Cara had been born and raised on Miralinda. Fit men in swimsuits were a dime a dozen.
So this man was visually distracting-big whoop. It meant nothing.
She thumped the bucket in the centre of the room and grabbed a rag from the pile she'd assembled. Dunking it, she relished the cold grip of water around her hand.
Time to get real.
That man was a menace on every level. Visually distracting. Morally bankrupt-obviously a conman, even if by accident. His friend had sent him down here on a fool's errand and Cara could spare him no sympathy.
His tough loss that he'd come all this way for nothing.
And now he wasn't even getting a quiet weekend in paradise because he'd made the mistake of interrupting the careful flow of work she'd organized.
She scrubbed the baseboards and the windowsills, all the places where dust had accumulated, until the room shone.
It was a beautiful room. Villa Sucre was a beautiful estate. Worthy of the protection of the Historical Society. Set aside her own selfish reasons for wanting the project to continue as planned, she also couldn't let a group of American men stomp in and destroy a building rich with history and tradition.
She'd protect it from the big, bad, scary man and his so-called friends.
"Brute," she muttered under her breath.
"You talking about me?"
She screamed and jumped in the air.
Mick chuckled behind her.
She whirled around and stabbed her finger at him. "That was mean."
He arched one eyebrow as if to say, yeah? So? And that eyebrow of course brought her attention to his wet hair, spiky all over except for right in front, where it was longer and curled onto his forehead. The droplets that ran down his corded neck and onto his-
No. She didn't care about how broad his shoulders were or where that water was heading next. "You're dripping on the floor."
"The morning maid failed to leave any towels," he said dryly.
"Did you seriously expect hospitality?" She took a deep breath, ready to launch into a tirade about the gall of him, but then her gaze finally met his again-because fine, it had gotten stuck on his stupid shoulders after all-and realized he was laughing.
At her.
She growled. "That's not funny."
"It kind of was." He let his own gaze linger on her face for a moment, then he looked past her. And the laugh lines disappeared. "What is that?"
She grinned. "My tent."
"What is it doing here?"
Her smile got wider and she didn't answer. This felt good. Hello, upper hand. Nice to make your acquaintance.
"Are you … staging some sort of sit-in?"
"That's not how I'd describe it." She crossed her arms, belatedly remembering she had a dirty wash rag in her hand. She tried not to flinch as the wet, filthy cloth hit the back of her arm. Ew.
"You have so much work to do this weekend that you can't go home to sleep?"
Okay, maybe it was a sit-in. "Honestly, Mr. Frasier, I'm not sure I can trust you to be alone on the property."
"I told you, call me Mick. What do you think I might do?"
She gave him an incredulous look, because really? "You've already admitted to messing with plumbing. We have a set schedule for tradespeople to come in and do work. You interfered with it once already today. How do I know you won't sabotage something else? You clearly have the skills, although I'm sure they're … amateur."
He returned her glare of indignation with a slow, hooded look that she pretended didn't affect her at all. "You haven't even seen my handiwork."
Ignoring the double entendre, she turned on her heel and dropped her washcloth in the bucket. "I don't need to see whatever hackney workaround you've figured out. I have no doubt you've done your worst to the plumbing in the servant's quarters."
"It's perfectly fine!"
She jerked her head around, glaring at him over her shoulder. "It's not. Not perfectly fine, not funny, not anything. You don't belong here, Mr. Frasier. You are a nuisance, and you need to stop interfering. Don't. Touch. Anything. Else."
"My. Name. Is. Mick. And maybe I'm helping."
"More like you're helping stall until your friend can show up and take this con to the next level."
"Con?" He propped his hands on his hips. "You think I'm conning you?"
"The Parrys are ruthless business people."
Something flickered in his gaze. He wanted to spit something back at her, but he was holding himself in check.
She tested that again. "I'm sure your friend doesn't fall far from the matriarchal tree in that regard."
Yep. Definitely didn't like his friend being questioned.
The nervous tremor in her gut annoyed her. So what if he was loyal?
She'd known him for less than twenty-four hours, and Mick Frasier was definitely, absolutely, one hundred percent a threat to everything she'd worked toward for the last four years.
And if he managed to somehow still come off as a good guy-call me Mick, look at me worry about my friend, blah blah blah-that just meant he was good at what he did.
She wouldn't fall for it. "Look, I don't really care what your game is. The point is, I see right through you. And besides, it doesn't matter. We're well under way with our work, and there's no stopping the project now."
"What the hell are you doing beyond fixing it up?" Now he though it was his turn to glare at her?
She huffed. "We've commissioned an architect to modify the parts of the building that can't be restored in a historically appropriate way."
His eyes narrowed. "We'll happily take over that commission and have him redraw the plans to our specifications."
Don't ask, don't ask, don't ask … She couldn't help herself. She braced herself and asked, "What kind of specifications?"
"A gun range. Weapons vaults. An obstacle course. The usual."
Oh, sweet mother of God. It was worse than she'd suspected. They were going to destroy the estate. "The usual?"
He leaned in close, probably to make sure she wouldn't miss just how serious he was. "That's just the start of it."
Her nose twitched uncontrollably and she could feel her cheeks turning what was probably an embarrassing shade of red. "This is a historic building and you can't just-"
"Oh, but I can." He stepped back and squared his shoulders again. The man was disturbingly geometric. Human beings shouldn't have that many angles. Or that much confidence. "It might be old, but it's not protected, right?"
Well, no, it wasn't … but that wasn't how the island did things. And … She narrowed her eyes at him. "You don't know that."
His expression gave nothing away.
That was enough of a tell. She swallowed hard and lied. "We've begun the process to protect this as a historic site. You're too late."
A twitch. Just one, right above his right eyebrow. He doubted himself. Good.
"There's nothing historic about this monstrosity." He ground out the words from between tightly gritted teeth.
"Now you're pretending that it's a monstrosity?"
"I've spent the last twenty-four hours, here, sweetheart. I know just exactly how run-down it is."
"It's not-"
"Until thirty minutes ago, when you set up your ridiculous little tent, it had sat unoccupied for more than ten years. It's full of more rats and birds than I can shake my fist at, and no exterminator could fix that. We're going to need to rip everything back to the studs anyway, so we might as well keep going and knock out a few walls."
MICK COULD TELL THAT EVERY WORD OF HIS LAST SENTENCE landed squarely. Cara's eyes got wider and wider, and then snapped shut, like she didn't want to hear anymore.
He ignored the visible tremor in her cheek and the wobble of her full lower lip. She was a distraction, nothing more, and he wouldn't let her bother him another minute.
He took one last grim look at her ridiculous tent and offered a platitude he almost definitely didn't mean. "If you need me, I'll be in my quarters."
"They're not your quarters. And I'm not going to need you," she hollered as he strolled out of the ballroom.
She would, though, if she hung around long enough. The only running water was in his bathroom. Now that she was staking her ridiculous claim in the middle of the ballroom, he'd have to play hardball.
Which was a shame, because when she wasn't yelling at him, Cara was … interesting. Smart. Pretty, too. Definitely someone he'd be happy to share a shower with.
But no hot water for her.
She wanted a fight? He'd give her one.
The tiny little historian with the crazy curls and flashing eyes had no idea who she was messing with.
FOUR
MICK HAD ALREADY ESTABLISHED HIS HIGH-GROUND POSITION NEAR THE RUNNING WATER. Next step in surveying the battlefield: recon.
So he spent his second twenty-four hours on Miralinda watching a beautiful woman through the windows of her house. Sort of. It might be his house. Or his-adjacent. His by proxy.