Page 2 of Goalie and the Girl Next Door
“I’m not suggesting it. I’m stating it. You signed it five days late, Phillip.”
He bristles. “That’s hardly cause for?—”
“An emergency summons?” I cut in, snapping the file shut. “Agreed.”
“It’s just that I think we should hold our civic partners to the highest standard,” he says, voice smooth as artificial syrup. “Especially those handling sensitive community funds.”
There it is. The jab at Happy Horizons. Only a really icky person resents funding a program for children in need, because that’s what Happy Horizons specializes in: giving kids a chance when they’ve never gotten a break in life.
I stare him down, barely resisting the urge to beat him with the folder.
Phillip Bane wants to run the town one day, I’m sure of it. But I’ve seen his leadership style. He treats every minor budgeting error like a criminal conspiracy and once tried to get the town to issue official business cards that readPhillipBane, Acting Integrity Liaison.He is a walking audit report with a savior complex—minus the actual saving.
“If your plan to take over Maple Falls involves undermining every accountant who works with a nonprofit,” I say, “you might want to revisit your strategy.”
He smiles tightly. “Oh, I think I’m doing fine. Just because you’re the only number cruncher around doesn’t mean you can take your position as a consultant to the Town Hall for granted.”
I inhale slowly. “That almost sounded like a threat.”
“Oh, no.” He leans against the conference table. “Consider this a helpful observation—your spreadsheets are overcompensating for something.”
I gasp and clutch the folder against me. “Are you insulting my attention to detail?”
“I’m just saying,” he calls breezily as he heads for the door, “someone who has no social life and is known across town for being in love with numbers is… suspicious.” The next part he mumbles under his breath as if I couldn’t hear it. “No wonder they call you the Ice Queen.”
No one insults an accountant’s love of order and walks away unpunished.
I’m about to lay into him when a voice fills the meeting room. The voice is loud, joyful, and deeply French.
“Bonjour, bureaucratic friends!”
Phillip nearly jumps out of his loafers and my hand jerks reflexively, and the documents I’m holding scatter like leaves in a windstorm.
A tall man with sun-kissed skin, messy curls, and a hockey duffel slung over one shoulder strides in. He’s grinning like the world’s been personally generous to him this morning, and I’m too stunned to do anything but stare.
“I’m looking for Mayor Thompkins,” he says. “It’s about a building permit.”
He moves smooth, confident, annoyingly magnetic. His jeans cling in a way that is definitely not accidental, and the forest green Henley shirt he’s wearing looks like it was made for slow, appreciative glances. Not that I’m giving him one.
There’s an ease to him, that particular breed of European polish that turns heads even when it shouldn’t.
Wait, you’re angry, remember?Yes, I’m angry. At Phillip. At whatever manufactured budget disaster he is inevitably going to toss into my lap. At the idea that a manthatattractive walked into a municipal building and I’m now questioning the cut of my blazer.
My better judgment crosses its arms, but my pulse, traitorous thing, doesn’t listen.
When I get over my momentary freeze-up, I drop to my knees, scrambling to recover the paperwork. He crouches to help me, entirely unbothered.
“Wow,” he says, flashing a smile as he picks up a page. “Do all town meetings start with this much paper throwing? Because I’m in.”
I don’t know who this guy thinks he is, but he’s holding the town’s most sensitive finances in one very large, very tanned hand.
I snatch the paper from him and say the first thing that comes to mind.
“You’re not supposed to be here.”
He winks, and I’d like to smack that smug grin right off his perfectly chiseled face. “I get that a lot.”
CHAPTER 2
