Jennifer Morey - The Eligible Suspect

“Were you dreading telling me who your dad was?” he asked.

“Yes.” She was still smiling.

“I always dread telling women who mine is.”

She related to him on a level that sent her guard up. She felt as though she were sliding down a slippery slope with nothing to grab a hold of.

“Growing up, I felt like Richie Rich. I love my parents and they’re good, loving people, but they’re a couple of rich snobs.”

“You watched the documentary on my parents’ mansion,” Savanna said. “Mine are, too.”

“Yeah, but your mother seemed so down to earth. That’s why I remembered it.”

“She is all about the family. But she isn’t innocent of showing off her wealth. Her parties are embarrassing sometimes.”

He chuckled. “I stopped going to the ones my parents held after I turned eighteen and left for college. I couldn’t stomach seeing them act different than when we were at home together.”

The camaraderie they shared was amazing and began to make her uneasy. “Do you see them often?”

There was that hesitation again. “Not as often as I should.”

Why not? She decided not to ask.

“You?”

She supposed it was only fair that she answer that question. “One of my mother’s favorite pastimes is surprising her children with visits. She usually gathers up as many of the other family members as she can before arriving unannounced with food and beverages. It’s either that or we all meet at the family home in Evergreen. It’s a more central location than the mansion in California.”

“It would be hard for her to surprise you here.”

“One of many amenities of this place.” She met his eyes and couldn’t look away despite the inner warnings ringing in her head.

She stood up. “I was going to make dinner when I saw your headlights.”

“Can I help?”

He must be hungry. “No. Make yourself at home.” She met his eyes a moment longer, wondering if she should have extended that much of a welcoming invitation.

Before going into the kitchen, she glanced once more out the window where the snow piled higher by the hour. How long would this man be stuck here with her? On the surface he appeared to be good and honest. But what secrets would she find he harbored...and why?

Chapter 3

Korbin wandered Savanna’s living room, glad the storm would give him some reprieve from police. The expensive furnishings were homey and inviting rather than a statement of wealth. He still reeled over the revelation of who her father was. Rarely did a woman surprise him the way Savanna did. He’d have never guessed she came from big money, and found it more than a little refreshing. He’d spent his adult life working to remove himself from that lifestyle. Savanna clearly had been successful in doing so. Although she had impeccable taste when it came to her home.

At the gas fireplace, he touched the stone that rose up to the ceiling. Polished smooth, it was a mafic metamorphic rock, probably a hornblende gneiss. When he wasn’t hacking computers, he was a voracious reader, and geology was a hobby of his.

Growing more curious about the woman who’d chosen such a rock, he investigated further, going into a turreted dining area off the living room. Bright outdoor lights illuminated heavy snowfall through the panel of tall windows.

Leaving that, smelling Savanna cooking something on the stove, he saw her standing there, head bent and concentrating on what she was doing. The flannel shirt didn’t cover her rear in those tight spandex pants, and he could tell she wasn’t wearing a bra. Her feet were bare in the warm house, toes sinking into the rug before the stove.

As his intrigue mounted, he decided it was best to control where that would lead. Instead of letting male instinct take charge, he walked down a hallway that extended between the kitchen and living room to familiarize himself with the layout of the house in case he needed an escape route. There was a large main bathroom on the left and across from there was a bedroom-size library. Bookshelves filled every wall except where two tall, narrow windows looked out to the front. A closed laptop sat on an old library table, wood chair pushed in underneath. Two brown patterned wing-backed chairs were angled in front of one bookshelf. Korbin checked out a few of the titles, taming the excitement that she loved to read as he did. Savanna had a varied taste in her fiction and had an impressive collection of nonfiction. How to make pottery. History of trains. Ancient civilizations. And several biographies, one featuring her father.

Leaving the library, lest the building interest take him over, he heard something sizzling on the stove and went into the only other room on this level. A wood bench with a pottery wheel on top was in the center of a large sunroom. Solid white French-style windows kept sound and cold outside. There was a double door next to a five-piece sea-grass seating arrangement on one side of the room. Good to know. The other side was a work area. Against the wall was an antique dresser with rows and columns of small drawers and white knobs. It looked like an old card catalog storage cabinet. On top was a metal rack from which a few strands of earrings, necklaces and bracelets hung, some beaded, some with colored and designed glass pendants. Sliding one of the drawers open, he found individual beads. Next to the cabinet was a work desk, with a partially finished necklace with a stone pendant waiting for the next impulse to create.

Savanna made jewelry along with her pottery. And that wasn’t all. Along the far wall, windows ran above a long counter, a sink with a farmhouse faucet and a stove on one end, trays of cooled candles on the other with some work space in between. The cabinets below were left open and the shelves were filled with pots, wax and wicks, oil-based dyes, scents and a variety of jars and bases. A closer look revealed materials to make soap as well.

He turned to go back to the living room and saw Savanna standing at the entrance, long dark red hair in a ponytail and those amazing eyes fringed by thick lashes. Her plump lips and petite, sloping nose made her all the more of a man magnet. She seemed uncertain as to how she felt about him invading her personal space. It sort of dimmed his sparking attraction.

“You have quite a few hobbies,” he said, covering his fascination.

She looked at him a moment longer. “Dinner is ready.”

He followed her back to the kitchen, where she’d set up sturdy paper plates on the kitchen island. She’d already dished out pork chops with sautéed fruit, red onions and banana peppers on top and some kind of salad.

Savanna opened the microwave and brought over a bowl of steaming mashed potatoes. He didn’t care if they were out of a box.

He looked up at her and smiled his thanks.

She smiled back. “I wasn’t expecting company, least of all a hungry man.”

“I wasn’t expecting to be company.” But here was as good of a place to hide as any.

While he piled potatoes onto his plate, she put a glass of water in front of him and sat next to him, putting down a bottle of sparkling water. She began slicing her pork chop and ate daintily and slowly, frequently glancing over at him and occasionally taking a swig from her bottle of water. Most people who drank that stuff put it in a glass. She drank it like a beer. He almost chuckled.

“You like living alone, don’t you?” He said it more like an observation.

She put her water down and smiled. “What gave me away?”

“You seem—” he glanced down at the bottle of water “—set in your ways. In a good way.” Was he digging himself a hole here?

“Well, when you make it to my age without getting married, it’s bound to happen.”