Irresistible Stranger

Chapter 3

Lily had serious things to think about-why fires had started up in Pecan Valley since she’d shown up, the facts surrounding that long-ago fire, whether there was a chance of finding more information that might clear her dad’s name…and, oh yeah, that extraordinary kiss from Griff the night before.

The man had been humming in her dreams all last night. But this morning she couldn’t concentrate on anything because of her landlady.

Louella Bertram was eighty if she was a day, never met a cat she didn’t like, made coffee so weak it looked like dirty water, and treated every guest as if they were skinny runts that she took in just to feed.

“Now, sugar.” When Lily tried to rise from the breakfast table, Louella was already trying to block the doorway. “You can’t go a whole day on a sip of coffee and a half a bite of toast. You’ll waste away in the heat. Now you just take a little bag along with you. It’s just a couple of my cinnamon muffins, something to tide you over. You end up here at lunch, you just come on back to the kitchen, and I’m sure I can whip up something for you.”

She’d been here less than a week, yet Lily already knew better than to argue. She took the bag, then, when Louella lifted her wrinkled cheek, bent down to give her a smooch and a hug. Louella wouldn’t let her out the door without those, too.

“Now,” the older woman walked her to the door, “I know you think you want answers to the past. Everybody wants answers. The whole South, we understand about how the past and our history is part of who we are. But sugar, the things that matter in life, you never find those kinds of answers in facts. It’s all in the heart. So I’m not saying you shouldn’t look, honey. But I just want you to enjoy being back in your home town, instead of dwelling on that one bad moment. Your momma and daddy had a good life here once. You try and think about that, child.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“And another thing…”

Lily escaped inside of ten minutes, the best she’d managed to do so far. Carrying her purse and a satchel-and the muffins-she headed straight for the street. She didn’t have a thermometer, but outside, this early, it couldn’t be more than one hundred and ten. In the house, it was hot enough to fry eggs.

She’d given up jeans in the first two days, then gave up skirts, and that was the end of her traditional teacher clothes. Her shorts were barely decent, her tee tissue thin, and if this relentless heat didn’t let up, she planned to walk around naked with no apology. She’d neglected to get her long hair lopped off, but that was only because she’d been too busy to check out the local salons.

Two blocks later, she paused at Griff’s place. Naturally, this early in the morning it was still locked up. She didn’t expect to see him. It just seemed to be a knee-jerk reaction-walk by the ice cream place, remember that kiss. Remember his sitting on the veranda, feeding her Griff’s Secret, making her think about other seductive secrets he might offer.

To the right woman.

Under the right circumstances.

He was a player, she reminded herself. A womanizer. An uncommitted, lazy, adorable scoundrel. There wasn’t a soul in the town who’d suggested anything else.

Truthfully, it was his lazy scoundrel persona that rang her bells. It had been so long since a man rang her bells that she couldn’t believe it. Somehow, though, she couldn’t manage to believe his reputation. Something was…off. He kissed like trouble. He looked at a woman like trouble. She didn’t doubt that he was trouble.

But a sixth sense still warned her that he was not what he seemed.

Like everything else in this town.

Another block later, she opened the door to the police station, which had become as familiar as Louella’s. The same Martinet Martha guarded the front counter, gave her the same two-second acknowledgment, then barked, “Chief, someone to see you!” at the top of her impressive vocal range, same as before.

And Herman Conner, after a few moments, clomped out of his office, hitching up his trousers, with the same refrain. “How many times do I havta tell you-” And then he spotted her. Sighed.

“You gonna visit me every day this week?”

“Not every day. But I just-”

“Come on in, come on in.”

“You’re busy.” Phones were ringing. Printers clacking.

“Not too busy for you, sweet thing. We need to get your mind satisfied so you could finally put all this to rest.” He motioned to the same scarred-up wood chair he had before. “I’m having coffee. You gonna be here long enough to have a mug?”

“I could kill for a cup.”

He sighed again. “Not a thing to tell the sheriff, honey.”

She propped a peace offering on his desk. “Cinnamon muffins. Fresh.”

He opened it, smelled. “All right. I admit it. There is good in you.” She got the coffee. He got the muffins. She opened up the satchel and pulled out her faded copy of the police report.

“Not this again,” he said.

“I just have a few more questions.” She leaned over the desk with her copy of the investigation report. It was only three pages, and that included signatures and dates and times and addresses. The actual information related to the investigation was sparse-which was why she’d read and reread it until her eyes crossed. “At the very end of the report, you wrote, ‘no reason to connect this to the other arson fires’. That kept jumping out at me. What other arson fires?”

“You’ve been on the computer again, haven’t you? That, or watching Law and Order reruns. Everybody’s an expert on the law these days.”

“I’m sorry to be such a pain,” she said, real apology in her voice, but not moving until she’d heard an answer. He sighed and eventually got around to responding.

“You know, it’s been twenty years, but if I recall correctly, there’d been a rash of vandalism fires, stretching maybe a year or so, before the one at your place. But there was no relationship, like I wrote. There was no one killed in the other fires, no property damage that remotely compared.”

“Still, was there any similarity with my family’s fire? Like…was the same accelerant used? Or were those fires set in the same time of day? Any connection at all?”

“The similarity you need to know, sunshine, is that the arsons stopped after your daddy died. For a whole three years, there was no other fire except for old Samuel Wilson’s trying to cook after his wife died. So this is probably not an avenue you want to pursue. It only points to your daddy all over again.”

That hurt. She admitted it. Still, she said softly, “So you’re sure…there was no similarity in the other fires?”

“To be honest with you, sweetheart, I don’t remember now. I just remember studying the thing at the time, concluding there was nothing in common with the other prank-type fires. If you’re doubting I know how to do my job-”

“No, no.” She hurried to look penitent…and to push the other cinnamon muffin his way. Being a teacher, she had a half-dozen ways of locally researching the past fire, all of which she still intended to pursue-but there’d be no real way to get closure without Sheriff Conner on her side. If she had to grovel, she was more than willing to grovel. “I’m just trying to understand, sheriff. It was so devastating to my family-”

“And to everyone in this town. Now-you got any more questions?”

“Just one teensy one.” She motioned to the partial sentence on the second page. “The report says the fire started outside our back door. Actually, it says, west of the back door.”

“Okay. And you think that means what?” the sheriff asked with a look of fatherly patience.

“Well, I’m not sure. But I remember our house. We shared a garage wall with the house next to us. And that my dad had a shop on that side of the garage. He liked working with wood, so he had stuff out there, like lacquer and varnish and mineral spirits and all that.”

“I’m still listening.”

“Well…I had no concept when I was a little kid, but now, it seems pretty obvious why the whole downstairs exploded. Why the fire was so fast and awful. Because of the chemicals my dad had in the garage.”

Herman Conner took the last bite of muffin. “Okay.”

“But my dad would never have deliberately started a fire near those products, would he? That wouldn’t have made any sense at all. The belief was that he wanted the insurance money. But he loved us. I can’t imagine in a million years why he would have started a fire where all those accelerants were around. It would have been asking for an explosion. And he’d never have done anything to deliberately harm my sisters or my mom-”

“Lily. Honey. We’ve been over this. He was despondent. He’d lost his job. He wasn’t thinking rationally.”

“But isn’t it possible…that the fire might have started in the house next to ours? But that ours went up so fast because of the stuff my dad had in the garage? I mean, do you know who lived next door? What happened to them? I don’t remember at all-if that house burned down, too, or if anyone was hurt there, or anything else. If there could have been a connection…” Lily could have sworn she caught a flash of alarm in the sheriff’s eyes, yet his voice was as calm and patient as before.

“Aw, sweetheart. You got eyes full of hope. But there was no one in that house. It’d been for sale for several months. There was fire damage there, too, a course, but nothing like what happened to your place, where the downstairs fire took off like hell in a fury. Pardon my French. You were all trapped on the second floor. There was no one on the other side of the garage wall to be hurt.”

“So. You think that’s a dead end,” she said carefully.

Something had changed in his expression. His posture was a little stiffer, his eyes more guarded. Or maybe it was her imagination, because his tone of voice never changed. “I think, if you want to come back here every single day you’re here, ask more questions, pursue anything on your mind, honey, then that’s what you should do. Let’s get this off your mind so it’ll never come up again. I admit, if I were your daddy, I’d be advising you to let it go, that it’s not good for you to dwell on something you can never make right. A tragedy is a tragedy, honey. You already went through it. No point that I can see in reliving it yet again. But you do whatever you need to do. I won’t get mad. That’s a promise.” He added, “Particularly if you keep bringing me Louella’s cinnamon muffins.”

When Lily left the station, the temperature had risen to one hundred and thirty-at least. Virginia had hot summers, but nothing like this. She battled the humidity straight to the ice-cream store-which, she told herself, had nothing to do with seeing Griff. It was about saving her life.

The place was wallpapered with kids, some slurping ice cream, but not all. Lily recognized the phenomenon. With school out for the summer, the kids too young for a job needed a hang-out place. Griff’s was clearly it.

Two boys were manning the counter, with a third visible in the back, doing washup. Griff seemed to choose employees who looked as if they’d recently been let out of juvenile detention-lots of tattoos, lots of metal on their faces, lots of attitude. The one Lily had come to know-Jason-seemed to half-live there.

“You looking for Griff?” he asked when she made it up to the counter.

“Well. It doesn’t look as if he’s here-”

“He’s here. He’s just locked up.”

“Locked up?”

Jason nodded his head toward a far steel door. “He’s in the vault. It’s where he makes the ice cream. Nobody’s ever allowed in the vault, but I can let him know you’re here-”

Before Jason finished the comment, Griff appeared from beyond the locked steel door. As if expecting her, he turned and located her in two seconds flat. That slick, wild kiss on the dark veranda was suddenly between them as if it just happened.

Possibly, she’d have had the good sense to run out the door, if he hadn’t crossed the room too quickly for her to take that option.

“I don’t want to interrupt you,” she said immediately.

“You won’t if you come back with me. I’m right in the middle of something.”

“Jason just said no one’s allowed back there?”

“No one is,” he agreed, and motioned for her to follow him.

All right, all right, so she had more curiosity than could kill any cat. After a word with his kids, Griff led her into the so-called vault. “You can test one of the new flavors I’m experimenting with,” he said.

She tasted. Then tasted again. The flavor had some peach, some pecan, some vanilla bean, some unique and tantalizing other flavor. She took another spoonful, thinking that when she left this darned town, she was going to be fatter than a pig.

Which didn’t stop her from more taste testing, even as she turned in a slow circle, examining his “vault.” The room was long, clean as a new penny, all stainless steel and bright light. A one-way window supervised the shop-so that was how Griff knew exactly what was going on with the customers and kids-and inside were counters and a bunch of futuristic appliances she couldn’t identify. Ice-cream making equipment, obviously. She would have asked a dozen questions, except that Griff clearly was in the middle of something, had put on gloves, had some kind of quietly vibrating blender that he was supervising-so he got in his grilling first. “How’d your visit with the sheriff go?”

“Pretty much the same as the other times. I raised questions. He called me a fool. I thanked him.” She gave him more rave reviews for the new flavor, but he still had questions.

“Where are you going after this?”

“I figured either the newspaper office or the library. Wherever I can dig into old copies of newspapers the easiest. I assume old editions will be available online-”

“Maybe not online. But likely on microfiche.”

“What’s microfiche?”

He chuckled. “Spoken like a Yankee. We just don’t do technology at the same rate you northerners do, sugar.”

“Hey. Virginia isn’t north.”

“It is, compared to a small town in Georgia.”

“But I was born here. Don’t I get credit for being true Southern?”

“With those legs, in those short shorts, you can get all the credit you want.”

She didn’t think he’d noticed. “Speaking of which…”

“Speaking of your legs, or of credit?”

“Credit. You’ve been giving me a lot of free ice cream. I was thinking I should go the same path as the other women in town and fall at your feet.”

His eyebrows lifted. “I like your thinking.”

“So…I’m asking you to dinner.” Actually, Lily had no intention of walking in here and making that suggestion, but now that it was out, she was going with it.

“Hmm. I’m guessing you’ve been stuck with restaurant food since you got here. So how about dinner at my place?”

“That’d be okay-but it doesn’t solve the problem of my being in debt to you.”

“I don’t need to solve that problem. I love women in debt to me.”

She rolled her eyes. “Your place. But I cook-to erase the ice-cream debt.”

“This is sounding complicated. On the other hand, I like complicated. How about if I pick you up from Louella’s around five. We can grocery and wine shop together. Then go back to my place and sip something tall and lazy while you cook.”

“A reasonably good plan,” she said, “except for not knowing where you live.”

“Close enough for you to walk home if I come on too strong, sugar.”

Several hours later, Lily was just starting to seriously consider that question. It seemed unlikely that Griff would actually come on at all-much less, come on too strong. Yeah, there’d been those kisses on the dark veranda, but maybe she’d built those up in her mind. Unlike her sisters, she’d never attracted a hot kind of guy. Good men, yes. Gentle guys, decent guys with all the important boy scout qualities-but never scoundrels.

At least other women seemed one hundred percent certain that he was.

As they wandered around the local grocery store, she picked out chicken breasts, fresh parmesan, bread crumbs and aimed for fresh potatoes next. Lily wondered if it was possible to make it five feet without yet another woman flashing a smile at Griff. The smiles all had the same brand-the kind of slow, Southern smiles that told a man he was the best thing she’d ever seen in a month of Sundays.

By the time she caught up with him the next time, she’d gotten the potatoes-and everything else she’d sent him after-and found him cornered between the oranges and grapefruit by a redhead in frayed denim. He spotted Lily. His eyes lit up-not necessarily out of exuberant lust-since it looked as if he’d have groveled to anyone who could save him from the buxom redhead’s gregarious chatter.

“Lily! Mary Belle Johnson…this is Lily, Lily Campbell.”

The redhead whirled around, green eyes narrowed-took in Lily in a glance. Instead of spitting fire, the woman’s face immediately calmed. Possibly, it was Lily’s simple blue crocheted top and white capris that conveyed that she was just no competition for Griff’s attention. Not compared to a woman with Mary Belle’s substantial figure and charming ways.

“I swear, Lily, I been hearing about you since you got into town. My daddy told me you’d come back. I was wondering if I’d have a chance to set eyes on you.” The woman lifted a critical hand to her hair. “I could do something with that.”

“You-?”

“Yeah. I run the salon on Main Street. Belle Hair. I do makeovers, too.” Another evaluative look at Lily’s face. “I really know my eye makeup.” Mary Belle glanced down at her hands. “And manicures.”

“Well, thank you so much.” Lily didn’t laugh, but she was inclined to. She hadn’t been insulted so thoroughly-or so kindly-since she could remember.

Griff took off with the grocery cart toward the checkout like a bat out of hell. “That’s the scariest woman in town,” he said sotto voce, when Lily finally escaped and caught up with him.

“Come on. You could handle her with both hands behind your back.”

“Are you kidding? I was about to dive into the grapefruit. See if a commotion might make her go away.” Griff shot her a wry look. “She didn’t seem to upset you. And as far as I could tell, she was trying her best.”

“I desperately need a haircut. And a woman knows never-ever-to offend anyone who could have power over her hair.”

He let out a husky chuckle. “You don’t need a hair cut. It’s great the way it is.”

“Why thank you, sir. But you don’t have to waste flirting on me.”

“Waste? Since when is flirting a waste?” He paid for the groceries, scooped up both bags.

“I saw what you were doing. The blonde. The second blonde. The brunette. Then the redhead.”

“What? What?”

“You were telling the ladies that I was with you. Which’ll be all over town-” she glanced at her watch “-probably within the next ten minutes. Is that why you asked me out to dinner? To make sure people knew I had a friend in town?”

“Are you kidding? I have no interest whatsoever in being your friend.”

Man, he was full of the devil. It was good for her feminine ego. But his protective streak-no matter how vociferously he denied it-was as transparent as glass. “She mentioned her daddy-”

“Yeah. The sheriff. She’s Herman Conner’s daughter.”

“I thought you said her last name was Johnson?”

“I did, but it’s darned hard to keep track. Mary Belle’s changed her last name around three times in the last decade. She must have been about ten years older than you back then. The wildest thing this town had ever seen. Gave her dad gray hair and then some. Drank, smoked funny stuff, partied and stayed out all night. No one could put a rein on that girl. Or that’s the story.”

She’d forgotten-or maybe she’d never known-how much fun it was to get caught up in the soap operas in a small town.

The groceries fit snugly in the back of his red convertible EOS. The car suited him. It was seriously green, but it was also splashy and sassy and high tech. Not a gas guzzler, yet still perfect for a guy who wanted a sexy scoundrel’s image. “So why do I keep getting the impression,” she asked, “that you’re not quite the lazy bad boy you let on?”

“You’re such a breath of fresh air. It’s been a while anyone believed I had a serious bone in my entire body.” He shot her a glance. “Mostly because I don’t.” As if to prove his point, he gunned the baby. Of course, even driving at breakneck speeds, his place wasn’t more than a couple miles from town center-so it wasn’t as if he kept up that life-threatening pace for long. As he’d said, she could walk home later if she was so inclined or needed to.

His place wasn’t what she’d expected. Of course, she hadn’t expected anything in particular. But his land was so close to town, and yet nothing like town. Just off the highway, he turned onto an unmarked road, sneaked up past a sea of lodge pines, into a burst of sunshine, and finally there it was, a house perched on a rock ledge, the same color as the native pale limestone.

All the rolling hills in their Georgia neck of the woods made finding a hideaway easy enough, but Griff had made his place so…invisible. Almost as invisible as the dirt-crusted, practical pickup truck parked behind on the garage, on a slab of concrete in the shade.

“Like it so far?” he asked, not referring to the pickup-which he couldn’t realize she’d noticed-but to the facade of the house.

A half hour later she was dredging chicken into a whipped egg, then rolling each piece in a batter of fresh parmesan. Griff had opened a bottle of something red and dry, poured it into a couple of fat glasses, and for a laid-back kind of guy, was jogging circles around her.

He’d already made dessert-yet another new flavor of ice cream he wanted her to try. He’d also pulled out hors d’oeuvres from the fridge, plump white shrimp on ice, with a sauce so spicy it could turn a nun hot. His eating table was beveled glass, with thin teak slabs for placemats, already decked out with sterling flatware and water goblets.

The view from the counter where she was forking the chicken into a frying pan, was of a mountain. The entire east wall was glass, overlooking a secret dark forest below, where occasionally she could glimpse a sterling ribbon of stream.

“You know, I didn’t really expect you to cook.” He kept circling, leaning over her shoulder. “What are you making?”

“You’ll love it. Trust me.”

“How do you know?”

“You’re male.” She grinned, took a sip of wine, then scrounged in his cupboards for the extras she needed. Aluminum foil. Spices. A good olive oil.

He’d never exhibited a trace of nerves before-at least not around her. Yet temporarily, he couldn’t stand still or relax. Lily thought she knew why. She was discovering, whether he wanted her to or not, that Griff was a class-A liar.

His general decorating scheme was minimalist to the nth degree, but that was misleading. He’d built the place to be a private hideaway, which it was; but the design, constructed right into the hillside, had to cost a fortune. The inside surfaces were all expensive, from hardwood to marble and limestone. The bathroom off the main living area was done up in lapis-the real lapis-and the shower itself had one glass wall overlooking the mountainside.

A deer could do the voyeur thing, for heaven’s sake; the man must have no modesty at all. And since Lily’d had to use the facility, she’d accidentally noticed his office, because it was right across the hall. These days, everybody had their computer corner, someplace where dusty cords reproduced on the floor and a desk was heaped with paper. But not like this. Griff’s office looked something like a war room at the Pentagon. She had no idea what work he did-particularly since he claimed to do no work at all beyond experimenting with ice cream for fun-but that office was no play station.

She wasn’t quite sure how she wanted to deal with the liar yet, so she focused on the immediate priorities. Once the browned chicken was popped in the oven, she tested the potatoes. They were almost ready to mash. She searched for a bowl, then collected sour cream, cream cheese, fresh chives, shredded cheddar and pepper.

“Your kitchen’s beyond awesome. Is this where you play with the ice-cream flavors?”

“Almost never. The vault at the store is ideal for working with that.”

“There’s nothing more ideal than this kitchen that I’ve ever seen.” She finished another sip of wine, then added, “Be ready in about ten.”

“I set up right here.” He motioned to the glass table. “But that doesn’t mean we have to stick to that plan. If you want to eat outside-”

“Bite your tongue, handsome. I can see that gorgeous patio outside, but it’s okay with me if I never experience heat again.”

“You’re a wuss, Lily.”

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

He stopped talking altogether, once the food hit the table. It couldn’t have been a more ordinary dinner: mashed potatoes, fresh asparagus, the chicken parmesan. She’d figured what to cook based on a single factor. He was a guy. So normally, he wouldn’t take the time to make ordinary good food.

And from the way he was shoveling it in, she’d judged that question fairly well.

“Did I mention before that I was in love with you?” he asked.

“You didn’t, but I was expecting it. I’m sure you say that to all the girls.” She enjoyed the flirting. She still hadn’t figured out why he was flirting with an ordinary schoolteacher-like herself. But it seemed pretty darn silly not to like it. Life was too darn stressful these days not to savor a smile when she could win one.

“Yeah, I do. But this time I mean it. Where’d you learn to cook like this? Would you live with me? Would you like jewelry, diamonds or rubies or something? Now’s the time to ask,” he assured her. “There’s probably nothing I wouldn’t give you.”

“Oh, good.” She finished eating long before he did. She poured him another glass of wine-she’d had enough-and cupped her chin in a palm. “I want to hear where you came from. How you ended up here.”

“Aw. You don’t want to hear that boring old history.”

She raised her eyebrows. “You said I could have anything I wanted.”

“Okay. You asked.” He reeled off the stats. Core family based out of Savannah, but his father was career military, so there was a lot of moving around. He had two younger brothers, one living in Idaho, the other in Vermont. He’d gone to college.

She made a disgusted sound. “Okay. I take it you never want me to cook for you again?”

“Whoa. Wait.”

She made a come-on motion with her hands. “Less bare bones. More real story.”

The sky blurred, blued, backdropping the hilly landscape with jewel colors and softness. When he talked her into going outside on the slab of a white patio-and it took some convincing-she discovered it wasn’t hot, not this high above the tree level. Instead, it was cool and serenely peaceful.

She sank into the cushioned lounger next to him, and accepted a bowl of his newest experiment. It was some kind of mix of blueberry and cherry and mint. Tangy. Sweet, but provocatively so. Different.

Like him.

“MIT is not a generic ‘went to college’,” she informed him. “You should have said MIT before. Then I’d have known you had a scary kind of mathematical brain and I’d never have come to dinner.”

“You can’t just tell people you came out of school a mathematician. They don’t know what to do with you. What do you think of the flavor?”

She took another spoonful. “I think it’s outstanding. The one in the store this morning-that was good, but more universal, a flavor everyone could love. This one is in a class by itself. More refreshing than rich. Flavors that blend in ways you’re not expecting. You’re good at this.”

“Yeah, I think so, too.”

He made out like he was so full of himself, but Lily was beginning to see that was just more of his tomfoolery. And it seemed about time to let on that she wasn’t that easily tomfooled. “So far, just for the record, you haven’t told me a single thing that adds up. Your field’s mathematics but you make ice cream. You started out in Savannah but your family seems to be all over the place. And where do women or wives or children fit in this picture?”

“I’m not good husband material. Which I realized a long time ago.”

“Did you discover that by being a husband?”

“Man, are you nosy.”

She got it out of him, but it took another glass of wine-for him, not her.

It probably helped that the sun dipped below the tree line, creating a concealing darkness and sense of privacy. Griff likely didn’t realize he’d forgotten to use all his usual “honeys” and “sugars” and all that other flirting nonsense.

The man she discovered behind the protective layers intrigued her-more than intrigued her. He clearly hated talking about himself. But what he grudgingly revealed exposed…well, Lily wasn’t sure what to call it. Depth. Heart. A man deeper than a well.

“My father was old-line, straight military. He wanted the family to run like a machine. You obeyed him right now, no asking questions, no excuses. I was the oldest.”

“So it was worse for you.” It was all too easy for Lily to read between the unsaid words.

“I’m not saying it was worse. Just that being oldest made things different for me. I didn’t want him raining hell on my little brothers. They cowered from him as it was.”

He didn’t say his father punched him regularly. Lily didn’t ask. But she could see the blank expression in his eyes. Hear his light tone.

“When I turned eighteen, he wanted me to sign on for the military. I wanted to go to college. We had a fight. A serious fight. It was the first time I ever hit him back. He had me arrested, thought that would be a good lesson for me, and told me that I’d see what it was like to spend the night in jail, see if I felt like disrespecting him ever again.”

Lily stopped breathing. She was afraid if she said anything, she’d cry. For him. For the pictures he was putting in her mind.

“You have to understand-my dad thought he was raising us with love. He just thought boys needed to be tough to survive, to ‘be men’. He thought toughness was a sign of character.” His gaze narrowed. “That’s the fourth glass of wine you poured me, Lily. You trying to get me drunk so you can have your way with me?”

“No. Finish the story. How’d you end up at MIT?”

“A seriously decent scholarship. A lot of work. A lot of debt. I see my mother every few months, call her more than that. But I don’t see him. My one brother turned out just like him, a bully all the way. The youngest brother called me when I was at MIT. Johnny was in the hospital, broken collarbone, broken wrist. I came to get him. I was in no financial shape to take on a kid brother-particularly when my father took me to court. But we managed okay. You heard enough?”

Again his voice was lazy and teasing, as seductive as the moonlight.

She answered as she had the last time. “No. It’s still a long way from there to owning an ice cream parlor in Pecan Valley.”

“Actually, it’s not that far. I made certain decisions, once I was grown and had my kid brother on his feet. I was never doing anything requiring discipline as long as I lived. That includes wearing ties, relationships and any kind of work that takes effort.”

“Griff?”

“Yes, honey.”

“You are so full of baloney.”

“What I am is embarrassed. I can’t remember the last time I told this story, probably because I never did. I was raised with better manners than to bore a charming, beautiful woman. We’re wasting this moonlight. I never-it’s the cardinal rule of my life-waste moonlight.”

For a man who’d had four glasses of wine, he was out of the lounge chair faster than magic. His eyes met hers in the darkness as he coaxed her out of the chair, pulled her close, pulled her into him.

Okay, she told herself. Okay. She’d been charged up from the first instant she met him, and she knew it. He was full of baloney, he charmed her, enticed her. Made her want to experience-just once!-being involved with a bad boy, a man who knew his way around women, who just plain liked women and knew what to do with them.

Every woman she knew had flings. Why on earth shouldn’t she?

She realized she wasn’t experienced in being wild and loose, but she was willing to practice. He was ideal to take lessons from.

It was just…the more she knew him, the less she believed of his bull.

And now he’d completely messed up the fantasy. Kissing him wasn’t about the wild, loose, immoral fling she’d had in mind. She liked the damn man. He was lonely, a solo flyer. Tons of people claimed to “love him”, but no one she’d seen so far actually seemed to know him. Much less really love him.

Not like a person needed to be loved.

So really, it was entirely his fault that it all just got out of hand.

He swooped her in his arms, and even though she wasn’t exactly sure how to seduce a seducer, she swooped right back.