They managed to get the house straightened up in record time—dishes and pots washed and returned to their cupboards, bathrooms wiped down, blankets, tools and snowshoes put back where they belonged. When they exited the front door and Meg replaced the key in the lock box, he felt suddenly disappointed that they were leaving. The past day and a half had been a respite from real life, a cocoon in which the normal pressures of their world didn’t intrude, regardless of their original reason for being there.

  He wondered if this...thing...between him and Meg would survive the transition.

  But he didn’t have much time to dwell on it, because the tow truck was already waiting on the road when he and Meg arrived there in Declan’s car. She jumped out to talk to the driver, who looked dubious about the snowdrift until Declan volunteered to help dig it out. Between the two men, they managed to clear a path to the back of the Jeep. Then he and Meg moved back to watch the tow truck driver attach a hook and winch Meg’s vehicle back out onto the road in a shower of snow. Declan winced at the creak of metal when it finally came to rest on flat ground and circled around the front to see the damage.

  “It’s...not bad,” he said finally.

  Meg stared at the Jeep with a helpless look on her face. “I mean, it’s only a bumper. Is it drivable?”

  Declan knelt in the snow to peer underneath the car. “I think so. It’s crushed, but nothing is going to hit the wheel at least. We’re going to have to take it slow on the way home anyway, so I think it will be okay.”

  He only allowed himself a second of disappointment that the car wouldn’t be traveling home by tow truck, leaving Meg to ride with him, but that was probably a good thing. She was carefully not looking at him, at least not looking looking, a sure sign she was already regretting their interlude at the house. He’d give anything to be back there now, kissing on the rug by the fire, instead of out in the cold, separated, with far too much time to think about practicalities.

  Though why there should be anything to think about, he didn’t know. The spark between them had practically burned the house down around them. They were no longer enemies, now that they’d sorted out their miscommunications and Declan had apologized for the way she’d left Klein & Company. They didn’t work for the same company, so there were no interoffice conflicts to worry about, and there were lots of architects who were married to others from different firms. Though to be fair, most of them had started out in the same firm and left because they were rising through the ranks at unequal rates.

  There was no good reason for them not to explore whether or not they had a future together.

  Unless, of course, he’d misread her completely. Just because she was attracted to him didn’t mean she actually liked him. How many dates had he been on that proved that very point?

  And now he was really glad they hadn’t gotten any further before the phone rang, because he was suddenly reminded that he was the sentimental one between the two of them.

  Once Meg had confirmed that the car would start and drive without grinding any essential components together, she signed off on the towing company paperwork and then stopped between her Jeep and his BMW, illuminated by her vehicle’s headlights. “So, this is it.”

  “You sound like we’re on the surface of the moon,” Declan said wryly. “I’ll follow you home to make sure you don’t break down. And then I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She smiled, but she didn’t make any move toward him. “Deal.”

  Fortunately, Declan didn’t have much time to dwell on how they’d left things, because despite Vail Pass being open and the roads recently plowed, the drive was still treacherous all the way down I-70 into Denver. He followed the white Jeep at a safe distance, watching for any sign that her steering or drivetrain components had been damaged, but the SUV pushed on, throwing up chunks of snow and ice at regular intervals, the brake lights flashing in the dark whenever she started going too fast.

  Apparently, she entered relationships the way she drove...too hard on the gas, then backing off sharply. The thought made him huff out a laugh. But then it made him consider how she’d responded to his kiss with a passion he hadn’t known she possessed, matching him for intensity and upping the ante. He shouldn’t be surprised. Anyone who could hold a fierce grudge like she had felt things far more deeply than she let on to the outside world.

  When they finally pulled up in front of her house three hours later, nearly double the time it would ordinarily take them, his eyes felt gritty from the glare of oncoming headlights, and his shoulders ached from keeping constant alertness to road conditions. He parked at the curb behind Meg’s Jeep and then looked up at the house. Sure enough, it was a traditional Victorian, and in just as rough condition as she’d implied. The porch was sagging, the gate was rusted, and from what he could tell beyond the coating of snow, the brickwork could use repointing. It was, in short, a mess. And it made him instantly want to draft up drawings for how it could look with a little effort and TLC.

  Meg exited her car and walked around to the cargo area, so he stepped out of his car and took her roller case before she could lift it. “Thanks,” she said with a touch of surprise.

  “My pleasure. Drive okay? Nothing feels strange? No weird noises?”

  Meg shook her head. “Besides the bumper, you mean? I think it just needs an alignment. I’ll take it in to my mechanic in the morning to be sure.” She moved ahead of him to open the hip-height wrought iron gate, and he lifted the suitcase free of the snow piled on her sidewalk. The front porch light clicked on automatically.

  After he deposited her suitcase on the front porch, he stepped back and studied her face, trying to read some hint of what she was thinking or feeling.

  She cocked her head. “What?”

  Oh, forget it. He was going to press his chance before she had time to overthink it. He closed the two feet between them, took her face in his hands, and kissed her again.

  It took only moments for her to respond, wrapping her arms around him and returning the kiss with the same enthusiasm she’d shown back in the Gratz house. One taste of her, and he was forgetting every reason he was glad they’d been interrupted. Only when her back hit the front door with a thud and a rattle of glass did he come to his senses. He lifted his head and dropped his hands. “Sorry. I can’t seem to help myself.”

  Meg licked her lips, looking mussed and appealing and a little dazed. “That makes two of us. See you tomorrow, Declan.” She fished a key from her pocket, fitted it into the lock, and went into her house without a backward look at him. The door shut with a soft scrape, the message unmistakable.

  “Good,” he told himself as he moved down the stairs onto the snow-covered walkway. “Didn’t need the temptation.”

  But that was as big a lie as any he’d told. Regardless of which side of the door Meg was on, she was nothing but a temptation.

  Despite the fact that Meg was exhausted from the drive and from her restless night on the sofa, even a bath and her warmest pajamas couldn’t settle her nerves enough to sleep. It wasn’t just the lingering adrenaline from their interrupted encounter or the tension from the slippery drive home. It was the way Declan had looked at her when he left her on the porch. Like he couldn’t believe his good fortune that they’d put their past behind them and embarked on a new...

  What? What was it exactly they’d done? They’d definitely made inroads to being friends. If friends made out on an antique Persian rug like the world was going to end, that was. The recollection put a smile on her face and a flush on her cheeks.

  The man could kiss, she’d give him that much. That didn’t surprise her at all. What surprised her was how much of a gentleman he turned out to be, acting as if he regretted pushing things too far more than he regretted getting interrupted in the first place.

  Meg rolled over and pulled her down comforter more securely around her, forcing Declan out of her mind. He was the last thing that would lead to drifting off to sleep, when now the very thought of him had her pulse racing in anticipation for tomorrow night.

  In the end, exhaustion won out, and Meg woke late the next morning to a clear blue sky, another inch of snow on the ground, and a text message from Declan.

  Can’t wait to see you tonight.

  She smiled. Her face was liable to get stuck that way, as giddy as she felt at the prospect of a real date with him. But if she were going to take the evening off, that meant she had little time to waste on her design. Fortunately, she wasn’t required to do more than exterior elevations and a floor plan for her proposal, but now that she’d glimpsed what Declan had in mind, she knew she was going to have to bring her very best work. If she lost this bid, it was going to be because Eleanor Gratz preferred his style of architecture, not because she’d been too preoccupied by the stirrings of new love to properly concentrate.

  The word stopped her in her track: love. Was that what this was? Not in the real sense, of course. But in the potential sense. There was a difference between going into a date just hoping to have some fun versus thinking about the long term. Which did Declan think this was? For that matter, what did she think this was? She’d gone out with a few guys in the last several years, but it had all been very casual, and none of them had stuck around for more than a few months. That had been fine with her. Women were already underrepresented in her field, and she wasn’t going to reinforce the stereotype of female architects being more devoted to family than they were to work. That made men a distraction she was all too willing to bypass.

  But now, she thought, maybe she just hadn’t met a man who was worth being distracted over.

  “Not today, Meg,” she told herself sternly. She pulled on a fuzzy cardigan over her pajamas, slipped her feet into wool socks, and padded across the cold hardwood floors, down the stairs to her kitchen. She puttered around making coffee, but as she braced herself against the counter to pick up a dropped coffee filter, one of the 1980s ceramic tiles broke off in her hand. She stared at the tile in bewilderment. She’d managed to ignore the state of the kitchen for the last two years, but if she were honest, she felt a little embarrassed by her neglect. She’d been paralyzed by the question of whether to restore or modernize, open up walls into the modern ideal of open living spaces, or retain the integrity of the original floor plan. And while she’d been waffling, it had begun to disintegrate around her.

  Declan would have an idea of the best way to treat it. Maybe she’d ask him in and get his opinion on the right way to handle a remodel. After all, traditional styles were his forte, and while she was familiar with them, she didn’t love them the same way he seemed to.

  Then again, if she invited him in, they might never make it to the kitchen.

  Meg pressed her hands to her quickly-warming cheeks. He was turning her into a lovestruck teenager with a perpetual flush and she wasn’t even sorry. The last time she’d felt so buzzed on just the prospect of someone’s nearness was . . .

  . . . in grad school when she’d first met Declan, still thought there was the chance for them to be more than just classmates. Had she really spent a chunk of her adult life waiting on a guy she hated, whether she realized it or not?

  But she didn’t have time to dwell on what she might or might not have done subconsciously. She had exactly six hours to get some work done on this proposal before she had to start getting ready for her date with Declan. Which meant wrangling some focus out of her scattered thoughts, doing her best work, and proving once and for all that not only did she deserve the senior architect position, she deserved to be a woman in architecture, period.

  It turned out she didn’t need the pep talk. As she began transferring the details of her sketches to her software program, the ideas started flowing. The house itself wasn’t bad; it had decent bones, and it had been sited properly to take advantage of the views as well as the heat from the sun during the winter. It was just like the heroine of one of those teen Pygmalion comedies, where the girl was already pretty, she was just hiding it behind terrible hair and wardrobe and big ugly glasses. Which was proof that Declan was already rubbing off on her. Now she was the one anthropomorphizing inanimate structures.

  By the time she paused at one-thirty to eat leftover Chinese food from the fridge, she’d put together renderings of all four elevations of the house and just had to fill in a little landscaping to make it feel finished. That little landscaping, of course, put her down a rabbit hole of small changes, and before she knew it, she was edging toward six o’clock without having made any move to change out of her thick socks and plaid pajama bottoms. She glanced at the clock, trying to judge realistically how long it would take her to get ready. She was looking forward to the date no less than she had earlier, but now that she’d hit her stride, she was loathe to walk away. She could at least get to work on the small changes she intended to make to the floor plan.

  She opened her email inbox and sorted through the cascade of junk mail that had piled in since Declan had forwarded the email. She found it a couple of dozen lines down and double clicked on the attached file to download it. While she was waiting for it to save, she skimmed the message. It looked as if it had been forwarded to Declan from someone in the company. Her eyes widened when she saw the name on the top: Nina Klein. What was the owner doing getting involved in the details of a bid? Of course, Eleanor Gratz was a long time client of the firm. It made sense that she would have gone to the top first, even if she intended on having one of the junior architects work on the project.

  And then she saw the words that were written below: Here you go. Don’t get too distracted by your little game in Vail. Get the information you need and then get back to work! I’m expecting your best on this one. I don’t want any accusations of favoritism.

  Meg read and re-read the words, trying to understand what they meant. As much as she was tempted to read ill intent just because of her past experience with Nina and Declan, when she really parsed the message, it sounded like Nina was impatient with the fact that Declan had gone up to Vail when he already had the information he needed. She wasn’t sure what the favoritism thing was about, but surely it had something to do with the fact that Declan’s father had gotten him the job at the firm. Was it possible that someone other than Meg had taken exception to how he’d gotten it?

  But that wasn’t the end of the email. There were several back-and-forth conversations below. She scrolled all the way down to the end and started reading from the bottom up. The first one was just the original message from Mrs. Gratz, who seemed to be on a casual first name basis with Klein: Nina, let’s give your wonder boy a try on this one. So far my other bids have been sore disappointments. See what he can do with this.

  Then one from Nina to Declan: Thoughts?

  Declan: I’d love to take this on, but Craig is complaining that you show too much preference for me already. Better suggest she open it up to other architects so it’s a fair bid.

  Nina: Suggestions?

  Declan: How about Meg Anderson? She’s at NCO now and she’d jump on this, but Eleanor doesn’t particularly like her work. She says she’s always designing museums.

  Meg stared at the words, uncomprehending. Surely she was misunderstanding this. It couldn’t mean what she thought it did. But she was feeling so many levels of betrayal and hurt that she couldn’t even begin to unravel them. Forget the fact that Eleanor Gratz thought she was designing museums. That was fine. She’d heard it before from architects of Declan’s ilk, who believed that post-modernism should only apply to public spaces. But if she was reading this right, Declan was the only reason she’d gotten invited to bid on this project in the first place.

  Even worse, she’d been invited because she posed no threat to him.

  The betrayal sliced deep, like a blade so sharp that it could kill you before the wound started to bleed. Everything Declan had said to her was a lie.

  No, but that wasn’t true either. He’d been completely honest, even as he didn’t let on that she didn’t have a chance in hell of winning this bid. He’d talked about what he liked about her work. He’d talked about how this would be a battle of styles. He just hadn’t said that he already knew which way Eleanor would fall. He’d been one hundred percent honest while being one hundred percent devious.

  It took a special kind of person to balance on that kind of razor’s edge. It just wasn’t special in a good way.

  The biggest question was why he’d forwarded the email to her. She glanced at the time stamp, the one on Nina’s email. Friday night. After ten. That meant at some point after she’d fallen asleep, he’d asked Nina to forward him the files. And then he’d immediately sent them to Meg when they were out for a walk. He probably hadn’t scrolled all the way down on his phone to see the original email thread. There was no way he would have outed himself like this otherwise.

  Meg sat back in her chair while her heart vacillated between anger and hurt. For a brief second, outrage flared, along with wild thoughts of retribution—stealing his ideas, doing a Declan McKenzie design better than Declan McKenzie, proving herself a contender for this job. But just as quickly as they came, they dissipated. She didn’t want the job if it meant copying someone else’s style, didn’t even know if she could do it. It would be selling out in the highest order, a betrayal of all her professional ethics.

  The thought of professional ethics made her laugh bitterly. Apparently, she was the only one that cared about the ethics of the situation. Even if Declan had been truthful, he hadn’t exactly been ethical. One could even say he’d practically lured her to Vail under false pretenses and then taken advantage of her.

  But even in her hurt, she couldn’t go that far. Whatever had happened between her and Declan had everything to do with pent-up attraction and bad choices, not premeditation.

 

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