Elizabeth Bevarly - Monahan's Gamble

“Excuse me, miss? I’ll have one of those plump, luscious-looking scones, please,” he announced, proud of himself for completing the request without a trace of suggestiveness.

Autumn’s head had been bent when he approached, but she snapped it up quickly at the sound of his voice. Immediately she blushed, something Sean considered to be a very good sign, then her lips parted fractionally in clear surprise. “I…what?” she asked.

He jabbed a finger toward the rich bounty of baked goods before him. “I’d like a scone, please,” he said, reading the hand-lettered sign in front of the selection. Otherwise he would have had to call it “one of those big lumpy things with the red spots,” because he had no idea what a scone actually was. He just hoped the letter c in the word was a hard c and not a soft c, otherwise, he’d just made a fool of himself. Then again, maybe that was why she was looking at him the way she was looking at him—as if she weren’t sure what language he was speaking.

He was about to correct himself—he hoped—and repeat his request, asking for a “sone” this time—or, at the very least, a “big, lumpy thing with red spots”—when Autumn blinked twice, something that seemed to break whatever spell she’d fallen under.

“Right,” she said. “A scone.”

Sean breathed a silent sigh of relief when she pronounced it the same way he had. Then he expelled a soft groan of frustration as he watched her lean forward to collect a particularly fat one from the front of the pile—because when she did so, her apron fell forward a bit, offering him a view he was certain Betsy Ross never would have offered, even for the sake of her country. Then, as quickly as it had been given, that view disappeared, because Autumn straightened to drop the scone into a small paper bag.

When she extended it toward him, Sean was reminded of the last time he’d seen her, three mornings ago, when she’d thrust forward the cup of coffee he’d requested. This was becoming a habit, he thought, her pushing something his way in a silent sort of “Beat it.”

“Here you go,” she said brightly. A little too brightly, Sean thought. Translated, her words almost certainly meant, “Beat it.” Especially since she punctuated the statement with, “That’ll be $1.50, please.”

He held her gaze steadily as he tugged his wallet from the back pocket of his blue jeans and withdrew two faded bills, trading them for the little paper sack. When she turned to make his change, Sean allowed his gaze to rove over the back of her, finding it every bit as enticing as the front. The flair of her hips and the dip of her waist gave new definition to the phrase hourglass figure, because he realized he wanted to take a whole lot of time exploring that part of her anatomy. Unfortunately, she chose that moment to spin back around with his change, and it was only at the last possible moment that Sean managed to drag his gaze back up again.

Oops. Okay, so maybe he hadn’t dragged it back up quite soon enough, he was forced to concede when he saw Autumn scowling at him. But she was blushing again, too, and that made him smile. If she was blushing, it must mean she was uneasy, and if she was uneasy, it must mean she was having a reaction to him. He still wasn’t entirely sure what kind of reaction she might be having, but at this point any reaction—short of throwing things—was welcome. And he was reasonably optimistic that her reaction now was something in the good family. After all, she hadn’t thrown anything, had she?

“Have lunch with me,” he said suddenly, impulsively, even though he had approached the booth with the express purpose of asking her to join him in that very activity. But he’d planned to go about it a bit less impulsively and a bit more smoothly. He hadn’t meant to just blurt it out that way. He’d intended to work up to it gradually, because Autumn seemed like the kind of woman who needed a lot of buttering up.

Immediately Sean wished he’d come up with another way to put that. Because the thought of buttering up Autumn Pulaski—or whip creaming her up or chocolate saucing her up or maple syruping her up or honeying her up—just roused images that were far too graphic for a public, family-oriented place. Much better to entertain ideas like that later, when the two of them were alone together somewhere. Preferably somewhere that was close to a kitchen.

“Thank you, Mr. Monahan,” she said as she handed him his change, sounding a bit breathless for some reason, “but I’m much too busy to be able to break for lunch. As you can see, I’m womaning the booth all by myself.”

As if cued by her announcement, two teenage girls dressed in huge khaki shorts and even larger white T-shirts bearing the Autumn’s Harvest logo approached the table and ducked behind it. Each donned an apron identical to Autumn’s, then each positioned herself at opposite sides of the booth.

“Thanks for the break, Autumn,” said the blondest of the two. “Go ahead and grab some lunch yourself. Brittany and I can handle things here for a while. You deserve a break.”

Autumn’s cheeks pinked even more becomingly, and involuntarily Sean’s smile grew broader. “Gosh, guess you’ll have time, after all, won’t you?” he asked.

“Uh,” she replied eloquently. “I, um… Actually, I… That is, I need to… Ah…”

“Excellent,” he said. “I know just the place.”

Before she could object, he reached across the table to curl his fingers gently around her upper arm, silently urging her body—if not her spirit—toward the space between two tables that obviously served as an entry to the booth. Autumn stammered a few more half-formed—and, he was certain, halfhearted—protests, but Sean easily disregarded and dismissed each one. He kept talking until the two of them were a solid twenty or thirty yards from the booth, then, still not convinced he had her completely in his thrall—go figure—he looped his arm through hers and pulled her closer still. And all the while, Autumn seemed to be too flummoxed to do anything but follow him wherever he might lead her.

Now if he could just keep her flummoxed for two lunar months, Sean thought, he would make Finn eat his dare.

Unfortunately for Sean, though, by the time he’d picked up two box lunches for them at the Rotarians’ booth, snagged a couple of lemonades from the Girl Scouts’ booth, and reached the fountain at the heart of Gardencourt Park—the nauseatingly romantic one that looked like an urn full of flowers spewing water all over a bunch of buck-naked cupids—Autumn was becoming decidedly less flummoxed. And damned if she didn’t dig in her heels and tug her arm free of his, just as he deposited their lunches and lemonades on a two-seater wrought-iron bench that sat near a privacy-providing sweep of wisteria tumbling completely uninhibited—and almost blindingly purple—from a fat hedge behind it.

“Mr. Monahan,” she began a bit breathlessly.

“Sean,” he hastily corrected her, reaching out to wrap his fingers lightly around her wrist once more.

“Mr. Monahan,” she repeatedly adamantly. She deftly maneuvered her arm to her side before he could grasp it, curled both fists ineffectually—and really rather adorably, Sean thought—at her sides and frowned. “I’m afraid I can’t accommodate your request right now. I have other things I should be doing besides eating lunch.”

“Sean,” he corrected her again. “I’m Sean. If you keep calling me ‘Mr. Monahan,’ you’re going to have me and all four of my brothers heeding your beck and call.”

The possibility of such a development seemed to make her feel queasy for some reason. “Oh, dear,” she murmured. But she said nothing more to enlighten him about her state of uneasiness, just looked a little pale and distressed.