Buch lesen: «Drawing Hearts»

To Rhonda: thank you so much for the wonderful years of friendship. You’ve been one of the best friends ever and thank you for letting me borrow your wonderful daughter. To Nikki: I watched you grow into an incredible woman. You are an inspiration. All my love forever, Shar-Pei puppy love.

—Jackie

To Warrick Aurelian Pace: such a huge name for such a small baby. I know you will live up to it and be as amazing as your cousins, Kathryn and Frederik Stein.

To Erin Pace: thank you for my new grandbaby and letting me bounce ideas off you.

To Jeff Pace: thank you for being you.

To Miriam Pace Stein: you are such an amazing mother. I’m so proud of all of you.

—Miriam

Acknowledgments

Thank you to Shannon Criss

and the entire Harlequin staff.

They provide us with wisdom, knowledge and care.

A special thank-you to the Harlequin Art Department for the best covers ever.

All of you rock!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Copyright

Chapter 1

Kenzie Russell wanted to pound her laptop with her fists. The software she’d commissioned for the boutiques refused to work and Nina, perched on a stool with one leg crossed over the other, grinned at her frustration. The big flashy diamond on Nina’s left hand winked as the morning sun streamed through the open patio doors. Splashing and laughter drifted up from the pool far below.

“Explain to me how this software works,” Nina said, taking a sip of her iced tea.

Kenzie wasn’t certain how it worked, but she knew how she wanted it to work. “A customer enters the boutique and doesn’t find anything. This software will allow a clerk to take a photo of the customer, input the photo and the body measurements and then allow them to try on clothes in a virtual environment. The clothes would expand or contract depending on the body type. I’ve lined up a dozen designers who are ready to try this and I can’t make it work.” She tried not to give in to the urge to unleash her frustration out on the counter. She scowled at the screen.

“Sounds complicated.”

Her best friend wasn’t helping. “I’m sure the software engineer I dealt with understood my instructions.” She knew she’d been explicit enough; she’d even written down what she’d wanted so he wouldn’t misunderstand.

“I’m sure he did,” Nina replied.

Kenzie glared at her best friend. They’d been friends since college when they’d roomed together. “It has to work.”

“Maybe you need a hammer.”

“You’re not helping.” A hammer sounded good, but she didn’t think the laptop would survive. Kenzie turned back to the screen. “Let’s try again.”

Nina obediently stood and Kenzie activated the laptop’s photo function. She pushed a button and the photo embedded itself into the viewer with the background stripped out. She’d already added Nina’s dimensions. She tapped keys and once again the laptop froze. Kenzie ground her teeth in frustration. She’d thought her idea was brilliant, but the execution wasn’t turning out the way she’d envisioned it.

“I think it’s a great idea, but you have a few bugs to work out.” Nina hopped back on her stool and reached for a muffin.

“Bugs? I have pterodactyls to work out.”

“Why don’t you ask Reed?”

“Number one, we haven’t met. And how’s that going to sound? ‘Hi, I’m Kenzie, can you fix the bugs in my software?’” That sounded so crass. He’d just arrived in Reno after months of dealing with family issues and here she was demanding help.

Nina chuckled. “He’s very nice. I’m sure he’d be willing to help someone as lovely as you.”

Kenzie growled. “You’re responsible for this. You didn’t want to try on wedding dresses.”

“I’d love to try on wedding dresses, but I have no time.” Nina sipped her coffee, unconcerned.

“I thought virtual wedding dresses were the answer.” Kenzie had arranged with Vera Wang, Oscar de la Renta, Claire Pettibone and Carolina Herrera to take photos of wedding dresses so Nina could try them on in the virtual environment Kenzie developed for her. And once the idea took hold, Kenzie thought, it would work for other women. But the reality was turning out far different than she thought.

“It’s a terrific idea,” Nina said, “and I could spin this into a huge campaign, making the Casa de Mariposa a wedding destination.”

“And you’re envisioning...”

“We could have them try on their virtual wedding gowns in their home and have the gown waiting for them when they arrive as part of the whole package. And we could do this with the groom and the bridesmaids and the groomsmen. And if the bride doesn’t want to buy a gown, we’ll rent it to her. There are so many variations on the idea that I can’t stop thinking about it.” Nina picked up her iPad and started typing.

“Give you a bit of rope and you become a cowgirl.”

“I’d rather have glass slippers and be Cinderella. You know how I feel about nature.” Nina licked muffin crumbs off her fingers and took a long sip of her iced tea.

“Your idea of camping is a suite at the Waldorf Astoria.”

Nina simply grinned, pointing at her face. “This is my, ‘Oh, I’m so ashamed’ look. Your brother had the audacity to suggest we honeymoon on the Alaskan tundra.”

“Doing what?” Kenzie asked curiously.

“Nature crap,” Nina replied with a rich laugh.

“I assume you set him straight.”

“I told him there would be no boom boom without a room. I would never be in the ‘mood’ in the outdoors.”

Kenzie burst out laughing. The last person in the world she would have expected her brother, Scott, to hook up with was Nina. Yet she was thrilled. Nina got to be her legit sister, and life didn’t get better than that.

Nina paused to admire the rock on her finger. Scott had terrific taste. The diamond was marquise-cut with emeralds along the sides.

Kenzie went back to her computer. She had Nina’s photo on the screen and the pictures of wedding gowns on the side bar. She chose a gown to drag over to Nina’s photo and then it happened. The screen pixelated and started to go wonky. Lines appeared, scrolling from side to side and Kenzie half screamed. “No. No. No. Stop. Stop. Stop.”

The screen went blank.

“You hurt it,” Nina said.

“I didn’t do anything. Really.” Kenzie frantically pushed keys, but the screen stayed stubbornly blank. She rubbed her forehead. This wasn’t happening. Not now, when she so needed it to work.

“Can we hit it with a hammer now?” Nina asked, curiously. She bit into her muffin and smiled.

Kenzie didn’t reply. If she’d had a hammer she would.

“Call Reed,” Nina suggested. “Tell him to send someone here right away to save us. You can pull the granddaughter card.” She slid off the stool and headed to the door with a wave. “Got to go. Catch you later.”

“All right,” Kenzie said, reaching for the in-house phone.

* * *

Reed Watson knocked on the door to the suite. From the other side of the door he could hear the menacing sound of someone muttering and snarling. That didn’t sound good.

The door opened and Kenzie Russell stood there in all her beauty, wearing a red wrap dress that hugged her slender body like a glove. She was tall with curves in all the right places. Her brown hair was short and sort of spikey. His heart started racing and a bolt of heat hit him in the gut. And when she smiled at him her whole face lit up and he couldn’t stop staring at her. She was that beautiful.

“Hi,” she said, holding out her hand. “I’m Kenzie, and you are...?”

“Reed Watson.”

“Oh, I’m so excited to meet you.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him into her suite.

He looked down at her elegant hand in his, liking the way her silky cinnamon-colored skin looked against his whiteness. Please don’t let my palm start sweating. He was reluctant to let her go. He took a deep breath to steady himself and inhaled the subtle scent of vanilla, spiced fig and orchid. She smelled delicious and exotic. He just wanted to bury his nose in her neck. A heated flush crept up his face and he forced himself to turn away and pretend to examine the decor.

The suite itself mirrored his with a living room, dining room and entry on one side and two bedrooms and a galley kitchen on the other, all opening to a balcony and a view of the mountains beyond. “I’m pleased to meet you, as well.”

“You’ve been so elusive I thought you were an urban legend.” She led him toward the dining table with paper scattered across the surface and her open laptop.

“My father has been ill and I needed to be with him.” Chemotherapy did that to a person, but the last test results had shown the cancer in remission and Reed was finally able to get to Reno.

“Miss E. said you had family issues. I’m glad you’re here now—I need your expertise.” She gestured at her laptop. “It just stopped working.”

He sat down at the table and tried to concentrate on the laptop with its blank screen. Anything to distract himself from her. “What’s the problem?”

“It’s broken.”

“Broken in what way?”

She shrugged. “I don’t know. You’re the expert.”

Okay, he thought. She was not a computer person. He glanced around and saw the disconnected power cord. He plugged it back into the computer, waited a few seconds and pressed the power button, and the laptop sprang back to life. It had just run out of battery power.

“How did you do that?” She stared at the flickering screen, one hand on her hip, the other pointing at the laptop.

“I have techno mojo.” Most computer problems were simple. “It helps to have the power supply hooked up. Your battery ran out of power.”

“That’s all,” she said.

He grinned. “That’s all.”

“So, you’re a computer wizard.” She leaned over his shoulder and slid her slender fingers over the mouse pad.

“I’m a god chained to Earth,” he ended with a chuckle. He pushed the power cord tightly into the laptop.

She laughed. “Well, then, can you use your godlike qualities to make my software work?”

He liked that she liked his humor. “You’re not a technophobe, are you?” he asked.

She frowned at him. “I know how to use my phone. I do everything on my phone.” She held up the newest, top-of-the line iPhone.

“Explain the problem.”

Leaning over his shoulder, she took the mouse and clicked on an icon. “I commissioned this program that will allow our boutique customers to try on clothes in a virtual environment, but the clothes won’t adjust to figures properly and my computer freezes every time I try to drag something over.”

For a moment he couldn’t force his thoughts away from the way her soft skin brushed against his hand. He gulped. No one had told him how beautiful and sexy Kenzie Russell was. The throaty quality of her voice started his heart hammering away. He fought to breathe. Never in his whole adult life had he reacted to a woman like this.

Beautiful women had been throwing themselves at him since he’d made his first ten million. They’d been more attracted to his money than they were to him. At first, he’d been flattered, but later he’d grown jaded. Kenzie didn’t seem to be looking at him in quite the same way. In fact, at the moment she wasn’t looking at him at all as she frowned at her laptop.

“What do you want your software to do?” he asked when he found his voice again.

“I wanted the software to take a photo of the customer. A salesperson would input measurements and search for appropriate styles depending on what the customer wants.” She waved a hand at the screen. “It seems so simple. Why can’t it be simple?” She frowned at the laptop again.

If software was simple, he might be living in his dad’s basement playing video games. “Who developed the software?”

“A friend of mine knew someone.” She pulled a chair over and sat down next to him.

“The concept sounds interesting.” He studied the laptop screen as she slid her fingers over the mouse pad and tried to show him. The laptop froze and she slapped her hand on the counter. He gently pushed her hand away and unfroze the screen.

“I know,” she said eagerly. “Can you make it work? Miss E. says you can write software in your sleep. She says you can do anything.”

“I don’t know about ‘anything.’” He laughed. “I like to work in my pajamas.”

“You do?” She cast a sidelong glance at him. “I like a man who can joke about wearing his pj’s to work. For me, half the fun of going to work is dressing up.”

“I know you’re all about fashion.” He opened the program again and began clicking through, trying to get a feel for it. From the way the program sputtered and lagged, he knew the code hadn’t been very well written.

“How did you get into computers?” she asked, her dark brown eyes studying him.

“My father took me to a computer show in LA when I was around ten and bought all the components he’d need to build his own, because he figured it would be easy. Except it wasn’t. After a couple hours of grunting and cursing, he started making dinner, and I put the computer together.” Everything had fit exactly the way Reed had envisioned it. His father had been fascinated by Reed’s intuitive understanding of the process.

“Pretty remarkable.”

“Thank you.” She sounded impressed. He liked that. Once he had that computer operating, he discovered what it could do and he’d decided to write his own game, which he’d distributed to his friends. And from there, he’d started his own company. In the years since, he’d worked in gaming, then moved to apps for smartphones, then into computer security, and his latest endeavor had been using computers to design prosthetic limbs. He’d immersed himself in his business until his father became ill. That was when he realized he was missing out on life.

“Have you fixed it yet?” Kenzie asked.

He chuckled. “This is going to take more than a few minutes.”

“How much time?” She glanced at her watch. “I’m meeting my niece, she’s teaching me to barrel-race.”

He sat back in surprise, looking her up and down at her very fashionable dress, stiletto shoes and chunky necklace. He was having a hard time seeing her on a horse, wearing jeans, plaid shirt and cowboy boots.

“I know.” She patted him on the hand.

“What do you mean?” he asked, confused.

“I can tell from the look on your face you are trying to picture me on a horse wearing boots and a Stetson.”

“No...no... I wasn’t thinking that exactly.”

She laughed. “Sure you were. Just remember, I’m the girl with three older brothers. I may look like I stepped out of the pages of Vogue magazine every day, but at heart I’m pretty much a tomboy. Though I’m a tomboy with style.” She posed, one hand on her hip and a flirty look on her face.

He tried to imagine her on a horse, but the image failed to materialize.

She held up a hand. “Wait a moment. I’ll show you.” She walked to one of the bedrooms.

Lost in a cloud, unable to take his eyes away from her, he watched her body sway back and forth gracefully. The door closed with a click and he turned back to the laptop. If he was going to solve her problems, he was going to need his computer with him and her distracting beauty gone. The challenge excited him. He hadn’t felt excited in a while.

The bedroom door opened and Kenzie reappeared wearing jeans, a white shirt, red leather cowboy boots and a matching red hat. She posed for him like a runway model. For a moment he thought his heart would stutter to a stop. She walked back and forth, her hips swaying and he couldn’t catch his breath. She looked adorable, delectable and so sexy he wanted to kiss her.

“You certainly look the part.” What he really wanted to say was that she looked absolutely stunning, but they’d just met and that would be inappropriate.

“Of course I do. I don’t play at being a cowgirl. If I’m going to dress like this, I’m going to know how to flaunt it.”

She sported the look just fine in his estimation. He felt a huge thud in the area of his heart and for the first time in his life he was willing to fall into lust. Oh, hell, he was going to fall in lust with her.

No. No. He didn’t have time to be in...whatever. He still had his life to figure out and her software problem. He went back to contemplating how he would fix her software...or her.

He turned back to the computer. He felt her behind him, the heat of her body like a solar flare. “You’re hovering,” he said, half turning to glare at her.

“I’m fascinated by what you’re doing.”

“I’m just playing to see where the glitches are. I don’t have my applications here to start working on the fix. I’m going to need your laptop for a couple hours.”

“I’ll be gone for a couple hours. Take all the time you need.”

He nodded and closed the laptop, tucking it under his arm. “You know, I’ll have access to everything on your laptop. I’ll know all your deepest, darkest secrets.” He’d already figured out she had no password protection set up.

She laughed. “Yeah. You’re going to find out I play Warhammer.”

That surprised him. “So do I.” He’d never met a woman who liked adventure gaming.

She tilted her head at him. “We’ll have to team up some day. You, me and my brothers. They get pretty intense.”

He had the feeling she could best them all.

He walked to the door and she opened it to let him out. She leaned against the edge of the door and gave him a smile that practically melted his insides.

“You’re not what I expected.”

“What did you expect?” he asked.

“Horn-rimmed glasses, plaid shirt and socially awkward.”

His eyebrows rose. Ten years ago he’d been exactly that—horn-rimmed glasses, plaid shirt and socially awkward. Laser surgery corrected his vision, a stylist helped with his wardrobe and experience conquered his awkwardness. He knew he tended to be introspective, but having millions in the bank had made him a target for women who had been throwing themselves at him for years, and he’d become adept at recognizing and avoiding them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t what you imagined.”

“You’re better.” She grinned mischievously, a flirting sparkle in her eyes.

Again, he felt a tug on his heart. He didn’t know how to respond to that. He liked her directness, but unpredictability lurked behind her dark eyes. He held up the laptop. “Hopefully I’ll have this ready for you when you get back from your lesson.” Or not. He wondered how long he could drag out fixing her software just so he could be near her. He wanted to be near her.

* * *

Kenzie watched him walk down the hall toward his suite. She really had expected geek extraordinaire. The fact that Reed Watson was a very handsome man made her tingle. She wanted to run her hands through his shaggy blond hair and kiss him. She’d never been attracted so strongly to a man on a first meeting.

Not even Sam. He’d worked his way up through the executive ranks at Saks and eventually landed as the director of marketing. They’d had a lovely time over the years, but Sam wasn’t into commitment. He’d been quite emphatic about making sure she understood his feelings from the beginning.

Sam had warned her she’d hate Reno and he wasn’t giving up his job to follow her. How could she back away from her career for a backwater town when she’d been all over the world and seen the best fashion the world had to offer? He was wrong. In the time she’d been in Reno, she’d come to love it. The town wasn’t jaded or as self-important as Vegas. Reno knew what it was and reveled in its frontier-town mentality.

Anything was possible. Look at Miss E., Kenzie’s grandmother. She’d taken a classic hotel and casino and made it new again. She’d got her family back together, and no one was unhappy. Hunter and Lydia were having a baby. Nina and Scott would be getting married soon. Donovan and Hendrix were cooking up a storm. Even though she was the odd one out, she was used to being the only girl. Besides, she wasn’t ready to settle down.

Her cell phone rang and she went back into her suite to answer it. Rapid French overwhelmed her.

“Slow down, Monique. What is going on?” Monique Benoit designed her own line of casual wear that had grown very popular over the past few years. Kenzie had discovered her and suggested that Saks offer her a contract for her designs. She’d always been able to spot the up-and-coming designers and talk stores into showcasing their lines.

“That woman,” Monique snarled. “I hate her.”

“What woman?” Kenzie cradled the phone against her ear with her shoulder while she poured herself a glass of iced tea.

“That Anna. The one who replaced you. I cannot work with her. She is an...an imbecile.”

“She came highly recommended.” Sam had campaigned for the store to hire her, replacing Kenzie. “I’m sorry she’s not working out with you.”

“She is not you, Kenzie.”

“I’m sure she’ll work out if you give her some time.”

“I don’t know,” Monique said, her tone resigned. “I like working with you.”

“And I with you. Your clothes are selling well here.” Kenzie had opened a small store in the hotel spa for Monique’s line. “I know it’s not like having your lines in Saks, but Reno is growing. I think you should consider expanding your lines with your own stores.”

“I think on it, but I’m not ready yet. I have no...worries about you in Reno. It is this Anna I have uncertainties about.”

“She’ll work out, Monique,” Kenzie soothed. “Change requires a period of adjustment. Talk to Sam. I’m sure he’ll help.”

“Maybe.” Monique sounded dispirited.

Kenzie wondered just what Anna was doing that upset Monique so much.

“Come to Reno and play for a week,” Kenzie offered. “I’ll show you around and we’ll explore. There’s some great hiking here.”

Monique, like Kenzie, was a hiker. She would love the mountain trails, the hot springs in unexpected places and the beautiful vistas.

“I will think on that,” Monique said before she hung up.

Kenzie tried not to let her friend’s conversation bog her down. Everyone she’d worked with in New York would adjust to the new buyer. She was sure Anna would work out. She might not have Kenzie’s intuition about things, but she would learn.