Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses

The receptionist apologetically handed him a ream of pink message slips. “One from your dad, one from your sister,” she said. “The rest from Miss Richards.”

“Ah,” he said, and stuffed them in his pocket. He didn’t want to talk to his dad today. Probably not tomorrow, either. As for Heather, okay, so he’d missed her last night. She’d wanted him to go to a fashion show. Real men didn’t go to fashion shows. He’d implied he might attend to avoid sulking or arguments, but he’d never promised he would accompany her. Apparently he had only postponed the inevitable.

He’d gotten in from the sports pub that he was a part owner of to see his answering machine blinking in a frenzy. Each message from her; each one more screechy than the last.

Heather was beginning to give him a headache. Right on schedule. How come girls like Heather always acted like, well, Heather? Possessive, high maintenance, predictable.

Predictable.

That’s what he was to Katie, the flower lady. He didn’t really know whether to be annoyed or amused that she had his number so completely.

Still, how had she known what to write on that card for Heather?

The little minx was psychic. And darned smart. And hilariously transparent. He had thought she was going to faint when he’d nearly taken his jacket off in front of her. She had a quality of naïveté about her that was refreshing. Intriguing. She’d told him once, tight-lipped and reluctant to part with anything that might be construed as personal information, that she was divorced. Funny, for someone who had “forever girl” written all over her.

The fact that he was predictable to someone who was a little less than worldly, despite her divorce, was somewhat troubling.

Rather than be troubled, he picked the least of the three evils on his messages and called Tara.

“Hey, sis,” he said when she answered. “How are you?” He could hear his fourteen-month-old nephew, Jake, howling in the background.

Tara, never one for small talk, said, “Call Dad, for Pete’s sake. What is wrong with you?”

His sister was seven years older than him. He had long-ago accepted that she was never going to look at him as a world-class athlete or as Hillsboro’s most successful entrepreneur. She was just going to see her little brother, who needed to be bullied into doing what was right. What she perceived was right.

“And for heaven’s sake, Dylan, who is that woman you are being photographed with? A new low, even for you. Miss Hillsboro Mud Wrestler? Sheesh.”

“She is not Miss Hillsboro Mud Wrestler!” he protested. Only his sister would see a girl like Heather as a new low. The guys at Doofus’s Pub knew the truth. Heather was hot.

“Dylan, call Dad. And find a decent girl. Oh, never mind. I doubt if you could find a decent girl who would go out with you. Honestly, you are too old to be a captive of your hormones, and too young to be having a midlife crisis. Mom’s sick. She isn’t going to get any better, and you can’t change that by racing your motorcycle or dating every bimbo in Hillsboro. And beyond.”

“I’m not trying to change anything,” he said coolly indignant.

“Humph,” she said with disbelief.

Don’t ask her, he ordered himself, but he asked anyway, casually, as if he couldn’t care less. “How would you define decent?”

“Wholesome. Sweet. Smart would be a nice change. I have to go. Jake just ate an African violet. Do you think that’s poisonous?”

I’m sure it’s nothing compared to your tongue. He refrained from saying it. “Bye, sis.”

“Only someone who loves you as much as me would tell you the truth.”

“Thanks,” he said dryly.

Still, as he hung up, he reluctantly recognized the gift of her honesty. Too many people fawned over him, but refreshingly, his sister was not one of them.

And neither was Katie Pritchard, who, when he thought about it, was the only woman he knew who even remotely would fit his sister’s definition of decent.

He ordered a ton of flowers from her, even before someone told him she sent secret messages in with the blossoms. But so far not one person on the receiving end had said a single word about secret messages.

Still, despite the lack of secret messages, he liked going into her little shop. It was like an oasis in the middle of the city. Perversely, he liked it that while she could barely contain her disapproval of him she still nearly fainted when he threatened to do something perfectly normal, like remove his jacket.

He liked bugging her. He liked sparring with her. Okay, in the past year he had played with the fact most women found him, well, irresistible, but not nearly on the level he had Katie believing. He’d taken to going in there when he was bored and sending flowers to his sister. Also on the receiving end of bouquets were his PR manager, Sarah, and Sister Janet, the nun who ran the boys and girls club. Sometimes Dylan ordered flowers just to see Katie’s lips twitch with disapproval when he said, “Just put ‘From Dylan with love.’” Even the flowers on the reception desk right now had arrived with that card, addressed to Margot, which he’d quickly discarded.

And, of course, once a week, he went in and she let him go into the refrigerated back room and pick out his own bouquet from the buckets of blossoms there. She would never admit it, but he knew no one else was allowed into that back room. He never told her anything about that bouquet, or who it was for, and Katie did not ask, but probably assumed the worst of him.

Katie found him predictable. Katie, who looked as if she was trying out for librarian of the year.

Every time she saw him, she put those glasses on that made her look stern and formidable. And the dresses! Just because she was the flower girl, did that mean there was some kind of rule that she had to wear flowered dresses, the kind with lace collars, and that tied at the back? She had curves under there, but for some reason she had decided not to be attractive. She wore flat black shoes, as if she was ashamed of her height, which he thought was amazing. Didn’t she know models were tall and skinny, just like her? Okay, most of them had a little more in the chest department, but at least hers looked real.

It all added up to one thing. Decent.

He smiled evilly, wondering how the flower girl would feel if she knew he had covertly studied her chest and pronounced it authentic?

She’d probably throw a vase of flowers right at his head.

At the thought of little Miss Calm and Cool and Composed being riled enough to throw something, Dylan felt the oddest little shiver. Challenge? He’d always been a man who had a hard time backing down from a challenge.

His sister had said a decent girl wouldn’t go out with him. So much easier to focus on that than to think about the other things Tara had said, or about calling his father. Besides if a decent girl would go out with him that would make Tara wrong about everything.

Why not Katie? He’d always been reluctantly intrigued by her, even though she was no obvious beauty. She was cute, in that deliberately understated way of hers, and he realized he liked her hair: light brown, shiny, wisps of it falling out of her ponytail. Still, she could smile more often, wear a dusting of makeup to draw some attention to those amazing hazel eyes, but no, she chose to make herself look dowdy.

She did fit his sister’s definition of decent. Wholesome she was. And smart? He was willing to bet she knew the name of the current mayor of Hillsboro, and who the prime minister of Canada was, too. She would know how to balance her checkbook, where to get the best deal on toilet paper—though if you even mentioned toilet paper around her she would probably turn all snooty—and the titles of at least three Steinbeck novels.

He was just as willing to bet she wouldn’t know a basketball great from a hockey sensation. He liked how she seemed unsettled around him, but did her darnedest to hide it. He was pretty sure she watched him run every day.

So, Katie thought he was predictable? So, his Tara didn’t think a decent girl would go out with him?

If there was one thing Dylan McKinnon excelled at it was being unpredictable. It was doing the unexpected. It was taking people by surprise. That was what had made him a superb athlete and now an excellent businessman. He always kept his edge.

His phone rang. It was the receptionist.

“Heather on the line.”

“I’m not here.”

He’d talk to Heather after she got her flowers. That should calm her down enough to be reasonable. There had been a hockey game on TV last night. No one in their right mind would have expected him to go to a fashion show instead of watching hockey. It was nearly the end of the season!

Heather had promised him girls modeling underwear, but the truth was he didn’t care. He was growing weary of his own game.

Secretly, he didn’t care if he never saw one more woman strutting around in her underwear again. One more top that showed a belly button, or one more pair of figure-hugging jeans. He didn’t care if he never saw one more body piercing, one more head of excruciatingly blond hair, one more set of suspiciously inflated breasts.

He felt like a man trying to care about all the things the wealthy successful businessman ex-athlete was supposed to care about, but somehow his sister was right. He wasn’t outrunning anything. His heart wasn’t in it anymore. He wanted, no, yearned for something different. He wanted to be surprised for a change, instead of always being the one surprising others.

He thought of her again, of Katie, of those enormous hazel eyes, intelligent, wary, behind those glasses.

On an impulse he picked up the phone, rolled through his Rolodex, punched out her number.