Jennifer Greene: Irresistible Stranger

She uncurled her legs and started to clean up the spoons and ice-cream container. Griff didn’t need a bat over the head. It was time for him to go.

Heaven knew what sparked the impulse to visit to begin with. The buzz of gossip coming from Jason had just nagged on him. The sound of the fire truck siren had annoyed him further. He just kept getting some stupid, uneasy feeling that Lily was alone in town and in trouble.

So-fine. He’d come and brought her ice cream and they’d made each other laugh. Everything was great. Time to pack it up. Hell, he’d lost a couple hours of the real work he did at night as it was.

Yet they both stood up at the same time. He reached for the container at the same time she extended a hand to offer it. She was still smiling at him, friendly fashion. She’d absolved him of any responsibility. She was tough, she’d implied. Prepared for trouble, she’d implied. No one needed to worry about her, she’d implied.

This close, for that millisecond, he saw a pearl of perspiration on her neck. Saw the tilt of her head, proud, stubborn. Saw the sunset in her hair.

He had to bend down almost a foot to kiss her. Didn’t know he was going to do it. He didn’t plan it, and didn’t intend to. He was holding the sticky spoons and container, so it was a no-hands kind of kiss, couldn’t be any more, couldn’t turn into more.

Yet her face tilted to accommodate the landing of his mouth, not as if she was inviting him, but as if she just instinctively moved to make a meeting of lips more natural, more easy. He tasted ice cream. He tasted the vulnerable satin of her lips.

He lifted his head almost immediately, saw the startled flush on her cheeks, thought…oh yeah, she’s tough, all right.

Tough as a rose petal.

“I’ll give you a discount on ice cream if you show up regular while you’re here.”

“As if that was an offer I could refuse.” But her eyes shied from his now. The sass was still there, the ready teasing…but she didn’t know what to make of that kiss.

As he ambled down the walk, headed home, he thought, hell times ten, neither did he.

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.”