Met Her Match Read online

  “And now your dad still runs the place. What about your mother?”

  “She died when I was two.” Terri didn’t meet his eyes.

  For a moment they sat in silence, both of them looking out at the lake, coffee mugs in hand. Maybe she was reading too much into it, but she felt comfortable around this man. Usually, she was running out the door to do whatever had to be done. Since she’d been away for nearly forty-eight hours, she had no doubt that her father’s secretary, Anna, would have a long list of things for her to do.

  But Terri didn’t feel any urgency to leave to deal with raccoons and garbage and whatever gross stuff was littering one of their two beaches.

  She took a breath. “There are about six cabins vacant right now and you could rent one of them.” There were birds flying across the lake and the sun made beautiful shadows on the water.

  “What do the cabins look like?”

  “The usual. Two of them have porches along the front.”

  “But no glass-walled bedrooms?”

  “Not a one. In the winter the sun is lower and it comes all the way across my floor.”

  “If I promise to be quiet and respectful and do all the cooking, could I rent the bedroom in this house? I’ll pay double whatever you usually ask.”

  Terri was pleased at the idea, but she suppressed her smile. “I don’t know... We have our yearly festival coming up and rents are pretty high.”

  “You have a month’s worth of laundry that needs doing. I could help with that.” When she looked startled, Nate gave a half smile. “Sorry. I looked around a bit, but not enough to figure out that the manager’s sister wasn’t living here but his daughter is. You think my uncle and your dad were up to something with this?”

  “Oh yes. Definitely.” Terri could feel her eyes growing warm with the thought of what the two matchmaking old men had in mind.

  But Nate quickly looked away. “Maybe Kit wants me to help you with all the work around this place. Rescuing idiots, that kind of thing.”

  When Terri looked back toward the glass, she was smiling. “I’m sure that’s it. Today I have to tell some Enders that they need to keep the lids on their garbage cans closed, and no, we will not shoot the raccoons.” She looked back at him, at his shoulders straining against the soft cotton shirt. “You’re big enough that if you told them, they might listen.”

  “You allow firearms here, do you?” He was frowning. “And who are ‘Enders’?”

  “Guns are not permitted. But then, perfectly sane people come here and they drink and party and cause as much trouble with a BB gun as someone with a twelve gauge. Enders is our name for people who come for the weekend. There are also Rounders and Players. Rounders are—”

  “Let me guess. They stay year-round. So who or what are ‘Players’?”

  “They live elsewhere, but spend the summer here. Some are retired, but a lot of them are families with one person who earns the money. He or she is away during the week.”

  “And the ones left here like to play?”

  “They do.”

  “You have activities for them?”

  “There are some things for the kids, but the adults usually entertain themselves.”

  Nate looked at her, but Terri kept her gaze straight ahead. Explaining what the Players did was too embarrassing.

  “Players. I get it.”

  Terri put her empty mug down. “Did you say something about three weeks?”

  “Yes. That’s when Stacy gets back. She has a booth at your festival and she wants me to get it ready for her. She shipped back a tent and I’m supposed to put it up.”

  Terri blinked at him. “Stacy?”

  Standing, Nate collected the dirty dishes. “My fiancée, Stacy Hartman. She’s in Italy now, but she’ll be back in three weeks, so I wouldn’t be here for very long.” He turned away to go into the kitchen.

  For a few moments Terri sat utterly still. How stupid could a person be? She’d thought the man was put into her house for... Well, for her.

  She’d thought her father and his friend, Kit Montgomery, had been so concerned about her complete and total absence of a personal life that they’d sent her a gift. One tall, gorgeous man wrapped in a pair of wet swim shorts. It had seemed so obvious that they might as well have put a bow around his neck.

  She buried her face in her hands. Stupid and naive. She was living in a fantasy world of glorious men appearing on her doorstep.

  “Are you okay?” Nate asked.

  She looked up. The sunlight was behind him, making a golden halo around his head. The damned shirt matched his damned eyes! The lake had never been as blue as this man’s eyes were.

  “I’m fine,” she said. “I have a lot to do today and I’m late.” She stood up. “I need to go. I just have to get my red notebook.” She went to the couch to look for it, but when she turned around, he was so close she could feel the warmth of him. She did not look up into his eyes. Instead, she kept her head down and took three steps back. “Notebook. In office,” she managed to say.

  Turning, she hurried toward the front, slid the door open and ran out to the dock. Within seconds, she was in her pretty little wooden boat, had started the motor and was moving toward Club Circle.

  When she looked back at her house, she saw Nate Taggert standing on the dock. Even from this distance she could see his puzzlement.

  She truly hoped this man was unaware of what was going on.

  Chapter 2

  As Nate watched the young woman speed away in her nifty little boat as though she were leading a race at Monte Carlo, he grabbed his phone out of his pocket. As well as he knew anything on earth, he was sure Kit Montgomery had done this.

  He called Kit’s private number, the one only four people in the world knew. After years of being at the man’s beck and call, Nate deserved access at all times.

  Of course Kit didn’t answer. Nate hadn’t expected him to, but he was going to leave a voice mail the man wouldn’t soon forget. “What are you up to?” Nate shouted, then lowered his voice as he walked back toward the house. “I know you did this, but why? You like Stacy. No, you love her. You introduced us, so why are you dangling another woman in front of me? Why did you—”

  He broke off. There was no way in the world a man as stubborn and as sure that he was always right as Kit Montgomery was would listen to the message. Nate had seen Kit erase unheard voice mails from the President of the US. “Why should I listen? The bastard’s always dead wrong,” Kit had said.

  Nate stopped in front of the house and calmed his breathing, slowed his heart rate. He’d learned how to do that the first year he worked for Kit. “If we go in there with your heart hammering in your oversize chest, they’ll know we want this,” Kit said.

  “Doesn’t our being here tell them that?” Nate had asked, and Kit responded by making Nate stand outside the door and wait—and miss all the action.

  Now it was second nature to him to not show any trace of emotion. It had been very useful this morning when a tall, very pretty girl with a mass of brown hair tumbling about her head had walked into his bedroom. He’d been so deep in the thought of What the hell am I going to do for three weeks? that he hadn’t heard her approach.

  Nate had been in the house for two days but he’d spent most of the time with Jamie and his new wife.

  Stacy’s parents had said that he should stay with them, but they all knew no one wanted that. He’d told them he wanted to be at the lake so he could fish and rest and have a vacation. The truth was that he needed time to get over his anger at Stacy. The plan had been for them to be together for these weeks. But the day before he left DC, she’d told him that she’d won an internship in Italy with some big shot interior designer. “It’s only for three weeks,” she said over the phone. “I’ll be back for Widiwick and after that we can start planning our wedding. I’m dying to sh