Irresistible Stranger Read online

  “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 sh
ade.

  “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.”