One Summer’s Knight

Chapter 5

Do you trust me?

Such a simple question. One she could not possibly answer. Because the only answer she could have given him at that moment was “No! No, I don’t trust you.”

She didn’t trust anyone, and probably never would again.

That realization came to her like a knife thrust straight to her heart. She gasped at the pain of it, then murmured, “It’s not that simple.”

She stared at her hands, doubled now into fists, and right below them Riley Grogan’s fingers wrapped like manacles around her wrists. He had strong fingers, she noticed, big hands to match his frame, hands that were rather more rugged than she’d have expected, but which fit the image she’d carried of him in her mind. The other image. The street fighter. They did seem out of place, though, emerging from those pearly white cuffs with their gold-and-onyx cuff links, and the soft black fabric of the jacket sleeve. And they were immaculately clean, so scrubbed the skin had a buffed look, like fine leather, with perfectly manicured nails and the gleam of gold and onyx on the right ring finger. Her own hands looked grubby as a child’s by comparison.

For some reason that made Summer think again of Cinderella, whose hands must have been rough and chapped from the soap and water, with nails broken and black from the ashes and soot of the hearth. What must that poor girl have felt as she watched the Prince take her hand in his royally pampered one and gracefully raise it to his royal lips? Why, Summer thought, didn’t any of the books, movies or plays ever tell you what was going through her mind? At the very least she had to have been dying of embarrassment

Summer fixed her eyes on Prince Ch…uh, Riley Grogan’s pristine shirtfront, unstuck her tongue from the roof of her mouth and said firmly, “It’s impossible. I have my job. The children have-”

“Your kids aren’t going anywhere, I’m afraid. And neither are you.” His voice was as implacable as when he’d put the FBI man in his place. “Think about it As long as you three are targets-”

Summer stared at the tiny mirrors that were Riley’s black onyx studs, feeling dazed, as if she’d been hypnotized by them. Suddenly the whole thing seemed like a nightmare to her. “This is crazy,” she muttered. “I’m a veterinarian, for God’s sake. A mom with two kids. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen to people like me.”

“Hard as it is for you to believe and accept,” Riley drawled in that calm, patient and suddenly very Southern voice, relaxing his hold on her wrists so that it became at the same time gentler and more compelling, “somebody is out to do you harm. All you need do to remind you of that fact is to think about what happened to your house trailer.”

Summer closed her eyes. Oh, God, she thought, swaying a little. It isn’t a nightmare. It’s true. It really has happened. They had nothing-except, thank God, they still had one another, and the animals. The clothes on their backs. Whatever had been in the children’s backpacks. And, of course, that wretched car…

“This is no time for misplaced pride, Mrs. Robey.” Riley’s quiet voice had taken on a slightly harder edge.

Summer thought, Pride? What pride? How could she possibly have any pride left? She couldn’t even work. She couldn’t go to her family, not even to leave the children. Oh, God, she thought, what if they came after us there? How would she ever live with herself if she brought this mess to Bella’s family? To Mom and Pop? To Evie?

“Our first priority,” said Riley, “is gonna have to be your safety-yours and the kids’. That’s what you need to be thinking about right now.”

“Yes.” My children. The thought was strangely calming. Conscious, suddenly, of warmth and pulse beats, Summer opened her eyes to find that her wrists-in fact, her forearms-were cuddled up against the stiff white shirtfront she’d been staring at so intently only moments ago, and that the pulse beats were her own, tapping joyfully against the smooth pads of Riley’s fingertips. Letting her gaze travel upward, she found what seemed to be the same pulse-no, not a pulse, but a muscle, a tiny knot of tension-beating in the side of Riley’s jaw.

A strange hollowness filled her, a dizzy, light-headed feeling she hoped was only exhaustion. Carefully removing her hands from their gentle restraints, she said, “Yes, of course you’re right,” and took a breath. “Right now, I have to think of the children.”

Was it like this for you, Cinderella? she wondered as she turned her back on the totally incongruous vision of the Prince standing there in the flesh before her. She went to the sink, turned on the water and plunged her wrists into the stream in a determined effort to drown those tap-dancing pulses. Was this what prompted you to throw caution and good sense to the winds and go riding off with a man you hardly knew? Was it just that you knew you couldn’t possibly stay where you were a moment longer? Did you feel you had no choice? Maybe, she thought, it wasn’t true love after all, just simple expediency.

It occurred to her then, that trapped between the devil and the deep blue sea, if a person were scared enough of water, the devil might not look all that bad.

Not that she suspected Riley Grogan of being the devil in disguise, or anything even close to it In fact…

“It’s you I’m concerned about, Mr. Grogan,” she informed him quietly as she reached for a paper towel and then turned to the rest room door, an ironic little smile on her lips. “I don’t think you have any idea what you’re getting yourself into.”

“Oh, Lord, what have I gotten myself into?” Riley muttered the words aloud sometime later that evening-or more accurately, early the next morning-as he sat in his study nursing a large brandy and a bandaged finger. If anybody had asked him, he would readily have admitted it was no accident that the words were arranged in the form of a prayer.

Except for the fitful and distant grumble of thunder, his house was quiet. Blessedly quiet. He relaxed in it, slouched down on his spine in his favorite chair with his feet stretched out on the matching ottoman, the snifter cradled on his chest. His eyes were closed as he savored, along with the old-woodsy aftertaste of the brandy, both the quiet and the thunder-the latter because it echoed his mood at the moment, the former because he had an idea it might prove to be the last of such moments for a while.

He had a headache, and his finger throbbed to the dirgelike pace of his heartbeat. And it was becoming increasingly clear to him that he had lost his mind.

There were few things in life Riley Grogan valued more than his privacy. He considered his home his personal refuge, a haven that in the past he’d guarded as jealously as a wolf would guard his lair. Yet, inconceivable as it seemed, there were at this very moment asleep in one of the several extra bedrooms he called “guest rooms”-though he seldom if ever had any-not one stranger, but three: an exhausted woman, who happened to be his newest client, and her two minor children. Oh, and had he mentioned her cat and her dog? And-he stared balefully at his bandaged finger-one apparently demented parrot.

What had he been thinking of?

As if his mind had been waiting for that question, had already rewound his memory tapes to the proper place and had just been waiting for the order to push Play, he found himself watching a replay of that scene in the rest room at FBI headquarters in Augusta, those last few moments before she-Summer Robey-had pulled her hands from his and turned to wash them and her face in the sink. He’d never forget the way she’d looked at him then. Doomed but not defeated, like a magnificent wild creature caught in a trap. He’d never forget the way he’d felt, either, as if something had struck him hard in the chest and momentarily interrupted the normal rhythm of his heart.

He hadn’t known whether to be relieved or sorry when she’d left him immediately after that, focusing instead on her kids. While she’d been doing whatever one did to get children ready for a trip, Riley had gone to get his car. Following Agent Jake Redfield’s instructions, he’d driven around to the back of the building and up to what had appeared to him to be a blank wall, which had opened, James Bond-like, to admit him to an underground garage. In that stuffy, dimly lit cavern, he and Redfield had transferred various pet accessories from an anonymous FBI sedan to the trunk of Riley’s Mercedes-food and water dishes, assorted bags of dog, cat and parrot chow, cat litter and the appropriate container for same, something covered with carpeting that Jake had told him was called a cat cave, and what appeared to be a miniature-size jungle gym. Enough equipment, it had seemed to him, to outfit a small invasion force. At least, he’d thought, it didn’t look as if he was going to have to stop at an all-night pet shop on the way home.

The children, however, did require a stop at some vending machines for crackers and chocolate milk, which Riley made damn sure were eaten and all traces disposed of before they were allowed anywhere near the Mercedes. He and Redfield had then escorted everyone downstairs to the garage via a special express elevator.

It was while he was helping to find places for three pet carriers and two kids in the back seat-his suggestion that the carriers might ride better in the trunk had been loudly overruled-that Riley had managed, though he still couldn’t figure out how, to get his finger within range of that damn parrot’s beak. That had brought about a short but chaotic delay in their departure while Jake went in search of a first aid kit and Summer tried her best to calm hysterical children and livestock while simultaneously assessing the damage to Riley’s person.

“It’s not broken-hardly even bleeding. You’re lucky,” she had pronounced when order had been restored, more or less. Riley, experiencing sensations similar to those caused by slamming a finger in a car door, had seen no reason to answer that “A parrot’s beak can easily snap small branches-and bones,” Summer had explained in a tone half instructive, half scolding, as if Riley were a not-very-bright child. “You should never, ever put your fingers in a parrot’s cage-especially one who doesn’t know and trust you.”

But to tell the truth, he’d hardly been aware of his injury just then. He’d been watching Summer, watching her capable hands as they gently examined his finger, watching a frown of concentration etch a deep crease between her brows, watching a stray strand of her hair float in the breeze of her breath.

He’d discovered he liked seeing her in this mode-relaxed, confident, less tense than she had been up to now. He wondered if it had even occurred to her that she was holding his arm, tuxedo sleeve and all, imprisoned between her arm and body, and that when she shifted to find a better hold, or better light, she’d turned herself neatly into the circle of his arm, with her back turned to him and her head bowed low over his wounded hand so that her nape was unself consciously bared to him. He could have counted the hairs that had escaped from her haphazard ponytail, he thought, if there’d been more light If there’d been less, he would only have had to lower his head a little, shift his arms a few degrees…and his mouth could have savored the taste and texture of the velvety skin drawn taut over the vulnerable bumps of her spine…

Absurd notion. She was his client, a mother, and absolutely off-limits. But it had been a very long day and an unexpectedly unsettling evening, and he supposed he must have somehow been reminded of Miss Louisiana and her uncanny resemblance to Maureen O’Hara. Thinking of what might have been.

Agent Redfield had returned about then with a first aid kit, and Summer had made short work of bandaging up Riley’s finger, all the while tweaking his masculine ego with remarks about the insignificant nature of the injury. He’d consoled himself with the thought that naturally she’d say that-it was her bird that had inflicted it, after all. Technically, she was liable for the damage. Not that he’d have said so. Just a minor legal point.

They’d left the FBI garage in a convoy-Redfield first, with a mannequin sitting beside him in the passenger seat of the tan sedan as decoy for anyone who might have observed the departure with interest-and no one present questioned the need for such a precaution. After five tense minutes, Riley’s Mercedes rolled silently out of the garage, with its passengers crouched low and hidden from the view of any of those watchers who might have remained behind. It was then, as he’d guided the big car down an alley that seemed as dense and dark as a tropical jungle, through streets where humidity drifted in the car lights like dust and hung overhead in a gauzy yellow shroud, that he’d realized that all thought of his wounded finger, incipient headache and the sensuous Miss Louisiana had faded from his mind. The night was like a sauna, but the sweat that trickled down his spine was cold. Evil was out there, somewhere. He could feel it. Unlikely as it seemed, evil had touched this woman and her children. And because he had committed himself to keeping them safe, it had touched him, too.

That was when it had first come to him, the question she’d suggested to him, the question he’d been asking himself ever since: What in the world was he getting himself into?

Riley knew evil very well. He knew what it was to be stalked by it, to he hidden and chilled while evil hunted him through the long, dark night. But it had been a long time since he’d made a solemn vow to himself that he would never live in that kind of fear, or in the proximity of evil, ever again-thirty years, as a matter of fact. Ironically, thirty years almost exactly. He’d conducted his life ever since with that vow as his guiding light, had chosen to go into civil instead of criminal law because of it. Because he had no desire to rub shoulders with the criminals and predators of this world, he’d seen enough of those. Not that civil law didn’t provide him with ample opportunity to witness more than his share of wrongdoing and shady dealings and other shabby aspects of human nature. But in his practice, those generally had more to do with avarice and greed than with pure, out-and-out evil. And as it happened, other people’s greed had provided Riley with the means to insulate himself against evil. He’d done a damn good job of it. Until now.

What had he done? And why?

There in his study, in the blessed silence of the wee hours of morning, Riley sipped his brandy and thought about it. But the only answer he could come up with hung in his mind like a pale oval moon. Summer Robey’s face. Summer Robey’s eyes…

For the first time in many years, Riley awoke with his skin prickly and clammy, breath thick in his throat, heart pounding. Danger! Something was there-right there, surrounding him. He could hear it rustling…feel its warm, moist breath.

Already charged with adrenaline, he opened his eyes. His fingers digging deep into the arms of the chair were all that kept him from exploding out of it. There before him, inches away, a face hung like a small, oval moon.

Voices whispered hoarsely. “See? I told you he was awake.”

“Well, he is now.” A second moon appeared beside the first, this one a little farther away. “You woke him up, that’s what you did.”

“Did not.”

“Did too.”

“Uh-uh-Beatle did. See?”

At that point Riley realized that something was prodding him-very lightly-in the groin. Then on his abdomen… belly…ribs…chest. A third face appeared, a goblin face-dark, almost black, with huge, round buggy eyes. It was much smaller than the first two but so close to his own it eclipsed them both. Something cool and wet-a tongue!-slapped across Riley’s lips…then his nose. Aagh-into his nostrils!

He swiped at it, a maneuver that only seemed to excite the tongue’s owner, who apparently viewed the slap as some sort of game. Tiny feet danced an eager tattoo on his belly and chest as Riley threw up his hands in a futile attempt to defend himself. But he was simply no match for that tongue, which feinted this way and darted that way and managed to hit its targets with unerring accuracy.

Finally, somehow, he managed to sputter, “Umph-get…it…off.…of…me!” And just like that, the onslaught ceased.

Then, for a few moments, Riley simply sat-or more accurately, lay-half in and half out of his favorite chair with his legs sprawled across the ottoman, the bathrobe he’d wrapped himself in just before settling down with his brandy so few hours ago hitched up around his neck and gaping open on his chest. He lay there, breathing hard and glaring at the three small faces, which had prudently moved back a step out of range.

“We’re sorry we woke you up.” The voice came from the largest of the faces as it attempted to hide behind the perkedup ears of the smallest. It sounded apprehensive, and matched the worry crease that had dug itself in between the sky-blue eyes and childish brows. Riley realized that he’d seen eyes like those, and an almost identical pleat, before.

He cleared his throat and managed to scoot into a more-orless erect position, just as the third face thrust itself brashly forward. Nothing scared about those eyes-uh-uh, no, sir. No sign of a worry crease there.

“Beatle has to go outside,” the second voice announced. Helen-that was the child’s name. And why did that immediately make Riley think of hellion? “Mom said we have to ask you first, in case there might be a burglar.”

“Burglar alarm.” That was the other one, the boy David.

“That’s what I meant,” said Helen, scowling at her brother before turning her inquisitive gaze back to Riley. “Is there?”

“Yeah, as a matter of fact.” Riley pushed himself upward and out of the chair and walked over to a small box on the wall beside French doors that opened onto a trellis-shaded patio, rebelting his robe as he went and silently blessing the foresight that had made him put on pajama bottoms under it. Both children shuffled their way into close formation right behind him, David still clutching the dog, who was apparently named after an insect, though in Riley’s opinion it bore a closer resemblance to a praying mantis than a beetle.

“Is it real loud?” Helen inquired as Riley punched in the appropriate code and deactivated his security system.

“Sure is.”

“Can I hear it sometime?”

Riley glanced down at the small, upturned face wreathed in pinkish-blond curls, pretty as an angel’s-and at the most unangelic gleam in those china-blue eyes. “In all probability,” he muttered as he pushed open the French doors and stepped out onto the patio. Children and dog tumbled after him, hard on his heels.

The morning heat and humidity slapped him in the face and he inhaled a lungful of air that was like slightly cooled bathwater, perfumed with honeysuckle and roses. For some reason that image brought the thought of Summer to his mind. Summer Robey, that is. He wondered if she was still asleep, up there in his “guest room”; wondered even more at the small but unmistakable disappointment he’d felt when it had been the children rather than their mother who’d awakened him.

Then, remembering the indignity of that awakening, he decided he was just as glad after all that there hadn’t been a beautiful woman there to witness it.

“Where’s your mother?” He asked the question casually, checking the watch he hadn’t bothered to take off the night before. It was early yet-almost obscenely early. There was still plenty of time to go over some things-such as the ground rules for this arrangement, before he had to leave for work. “Still asleep?”

He got no answer from Helen, who was already off exploring, stalking across the lawn with her hands firmly planted on her hips, like a new landlord surveying her most recent acquisition

Meanwhile, David had put the dog down on the patio. Riley winced as the mutt ventured onto his pristine turf, promptly squatted, then moved on, one tiptoeing step at a time, ears alert, every muscle quivering.

David glanced up at Riley, still wearing that worried frown. “She said she’d be down as soon as she finds something to put on.”

Oh, Lord. The fact that his houseguests literally had nothing but the clothes on their backs had completely slipped Riley’s mind.

“Oh,” he said, when he realized he’d been scowling at the poor kid for several seconds without saying anything, thereby causing the worried look to intensify to one approaching alarm. “Well-”

But just then Helen came skipping back around the comer, making her way toward them and looking like the cat that had stumbled on a whole nest of canaries. She gave Riley a sideways look, then sidled up to her brother and tugged on his shirttail.

David squirmed away from her, then reluctantly bent a little to allow his sister to whisper in his ear. And went absolutely still. He gave a small gasp, the lines between his eyebrows vanishing as his eyes opened wide. “Really?” The word was an airless squeak. “Oh, boy…” His head snapped toward Riley as if operated by levers and springs instead of muscle and sinew. His ears were pink and his eyes glowing. Breathlessly, worshipfully, he said, “You have a pool…”

“Yeah,” Riley allowed, “I do.”

“Ask him, ask him,” Helen hissed, hopping up and down at her brother’s elbow.

The boy tried, but the words seemed to have formed a logjam in his throat. The effort it cost him to sort them out and get them moving again made him go even pinker, but in the end he managed to whisper, “Can we…please, Mr…um…”

“Riley.”

“Please, Mr. Riley, can we go swimming? We’ll be careful, I promise. We’re real good swimmers-I’m even on a team. And we won’t run on the deck, and we won’t splash…much. Can we? Please?”

“Yeah,” Helen echoed, “can we?”

Riley stared down at the two upturned faces, one flushed with hope, the other squinched up with what he could only have described as glee. Oh, Lord, he thought. These two blueeyed urchins squealing and splashing in his beautiful pool, which he’d had designed, situated and landscaped to create the most harmonious and tranquil environment possible? He hadn’t planned for such a circumstance-hadn’t considered it would ever come up. Couldn’t even imagine it.

And how could he possibly say no?

Fully aware that he was stalling for time, he folded his arms on his chest and said sternly, “Well. It appears you’ve already answered most all of my objections-except for one big one. Don’t you think you should ask your mother?”

“She’d just tell us we have to ask you,” David said quickly, as Helen’s head bobbed in rare agreement.

“Hmm…” Riley rubbed his chin. “Okay, what about suits?” He was rather pleased to have thought of that; of course all their clothing would have been burned in the fire. Naturally, buying replacements, including bathing suits, was one of the first items on his list of priorities, but right now what he needed most was to buy himself some time. Time to get used to this…invasion. Time…

“We have suits,” said David eagerly. For an exclamation point, Helen added a jubilant little hop. “They’re in our backpacks. We were gonna go swimming at Jason’s, but then stupid-head here, had to go and squirt him with grape juice-”

“Am not a stupid-head! You are!”

“-and then our house burned down.” For once even Helen had no punctuation to contribute. Both children gazed at Riley in round-eyed silence.

Seconds ticked by while Riley gazed back at them. Dammit, he didn’t know what to say. He couldn’t account for the fact that his chest suddenly felt as if it had been filled with gravel. Finally he cleared his throat. “Well, okay, then. Go put your suits on. You can swim after breakfast. But only if someone’s with you. And if your mother says it’s okay…”

But the children were already beyond earshot as they rocketed through the French doors and into the house, their gleeful shouts flung back at him like pebbles from under a spinning tire. “Mom! Mom! Mr. Riley said we can go swimming! He said we can go in his pool! Where’s my bathing suit? Mom-where’s my backpack? Mom-”

All the noise and excitement, of course, brought the dog at a dead run. She came in at warp speed, carrying a golf ball in her mouth, and skidded to a stop on the flagstones. Finding herself left behind and apparently forgotten, she stared intently for a moment or two at the closed French doors. She looked over her shoulder at Riley. Then, on paws so tiny and delicate they hardly seemed to touch the ground, she trotted over to him and dropped her trophy at his feet.

Even Riley had to admit that was pretty cute. “Well, okay, thank you very much,” he said magnanimously, and was bending down to retrieve the golf ball when, to his annoyance, the little mutt snatched it up in her jaws and pranced away with it, stopping just beyond his reach.

He swore under his breath. The dog looked at him, then opened her mouth and once more let the ball drop. It made a small “pock…pock…pock” as it bounced on the patio flagstones. The dog-Beatle-watched it until it had stopped rolling, then cocked her head and looked up at Riley. Her eyes were huge and round, and every muscle in her body seemed on hair-trigger alert, as if she were about to speak.

Riley, however, was not about to be suckered a second time. He folded his arms on his chest and growled, “Okay, what do you want, a medal?”

“A simple ‘good girl!’ would absolutely make her day,” Summer said with a soft laugh as she stepped out onto the patio.

Riley turned, a whole string of stock “good morning!” phrases in his mind. But the words seemed to hang somewhere between there and his lips, run aground on the shoals of feelings he hadn’t know were there, lurking just beneath the smooth-flowing surface of his conscious thoughts.

She did look like summer personified, all right, standing there in his old blue bathrobe-a former favorite of his, coincidentally, which had become so threadbare and worn he’d banished it some time past to one of the guest room closets. Now he wondered why. It didn’t look like a ragbag candidate, not on her. It matched her eyes. It draped softly over her body. She looked like blue sky and sunshine, fresh breezes and flowers. And her eyes had a misty look.

She said softly, “I hope you know you just made their day.”

Riley cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah?”

She nodded. “I don’t know if I mentioned it, but David was on a swim team in California. It was so good for him-he’s not a naturally active child, you know, like Helen is. It was good for his self-esteem, too. I know he’s been worried about keeping it up…keeping fit…” Her voice trailed off, and she gave herself a little shake. “Anyway, thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” Riley said absently. He was watching her as she bent down to scoop up Beatle, who had gone into raptures at her appearance, dancing on her hind legs and frantically jabbing the air with tiny front paws. He frowned as Summer endured, with eyes and lips firmly closed, the same treatment he’d gotten earlier from that lightning-quick tongue, then gave the dog’s ears a scratch and set. her back on the flagstones. He frowned because, for what may have been the first time in his adult life, he felt ill at ease with a woman.

The problem was, he couldn’t place her, not here, not in this setting. Something like running into your dentist’s receptionist in the grocery store-he couldn’t quite figure out who she was. Summer Robey in court had been one thing to him-the adversary. In his office yesterday morning she’d been something else-the prospective client. He was well-experienced in dealing with those. A little less experience with last night’s incarnation, the traumatized client, perhaps, but still a role he was reasonably comfortable in. But who in the hell was she now, standing here barefoot and sun-kissed in his old bathrobe, on a morning that smelled of honeysuckle and roses? His houseguest? Well…yes. And still his client, too-he couldn’t let himself forget that. But somehow, it seemed to him, more than either of those. As hard as it was to admit it to himself, he didn’t have the faintest idea how to treat her.

Talk about the children, he decided. That was usually safe. He cleared his throat and remarked, “Seems to me that boy worries a lot.”

The words hadn’t been meant as a criticism, Summer knew, but they pricked her heart just the same. Instead of answering, she scooped up the golf ball and tossed it onto the lawn, then watched with Riley as Beatle bounded after it, keeping her smile firmly in place. When she glanced at Riley, she saw that he hadn’t bothered to make even that effort.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, hunching her shoulders and plunging her hands deep into the pockets of the blue flannel robe-movements that felt stiff and unnatural to her as a puppet’s. “I found this in the room next to mine. I thought, since-”

“No, of course I don’t mind-you’re welcome to it.” His tone was polite but aloof, and his gaze slid only briefly toward her before returning to Beatle, who, having run down his “quarry,” was now growling and shaking it violently to insure a quick “kill.” “I’m sorry-I should have thought to find something for you last night.”

“No, no-that’s all right. We were all tired.”

Once more silence fell between them and was instantly filled with the hum of morning… and miniature canine snarls. Summer listened to it all for a few moments, then forced an unsteady laugh. “You have no idea,” she said in a low voice, “how awkward this feels.”

His eyes flicked back to her, and this time, before he could veil them with his usual grace and faultless courtesy, she caught a look of surprise-surprise, and a glimpse of something darker, something that told her how wrong her statement had been. Not only was Riley Grogan feeling the same awkwardness she was, but it was a state he abhorred. Naturally, she thought, remembering the way he’d faced her in a courtroom and in his office, with the quiet confidence that had made her think of jungle cats. The way he’d faced down the FBI man on his own turf and promptly taken charge. Riley Grogan was not a man who would ever be accustomed to feeling at a loss.

She smiled, making it a hopeful invitation to him to do the same. “Just yesterday I hired you as my attorney. And today…”

Today, she was standing barefoot on his patio in the soft, sweet-smelling morning, dressed only in one of his old bathrobes. And the man she’d envisioned last night as Cinderella’s Prince was facing her not ten feet away, not armored in elegant evening clothes, but rather endearingly rumpled and unshaven in a navy blue robe that she knew must be silk, with his hair falling over one patrician eyebrow in the sort of disarray she thought novelists must be describing when they employed the word rakish.

Poor Cinderella, she thought as she swallowed, drymouthed. What a shock it must have been for you, waking up that first morning in the Prince’s palace, to see your polished and graceful royal suitor for the first time as…a man. Did your heart pound like this? Did your mouth suddenly taste like dust?

She took a deep breath and just managed to hold on to the smile. “This seems…really, really strange.”

Yes, and what was this sudden preoccupation with Cinderella, anyway? It never had been one of her favorite stories-oh, well, except for when she was a little girl and had identified so strongly with the way she’d taken care of the animals, and those adorable little mice… But now that she was grown up-well, actually, she did have a cat who looked an awful lot like old Lucifer…

“Strange…” Riley’s voice rumbled, bringing her back to the here and now with a start. He gave a snort of irony and looked away, scrubbed a hand over his face, then shook his head. She was more than relieved when he finally faced her again, this time wearing his version of her own smile-a bit wry, more than a little bemused. “Yeah, I guess it is, at that. Well, I don’t imagine either one of us planned on this happening. Since it has…as I said last night, I don’t see we had any other choice. For right now, anyway. You’ll be safe here until we can come up with a more comfortable arrangement for you. Meanwhile-”

He was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream.