around and expecting them to like it. Perfect for a professional athlete, but as a general rule? Notsomuch.

  Mac swiped at another cobweb in the corner behind the lamp, but it was beyond the reach of her rag. Poor Mildred; the woman should have moved out a long time ago. These old Victorian houses
were just too hard to keep up, especially for people her grandmother and Mildred’s ages.

  Too hard for her, too, with these ten-foot ceilings. At five-two, even eight-foot ceilings were a challenge. Which meant she had to go back to her old pickup truck to get her ladder. Past Jared and his sneering condescension.

  How could someone as sweet as Mildred be related to him?

  Tucking the dust rag into her utility belt, Mac ran down the stairs, hoping to avoid Mr. Sarcasm this go-round.

  She didn’t make it.

  “Had enough?”

  She momentarily thought about flipping him the bird, but that would A) be childish, B) give him further cause to ridicule her, and C) not be worth her energy when she had too many other things to do.

  So she ignored him and headed out to the truck. She grabbed the ladder and hefted it onto her shoulder, then went back into the house.

  Jared met her at the door. “Here, let me help you.”

  “Back off, Nolan. I’ve got it.” She hefted it once more just to make a point. How he thought he’d carry a ladder with crutches was beyond her. She hadn’t expected him to have them when she’d handed him the soup and she’d been too busy trying to keep the bells from falling to the floor to notice until he’d pointed it out. She didn’t need to be told twice.

  Jared stepped back, hands up. “Hey, I was only trying to be helpful.”

  “Not interested.” She stomped past him toward the stairs.

  “With that attitude, don’t be surprised if it’s not available when you are.”

  “Seriously, Jared? Nothing you do would surprise me. I know exactly what kind of guy you are.” One who reveled in destroying a young girl’s dreams. Callously.

  It was a good thing she was holding on to the railing because halfway up the stairs, the ladder jerked her to a stop.

  She looked over her shoulder.

  Jared held the end. “What the hell does that mean?”

  She glared at him. “Let go of the ladder.”

  “Not until you tell me what you meant by that crack. I haven’t seen you since what? Your senior year? And if you recall, I was exactly not that kind of guy back then.”