Beauty and the Black Sheep

Beauty and the Black Sheep
Jessica Bird

THE FORCE OF THOSE EYES HIT FRANKIE MOOREHOUSE LIKE A GUST OF WIND But she quickly reminded herself that she had dinner to get ready, the staff of White Caps B&B (such as it was) to motivate. She didn't have the luxury of staring into a stranger's face. Although, jeez, what a face it was. And wasn't it just her luck that the owner of that face, Nate Walker–with his rebel attitude and distaste for authority–was the chef her restaurant desperately needed, and he was staying for the summer….And…it was a bit too tempting to let this breath of fresh air sweep her off her feet. Because all work and no play had been Frankie's motto for much too long!

“Why are you pretending that you find me so interesting?”

He leaned in close and she felt his lips brush against her cheek as he spoke. “I’m not pretending.”

She thought about putting her arms around his neck and pulling him into her bedroom. But then she pictured the morning after. The awkwardness because she’d hope it was a beginning not an ending. She’d done that god-awful dance once before…. Nate worked for her. Was supposed to be at White Caps for the whole summer. The last thing she wanted was to be reminded daily of another bad decision when it came to men.

She stared up into his eyes and tried to read the future in the flecks of green and gold.

Pulling back, she thought there was a damn fine line between self-preservation and cowardice. “I think it’s best that we not take things any further.”

He smiled slowly. “What’s life without a little excitement?”

Beauty and the Black Sheep

Jessica Bird

To my mother, with love.

And thanks for moving around all those boxes of books!

JESSICA BIRD

graduated from college with a double major in history and art history, concentrating in the medieval period. This meant she was great at discussing anything that happened before the sixteenth century, but not all that employable in the real world. In order to support herself, she went to law school and worked in Boston in healthcare administration for many years.

She now lives in the South with her husband and many pictures of golden retrievers that she hopes to replace with the real thing sometime very soon. As a writer, her commute is a heck of a lot better than it was as a lawyer and she’s thrilled that her professional wardrobe includes slippers and sweatpants. She likes to write love stories that feature strong, independent heroines and complex, alpha male heroes. Visit her Web site at www.jessicabird.com and e-mail her at Jessica@jessicabird.com.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter One

The only warning Frankie Moorehouse had that twenty gallons of water were going to fall on her and her desk was a single drop.

One drop.

It hit the financial statement she was reviewing, right in the middle of the page that suggested the White Caps Bed & Breakfast was dangerously close to going under.

She groaned, figuring the roof must be leaking again. The sprawling mansion had all kinds of nooks and crannies, which made for an elegant and interesting floor plan. Unfortunately, the roof covering all of these architectural treasures was a complicated warren of angles that trapped old leaves and moisture, creating little pockets of rot.

Squinting her eyes, she glanced out the window, searching the dimming light for a rainstorm that wasn’t there.

She looked up with a frown, saw a darkened spot on the ceiling, and had just enough time to get out the words “What the hell—” before the torrent hit her.

The water carried with it chunks of horse-hair plaster from the ceiling and an evil tide of filth that had collected in the rafters. It hit her in a stinky mess, splashing all over the desk and the floor in a great whoosh of noise. When the torrent ceased, she took her glasses off and lifted her arms, watching brown rivulets drip off her skin.

It smelled, she thought, like bat guano.

The sound of pounding footsteps heading her way was neither reassuring nor welcome. She shot up from the desk and shut the door to the office.

“Hey, Frankie, what happened?” George’s booming voice sounded characteristically confused. He’d worked for her for about six weeks and sometimes the only difference she could find between him and an inanimate object was that occasionally he blinked.

In the kitchen that serviced the White Caps dining room, George was supposed to be the fry-guy, the sous-chef, the pâtissier and the busboy. What he did do was take up space. At six feet seven inches, and tilting the scale at well over three hundred pounds, he was a big oaf of a man. And she’d have fired him on day two except he had a good heart, he needed a job and a place to stay, and he was nice to Frankie’s grandmother.

“Frankie, you okay?”

“I’m fine, George.” Which was her standard reply to the question she despised. “You better go make sure the bread’s cut for the baskets, okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Okay, Frankie.”

She closed her eyes. The sound of dripping, dirty water reminded her that not only did she have to pull off yet another magic trick to balance the account for the month, she had to clean up her office.

At least she had the Shop-Vac to use for the latter.

Much to her dismay, White Caps had financial problems she couldn’t seem to solve no matter how hard she worked. Housed in the old Moorehouse mansion, on the shores of Saranac Lake in the Adirondack Mountains, the ten-bedroom B & B had been struggling for the past five years. People weren’t traveling as much as they used to, so overnight guests were fewer and fewer and there wasn’t enough local traffic in the dining room to cover the costs of the operation.