CHAPTER ONE

      CINDY’S brush stopped making soapy circles on the cement floor. The pair of battered running shoes that had stepped into her view gave Parker Chaney away, so she wasn’t surprised to see his devastating smile aimed at her when she looked up.

      “What are you doing?” he asked as if he’d seen her only yesterday.

      “Trying to get this stain out,” she said in the same nonchalant tone, though her heart was thumping in triple time. She wished he’d at least act thrilled. After six weeks with nothing but a few brief phone calls, couldn’t he at least pretend seeing her was noteworthy?

      A mixture of irritation and the desire to make the occasion memorable got the best of her. She swiped the brush across the toes of his grungy shoes, careful not to spray the legs of his business suit with her sudsy water.

      He jumped away. “What are you doing?” His tone was totally different this time.

      “You already asked that,” she reminded him, pitching her scrub brush at the pail of cleaning water. Drying her wet hands on the legs of her jeans, she stood. “What are you doing?” Darn it. Only pride kept her from throwing her arms around him and revealing how delighted she was to see him. Finally.

      Parker scratched the side of his head, leaving a sprig of dark hair standing on end. The gesture helped him think.

      “I need your help,” he admitted, letting his meditative scowl deepen.

      “Oh?” She crossed her arms to keep from pressing the hair standing on end back in place. What else was new? “Helping” Parker usually meant he needed a sounding board, someone to listen to one of his new ideas—not that she usually understood them.

      He got right to the point, also as usual. “I think it’s time I got married.”

      But usually, his point didn’t make Cindy’s heart stop. It jumped to her throat then sped to a pace that would have kept up with a freight train. What’d you say? The question ran through her head but she couldn’t have gotten her mouth around a word if her life depended on it.

      “Don’t you?” he asked, continuing as if the subject of marriage was a normal conversation for him. “I’m thirty-three years old. I tend to get too wrapped up in things. I’ve been thinking that if I don’t get married soon, I’ll find myself old, no kids, no family, all my chances gone.”

      Her mouth still hung open. She had to consciously force herself to close it. “Don’t worry, PC. If things get that desperate,” she finally managed, “you can always find someone who’ll marry you for your money.” No problem making the comment as dry as she wanted, either. Her mouth was imitating a desert.

      “Funny.” The look he shot her said he thought she was amusing, despite the fact he didn’t like what she’d said. It was too true.

      As if money was the only thing he had! He was brilliant. His name was uttered with reverence in computer circles. Financial experts raved about him and delightedly recommended buying stock in his company. But she’d said his name in the same worshipful way long before his “miraculous” rise to success. She loved him despite the money.

      She’d loved him when he was dirt poor and living next door to her family in their old neighborhood. She’d still be there, if it wasn’t an industrial park now.

      She considered the destruction of their neighborhood the worst thing that had ever happened to her. Blocks and blocks of it had been razed to make way for “progress.” They’d all had to move. Until that time, almost six years ago, she’d seen Parker on a daily basis. Now she had to rely on seeing him whenever he got the whim...as he seemed to have now. Pride kept her from calling him when he’d go a couple of months ignoring their friendship.

      She longed to touch him, smooth the unruly, needing-a-trim haircut back into place. She wanted to push into his space, lift her lips for a kiss, make him uncomfortably aware of her nearness. Unfortunately he probably wouldn’t notice. Or be uncomfortable. She settled for a friendly hug.

      He hugged her back then sobered as his one-track mind got back to the reason for finally putting in an appearance in her life. “I don’t want someone to marry me for my money, Cindy.” His expression turned even more earnest, if that was possible.

      Cindy held her breath.

      “That’s why I need your help,” he continued. “Would you...I need you to make me into the kind of guy Mallory could fall in love with?”

      The life went out of her.

      “I need you to turn me into a stud.”

      He’d rendered her speechless. He was so intent, he didn’t even notice that his statement crushed her. She looked down quickly in case he came out of his hazy little myopic world long enough to see that tears had sprung to her eyes. She couldn’t think of anything to say or do except return to scrubbing the floor.

      She resumed her position on her hands and knees and dumped a splash of the warm, strong ammoniascented water on the cement floor.

      Parker sprang out of the way again as the small wave surged toward his feet. “What are you doing?”