Jennifer Greene - Irresistible Stranger

“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.