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Elle sighed. “When would I have had the chance to tell him that, Gigi? I just told you last night.” Elle stood up. “I’m going to see if Mom needs any help in the kitchen.”
Elle stood, but Wiladean beat her to the doorway. “You two visit and I’ll go help Zelda.”
“Visit?” Elle said. “Gigi, Daniel didn’t come to visit—”
“You’re absolutely right. Elle, you go ahead and tell Daniel about the new plan and I’ll go hurry up your mother. I’ll be right back.”
She was gone in a flash, leaving the two of them alone in an awkward silence.
Elle sat back in her chair and crossed her arms over her chest, looking less than thrilled to be stuck in the tiny office with him.
“So, you’re staying in Savannah for a bit?”
“Apparently so.”
When Daniel had first come back to Savannah and tried to talk to people about his new business, he’d faced similar chilliness to what he was getting from Elle. Many remembered him and tried to brand him as an eternal troublemaker, someone not to be trusted. He’d found the best way to break through their barriers was to keep talking, asking questions about nonthreatening, inconsequential subjects that forced them to answer him. One thing about Southerners was that they wouldn’t be caught dead being intentionally rude. They specialized in the veiled insult that made the uninitiated scratch his or her head wondering if they’d been complimented or damned. He had decided he would keep making polite conversation until they walked away or realized he wasn’t such a bad guy after all. That was exactly what he planned to do now.
“What made you decide to stay?” he asked.
She gazed at him for a moment and drew her bottom lip between her teeth. Damned if his body didn’t respond to the lip bite, that old familiar fallback defense gesture of hers.
He wanted to bite her bottom lip himself. He wanted to suck on it and draw it into his mouth and see if it still tasted as good as he remembered from all those years ago when he’d kissed her.
“If I don’t stay, Gigi and Mom might kill each other. Or at the very least they’ll keep fighting over the specifics of the renovation and y’all will get nothing done. I can’t have that on my conscience.”
There it was. She was talking to him. That was progress.
He turned in his chair so that he was facing her straight on. “So, I have you to thank for getting this project ready to roll?”
“I don’t know about that.”
“Need a job? Maybe I should hire you on as my project manager?”
She got a funny look on her face, but it only lasted a fleeting moment. She raised her chin. “I didn’t realize you were hiring. Don’t you have a regular crew?”
There was an edge to her voice, but he was beginning to like brushing up against her sharp edges. He liked this confidence she had now. It was sexy. She’d become a stronger woman, not the timid good girl she was in high school. And when she’d almost married Roger.
“For the record, I’m not hiring,” he said. “But I could find a place for you if you wanted to come on board.” Her cheeks turned that particular shade of pink that looked so good on her. It belied her bravado and made him believe that a little bit of the good girl had made it through the years unscathed. He felt a muscle in his jaw twitch. He should tone it down if he knew what was good for him. But flirting with her felt too damn good to resist. “Are you interested, Elle?”
She scowled at him, and for a moment, she looked as if she wanted to say something. Electricity virtually crackled between them, and judging by the look on her face, she felt it, too. But then again, the push-pull of unrequited attraction had never been their problem. Quite the contrary. This feeling that pulsed like a living, breathing thing was still there. Even if she wouldn’t acknowledge it. “I’m not interested in anything permanent in Savannah.”
“Good to know,” he said. “Who says it needs to be permanent?”
“You don’t want to try and go down that road with me, Daniel,” Elle said.
Oh, yes, he did. And even though her words said one thing, her eyes telegraphed something else. He was trying to give her something to grab onto—a starting point for them—but it was clear that she was messing with him. This was a business meeting. He needed to reel it in a bit.
