You’d think he’d have better things to do, she told herself firmly. But no, he’d moved into the valley and immediately tried to remake everything just the way he wanted it. Well, it wasn’t going to work. They weren’t going to change to suit Tanner King and the sooner she could make him see that, the better for all of them. But first, she had to make him like her. Become his friend. Introduce him around, maybe. Let him see that the Angel Christmas Tree Farm was a big part of the community.
And feeding him seemed like a good place to start.
Shaking her head, she opened the oven door, pulled out the fresh loaf of bread and set it on a cooling rack. While delectable scents filled the air, she turned to the stove and stirred the pot of soup. It smelled good despite being the ninety-minute quick start variety. Better than canned, but not as good as homemade. But at least he’d have fresh bread to go with it and she was fairly sure that this meal would be better than anything he’d made for himself in the last couple of months.
Her mom used to say that any man could be won over by a good meal and a warm smile.
She sure hoped Mom was right.
Because otherwise, Ivy would never be able to protect her Christmas tree farm from a rich man who wanted to shut it down.
Tanner couldn’t work. He’d tried, but every time he entered the changes he wanted on the programming form, his mind drifted to the woman in his house. Blond hair. Blue eyes. Dimple. The sound of her breathy voice and the faint, lemony scent that clung to her. Damn it, it didn’t seem to matter how many times he pushed thoughts of her from his head, she came right back a moment later.
And it was more than just mental images of her. How was a man supposed to keep his mind on work when he knew someone else was in the house? He hadn’t heard a vacuum or anything, but she was no doubt wandering around with dust cloths or whatever. Poking into things. Looking around. Breathing his air.
“Damn it.”
Tanner sat back in his desk chair and shoved both hands through his hair. Frustration tugged at the corners of his mind. He had thirty days to get the kinks worked out of this game. And he was wasting time sitting there thinking about Ivy Holloway.
“This is just not going to work,” he muttered and reached for the phone.
After three rings, his lawyer picked up. “Hello?”
“Mitchell, you’ve got to fire that housekeeper.”
The other man laughed shortly. “Hi, Tanner. Good to hear from you. Yeah, Karen’s fine. Thanks for asking.”
Tanner scrubbed one hand across his face. “Very funny. This isn’t a social call.”
“Yes, I picked up on that.” Mitchell sighed. “The housekeeper hasn’t even been there one full night and already you want her fired?”
Pushing up and out of his chair, Tanner stalked to the window and stared out at his nemesis, the tree farm. “I didn’t want her in the first place, remember?”
A part-time housekeeper had sounded like a good idea in theory, two weeks ago when Mitchell had first suggested it. God knew he was tired of frozen or packaged dinners and doing his own damn laundry. But with the crunch to get the game done and his lack of sleep, now wasn’t a good time.
“Forget it, Tanner. You need someone in there to cook and clean.”
“Because more distraction is exactly what’s required.”
“You know,” his old college roommate mused, “there’s a fine line between brilliant recluse and nutcase hermit.”
He frowned at the phone. “I’m not a hermit.”
“Not yet.” Sighing, his friend asked, “Would you rather she come in during the day while you’re sleeping?”
“No.” That would be all he needed, he told himself. Not only the noise from the tree farm, but someone inside his house making noise, too. Besides, he thought, remembering his sexy new housekeeper, if she were around when he was in bed, he’d be way too tempted to have her join him. No, better that she come in while he was working. At least then, he could tell her to stay away from wherever he happened to be and to clean around him.
“Then it’s settled. Don’t scare her off.”
“I don’t scare women,” Tanner said, insulted at the suggestion. And Ivy Holloway hadn’t seemed the slightest bit intimidated by him. He wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.
“My old friend, you scare everybody but me,” Mitchell told him.
Scowling, Tanner thought about that for a second or two. He didn’t like people much. Preferred his own company. Did that really make him a damn hermit? A scary one at that? When had that happened? When had he gone from being a private person to a solitary one?
Sighing heavily in resignation, he changed the subject.
“Mitchell, at least tell me there’s something we can do about the damn tree farm.”
He’d turned his lawyer onto the problem since Tanner’s last conversation with the local Sheriff hadn’t resolved a damn thing. Of course, that wasn’t surprising. Naturally Sheriff Cooper would side with the local against a newcomer. Still though, something had to change.
His old friend said, “I’ve checked into it, and I can file an injunction, but it won’t get you anywhere. That farm’s been in the Angel family for three generations. The town’s happy with it. Brings in plenty of tourist dollars and no local judge is going to side with you on this. You’ll only stir things up and probably make them worse.”
“How could it get worse?”
“Piss them off and maybe you’ll have Christmas music playing all night, too,” Mitchell grumbled. “Tanner, you’ve just got to find a way to work with them.”
“Perfect,” Tanner muttered, sitting down behind his desk. He had the house he’d always wanted and it was sitting next to a torture factory. “You know, it’s not just the traffic and the damn noise, Mitchell. I’ve got kids wandering over here from that farm and climbing my trees. That’s a liability nightmare waiting to happen. Not to mention the fact that I don’t own a dog, yet I do now own a pooper scooper of all damn things.”
He wasn’t sure, but he thought he heard Mitchell laugh.
“It’s not funny. Do you know there’s an event wedding over there nearly every weekend? And last weekend, there were at least thirty little kids running and screaming all over the place.”
“Yeah see, that’s the problem,” Mitchell told him. “You go into court complaining about children making happy noises at a Christmas tree farm and you look like the ultimate Scrooge. And that’s not going to make you real popular around there. It’s a small town, Tanner. You knew that when you moved there. Cabot Valley is nothing like L.A.”