He looked at it, hormones swirling around in him like fireflies.
Last night. God knew how he was going to get it out of his mind.
And he couldn’t, though he put up a valiant effort while walking to his office, checking in with the main Barron headquarters via phone and then seeing to all the other projects he had going.
When lunchtime came around, he went to the dining room, which was one of the first areas to be fully decorated, with its elegant dark-paneled walls, Southwest-inspired art, massive fireplace and roses on every linen-covered table.
He arrived before any of the businessmen did, beating even Mina by a few minutes.
She was dressed in full business attire, too, in a dark blue suit with a lowered waist and wingtip pumps. The red hair that he’d combed his fingers through last night was pulled back in a pearl clip.
He wished he could just walk up to her and say, “Can’t you wear it down?” As the businessmen arrived just after Mina, needles of emerging panic started to poke at Chet.
It was only during the meal itself that he got ahold of himself.
Work tended to do that though, whether it was out on the Montana range under the big blue sky or in an office. Still, he was all too aware of Mina as she sat at the other end of the table entertaining two men who owned local movie theaters.
He tried not to think about how taken they looked by Mina, how much attention they were paying to her beaming smile and bubbly laugh.
Good God, she was still in an afterglow and they couldn’t help but respond to it.
Again, he thought about his mother—how she’d fooled Abe with her betrayal—and Chet fought to maintain the trust that Mina had built up in him again.
Mina wasn’t like his mom. So why couldn’t he remember that?
Somehow, Chet got through lunch and the niceties of escorting their guests to the resort limos that would drive them off and away. All the while, though, he kept an eye on Mina and those men.
They were the last to leave. One of them was even ruddy with all the whiskey he’d drunk.
He was wearing a hat with a snakeskin band and a black suit. An urban cowboy, Chet thought, as the man whispered something in Mina’s ear.
Chet had noticed that she’d refrained from alcohol during lunch, but that was Mina—always in control of business.
Except maybe for last night…
When she distanced herself from the man while still managing to seem friendly, the guy’s associate, Todd Buckley, pulled him away.
“Come on, Jason. Time to leave our kind hosts.”
Jason put an arm around Mina and she widened her eyes at Chet, who was just about to blow a gasket.
But this was business. A responsible tycoon wouldn’t slam his fist into the face of one of the people he was trying to woo, now would he?
So he balanced his temper, went to the limo and pointedly opened the door.
“Great to see you, Jason,” Chet said through gritted teeth. He nodded at the guy’s friend. “Todd.”
Todd Buckley pulled Jason inside as his buddy blew a kiss to Mina.
“Charmed,” he said. “Everything about this place is charmed—”
Cutting him off, Chet shut the door and pounded on the top of the vehicle, letting the driver know it was safe to go.
When the limo was out of sight, Chet muttered, “Charmed. One more second of that nonsense and he would’ve been seeing stars, all right.”
He’d said it low enough so that Mina probably hadn’t heard. Even so, when she stood next to him, she had an air about her that he hadn’t felt before—a sense that he’d claimed her, even outside of the bedroom, and she was claiming him right back.
That panic assaulted him once more.
With a slap of truth, he knew that everyone, whether they were a father or mother, had the capacity to betray. He’d already learned that well. So what the hell was he doing setting himself up for another fall, even if it was with a woman who seemed as if she wasn’t capable of lying to him?
As some of the staff, including Danny Hogan, walked toward the restaurant, Chet tried not to act like a man in crisis.
Even though the whole thing about protecting Mina from office gossip—her sleeping her way to the top—struck false with Chet now, he realized that he truly didn’t want the staff to know what had happened between them.
“Well,” Mina said to him under her breath, “lunch sure was fun.”
He tried to keep his dander down. “You handled Jason the drunk well.”
“So did you.”
She smiled up at him, showing him how she’d noticed that he’d barely contained himself with good old Jason, just as Danny shouted out a hello.
They waved, and Mina took a step away from Chet, as if she also was wary of causing office gossip.