It Happened One Night

He would hate to be in the vandals’ shoes when that happened, he thought as he opened the day care center’s door. Whether the place was wanted by all of the members or not, nobody came in and destroyed any part of their clubhouse without the entire membership taking great exception to it.

“I’ll be right with you, Mr. Gordon,” Kiley said from across the room.

“Take your time,” he said, looking around. Several children sat in pint-size chairs at tables that were just as small. He couldn’t imagine ever being little enough to fit into furniture that size.

As he watched, Russ and Winnie Bartlett’s youngest little girl got out of her chair and walked over to hold up a paper with crayon scribbles for Kiley’s inspection. She acted as if the kid had just drawn the Mona Lisa, causing the toddler to beam with pride.

Josh had never taken much to little kids. For one thing, he had never been around them and didn’t have a clue how to relate to them. But he found himself smiling as he watched Kiley talk to the child as she pinned the drawing to a bulletin board. Only a coldhearted bastard would ignore the fact that she had just made the little girl’s day.

“Carrie, could you take over for me for a few minutes?” she asked a young woman Josh assumed to be the day care worker Kiley had hired not long after the center opened. When the woman nodded, Kiley walked over to him and motioned toward a door on the far side of the room. “Why don’t we go into my office? Otherwise, I can’t guarantee we won’t be interrupted.”

As he followed her to her office, he found himself fascinated by the slight sway of her hips. He had to force himself to keep his eyes trained on her slender shoulders. But that only drew his attention to the exposed skin between the collar of her red sweater and the bottom of her short blond hair—a spot that looked extremely kissable.

His heart thumped hard against his rib cage and heat began to fill his lower belly. What the hell was wrong with him? Had it been that long since he and his last girlfriend parted ways?

“Please have a seat, Mr. Gordon,” Kiley said, walking behind the small desk to sit down in an old wooden chair.

He recognized both the desk and the chair as having been in the storage room for as long as he had been a member of the club and probably for decades before that. If circumstances had been different, he might have felt guilty about the funding committee insisting her office be furnished with the club’s castoffs. But considering none of the members on the panel, with maybe the exception of Nadine Capshaw, expected the center to remain open past spring, it had been decided that the used furniture would be good enough.

“Call me Josh,” he said, sitting in a metal folding chair across the desk from her.

“I assume you’ve come to tell me the funding committee’s decision on my request…Josh?” she asked, sounding as if she already knew the outcome of the vote.

There was something about the sound of her voice saying his name that caused him to frown. “Before we get into the committee’s decision, could I ask you something?”

“I…uh, suppose so.” He could tell by the hesitation in her voice and her wary expression that she didn’t trust him.

“Do we know each other?” he asked, realizing immediately from the slight widening of her expressive brown eyes that they did.

“No,” she said a little too quickly.

“Are you sure?” he pressed, determined to find out what she knew that he didn’t.

“Well, we…um, don’t know each other formally,” she said, suddenly taking great interest in her tightly clasped hands resting on top of the desk.

She was hiding something, and he intended to find out what it was. “So we have met?” he continued.

“In a way…I guess you could say that.” Her knuckles had turned white from her tight grip and he knew whatever she hid was extremely stressful for her. “It was quite by accident.”

Every hair follicle on his head felt as if it stood straight up, and he suddenly wasn’t so sure he wanted to know what she obviously didn’t want to tell him. “Where would that have been?” he heard himself ask in spite of his reservations.

Getting up, she closed her office door, then slowly lowered herself into the chair when she returned to the desk. “You used to date my sister.”

A cold, clammy feeling snaked its way up his spine. “I did?”

When she finally raised her head to meet his gaze head-on, a knot the size of his fist began to twist his gut. “I’m Lori Miller’s sister. Her only sister.”

Josh opened his mouth, then snapped it shut. For the first time in his adult life, he couldn’t think of a thing to say. But his unusual reaction to her suddenly started to make sense. From the moment she’d walked into the meeting room to plead her case to the funding committee, he had been fighting to keep his libido under control. Now he knew why. He might not have realized who she was, but apparently his body had. The chemistry between them that night three years ago had been undeniable and it appeared that it was just as powerful now. Unless he missed his guess, her nervousness had just as much to do with the magnetic pull between them as it did with her reluctance to admit what had taken place.