to punch against his breastbone. So much for thinking it was her excitement about her wedding cake opportunities that had gotten to him the day before. It was her. Whatever he felt for her was escalating.
He carefully made his way to the table. “What’s up?”
She peeked up, her blue eyes solemn, serious. “Doing some figuring.”
He sat on the chair across from hers. “Oh?”
She rose, took a cup from her cupboard, filled it with coffee and placed it in front of him.
“What I need is an assistant.”
“Do you think—” Because his voice squeaked, his cleared his throat. “Do you think your business is going to pick up that fast?”
She refilled her own coffee cup and sat again. “I plan for contingencies. I don’t want to be known as the wedding cake lady who can’t take your wedding.”
He laughed. “There’s something to be said for playing hard to get… .” Maybe that’s why she was suddenly so attractive to him? Didn’t he always want what he couldn’t have? Maybe he’d only been kidding himself into thinking he was trying to get his inner nice guy back? And her playing hard to get had just fed his inner selfish demon? “Everybody wants what they can’t have. You could charge more money—”
“The more cakes I bake, the more referrals I get. I don’t need to be exclusive. I want to start a business, a real business. Someday have a building with a big baking area and an office.”
Their knees bumped when she shifted, and her gaze jumped to his as she jerked back. Her voice was shaky when she said, “I’ve been going over my figures, and if I didn’t save money for the winter I could hire someone.”
He tried to answer, but no words formed. Mesmerized by the gaze of those soft blue eyes, everything male in him just wanted to hold her.
He frowned. Hold her. Protect her. Save her.
Was he falling into the same pattern he’d formed with Betsy? Once they’d started dating, he got her a great apartment, a new car. All because he didn’t want to see her do without.
And he knew how that had ended.
Owen came running into the room. “I made my bed!” He jumped from one foot to the other, so eager to play that energy poured from him.
Wyatt scraped his chair away from the table. “Then let’s go.”
Missy swallowed and she rose, too. “Yeah. You guys go on outside. Mommy has some things to think about.”
Wyatt’s gut jumped again. He could solve all her problems with one call to his bank. He glanced at the papers on the table. Was it really an accident that she’d picked today, this morning, after he’d nearly kissed her the night before, to run some numbers?
He sucked in a breath. He had become a suspicious, suspicious man.
But after Betsy, was that so bad? Especially if it caused him to slow down and analyze things, so neither he nor Missy got hurt?
“Come on, O. Let’s go haul some dirt.”
He and Owen left the kitchen and Missy squeezed her eyes shut. Since that dance, she’d had trouble getting and keeping her breath when he was around. And she knew why. He was good-looking, but she was needy. Four years with no romance in her life, four years of not feeling like a woman, melted away when he looked at her. His dark, dark eyes seemed to see right through her, to her soul. And since that dance, every time he looked at her she knew he was as attracted to her as she was to him.
They could be talking about the price of potato chips and she would know he was thinking about their attraction.
And everything inside her would swing in that direction, too.
Luckily, she had a brain that wouldn’t let her do anything stupid.
They hardly knew each other. What they felt had to be purely sexual. She had kids who needed protecting. And the only way she could truly protect her kids was to make her business so successful she’d never have to depend on a man. Keeping her eye on the ball, creating the best wedding cake company in Maryland, that’s what would keep her safe, independent. Eventually, she might want a relationship. she might even marry again, if she didn’t have to be dependent on a man. But it would be pretty damned hard not to become dependent on Wyatt when she was broke and he had millions.
He had to be off-limits.
No matter how good-looking he was. And no matter how much she kept noticing.
Playing with Owen cleared Wyatt’s mind enough that he made a startling realization as he was eating another dry sandwich for lunch, this one peanut butter from a jar he’d found in a cabinet.
His relationship with Betsy ultimately had become all about money. But so did a lot of his relationships. He hired friends who became employees, and the friendships became working relationships. He invested in the companies of friends and those friendships became business relationships.
Because money changed things. If he really wanted his feelings for Missy to cool, all he had to do was give her money for her business. Then his internal businessman would recategorize her.
Sadness washed through him. He didn’t want to recategorize her. He wanted to like her. But he ignored those thoughts. He was recently divorced. With his limited time, all He and Missy would have would be a fling. She deserved better.
Walking to the back door of his grandmother’s house, he sniffed a laugh. It looked as if he’d gotten what he wanted. His inner nice guy was back. He was putting Missy’s needs ahead of his.
He strode through her empty backyard, knowing the kids were probably napping. He and Missy wouldn’t just have time to talk privately; they could go over real numbers to determine exactly how much money she’d need.
His heart pinched again. He kept walking. This was the right thing to do.
On her porch, he knocked on the wood frame of the screen door.
She turned and saw him.
Time stopped. Her eyes widened with pleasure. When he opened the door and stepped inside, he watched them warm with desire. Her gaze did a quick ripple from his face to his toes, and his gut coiled.
“Hey.”
“Hey.”
“I didn’t expect you back until the kids woke up.”
He scrubbed his hand across the back of his neck. Offering her money suddenly seemed so wrong. She was pretty and she liked him and he’d always liked her. The house was quiet. He could slide his hand under that thick ponytail, nudge her to him and kiss her senseless within seconds.
The very presumptuousness of that thought got him back on track. She’d already rebuffed him twice. She knew what she wanted and was going after it. She wouldn’t sleep with him on a whim. No matter how attracted they were.
He needed to behave himself, think rationally and get them both beyond this attraction.
“I’ve been considering what you said this morning about hiring someone.”
“Oh?”
“Yeah. Can we sit?”
“Sure.”
She sat on the chair she’d been in earlier that morning. He sat across from her again.
“You need to buy a new vehicle. Maybe a van.”
She laughed. “No kidding.”
“So the way I figure this, you need salary for an assistant, day care for the kids in the morning and a new van.”
She nodded. “Okay. I get it. You just talked me out of spending my winter money on an assistant. It won’t work to hire an assistant if the SUV breaks down.”
“Actually,