Reviewers love New York Times bestselling author SUSAN ANDERSEN!

Coming Undone

“Snappy and sexy…. Upbeat and fun, with a touch of danger and passion, this is a great summer read.”

- Romantic Times BOOKreviews

“Sexy, wisecracking fun…. Passionate, romantic, emotional at times and always fun.”

- Contemporary Romance Reviews

Just for Kicks

“Deft characters, smart dialogue, laugh-out-loud moments and sizzling sexual tension (you might want to read Chapter 15 twice) make this hard to put down…. Lovers of romance, passion and laughs should go all in for this one.”

- Publishers Weekly

“Andersen’s follow-up to Skintight retains the charm and wit of the previous story…. Hot, hot, hot!”

- Romantic Times BOOKreviews

Hot & Bothered

“A classic plot line receives a fresh, fun treatment…well-developed secondary characters add depth to this zesty novel, placing it a level beyond most of its competition.”

- Publishers Weekly

Skintight

“Andersen again injects magic into a story that would be clichéd in another’s hands, delivering warm, vulnerable characters in a touching yet suspenseful read.”

- Publishers Weekly, starred review

“Written with Andersen’s signature sass and sizzle, this book will appeal to fans of Sandra Hill and Rachel Gibson.”

- Booklist

Dear Reader,

I don’t know what I’d do without my girlfriends. Women forge connections that make crummy days better, breakups a tad easier and bad hair days, well, still bad hair days, but so much less dismal with a pal to make you laugh or lend you her hip new hat to disguise it. So I’m really excited to introduce the first of my new Sisterhood Diaries trilogy, because this series features three women who have been friends since the fourth grade.

Jane Kaplinski thanks heaven for her two best friends. It wasn’t easy being the only child of self-absorbed second-rate actors, and there were times growing up when only Poppy and Ava’s friendship made all the stormy exits and theatrical reunions in her household bearable.

These days Jane has her life on track, and the only thing on her mind is fulfilling the final request of a dear old lady who bequeathed the Sisterhood her estate. Jane is certainly not looking for love-she’s way too familiar with the damage done in its name. Still, if she ever does fall in love, she intends it to be with someone stable. A nice cerebral professor, maybe.

Then Devlin Kavanagh, a footloose international yachts sailor with steamy stamped all over him, comes home to help his family business during a crisis. And all Jane’s careful plans go up in flames. Who knew arguing with an irresponsible heartbreaker could be so exciting? Or that they’d generate such heat? He’s got issues of his own, of course, so this can’t possibly last.

Or can it?

It was fun making sparks fly, as well as creating Dev’s and Jane’s friends and families. As always, I hope you enjoy my efforts.

Happy reading!

Susan Andersen

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Cutting Loose
Susan Andersen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This is dedicated, with love, to a woman I’ve known

since I was ten.

To

Marilyn Hansen

Who took the time to sit on her porch steps

to talk to me when I was a kid.

And who has been a warmhearted

friend since I became an adult.

You rock.

~Susie

CONTENTS

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

EPILOGUE

PROLOGUE

Dear Diary,

Families suck. Why can’t I have a regular mom and dad?

May 12, 1990

“J ANE , J ANE, WE’RE HERE !”

Twelve-year-old Jane Kaplinski leaned out her bedroom window. Below, her friend’s chauffeur-driven car was parked at the curb in front of her middle-class house, her friends Ava and Poppy spilling out the vehicle’s back door.

“I’ll be right down,” she called, watching Poppy’s cloud of blond curls swaying in the breeze, her filmy skirts plastered against her slender legs. She’d probably bought her outfit at Kmart, but as usual she looked stylish and pulled together, while Ava, who had developed a full year and a half ahead of everyone else in their grade level, looked sort of packed into her pale green dress, its expensive workmanship tugged akilter at bust and hips. But her sleek red hair, brighter than a four-alarm fire, blazed beneath the spring sunshine’s sudden peekaboo appearance through the clouds and her dimples flashed as she grinned up at Jane.

Smoothing a hand down her own navy skirt, Jane flicked off her radio, aborting Madonna’s “Vogue” midsong. The front door banged open downstairs as she picked up her backpack and carefully closed her bedroom door behind her. She smiled as she headed for the staircase, imagining Ava’s usual insistence that they knock while Poppy countered they didn’t need an engraved invitation.

But it was her mother’s voice calling her name that froze Jane in place on the bottom step a moment later.

The suitcase in the foyer should have been her tip-off, but she’d been so focused on her outing with her best friends that she hadn’t even noticed it. Now here came her mother, ice clinking a familiar Parent rhythm in the highball glass clutched in her hand as she bore down with frenetic joy on her only child.

Crapdanghell.

“You’re back,” she said flatly as her mother gathered her to her bosom, and choked when her nose sank into Obsession-scented cleavage. She stood rigid until Dorrie loosened her grip, then edged toward the door.

“Of course I am, darling. You know I could never stay away from you. Besides-” she gave her hair a pat “-your father simply begged me to return.” Dorrie slung an arm around Jane’s shoulders and looked down at her, the aroma of Johnnie Walker Black wafting from her breath to clash with her perfume. “Look at you, all pressed and shiny! Are you going somewhere?”

Jane twisted away and took a giant step backward. “I’ve been invited to tea at Miss Wolcott’s.”

“Agnes Bell Wolcott?”

She nodded.

“My little girl is so highfalutin.” Dorrie gave her a swift once-over. “You couldn’t find something a little more colorful to wear?”

Casting a glance at her mom’s neon-hued top, she merely said, “I like this.”

“I have some nice red beads we could use to jazz it up.” She lifted a shiny brown hank of Jane’s stick-straight hair and rubbed it between her fingers. “Maybe fix up your ’do a little? You know how important staging is-if you want to look the role, you need to pay attention to the costume!”

Jane managed not to shudder. “No, thanks. I’m going for tea, not starring in one of your and Dad’s productions. Besides, didn’t you hear Ava’s car pulling up out front?”

“Did I?” Dorrie dropped the tendril and took another sip of her Johnnie Walker. “Well, yes, I suppose I did, now that you mention it. I wasn’t paying attention.”

Big surprise. Mom was usually all about Mom. Well, that or focused on the drama du jour of the Dorrie and Mike Show.

The doorbell rang and with a sigh of relief, Jane eased around her mother. “Gotta go. Me and Ava are spending the night at Poppy’s, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”

And, boy, was she grateful to be spared tonight’s theatrics when her dad discovered Mom was back. It was guaranteed to be filled with passion and fireworks, and having lived through both too many times to count she was just as happy to miss the show.

Ava and Poppy let themselves in before she could reach the door. They immediately surrounded her and, calling, “Hello, Mrs. Kaplinski, goodbye, Mrs. Kaplinski,” hustled her to the car.

Daniel, the Spencers’ chauffeur, opened the Lincoln’s back door. As Poppy dove into the backseat he tipped his neatly capped head at Jane. “Miss Kaplinski.”

She always wanted to giggle at his formality, but she gave him a grave nod in return. “Mr. Daniel.” She climbed in sedately after Poppy.

Ava plopped down next to her and Daniel closed the door.

The three friends looked at each other as the chauffeur walked around to the driver’s door, and, clutching her hair, Poppy mimed a scream. “Can you believe this?” she stage-whispered. “Tea at the Wolcott mansion!” She looked past Jane at Ava and asked in her normal register, “Why did Miss Wolcott invite us again?”

“I told you, I’m not sure.” Ava tugged on the hem of her dress to cover her pudgy thighs. “Maybe because we all talked to her at that dumb musicale thing my parents had. They were, like, so psyched that she accepted their invitation. I guess she turns down more than she accepts these days and everyone wants to have the party she comes to. But at the same time my mom says Miss Wolcott’s a genuine eccentric and she was a little nervous that she might say or do something Not Done By Our Kind.” She shrugged. “Dunno-she seemed pretty regular to me. Except maybe for her voice. My dad says it’s like a foghorn.”

“I thought she was interesting,” Jane said.

“Well, yeah, ” Poppy said. “She’s been everywhere and done everything. Can you believe that she’s been to places like Paris and Africa and even flew her own plane until a couple of years ago? Plus, she’s got that great mansion.” She bounced in her seat. “It makes your place look like a shack, Ava, and I didn’t think there was any place prettier than your house. I’m dying to see Miss Wolcott’s on the inside.”

“Me, too,” Jane agreed. “It sounds like she collects all kinds of rad stuff.”

Ava pulled a candy bar from her backpack, ripped the wrapper from one end and offered Poppy and Jane a share. When they declined, she shrugged and chomped off a large bite. “I’m just glad to get out of Cotillion class. Any excuse to avoid Buttface Cade Gallari is a good one in my book.”

Upon arriving at the three-storied mansion on the crowded western slope of Queen Anne hill they were ushered into a large parlor by an elderly woman wearing a severely styled black dress. She murmured assurances that Miss Wolcott would join them shortly and backed out of the room, rolling closed a long, ornate pocket door.

The high-ceilinged parlor was dim and cool, the windows all mantled in velvet curtains. Eclectic groups of artifacts cluttered every surface, making a space that could easily contain the entire first floor of Jane’s house seem almost cozy.

“Wow.” She turned in a slow circle, trying to take in everything at once. “Lookit all this stuff.” She edged over to a glass-fronted case and peered at the crowded display of antique beaded bags. “These are awesome!”

“How can you tell?” Ava asked. “There’s no light in here.”

“Yeah,” Poppy agreed. “Look at the size of those windows-I’d keep the curtains open all day long if I lived here. Maybe paint the walls a nice yellow to brighten things up.”

“Ladies,” a deep, distinctive voice said from behind them, and they all turned. “Thank you for coming.” In tailored camel slacks and fluid jacket, with a high-necked blouse as snowy as her carefully arranged hair, Agnes Bell Wolcott stood framed in the now partially open pocket door. A beautiful antique-looking cameo nestled in the cascading ruffle at her throat. She glanced at Poppy. “You may open the curtains if you wish.”

Without so much as a blush at being overheard, Poppy ran to do so and the high-cloud pearlescent glow of an overcast Seattle afternoon immediately brightened the southerly facing room.

“Well, now. Would you girls care to explore some of my collections or would you rather enjoy a light repast first?”

Before Jane could vote for option number one, Ava said, “Eat, please.”

Their hostess led them to another room that held an exquisitely set table in front of a marble fireplace. A three-tiered pastry stand, set squarely in its middle, held an array of beautifully presented desserts and crustless sandwiches. They sat themselves according to the little name cards at each place setting and Miss Wolcott rang for tea.

She then focused her undivided attention on them. “I imagine you’re wondering why I invited you here today.”

“We were just talking about that on the way over,” Poppy said frankly as Jane gave a polite nod and Ava murmured, “Yes, ma’am.”

“This is my way of saying thank you for your company at the Spencer musicale the other night. It’s not often young ladies will take the time to keep an old woman company, and I very much enjoyed talking to you.” She regarded them with bright-eyed interest. “You girls are very different from each other,” she observed. “I wonder if I might ask how you met?”

“We all go to Country Day,” Poppy said. Intercepting Miss Wolcott’s discreet inspection of her inexpensive clothing, she grinned. “My folks are all love, peace and joy types, but my Grandma Ingles is an alumna. She pays my tuition.”

“And I get financial aid,” Jane volunteered. Not that her parents had bothered to arrange it. If her second-grade teacher hadn’t submitted the original scholarship application Jane would still be attending public school. Nowadays she filled in the annual paperwork herself, so all her folks had to do was sign it.

“I’m just a regular student,” Ava admitted. “I don’t do anything special for tuition and Jane and Poppy are better at school than I am.” She smiled, punching dimples deep in each cheek. “Especially Jane.”

Warmth flushed Jane’s cheeks, ran sweetly through her veins. “Ava’s special in other ways, though.”

“I find it lovely to see such a close friendship between girls,” Miss Wolcott said. “You’re quite a sisterhood.”

Jane savored the word as the black-clad woman entered the room, rolling a cart that bore an elegant tea service. Miss Wolcott indicated the rectangular packages lying across the girls’ plates as her servant settled the silver teapot in front of her. “I got you a small token of my appreciation. Please open them while I pour.”

Jane carefully untied silver ribbon and peeled gold-and-silver paper from her package while Poppy ripped hers off with abandon and Ava unwrapped hers with a just-right show of attention that she’d no doubt learned in one of the Miss Manners classes she was always attending.

Jane smiled to herself. Maybe it truly wasn’t easy being a rich girl. Heaven knew Av told them so often enough.

Nestled in the paper was a deep-green leather-bound book with her name engraved in gold on the front cover. Poppy’s, she saw, was red, while Ava’s was a rich blue. Wondering how the older woman had known green was her favorite color, she opened hers, but the gilt-edged pages within were blank. She glanced at Miss Wolcott.

“I’ve kept a diary since I was your age,” the white-haired woman said in her deep basso voice. “And finding you all such interesting young women, I thought you might enjoy keeping one, as well. I find it a great place to share my secrets.”

“Awesome,” said Poppy.

Ava’s face lit up. “What a great idea.”

Looking from Miss Wolcott to the friends she’d known since the fourth grade, Jane thought of all the impressions and feelings that were constantly crowding her mind. Things weren’t always great at home, but she didn’t really like to talk about it-not even to her two best friends. Sometimes especially not to them. Poppy had great parents, so while she could and did sympathize with the way Jane’s folks were constantly slamming in and out of her house, she didn’t truly understand how shaky that could make the ground feel under a girl’s feet. And although Ava’s own home life was far from ideal, at least her parents weren’t a couple of actors who lived for the drama of constant exits and entrances.

But the idea of writing down how she felt really appealed to her. She smiled.

“Maybe we could call them the Sisterhood Diaries.”

CHAPTER ONE

I am so never wearing a thong again. Poppy swears they’re comfortable-which probably should’ve been my first clue.

“O MIGAWD , J ANE ,” Ava screeched. “Oh, my, gawd. It’s official!”

Jane pulled the phone away from her ear. Her friend’s voice had gone so high she was surprised the leashed dachshund sniffing the light standard down on First Avenue didn’t start barking. But she clapped the receiver back to her ear as excitement danced a fast jitterbug in her stomach. “Probate finally closed, then?”

“Yes, two minutes ago!” Ava laughed like an escapee from a lunatic asylum. “The Wolcott mansion is officially ours. Can you believe it? I sure miss Miss Agnes, but this is just too thrilling. Omigawd, I can barely breathe, I’m so excited. I have to call Poppy and tell her the news, too.” She laughed again. “We’ve gotta celebrate! Do you mind coming to West Seattle?”

“Lemme see.” Stretching the telephone cord as far as it would reach, she stepped out of her cramped sixth-floor office at the Seattle Metropolitan Museum to peer through the director’s open door two doors down. The coveted corner office showcased a panoramic view from Magnolia Bluff to Mount Rainier, with the Olympic Mountains rising dramatically across Elliott Bay and Puget Sound. Not that she could see more than a fraction of it from her angle, but she wasn’t trying to scope out the scenery, anyway. Traffic flow was her objective. “No, that oughtta work. The freeway looks pretty clear your way.”

“Good. Let’s meet at the Matador in an hour. Overpriced drinks are on me.”

She found herself grinning as she changed into her walking shoes and threw her heels into her tote in preparation to leaving. Swinging her butt to the happy dance song playing in her head, she freshened her lipstick, tossed the tube back in her purse and stuffed it into the tote as well.

“You look jazzed.”

Jane let out a scream. “Good God!” She slapped a hand to her racing heart and whirled to face the man in her doorway.

“Sorry.” Gordon Ives, her fellow junior curator, stepped into the room. “Didn’t mean to startle you. What was the little dance for?”

Ordinarily she wouldn’t consider telling him. She had a strict policy of keeping her private business out of the office that had worked well for her over the course of her career and saw no reason to change it now.

And yet…

Part of the inheritance was going to impact the museum, so it wasn’t as if he wouldn’t soon find out anyhow. And the plain truth was, she was excited. “I’m getting the Wolcott collections.”

He stared at her, his pale blue eyes incredulous. “As in Agnes Bell Wolcott’s collections? The Agnes Wolcott, who traveled the world wearing trousers when her generation’s women stayed at home to raise the kids and didn’t dream of stepping outside the house attired in less than dresses, gloves and hats?”

“Yeah. She didn’t wear only trousers, though. She wore her share of dresses and gowns, as well.”

“I’ve heard about her collections forever. But I thought she died.”

“She did, last March.” And grief stabbed deep for the second time today at the reminder. There was an unoccupied space in her soul that Miss Agnes used to fill and she had to draw a steadying breath. Then, perhaps because she was still off balance, she heard herself admitting, “She left them to me and two of my friends.” Along with the mansion, but Gordon didn’t need to know that as well.

“You’re kidding me! Why would she do that?”

“Because we were friends. More than that, actually-Poppy and Ava and I were probably the closest thing Miss Wolcott had to family.” Their original visit eighteen years ago had led to monthly teas and a friendship that had deepened as the fascinating, wonderful old lady took a hands-on personal interest in their lives and accomplishments, treating the three of them as if they were somehow equally as fascinating. She’d always gone the extra mile for them, making a fuss over their accomplishments in a way no one else had ever done-well, at least in her and Ava’s lives. Like the celebratory dinner she’d thrown at Canlis the evening Jane had landed her job here.

She rubbed a hand over her mouth to disguise its sudden tremble-then sternly pulled herself together again. This wasn’t the place or person in front of whom she wanted to indulge her emotions. “Anyhow,” she said briskly, “I’ll only be around in the mornings for the next two months. A couple of the collections are being donated to the museum and Marjorie’s letting me work afternoons at the Wolcott mansion to catalog them.”

“The director knew about this?”

“Yes.”

“I’m surprised no one else here heard, then.”

She looked at him in surprise. “Why would they?”

“Well, it’s just-you know. Nothing ever seems to stay a secret in this place.”

“True. But this was a private inheritance that came as a complete surprise to me and my friends. Then there were months of probate before it was finalized. It’s been all we’ve been able to do ourselves to figure out how this all works, and I only told Marjorie because one of Miss Agnes’s bequests directly affects the museum. I saw no reason to talk about it with people not involved in the matter.”

Sensing her curious co-worker was about to ask what the bequest was and perhaps even who else had received one, she looked at her utilitarian leather-banded, large-faced watch. “Oops, gotta go. I’ve got a bus to catch.” She grabbed up her tote and ushered him out of her office, closing the door behind her.

Emerging onto the street a few minutes later, she pulled on her little black cashmere sweater against the brisk wind and her sunglasses against the bright October sun. She’d only mentioned the bus to get Gordon out of her office, but after a quick mental debate she decided against going home for her car and hiked up to Marion Street to catch the 55 instead.

As the bus approached the Alaska Junction a short while later she changed back into her heels, smiling down at the leopard-skin, open-toed construction. She loved these shoes and knew this would probably be one of the last times she’d get to wear them this season. According to the KIRO weatherman on the news this morning, their sunny days were numbered.

She beat Ava and Poppy to the restaurant, but even though it was a weeknight and early yet, the Matador’s tequila bar was starting to fill up. She bought herself a club soda at the stained-glass-backed bar and staked out one of the few free tables.

She’d never been here before and spent a few minutes admiring the open-concept flow of bar into restaurant and the intricate metalwork on display. She killed another minute perusing the menu, but people-watching soon proved more compelling and she gave herself over to checking everyone out.

It was mostly a twenty-something crowd, but in the restaurant end of the room was a quartet of men who kept drawing her gaze. They ranged from late twenties to maybe forty and were holding what appeared to be an intense conversation across the room. Every now and then, however, they’d all shout with laughter, instigated for the most part, it appeared, by the redhead with the seam-threatening shoulders.

She’d never been particularly attracted to redheaded men, but this guy was something else. His hair was the dark, rich color of an Irish setter, his eyebrows blacker than crow feathers and his skin surprisingly golden instead of the creamy pale she associated with that coloring. Influenced, no doubt, by years of hanging around Ava.

Despite repeatedly redirecting her attention, it kept wandering back to him. He seemed very intent on the conversation with his friends, leaning into the table to speak, those dark brows pulled together in a frown one moment, then relaxing as he grinned and gestured animatedly the next. He talked with his hands a lot.

Big, tough, hard-looking hands with long, blunt-tipped fingers that could probably-

Jane jerked as if someone had clapped hands right in front of her face. Good God. What on earth was she doing thinking-what she was thinking-about some stranger’s hands? This was so not like her.

And wouldn’t you know he’d choose that exact minute to look across the room and catch her staring? She froze as he talked to the other guys at his table while his gaze skimmed her from the top of her head to the tips of her shoes, which he studied for a couple of heartbeats before beginning the return journey. When he reached her face once again, he tossed back a shot without taking his eyes off her, then pushed back from the table and climbed to his feet.

Was he coming over here? Ooh.

No! What was she, eighteen? She wasn’t here to troll for a date-and wouldn’t choose a bar if she had been.

“Hey, Jane, sorry I’m late. Poppy’s not here yet, I take it.”

She looked up to see Ava approaching the table and noticed that damn near every male head in the bar turned to follow her friend’s progress. The redhead across the room was no exception. He checked Ava out for a moment before glancing at Jane again. For just a sec he stood there rubbing the back of his neck. Then he hitched a wide shoulder and headed in the direction of the men’s room.

His butt was as nice as the rest of him. But giving it a final lingering glance before turning her attention to Ava, who was pulling out a chair, she noticed the telltale hesitancy in his step of a man who’s had too much to drink.

“Well, shit.” Her disappointment was fierce, which was pretty dumb considering she’d never even talked to the guy.

“What?” Ava tossed her Kate Spade clutch on the table and slid gracefully into the chair.

“Nothing.” She waved it aside. “It’s not important.”

Ava just looked at her.

“Okay, okay. I was doing the eye-flirt thing with this buff redhead over in the restaurant part of the room and-don’t turn around! For God’s sake, Ava. He went to the can, anyhow.”

“Eye flirting is good-especially for you, since you don’t do nearly enough of it. So why are you cursing?”

“He’s drunk. I didn’t realize it until I saw him walking away.”

“Aw, Janie. Not everyone who gets a little lit is a problem drinker. Sometimes it’s just a once-in-a-while kind of thing.”

“I know,” she said, partly because she did but mostly because she really didn’t want to argue tonight.

Ava knew her too well, however, and instead of letting it go, she leaned over the table, her bright hair swinging forward. Scooping it back, she tucked it behind her ear. “You’ve seen Poppy and me indulge a bit too much on occasion and you don’t hold it against us.”

“Yeah, because I know your history, and I know it’s a rare thing for either of you to drink to excess.” She gave an impatient shrug. “Look, I know I’m not completely rational on the subject and I don’t need to put some shrink’s kids through college to understand that Mom and Dad’s drinking is the reason why. By the same token, Av, you know you’re not going to change my mind. So let’s just drop it, whataya say? We’re here to celebrate.”

Deep dimples indented her friend’s cheeks. “Omigawd! Are we ever! Are you as excited as I am?”

“And then some. I’m so psyched at the thought of getting my hands on those collections I can hardly think straight. I didn’t get a chance to talk to Marjorie this afternoon, but unless something special comes up at the Met-and it’s been pretty quiet on the curator front for the past week or so-I’m hoping to dive right in and start sorting them on Monday.”

“Sorry I’m late.” Poppy arrived breathless at their table.

Ava made a rude noise. “Like we’d know how to act if you were ever on time. Where did you guys park, anyhow?” she asked as Poppy dumped her oversize handbag onto the floor and collapsed into the chair next to her. “Did you find a place on the street or park in the lot above the alley?”

“I’m in the lot,” Poppy said.

“I took the bus.”

Both her friends stared at her openmouthed, and she blinked. “What?”

“You’re crazy, you know that?” Poppy shook her head.

“Why, because I’m a public transportation kinda gal?”

“No, because bus service drops way down in the evening and it can’t be safe to hang around bus stops in the dark.”

“Oh, as opposed to walking through a dark alley to get your car, you mean? Besides, I can always call a cab. I don’t see what the big deal is. Ava said meet in an hour and I didn’t think I could make it here in time if I went home first.”

“And like Poppy’s never on time, you’re never late,” Ava said.

She shrugged. “We all have our little idiosyncrasies. Shall we talk about yours?”

“We certainly could…if I had any. But I like to leave those to my lesser sisters.” Serenely she waved over the waitress and ordered one of the tequila specials.

Poppy ordered tequila, as well, then turned to Jane. “How about you, Janie? Do you want your club soda freshened?”

“No, I think I’ll have a glass of wine-whatever the house white is,” she added to the waitress.

Her friends whooped and drummed the table and generally made a huge fuss over her unusual selection and Jane leveled a look at them when the waitress left with their order. “Contrary to popular opinion, you two, I do know how to make an exception on occasion.” Then she grinned. “And this is definitely the occasion.”

“Amen to that, sister,” Poppy agreed.

When their order arrived, Ava raised her glass. “To being new home owners.”

Jane and Poppy clinked glasses with her. “To new home owners!”

Jane took a sip of her wine, then raised her glass again. “To Miss Agnes.”

They clinked again. “To Miss Agnes!”

“Man, I miss her,” Poppy said.

“Yeah, me, too. She was like no adult I’ve ever known.”

Then Poppy raised her glass. “To you, Jane. May you speedily catalog Miss Agnes’s collections.”

“To me,” she said while Ava and Poppy exclaimed, “To Jane!” Then in a rare exhibition of uncertainty, she added, “What if I mess up the job?”

They stared at each other as the possibility of failure hovered in the air above them. Then Ava laughed, Poppy made a rude noise and Jane shook her head, her momentary nerves dissipating.

“Nah.” If there was one thing she was completely confident about it was her abilities in her chosen field.

“That reminds me.” Poppy twisted in her chair to glance around the bar. “I asked the head of Kavanagh Construction to drop by if he had the chance so you guys could meet him. And there he is!”

To Jane’s astonishment, Poppy hailed one of the men at the table she’d been watching earlier, then popped out of her chair and sashayed across the bar.

With her usual aplomb, she stooped down next to the bald guy Jane had thought was maybe forty and started talking with the confidence of a woman assured of her reception. After a brief conversation she rose to shake hands with the other three men at the table, then gestured in Jane and Ava’s direction and said something.

To Jane’s horror, not only did the bald guy get up and follow her back across the room, so did the hot redhead. The latter stumbled over an unoccupied chair a couple tables away and lurched the remaining steps to theirs, where he had to slap his fists down in order to catch his balance. He swore a blue streak beneath his breath.

“Dev!” the bald man snapped. “Cool it!”

“’Scuse my language, ladies.” The redhead gave them all a loose, sheepish smile. “I’m seriously jet-lagged.”

“More like seriously drunk,” Jane said sotto voce.

“Jane, Ava, this is Bren Kavanagh and his brother Devlin,” Poppy raised her voice to say over her. “As I told you earlier, the Kavanaghs are going to be in charge of our construction. Bren was just telling me that Devlin here will be the project manager on our remodel. He’ll oversee-”

“No.” Pushing back from the table, Jane surged to her feet, her heart slamming in outrage. It was one thing to put up with an inebriated man in a bar for a single evening. She’d be damned if she’d put up with one while she was trying to catalog the most important collection of her life.

Devlin, who’d been staring owlishly down at his knuckles where they bore into the rich wood tabletop, raised his hazel-green-eyed gaze and blinked at her. Then, apparently not liking what he saw in her expression, he narrowed his eyes, his devil-black brows snapping together over the thrust of his nose. “Say what?”

“No. It’s a pretty simple word, Mr. Kavanagh-what part don’t you understand?”

“Hey, listen-”

“No, you listen! I will not have some damn drun-Hey!” She yelped as Poppy grabbed her by the wrist and nearly jerked her off her feet.

“Excuse us,” Poppy said as she turned and strode toward the back of the bar.

Leaving Jane no choice but to follow in her wake or be dragged behind her friend like a toddler’s pull toy.

D EV WATCHED the uptight brunette being hauled from the table. “Okay, then, I’m outta here,” he said, and knuckled himself erect. Whoa. He flattened his hand back against the wooden surface. Damn room was starting to sway.

Bren’s eyes narrowed as he studied him. “Man, you are wasted. You’d better go sit down before you fall down.”

Good plan. He started to pull out the chair next to the redhead with the great ti-

“At our table, bro.”

“Oh. Yeah. Sure.” He gave the redhead with the killer bod an acknowledging nod for her sympathetic smile, then made his unsteady way back to Finn and David.

What the hell was he doing here, anyway? He should have fallen straight into bed to sleep for ten solid hours. He’d sure as hell known better than to let Bren guilt him into going out to discuss how he could take over for his brother while Bren went through treatment. Or, alternatively, having caved, he at least should have been bright enough to forgo the two shots of tequila he’d slammed back after downing a generous dram or two of Da’s treasured Redbreast. He was from good Irish stock; he could usually put away his fair share without showing the effects.

Tonight, however-well, he’d been up for more than thirty-five hours, nineteen of which had been spent traveling from Athens, Greece. He’d already been flattened with exhaustion when his brother Finn met him at the airport.

But there was no rest for the wicked as far as the Kavanaghs were concerned. When a chick came home to roost, a celebration was not merely expected, it was a given. And a get-together wasn’t a get-together unless it included all six of his brothers and sisters, their respective spouses and kids, his folks, both grandmas and his grandpa, his two uncles, four aunts and their families. Fair enough-he knew the drill.

But he should have paid less attention to Da’s whiskey and a little more to Mom’s food.

“Way to go there, Dev,” his youngest brother said with a sly grin when Devlin made it to their table. “Back in town a few hours and already you’ve managed to get sent back to the kiddie table so Bren can talk to the grown-ups.”

“You’re a riot, David, you know that?” Hooking the crook of his elbow around his brother’s neck, he staggered slightly, steadied himself against his brother’s side, then scrubbed his knuckles in David’s brown hair. “You oughtta take it down to open mic night at the Comedy Underground.” He turned him loose and dropped into the chair Bren had sat in earlier. “I gotta admit, though, that’s kind of what it feels like. Apparently my drunkenness offended one of the potential clients.”

“Can’t imagine why,” Finn said dryly.

He smiled crookedly. “Yeah, me, either. Shit.” He rubbed his fingers over lips that felt rubbery. “I didn’t realize how trashed I was until I stood up to go with Bren to their table. Had to concentrate like a son of a bitch just to walk a straight line.”

Finn looked at him, deadpan. “How’d that work for you?”

“Not so great.” He glanced over his shoulder at his oldest brother, still talking to the redhead across the room, then turned back to the others, abruptly feeling a whole lot soberer. “So how’s he doing, really?”

“He’s got his good days and his bad. I think he’d rather tell you about it himself.”

“Yeah, him being such a talkative son of a bitch so far.” He gave his brothers a look. “I’m still hacked that I didn’t even hear about it until three days ago.”

Finn gave him a bland look in return. “You’ve been a little removed from the family for the past decade, little brother. Maybe we thought you wouldn’t be interested.”

He came up out of his seat, ready to brawl.

Finn merely looked at him with calm, dark eyes, however, and Dev sat back down. Shifted his shoulders. And leveled a hard look on his brother. “I might be removed geographically, but the last time I checked I was still a Kavanagh. I’m still family.” Which, okay, conflicted the hell out of him every bit as much today as it had at nineteen. He loved the clan Kavanagh but couldn’t be around them long before he started going insane. Yet while he’d moved to get away from everyone always knowing his business, this was not the usual oh-did-you-hear-Dev’s-dating-the-O’Brien girl-I-wonder-how-May-would-work-for-the-wedding kind of crap-this was Bren, sick with cancer. It pinched like hell that nobody had bothered to pick up a phone to let him know about it. “I’m still family,” he repeated stonily.

“Yeah, yeah, Finn knows that,” David said peaceably. “But that’s something else you have to take up with Bren. It was his decision not to burden you with it when there wasn’t anything you could do to help. But now you can. If you didn’t blow it with the client, that is. So…what? She took a dislike to you because you didn’t hold your liquor tonight? Didn’t you explain you were jet-lagged?”

“’Course I did.”

“So what was that all about then?”

He thought about the brunette. She’d caught his eye from across the room. She wasn’t built like her redheaded friend or model-pretty like the blonde, and in their company he imagined she got overlooked a lot. God knew she wasn’t his usual type, but she’d been alone and looking at him and he’d found himself abruptly interested.

It had been the contradictions, he thought. She wore a prim white blouse that showed such a meager hint of lace undergarments it might as well not have bothered and a straight midcalf-length black skirt whose center slit barely made it over her knees, let alone into interesting territory. But her shoes were leopard-print high heels designed to make a man realize that the pale, smooth legs they accentuated were pretty damn sleek. And while her shiny brown hair had been piled up on her head in an old-lady bun, it had listed to one side and looked as if it were about ten seconds from coming undone and sliding down that long neck.

But it was her eyes that had been the real contradiction. He hadn’t been able to tell from across the room, but they were blue. And unlike her clothing, there wasn’t a damn thing prim about them. They’d looked at him, in fact, as if she wouldn’t mind giving him the hottest-

Shit. He shook aside the image that sprang to mind, because who the hell cared? She was obviously humorless and judgmental and he looked at David and shrugged. “Beats me, brother. I have no idea what her problem is.”

“Y OU WANNA KNOW what my problem is?” Jane wrenched her wrist free from Poppy’s grasp and reached behind her to grasp the ladies’ room counter at her back to keep from bopping her friend on her elegant chin. She might have thrown caution to the wind and taken her best shot when she was ten, but she had learned control since then.

Hell, she lived and breathed control these days.

“My problem,” she said coolly, “is one, I don’t like being manhandled by you, and two-and this is the biggie, Calloway-you’re looking to saddle me with a drunk while I’m trying to get together the most important collection I’ve ever been asked to head. You know damn well that I’m on a time crunch to get it done for the January exhibit and the last thing I need is to waste time babysitting some lush. That’s my problem.”

“You think you’re the only one with something on the line here?” Poppy thrust her nose right in Jane’s face. “This is not all about you and you damn well know it. None of us want to fall short when Miss Agnes put so much faith in us. At least you have the experience to handle your challenge. Ava has to sell the place without benefit of any sort of real estate experience and I’m responsible for the remodel. And that’s not small spuds, Kaplinski, given that I make most of my living designing menu boards!”

“Oh, please.” Jane thrust her nose right back at her. “Like you don’t know Miss A. requested you decorate because you’ve been trying to get her to redo the mansion since the first time we saw the place! How many suggestions have you given her over the years for improving the place? One million? Two? And I’m guessing she put Ava in charge of selling because she’s the one who has contacts up the wazoo with the kind of people who will be able to afford it.”

“All right, maybe you’ve got a point. But I’ve busted my butt researching and interviewing contractors, and the Kavanaghs are highly respected in their field. Not to mention that they agreed to work at twenty percent below their usual rate in exchange for the publicity that being associated with the Wolcott mansion will bring them. So get over it! Your hard-on against drinkers is not going to screw this up for Ava and me. Or you, either, when it comes to that.”

She could see that Poppy was genuinely angry, and that was a rare enough occurrence to make her swallow her ire and give a jerky nod. “Give me some damn breathing room,” she muttered and Poppy stepped back.

Jane smoothed her clothes, brushed back the strands of hair that had slid free of her bun. Then she met her friend’s eyes.

“Fine,” she said grudgingly, “he stays. But if he drinks on the job just once, I’m not accountable for my actions.”

“Fair enough.”

“I’m glad you think so. Because I’ll be expecting you to help me bury the body.”

“You wound me.” Poppy pressed a hand to her breast. “After all, what are friends for?”

CHAPTER TWO

I will do a good job of this. Miss Agnes obviously thought I could-believed all three of us could-and nothing and NO ONE is going to stop me from doing my best.

“L OOKS LIKE you’ve got your work cut out for you.”

Jane tensed, recognizing the voice. The fact that she did after only one meeting made her want to string several nasty words together. Instead she composed her expression and slowly turned.

Devlin Kavanagh, all hard-bodied male in a navy T-shirt, worn jeans and scuffed boots, lounged in the doorway to the Wolcott mansion parlor, his auburn hair gleaming beneath all the lights she’d turned on. Her heart started thundering in her chest and, propping her fists upon her hips, she slammed her mind closed against his appeal. “What do you want, Kavanagh?”

“Oh, that’s friendly.” Shoving away from the door frame, he tipped his head back, closed his eyes and with wide, sweeping movements touched first his right forefinger, then his left, then his right again to the tip of his nose. Snapping erect, he gave her a level look. “Look, Ma, I pass the sobriety test.”

“For now. It remains to be seen how long it will last, though, doesn’t it?”

Eyes narrowing to glints of golden green between dense dark lashes, he demanded, “What is your problem? I wasn’t kidding the other night when I said I was jet-lagged. Maybe I shouldn’t have knocked back those tequilas at the bar, but give me a break. I’d been up for a day and a half and they hit me harder than usual.”

Mortification suffused her. Because he was right: she was being a judgmental bitch and it wasn’t an attitude that set well with her. She didn’t know this guy-it was hardly her place to criticize his actions. “My apologies,” she said stiffly.

He made a skeptical sound. “Yeah, that sounds real sincere.”

What the hell did he want from her? Her spine ached from holding herself so rigidly against the temptation to get close to him. She didn’t understand this crazy attraction at all, but she knew one thing: she was stronger than a few stray hormones. Tipping her chin up, she looked him in the eye. “Then I apologize for that, as well. Your drinking issues are none of my business.”

“Jesus, you don’t give an inch, do you?”

“I said I was sorry!”

“In the most backhanded way I’ve ever heard. But you’re right about one thing, sister. If I had drinking issues they’d be none of your business.”

It was one thing for her to criticize herself and something else for him to do so. “Was there something you wanted, Mr. Kavanagh?”

“Dev.”

She gave him an “and?” look.

“Call me Dev. Or Devlin if you insist on being formal. Mr. Kavanagh’s my dad.”

“Okay. Is there something I can do for you, Devlin?” She stooped to fiddle with the collection of Columbia River basketry at her feet.

“I’m trying to locate updated blueprints for the mansion. A few of the rooms look off but the place is over a hundred years old and unfortunately I don’t have the originals, either. For all I know the joint is riddled with secret passages or other hidey-holes. I’d like to know what we’re dealing with before we start tearing things apart, though, because hidden spaces might actually be a selling point, which Bren tells me is your ultimate objective.”

The idea of a secret passage intrigued her, but she refused to be sidetracked. The sooner she got rid of Mr. I’m-too-sexy-for-my-boots the better. Yet instead of simply giving him a straight answer, she heard herself demand, “And you’re asking me because…?”

“You appear to be the go-to girl for all the odds and ends around here. So would you happen to know where the blueprints are?”

“No, I’m sorry.” And she truly was because the more information Kavanagh Construction had, the better the restoration was likely to turn out. And she’d love to see this old mansion fixed up the way it deserved to be. “I’m sure there’s more than one set, but I honestly don’t know where Miss Agnes kept them. All I know is that she told us Wolcott had been renovated several times. The last was when she had the interior done in 1985.”

He nodded. “The year the Wolcott diamonds were stolen by her construction foreman.”

Jane quit pretending to pay attention to the work she should be doing and rose to her feet to face Devlin squarely. “You know about that?”

“Babe.” He gave her a smile she’d bet her inheritance had gotten him into more than one woman’s silkies. “I’m a Seattle boy. Those diamonds are an urban legend in this town. Everyone knows about them.”

Well, she was a Seattle girl and-“I didn’t. Not until recently. Miss Agnes never talked about their theft or the murder of her man Henry.” She gave a shrug. “At least not before Poppy heard about it from someone and hounded her for the story.” Her lips crooked at the memory. “Poppy can be a bit of a pit bull when she gets her teeth sunk into a subject.”

He started to take a step into the room but must have noticed her stiffening, because he stopped where he was. Bracing a muscular shoulder against the doorjamb, he hooked his thumbs in his belt loops and studied her. “Henry, huh? Was that the business manager guy who was killed when the thief came back to recover the diamonds he’d hidden?”

“You’re the expert, Seattle Boy.”

“Hey, I was a kid when it all went down. I was interested in murder and mayhem but mostly fascinated by the idea of a multimillion-dollar set of jewelry still floating around somewhere.”

“Yes, well, Henry was her man for all matters. He was her butler and secretary and advisor and I think probably her lov-” Jane cut herself off, appalled.

What was she doing? She’d already established she didn’t know Devlin. And while assigning him dependency problems might have been jumping the gun a bit, there was no reason to offer him blanket trust, either. So why had she almost blurted out that she and her friends believed Henry had probably been more to Miss Agnes than a simple employee? It wasn’t as if their mentor had admitted as much to them. But the way Agnes had looked when she’d talked about him and the fact he wasn’t even supposed to have been there the night it was popularly believed that Maperton had broken in to retrieve the diamonds that had gone missing the year before, they had all sort of assumed Henry had probably been her lover as well as the man who kept her home and affairs running smoothly.

But she certainly didn’t plan on cozying up to Devlin Kavanagh with the speculation.

“Well, listen.” She gave him her best businesslike smile. “I have work to do. As I said, I really don’t know where the blueprints may be. I’m not even sure any exist. But I will keep an eye out for them.”

He looked at her for a moment, then stepped back, his hands shoved into his jeans pockets. “Thanks. I’ve got a partial set from the kitchen addition that was put on in 1909. I’ll head downtown to see if King County records has the originals or any of the updates since then.” He gave her a brief head-to-toe once-over, licked his bottom lip and nodded. “See ya around, Legs.”

Legs? She stared from the now-empty doorway to the limbs in question, encased in plain old dark Levi’s that she’d paired with a black blazer and a white shirt. She had fairly long legs, but they were certainly nothing to write home about. She’d always thought they were on the skinny side herself, which hardly qualified them as showgirl material.

Then she gave herself a mental shake and a stern directive to forget about it. But good grief. The man was a walking, talking Hazardous to Women zone. She imagined that with his confidence and those eyes and that body, females had been dropping at his feet since the day he hit puberty. Maybe even before.

Well, not her. As far she was concerned, he was Mr. Invisible from this point on. She was keeping her distance. Putting him out of her mind.

Getting her butt back to work.

Putting Miss Agnes’s collections in order so she could start researching and cataloging them was a huge undertaking, and she was happy as a pig in a puddle at the prospect of getting her hands on them. At the same time she was a little daunted by the scope of the museum bequest, and she needed to get moving on it. She had never headed an undertaking of such scale before, and she was laboring under a deadline.

“So here the clock is ticking and I’ve been spinning like that Looney Tunes Tasmanian Devil all day long wasting time just trying to figure out where to start,” she confessed to Ava when her friend dropped by to see how she was doing later that afternoon. “Then, too,” she added wryly, “I keep getting caught up in the nostalgia of so many of the pieces-upshot of which is that I haven’t actually started anywhere.”

“Jane, Jane, Jane.” Ava picked up a first-edition book, ran her fingers over the ancient leather binding, then carefully set the volume back on the shelf where she’d found it and looked up to pin Jane in place with her gaze. “It’s a no-brainer. When in doubt, start with the jewels.”

A startled laugh burst out of Jane and she gave her friend an impulsive hug. “You, Ms. Spencer, are a genius! I’ve been doing a bit of this and bit of that with all the collections, when I should be concentrating on the Met’s stuff. The jewelry is an excellent place to start, since that’s part of their haul.” Grabbing up her slim Apple notebook, she started for the stairs. “Come on. I’ve got the codes for the safe in here. Let’s go see what’s in the vault.”

I T WAS ALMOST 5:00 p.m. by the time Dev let himself back into the mansion. He probably should have called it a day and headed for the apartment his sister Maureen had rented for him in Belltown. But the skies had opened up, the place didn’t feel like home yet and he’d just as soon build a fire in the little study up on the second floor, drink his Starbucks drip and listen to the rain bouncing off the windows while he went over the information he’d gathered from the County Assessor’s office and the Department of Development and Environmental Services.

Not that it was much. Before 1936 the records that the Assessor’s Office kept for buildings had been compiled in longhand on four-by-six-inch cards with lots of revisions and cross-outs and not a single photograph. Pretty much useless, in other words.

But luckily he’d been able to get a Flexcar from the share-a-ride program he belonged to, and more helpful were the photos taken of the mansion from the late thirties on, which he’d run to ground at the Washington State Archives at Bellevue Community College. They weren’t as helpful as blueprints, but they’d at least help him get a handle on the timeline for the various so-called improvements that had been made to the Wolcott mansion.

He frowned as he took the stairs two at a time. Because whoever was responsible for the additions on this grand ole dame ought to be stuffed and mounted. He’d seen some bad do-it-yourself jobs in his day, but he’d never seen a place butchered quite as badly as this one. Few of the structural changes added over the years had been made with the original architecture in mind. And rooms that once must have been spacious and full of grace had been divided to the point they had conceded all personality.

So deep was he in thought about how to undo the damage that he’d nearly reached the study before he realized that feminine voices drifted out of it. He faltered to a stop.

Well…shit. So much for a little time to nurse his coffee in front of a fire.

He was turning away to head back to his apartment after all when the murmur of voices gave way to a woman’s deep, raucous belly laugh. The sound cut through him like a hot sword and he found himself following it back to the doorway as if he were one of those old-time cartoon characters wafting in the wake of a beckoning scent.

Since it never occurred to him that little Miss Bug Up Her Butt Kaplinski could be the woman laughing like she’d just heard a deliciously dirty joke, his gaze zeroed in on the voluptuous redhead seated in profile to him across the room. Unless Ava was a ventriloquist, however, the sound wasn’t coming from her. A slight smile curved her lips as she sat looking at her friend across the delicate oval coffee table. Dev turned his attention in that direction, as well.

Then he simply stood there feeling as if he’d just taken a roundhouse kick to the head.

Jane sat on a velvet love seat perpendicular to the crackling fire, her high-heeled ankle boots tumbled in a heap on the floor and her argyle-stocking-clad feet crossed at the ankles and propped amidst a tumble of velvet boxes and bags on the little coffee table. More neatly arranged containers surrounded her and her left hand curled over the top of an open notebook computer, preventing it from tumbling off her lap while she laughed with her head thrown back as if she’d just heard the raunchiest, most amusing story ever.

It was the first time he’d seen her with her spine fully unbent since stumbling into her table at the bar the other night. Not that he had seen her more than three times total, but on the other two occasions her posture had been rebar rigid, as if she were some secret princess wondering how the hell she’d gotten cast into this world of commoners.

As he watched her start gaining control of herself, a corner of his mouth ticked up. Because the royalty analogy wasn’t half-bad, considering she was wearing a queen’s ransom in jewels.

She’d removed her blazer and rolled up her shirt sleeves, and ropes of emeralds and pearls adorned her wrists, looped in strand after lustrous, glittering strand from her neck. A diamond tiara perched at the fore of her listing bun, a cascade of some jewel he didn’t recognize swung from her ears and each finger sported a gem-encrusted ring.

Ava was similarly decked out, but he barely spared her a second glance. Adorned with only a couple of select pieces, she had the look of someone who’d been born wearing this stuff. Jane looked like a little girl playing dress-up. And given her sober-puss personality he’d bet a position on the next America’s Cup yacht-which, okay, he didn’t actually have to wager-that she hadn’t played a lot of little-girl games even when she’d been one.

“Your turn,” she said, and Ava bent forward to pick one of the velvet containers from the table between them. The redhead’s hand suddenly halted midreach, however, and she turned her head in his direction. He had a nanosecond, as their gazes connected, to wish he’d stepped out of sight while he’d still had the chance.

Then she inclined her head and said easily, “Hey, Dev.”

Jane’s head whipped around and she yanked her feet off the table so fast that several boxes and bags tumbled to the floor. Swearing beneath her breath, she bent to pick them up and her tiara tipped over one eye. She snatched the little crown from her head as hot color flowed up her throat. A minuscule comb that still anchored the tiara on one side ripped a hank of slippery hair free and it unfurled down to the corner of her mouth.

Blowing it off her face, she snapped upright to perch with that ramrod posture on the edge of the velvet seat. Raising her chin, she met his gaze. “Devlin.”

He clicked his boot heels together and gave her a clipped bow. “Your highness.” Okay, it was a cheap shot. But when the universe handed you an opportunity on a silver platter it was practically kicking karma in the teeth to ignore it. He swallowed a grin.

“What can we do for you, Devlin?” Ava asked.

“Huh?” He pulled his gaze away from Jane’s flushed face and looked at her friend. “Oh. Nothing. I was going to build a fire and go over some photos of the mansion that I picked up at the state archives today, but I didn’t realize the room was already occupied.”

Straightening, the redhead extended an imperious hand. “Let’s see them.”

He crossed the room and handed her the manila envelope. Taking it, she patted the love seat next to her with her free hand. “Sit.”

“Stay,” Jane said in the same commanding-the-dog tone, and Dev looked at her in surprise. What the hell-did the woman have a sense of humor after all?

She returned his searching look with a bland one of her own and, rolling his shoulders, he sat down next to Ava. Nah. Probably not.

Ava started to pour the envelope’s contents into her lap, but he clamped his fingers over the opening to stay her. “Don’t dump ’em-reach in and pull them out,” he directed when she bent a queenly look of her own on him. “I’d just as soon not go to the trouble of putting them in order twice.”

She did as he bid and a soft sound of pleasure escaped her when she looked at the topmost photograph. “Oh, this is wonderful. Janie, come see what the place looked like before that awful sunroom was added.”

Somewhat to his surprise, Jane complied, setting aside her computer and rising to her feet. He felt Ava shift and once again she patted the cushion next to her. “Scoot over here,” she commanded him. “We’ll put you in the middle so we can all see.”

He felt rather than saw Jane hesitate. But perhaps that was his imagination, because a second later she lowered herself next to him.

On a really small love seat. Now, normally he’d say being sandwiched between a couple of babes on a piece of furniture built for two was a good thing. For some damn reason, however, this was making him edgy as hell. “Uh, I don’t think this love seat was designed with three people in mind.” Aware of Jane’s warmth all along his left side, he added, “Especially when one of us has such impressively curvy hips.”

Okay, that didn’t come out real suave, even though Ava did indeed have killer hips that cut down on the seating space. Still, he wasn’t prepared for both women to freeze on either side of him. And he sure as hell wasn’t prepared for the redhead to turn an expressionless face his way and demand with chill civility, “Am I taking up too much room, Devlin?”

“What? No! That’s not what I meant at all. I just-” What, genius? The truth was, he hadn’t been using his head at all, he’d simply rattled off the first excuse that popped to mind in order to get out from between the two. And now his brain, normally facile and quick around the opposite sex, was drawing a big, fat blank.

Jane’s breast flattened against his biceps as she craned around to see her friend. “He said ’impressively curvy,’ Av. Curvy. Not fat.”

He jerked in shock and stared down at her for the first time since she’d squeezed in next to him. “Of course I didn’t say fat! Jesus. No man in his right mind is going to look at her and think that. Hell, she’s built like a walking wet dream.” The blue eyes he was staring into widened and he felt like smacking himself in the head. What the fuck is the matter with you, Dev? You had more savoir faire when you were nine.

Except it appeared he’d actually said something right, because he felt Ava relax next to him even as Jane smiled slightly and said, “Damn straight she is. And it’s your shoulders, Slick, not Ava’s hips, that are taking up all the space.”

“No, it’s probably my hips.” Ava handed him the photos with a rueful smile. “I apologize, Dev. I didn’t mean to freak on you. I was a fat kid, and I still have a few issues with my weight.”

You think? With three sisters, one might reasonably imagine he had an inkling into the female mind, but he didn’t have a clue. So he merely said, “Well, you shouldn’t. There’s not a man I know who wouldn’t kill to get his hands on a body like yours.”

Yet it wasn’t Ava who commanded his awareness as the three of them pored over the photographs. It didn’t make a lick of sense, but it was Jane who kept capturing his attention.

She might have a chilly personality, but as he’d already noted, the girl pumped out some serious body heat. He felt it radiating along his entire left side and had to peel himself free for a moment to set his coffee on the table. It was hard juggling the cup and the photos in these cramped quarters anyhow, and at this point he didn’t need any additional heat from the inside, as well. He was plenty hot.

Plenty. Hot.

Shit.

He focused on Jane’s unvarnished fingernails. They were bitten to the quick. It wasn’t very big of him, but it gave him a little surge of pleasure all the same. Hah. Maybe she wasn’t as aggressively confident as she appeared.

But she had skin like a baby. Not that he could see a hell of a lot of it-she was buttoned up from stem to stern. Still, he couldn’t help but notice its soft texture when their fingers brushed as they exchanged photographs. Or how her bared forearms shone more luminous than the pearls twined around them.

He shifted uncomfortably. What the fuck was going on here? This was so not like him. He’d had more women over the years than you could shake a stick at, and he was a sailor and a carpenter, for cri’sake-he didn’t think in words like luminous.

“Well, hey.” He pried himself from between the two females and rose to his feet. “My eyes are starting to cross-I think I’m going to take off. I still haven’t caught up with the jet lag. I need to hit the sack.”

More like hit a bar and pick up a woman, he thought as he gathered his pictures, said his goodbyes and dashed through the rain to his car a few moments later after letting himself out of the mansion. Someone with cleavage, smiles and red lips. And nails long enough to drag down his back. Someone who’d look at him like he was the hottest stud to swagger down the pike, instead of a lush who was one drink away from oblivion.

Only…

Instead of heading out to one of Belltown’s night spots when he reached his apartment house, he took a shower and went to bed.

Tomorrow, though. Tomorrow night he’d go out and find himself a woman. Because clearly if he was getting all hot under the collar over uptight, disapproving little Jane Kaplinski, it had been way too long since he’d gotten laid.

CHAPTER THREE

Sex is overrated. I for one can live just fine without it.

Really.

J ANE SAT in the Wolcott parlor the next evening typing annotations into her notebook computer for a meeting with the museum director the following morning. Instead of focusing all her attention on the report, however, she found her thoughts constantly drifting to a certain buff redheaded man.

What was it about Devlin Kavanagh, anyway? This inability to concentrate whenever he popped to mind-which was far too often for comfort-was ridiculous, not to mention unprecedented.

Well, there was some precedent, she supposed. It wasn’t as if she’d never been attracted to other men before, because naturally she had.

But not like this. Never had she been drawn to a guy in such an I-gotta-have-him, out-of-control sort of way.

And that was the problem in a nutshell. Because she didn’t do out of control. Having grown up in a household that was always verging on or in the midst of some sort of drama, she’d made a firm decision about that before she was even ten years old.

What had she ever done to deserve parents who were actors? All she’d ever wanted was a nice, normal family, but had she gotten one? Oh, no. God was no doubt up in heaven slapping his knee at the thought of the Dorrie and Mike Show he’d sent her instead. It was unfair, that’s what it was. Her parents didn’t have simple differences of opinion; they had wars, crises of epic proportions. Which she almost could have lived with-had they just once not tried to drag her smack-dab into the middle of them.

So, no. She didn’t do out of control.

Which ought to make matters simpler now, right? Except somehow this didn’t feel simple. And she didn’t understand why she was having so much trouble with this particular guy.

“Crap.” She stared at her computer screen in frustration. “I have got to get a grip.”

“Well, this doesn’t bode well if the job already has you talking to yourself.”

She gave an involuntary start, then scowled at Poppy as her friend strolled into the room. “Jeez, give me a heart attack, why don’t you.” Even if it was her own damn fault for allowing a man to distract her to the point where someone could sneak up on her.

“Sorry,” Poppy said without noticeable contrition. “So is it the job that’s making you carry on conversations with yourself?”

“I wish,” she muttered. “That would be so much easier.” Then she gave herself a mental head slap. Shut up, Kaplinski. Shut up, shut up, shut up. She wasn’t ready to spill her guts, and until she was she knew better than to give Poppy even an inkling that she might have a secret.

But of course it was too late. Because as she’d told Devlin just yesterday, Poppy was a pit bull once she sank her teeth into something. Already her friend, who looked deceptively soft and pliable with her curly blond hair, big brown eyes and today’s floaty hippie-dippy-girl clothing, had Jane firmly in the crosshairs of the dreaded Calloway Evil Eye. “Spill,” she commanded.

And like a leaky old oil tanker in a pristine harbor, she did just that. “I think I’ve gone and fallen face-first in lust.”

“Ooh.” Poppy plopped down on a nearby chair and wiggled her fingers in a gimme gesture. “Tell sister everything. And don’t skimp on the details.”

“Me. In lust. That is everything. There are no details, Pop, because there’s nothing to tell.”

Poppy pursed her lips to blow a skeptical pffffft. “Please. We’re talking sexual attraction. Pounding hearts. Jingly-jangly nerve endings. Am I right?”

Oh, man. Was she ever. Jane nodded.

“Then of course there’s something to tell. When it comes to all things sexy there is always something to tell.”

“Not this time.”

Poppy gave her an indignant look. “Why the hell not?”

“Hey, just because I have certain urges doesn’t mean I have to act on them. So I haven’t-and I don’t intend to.” She saved the file she’d been working on and shut down her computer, gazing at her friend over its closing lid. “It’s a random case of lust. I plan to get over it.”

“Why would you want to?” Poppy blinked, clearly puzzled. “Lust is a good thing, right? I mean, it leads to sex, and sex makes you feel good. Not that I’d know from personal experience,” she added virtuously.

“Of course not. You’ve only been disclaiming personal experience since you first misinformed Ava and me about sex back when we were nine.” She gave her friend a lopsided smile. “The only difference being that you really were a total innocent then.”

“What do you mean, misinformed? I was always first with the true scoop, and you know it.”

“Please. Babies are made when you swap spit with a boy?”

“Oh. Yeah. That. Damn Karen Copelli’s sister. I thought for sure she was a reliable source. After all, she was an older woman.”

“I know. She must have been all of twelve, which made her a helluva lot nearer to being an honest-to-god teenager than the three of us. I gotta tell you, though, after hearing that spit thing I figured I’d probably never, ever have babies. Because, ew. ”

Poppy grinned. “Yeah, it didn’t sound real appealing, did it? Luckily, actual kissing turned out to be so much cooler.”

“Not that you’d know from personal experience.”

“Of course not,” she agreed with a serene smile, then brushed the topic aside with a long-fingered wave of her hand. “But we’re not talking about me, Jane. So don’t go changing the subject.”

“Yes, let’s. Let’s change it to something else entirely.”

“Okay then, how about this? Maybe what you’re feeling isn’t actually lust at all.”

She considered the possibility for, oh, two full seconds before giving a definitive nod. “Trust me. It’s lust.” A big, fat, flaming-hot case of it. “Or, okay, I suppose it could be heartburn.”

Her friend practiced the selective deafness that made her such a formidable meddler-with-a-mission and said with a perfectly straight face, “Maybe it was really a case of love at first sight.”

“Uh-huh. Because everyone knows that’s not a great big fairy tale, or anything.”

“Hey, it worked for my parents. And Ava’s mom and dad might be sort of benignly neglectful in the parental department, but look how long they’ve been married.”

“I always sort of assumed that was because there was too much money involved to go through the hassle of getting a divorce. But maybe not. They do seem to do a lot of stuff together.”

“See? The world is simply lousy with True Love stories. So tell me your guy’s name and maybe I can help you figure out how to handle the situation.”

“I’ve figured it out for myself, thank you very much. It’s pretty simple, really.” She gave Poppy a level look. “I’m handling it by not doing anything at all.”

“That’s a horrible game plan.”

“Yet all mine.”

“Tell me, Jane-Jane.”

“You don’t really want to go there with that name-Pop-Pop.”

“ Tell me.”

“No.”

Poppy treated her to another Calloway Evil Eye. This time, however, Jane wasn’t about to budge and she shot the Kaplinski version right back at her.

Her blond friend studied her for a moment. Then she gave a clipped nod. “Oh, all right. But you know I’ll get it out of you sooner or later. I don’t know why you don’t just save us all some trouble and tell me now.”

“I’ve never minded a little trouble.”

“In what universe, pray tell?”

She merely gave the other woman her best inscrutable smile.

“Fine.” Poppy heaved a disgruntled sigh. “Be that way. I didn’t come here to see you, anyway. Ava told me Dev has some great photos from the Washington State archives. Have you seen him today?”

Jane’s heart kicked hard, then commenced to gallop in her chest. Luckily, Poppy was busy glancing around as if she expected her question to make him magically appear and didn’t notice her expression. Good thing, because Jane was pretty sure it would render the question about who she was lusting over obsolete.

She managed to compose her features in the moment it took Poppy to turn her attention back to her. “No, I haven’t. Considering all the clomping around I’ve heard from up in the sunroom this afternoon, though, I’m gonna take a wild stab and guess he’s upstairs.”

Poppy studied her a moment. “Tell me you’re not still holding on to that ridiculous grudge because he knocked back a few too many tequilas last week.”

“Hey, I’ll have you know I’m being incredibly open-minded. Of course, it doesn’t hurt that he was sober when I saw him yesterday. Or that those footsteps I mentioned sounded fairly steady.” Or the fact she’d already decided she’d been a bit precipitous passing judgment.

“Dammit, Jane! You have got to stop this judgmental shit, because I swear if you louse this up for us-”

“Oh, get a grip, I haven’t done anything to upset your precious arrangement with Kavanagh Construction. As a matter of fact, I was the epitome of professionalism with him yesterday-and if you don’t believe me, just ask Ava.” Who luckily hadn’t been around during her afternoon conversation with Devlin. “Not that I can swear she was actually paying attention, mind you. She was pretty jazzed about those photos.”

The mention of which diverted Poppy’s attention. “Av said you saw them, too?”

“I did, and they’re every bit as great as she’s undoubtedly told you.”

“Hot damn. I’m gonna go find Devlin and see for myself.” She started toward the doorway.

“I’ll catch you later, then,” Jane said to her friend’s retreating back. “I’m going to call it a day and head home.” Where she intended to put Devlin out of her mind once and for all and buckle down to finish her report.

Poppy paused to look back over her shoulder. “Hang around for another fifteen minutes. We can go grab some dinner.”

She hesitated for a second, not sure she wanted to go another round defending her right to keep a few thoughts to herself. But visualizing her almost empty refrigerator and even sparser cupboards, she nodded. “Sounds like a plan to me.”

“Okay, then, I’ll be back in a few.” She raised her brows. “Unless you wanna come up with me?”

Jane managed not to screech, “Are you out of your freakin’ mind?” Her face even felt halfway composed when she said coolly, “No, you go ahead. We’ll probably get to eat a lot sooner if only one of us is drooling over the pics. And this will give me a chance to get a little more done on my report.”

“Okay, then. I won’t be long.”

“Hey, take your time.” She didn’t mind waiting. As long as she didn’t have to endure any face-to-face time with The Incredible Radiating Pheromone Man, she was perfectly happy to have Poppy take just as long as her little heart desired.

S HORTLY AFTER NOON the following day, Jane left the staff room at the Seattle Metropolitan Museum. She was slightly dazed, yet at the same time completely wired. Her meeting with Marjorie earlier this morning had gone well. She’d expected no less, since she had prepared for it last night with her usual overachiever obsessiveness, working from the time she got home from dinner until a case of scorched-earth eyeballs had forced her to close down her Mac shortly after midnight. Being in her own tidy little Belltown condo had helped her finally shove Mr. Too-hot-for-his-britches Kavanagh out of her mind, which in turn had allowed her to polish up her report until it shone and pore over her notes until she had all the major points in her presentation memorized.

Someone a little more laid-back might have skimped on their report, given that the only condition of Miss Agnes’s jewelry and couture-clothing-for-the-ages bequest to the Met was that Jane be the one to catalog the two collections. After all, it wasn’t as if Marjorie could yank the job out from under her and pass it along to someone with more seniority. Well, she could, of course. She was the director; she could do whatever she pleased. But she couldn’t do so and have the museum keep the collections.

The notion was moot, anyhow. Jane wasn’t laid-back. Preparation was her middle name and she simply could not, in all good conscience, give her superior a half-assed report.

The opportunity that Miss Agnes, bless her heart, had provided her wasn’t something Jane took for granted. This was going to make her instantly more visible in the art community. Everyone was going to be taking a closer look at her now, and if she handled this assignment right it would catapult her career beyond anything she might have imagined for this stage of it. She’d have a real shot at Paul Rompaul’s position as full-fledged curator when he retired next October. With all her heart she appreciated the boost this bequest had given her and she intended to repay Agnes’s faith in her abilities by doing the very best job she could.

So yes, she had been prepared, and therefore the success of her meeting with the director had not come as a major surprise.

What had knocked her socks off was the sheet cake bearing Congratulations, Jane in ruby-colored frosting that had been in the staff room at lunch today. Even more shocking had been the special announcement that Marjorie had given the staff. She’d freely credited Jane with bringing two valuable Wolcott collections to the Seattle Metropolitan Museum. The genuine enthusiasm that the director displayed as she’d shared Jane’s newly revised schedule for the next couple of months in order to get them ready for the January exhibit had blown her away.

The last thing she’d been prepared for was public kudos. In fact, she’d half expected the change in her status to fly under the radar for as long as the powers that be could manage it, given the way it had been forced upon them.

Want these prestigious collections? Then be prepared to take the junior curator along with it was the general theme of Agnes’s bequest.

Along with Marjorie’s acknowledgment, however, had come her expectations for this exhibit. She’d talked about how much the museum was counting on it to generate needed revenue during the traditionally slow postholiday period in which they’d slated the show. So now Jane was feeling downright twitchy and even more anxious than she’d already been. She had to find the couture clothing, pronto, and get a move on.

“Jane, Jane! Wait up!” a voice commanded from behind her.

She hesitated. Today’s events had both rattled and exhilarated her, making her so jittery that simply standing still was very nearly impossible. Still, she forced herself to do exactly that as she waited for her colleague Gordon Ives to catch up.

Gritting her teeth at the delay, she forced a smile for Gordon that probably wouldn’t fool a toddler. Hell, she doubtless looked like a toddler doing the I-gotta-go dance in front of a closed bathroom door. How embarrassing was that?

Well, too bad. She was fighting the urge to move, move, move as hard as she could. Smiling brilliantly at the same time was simply beyond her.

She tried all the same for a more genuine smile as Gordon walked up to her. Memories of Marjorie’s graciousness helped her produce one.

“I’ve said it before, girl, but I’ll say it again.” Gordon greeted her with a big white-veneered smile of his own. “Congratulations! What a huge job you have ahead of you.”

“No kidding. The past couple days I’ve been finding out exactly how immense it’s going to be.” Which contributed to both her edginess and her elation. “I’m a little concerned about the deadline the director’s put me on. I’m going to have to be really focused to get everything done in that time frame.”

“Focus is your claim to fame.” He waved her worries aside like so many pesky flies. “Obviously Marjorie has no doubt that you can do the job and do it both well and on time. But if there’s anything I can do-”

She made a noncommittal noise, because the truth be told, if she needed help she’d probably enlist Poppy. Her friend might not be as knowledgeable as Gordon, but they worked well together. Not to mention that with the holidays approaching, Poppy could probably use a little extra cash to round out what she made with her mishmash of jobs.

Besides, as much as she hated to admit it, there was something about Gordon that she didn’t quite trust. There was no good reason for it-he’d never done anything to her. It was probably nothing more than his wanna-be-your-best-friend occasional toadying combined with his predilection for narcissistic metrosexual grooming. Because, really, who could take a guy seriously who spent more on manicures and moisturizers in six weeks than she did in a year? She couldn’t help it; she preferred men who had a firm grasp on their identity-and were perhaps just the slightest bit rough around the edges.

Like a certain construction foreman…

Whoops. Didn’t want to go there. “Thank you for the good wishes. And if I decide I need help I’ll definitely keep you in mind.” She started edging away.

“Are you on your way over to the Wolcott mansion now?” he asked, taking a step forward for her every step back.

“Yes.” She quit trying to be subtle about it and simply started walking down the corridor. The nerves zinging in her arms and legs immediately quieted, but she had to smooth out a frown drawing her eyebrows together when Gordon fell into step beside her. She picked up her pace slightly.

He matched his stride to hers. “If you want, I could stop by after work sometime and give you a hand.”

She was a bit startled by the suggestion, but said carefully, “Thank you, Gordon, I appreciate the offer. But I’m still in the sorting phase and kind of want to-” Damn. How did she say this without sounding like little Miss Greedy-guts?

“Stamp your brand all over it before you let anyone else touch it?”

“Yes! Exactly.” She looked at him in a new light. And felt a little guilty for her heretofore less-than-flattering opinion of him. Guy grooming products and facials be damned, he obviously had more depth to him than she’d given him credit for. “I will definitely keep your offer in mind, though. Right now there’s just so much stuff in the mansion that I haven’t even found the Met’s collections yet.”

“Huh. I’d say poor baby, but the truth is, I’m pea-green with envy.” He gave her a crooked smile. “And green is so not my color.”

She laughed. “Not exactly a big candidate for sympathy, am I? Man, I still can’t believe that I get to be in charge of all this, myself. Speaking of which-” she accelerated her pace to a full-out stride “-if I want to start whittling away at my workload I’d better get to it.”

“All right then.” He slowed down as she sped up. “Good luck. And don’t forget I’m available if you ever need any help.”

“I will.” She waved a hand, but didn’t slow down as she hit the door to the stairs. “Thanks.” Feeling kind of warm and fuzzy toward him at the moment, she truly meant it.

By the time she’d pushed through the main museum doors into the blustery fall afternoon a few minutes later, however, her mind was already on other matters. Anticipation began bubbling through her veins.

She could hardly wait to get to work.

CHAPTER FOUR

Holy crap, the Kavanagh family sounds huge . I can’t wrap my mind around what it must be like to grow up with a mess of brothers and sisters. Bet it was nice, though.

“D AMN ,” D EV MUTTERED as he opened the kitchen door to the Wolcott mansion two evenings later and stepped inside to punch the code into the alarm system. “I see mistake written all over this in big red letters.” Not for the first time he noted the system’s advanced age, but shrugged it aside. Its obsolescence was the Estrogen Posse’s problem. Right now, he had one of his own.

“Oh, quit your bitching,” his problem, in the form of his sister Hannah, ordered. Entering the kitchen hard on his heels, she snapped the back of his head with her fingers.

“Ow! Shit.”

“If you’d bothered to stay around for longer than a week at a pop during any of your less-than-frequent visits, you’d know I check out every work site at least once during the project.”

Rubbing the spot she’d smacked, he glared at her. “You’re just as full of crap as ever, I see. Try to get your facts straight. I come home a minimum of once a year, which is a lot more often than you come to see me. And except for last year when I had to get back to crew a boat to Morocco I always stick around for longer than a week.” Before heading back home happy to have seen his family, but feeling vaguely disconnected from them, as well.

“Haven’t spent a helluva lot of that time at the work sites, though, have you?” Then she ignored him to look around the kitchen. “Man, I’ve lost count of the number of times this mansion was discussed around the dinner table. It’s kind of like suddenly coming face-to-face with Elvis.”

“Except this legend actually has the potential to be brought back to life.”

She inspected the worn early-twentieth-century black-and-white harlequin tiles on the floor and the seventies-era avocado appliances. “It’s definitely going to need work to revive it, though.” She headed for the doorway leading into the rest of the house.

“Hey, wait a minute.” He charged after her, only to discover her disappearing into the dining room across the hall. She was already thumbing notes into her BlackBerry as he entered the room behind her.

“Whoever put that scalloping around the windows ought to be shot,” she said. “This place has beautiful old bones and they’ve dressed it up in tacky froufrous.”

“The entire house is full of crap like that,” he agreed.

“May I help you?” inquired a voice behind them, in a tone that suggested they better have a damn good reason for being here.

Swallowing a curse, Dev slowly turned, already knowing who he’d see.

Sure enough, Jane stood in the doorway, clad in a pair of black leggings beneath a short, high-necked, black-and-brown tunic. That in turn was layered beneath a skinny black sweater with its sleeves shoved up and its tails looped into a loose knot beneath her round little A cups.

Dark, concealing clothing seemed to be her signature-except on her feet again. This time she wore a pair of yellow velvet slippers sporting extravagant puffs of marabou. They were incongruously cheerful-the frown furrowing her slender brows looked more at home than they did.

“Oh. It’s you,” she said without enthusiasm when she recognized him. “I heard voices and…”

Cutting herself off, she shook her head. “Never mind.” She glanced at Hannah, who hadn’t stepped foot outside the door a day in her life since she turned thirteen without her makeup and clothing set on stun, then looked back at him again. Her frown, which had started to lessen, settled firmly back in place. “For heaven’s sake. Are you bringing your girlfriends here now?”

“Hell, yeah.” Pissed that she always jumped to the worst possible conclusion when it came to him, he crossed the space separating them and didn’t stop until they stood toe-to-toe. Without her usual high heels she wasn’t nearly as tall as he’d believed her to be.

The observation had squat to do with the topic at hand, however, and he shoved it aside. “Han here is hot for old houses, so I’m just giving her a quick tour of the first floor to warm her up before we go upstairs to pull the shades down and rip off a piece. You got a problem with that, Legs?”

“In my house, on my dollar?” Eyes glowing bluer than natural-gas-fed flames, she held her ground, not the least bit intimidated by his proximity. “Yes. I guess you could say I have a problem. And that’s aside from your date’s poor taste in men.”

Hannah laughed. “She’s got you there, boyo.” Stepping forward, she thrust her hand out at Jane, forcing him to back up. “I’m Hannah. Dev’s sister.”

“Meet Jane Kaplinski, Han,” he said sardonically. “Resident conclusion jumper.”

“Oh.” Hot color flowed beneath Jane’s fine-grained skin. “Oh, crap. My apologies.”

He noticed her request for forgiveness was directed solely at Hannah, whom Jane checked out thoroughly as they shook hands.

“You don’t look anything alike,” she said. As if that was a defensible excuse.

“I know,” Hannah said cheerfully, tossing back her dark wavy hair. “Finn and Bren and Maureen and I take after Da’s side of the family. David and Dev take after Mom’s, except David got light brown hair. Kate’s a blend. She has Dev’s coloring but looks more like…well, no one, really. Da says the postman, but he’s just pulling our legs.”

“We think,” he added.

Jane, as usual, missed the humor entirely. She stared at Hannah unblinkingly. “You have six siblings?”

“She can count,” he marveled.

Hannah jabbed her elbow into his ribs. “Yep. What can I say? We’re both Irish and Catholic. That’s pretty well synonymous with big family.”

“I’m an only child,” Jane replied. “And my two best friends are, as well, so I can’t even imagine growing up with that many brothers and sisters. Wow.” She glanced back and forth between the two of them. “That must have been…”

When she hesitated as if at a loss for words, Hannah supplied, “Kinda loud, kinda crazy.”

“Completely lacking in privacy,” he contributed. “Not to mention intrusive as hell.” He hadn’t dropped out of the UDub and set sail for Europe at the tender age of nineteen for nothing.

“Oh, no.” Jane shook her head. “I was going to say nice. It must have been really comforting-you know?-to have all that built-in support.”

He snorted. “Boy, you are an only child if you believe that.” He for one had been tired of all the noise and drama of big-family life, where everyone and his brother knew his business. He’d just wanted to go somewhere where he would be judged strictly on his own merits and not compared for once in his life to his brothers or to his family as a whole.

“Shut up, Dev.” Hannah narrowed her eyes at him. “You might wanna note you’re the only one who ran away from home. The rest of us actually do find family support comforting.”

“Ran away, Han? You might want to dial down the melodrama a notch.” He hadn’t run; he’d judiciously removed himself from a situation that had a bad habit of making him feel constantly at odds with his family.

Hannah made a derisive you-are-so-full-of-it-I’m-amazed-your-eyes-aren’t-brown noise in her throat.

Refusing to get into this with her again, he shrugged and leveled his attention on Jane. Hell, she’d brought the subject up in the first place and was probably just jerking their chain with that whole must be nice bullshit-no doubt just to piss him off.

Except…

She appeared totally sincere. In fact she looked all sort of soft and wistful-eyed, as if they lived some sort of perfect existence. And he didn’t like it one damn bit.

The funny tug it caused deep down in his gut bugged the hell out of him.

“What are you looking at?” she demanded.

Her irritated tone chopped the funny feeling in two and, with a mental Thank you, sweetheart, he shot her his best Son of Satan grin. “You, short stuff. I was just thinking you look like a little girl with her nose pressed up against the candy-store window.”

“I look nothing of the sort!” She took an incensed step toward him, her chin shooting up into what he was starting to consider her default mode. As usual, the sudden movement caused a hank of shiny hair to slide free of her bun and slither down her throat.

And another of those odd feelings hit him, this time making his palms itch.

His innate common sense blown to hell, he took a Mother-May-I-worthy giant step closer, bringing them once more mere inches from each other. Whipping a hand out, he liberated the two combs still holding together the remainder of her crooked topknot.

“Hey!” She made a grab for them as her hair tumbled free. “Give those back!”

Dev tossed the combs into the largest of a group of leather bowls sitting on a nearby sideboard, then grasped her forearm to prevent her from going after them when she started to muscle her way past him. Why, he couldn’t say, considering he already regretted the impulse that had caused him to muss her up. The dark waterfall of hair slinking over one eye and draping her shoulders gave her an entirely different look.

One he had a feeling he’d be better off not seeing.

“Why the hell do you even bother putting your hair up?” he demanded. “It’s not like it ever stays there-every damn time I’ve seen it, it’s been half-down.”

“What are you, a closet hairdresser?” She tugged against his light grasp. “Let go of me.”

His fingers tightened. “Make m-”

“O-kay,” Hannah said. “I think it’s time you and I took off, Dev. Jane, it was nice meeting you. Love your yellow slippers, by the way. They’re très sexy.”

Jane blinked as if she’d forgotten Hannah was even there, then glanced down at her feet. “Oh, no, they’re just-” Chopping off her protest, she cleared her throat. “That is, thank you. They’re more comfortable than my heels for all the backing and forthing I do here.”

“Not to mention gorgeous. Well, listen, I hope to see you again. I’d also like to come back another time to inspect the property. I try to do that with every Kavanagh job in order to get an idea of the scope of the work for scheduling, and also to add the female perspective. Most of my brothers,” she said, shooting him a look, “seem to appreciate that. Next time, however, I’ll make an appointment for a time when I won’t be inconveniencing you.”

Which is exactly what I tried to tell you to do in the first place. Dev turned Jane loose, wondering what the hell had just happened. Jesus. He didn’t go around grabbing women. And had he really said make me? He rubbed his palm down the outer seam of his jeans, trying to erase the sensation of her soft skin imprinted on it. “Maybe during one of the mornings,” he muttered. “She’s not around then.”

Jane didn’t so much as glance in his direction. “ You’re welcome anytime,” she told his sister. “Just don’t bring him with you.”

“Listen, lady-” He took a hot step forward, self-recrimination suddenly nothing but a mushroom cloud on the horizon. Don’t bring him, his ass. He worked here.

Hannah wrapped both hands around his left biceps and tugged him toward the door. “See you around, Jane.”

A damp gust of wind slapped him in the face as his sister hauled him through the kitchen door into the blustery evening. He pulled free of her grasp, looking at her warily. “I’m good. I’m not going to pop her or anything.”

“You hitting her never even entered my mind.” Stabbing the remote keyless entry button to unlock her car, Hannah stalked around its hood. “Man, I have seen some crazy excuses for foreplay in my life, but you two take the cake.”

He froze in the midst of reaching for the passenger door handle to stare at her across the roof. “What?”

“Oh, that’s good. You oughtta be an actor.” She shook her head at him. “Please. I almost called 911. If there’d been any more heat pumping off the two of you the house would have burned to the ground.”

A short, sharp laugh escaped him. “And you’re supposed to be the smart one in the family.”

“No, that would be Kate.”

Ignoring her reply, he yanked the door open and climbed in, then glared at his sister across the console when she followed suit. “Don’t confuse heat with irritation, sis. Jane Kaplinski is a cranky little crow who hasn’t hesitated to think the worst of me from the instant we first clapped eyes on each other.” Well, not from the very first instant, he admitted to himself, recalling the look in her eyes when their gazes had originally connected.

Now that had been heat.

“Yeah, I heard you got clumsy drunk.” She started the engine and pulled out of the driveway.

“Of course you did. No such thing as a secret in the Clan Kavanagh.”

“Never has been, never will be,” she agreed cheerfully.

He had given up defending his actions years ago, yet he found himself twisting in his seat now to face his sister. He’d always been closest to her and Finn, both in age and interests. “I was seriously jet-lagged that night, Han. Then Da poured me a couple of strong ones at my homecoming, and the drinks I had on top of them at the bar with Bren and David and Finn hit me harder than usual.”

“That seems to be the general consensus, all right.”

He laughed without humor. “And you wonder why I’ve spent my adult life on the other side of the world. Don’t you ever get tired of everyone in the family knowing every move you make, practically every thought you think?”

“No.” Braking at the stop sign to Queen Anne Avenue, she reached over to pinch his cheek. “Ach, but then I’m a tough little hazelnut. Our Devlin, now, he’s a sensitive boyo.”

He couldn’t help it, he grinned. “You ever let Aunt Eileen catch you imitating her?”

“Do I strike you as the suicidal type?” She looked both ways before turning left down the steep hill. Then she shot him a glance that was wiped free of humor. “This is a huge opportunity for us, Dev. Don’t screw it up.”

“There’s nothing between me and Kaplinski to screw it up with!”

She shot him a disbelieving look.

“There isn’t,” he insisted. “But even if there were, I wouldn’t do anything to mess up your business opportunity, okay?”

“It’s your business too, you know.”

No, it wasn’t. The minute Bren’s cancer went into remission and he was strong enough to return to work Dev had every intention of heading back to the Continent. He’d made a life for himself there crewing sailboats and picking up construction work in his downtime-which was increasingly rare these days.

“Anyhow,” she added when he didn’t comment aloud, “I guess deep down I already know you’d never jeopardize our livelihood.”

He pulled a face. “Sure you do.”

“No, really. I may no longer know you the way I used to, but the Dev I got into trouble with back in the day would never deliberately do anything to mess up his family-no matter how crazy they drive him.”

They crossed Denny Way a while later, leaving the Queen Anne district behind and entering Belltown. She let him out on Second and he crossed the street to the Noodle Ranch, where he ordered Spicy Basil stir-fry to go and a beer to stay. Taking his drink to a nearby table, he sipped from the bottle and thumbed through a copy of The Stranger while he waited for his order. The personals in the alternative weekly newspaper were always good for killing some time.

His mind, however, was apparently more interested in wandering back to what Hannah had said about him and Jane than reading about nerdy punk girls searching for passionate dominates. She saw their constant clashing as foreplay? That was just plain nuts, right? Maybe his sister had taken to snorting illegal substances in his absence.

Yeah, right. He took a deep pull on his beer. That being such a likely possibility and all.

Still. It was no more absurd than her theory.

“One order of Spicy Basil to go,” the counterman called out.

He rose to his feet with alacrity, more than happy to shitcan the entire line of thinking. He reached the counter just as a woman wearing a black coat, leggings and high-heeled boots did, and they both reached for the to-go bag at the same time. His hand slid across hers. And he felt…

Warm skin.

Smelled…

Scented hair.

Aw, shit. The scent might not have implanted itself already in his mind, but he knew that skin.

Jane looked over her shoulder at him, and if he hadn’t felt so blindsided himself he might have smiled at the perfectly round O her lips formed when she saw who was wrestling her for the Spicy Basil. Then she narrowed her eyes, giving him her Psycho Bitch From Hell look.

“Oh, for God’s sake.” She slowly pivoted to face him head-on and her hair, which she still wore down, gleamed beneath the restaurant’s lights as it spilled over her coat collar. “Are you following me now?” She tugged on the take-out bag beneath their hands.

“Don’t flatter yourself, babe.” He didn’t relinquish his hold on her or the sack. “I was here first, and those are my noodles you’ve got your greedy little fingers all over.”

“You wish. I live in this area-it makes sense for me to be here.”

“Yeah? Well, so do I. So I guess you must be following me.”

His thumb stroked her hand. Damn, she was touchable.

He grimaced. Where the hell did this shit keep coming from? She was bad-tempered and judgmental and except for unexpectedly hot taste in shoes she didn’t know jack about dressing to entice. So there was no way in hell she should be getting him all steamed under the collar.

Yet he couldn’t keep pretending that she wasn’t doing exactly that. Lie to the Feds, lie to your sister if you had to, but don’t lie to yourself. Truth was truth, and the big reality here was he would do silky-skinned Ms. Kaplinski in a heartbeat. She wasn’t even close to his usual type and he didn’t understand the attraction, but there it was.

Hell, maybe it was nothing more than the fact he was a guy. Men were a species who saw an opportunity for sex everyplace they looked. So shoot ’em.

She shivered and her hand clenched beneath his. “They aren’t your noodles, but take-”

“Uh, actually, ma’am,” the counter clerk interjected, “they are his. Yours will be up in a minute.”

“Oh.” Embarrassment scudded across her blue eyes, but she promptly hid it behind a bland expression as she let go of the bag. “Then I apologize.” Hot color scorching her cheeks, she said in a voice so low, he had to bend his head closer to hear, “I seem to keep putting myself in positions that make it necessary to say that.” Shaking her head, she about-faced on a three-inch heel and strode away.

Okay, he thought as he dug out his wallet. The big problem here wasn’t that he was attracted to her despite the fact she had no discernible sense of humor and apparently didn’t believe in dressing to display the goods. It was that he had just finished making his sister a promise not to screw up the sweet deal Kavanagh had made with Jane and her friends. Hannah would shoot him, and he had a feeling his Guy Chromosome defense wouldn’t carry much weight with her.

Not to mention his word was gold. That was probably the first lesson his father had ever taught him, and it had stuck like gorilla glue. A man’s only as good as his word, Dev. It was practically the Kavanagh credo.

He paid for his noodles, hesitated a second, then walked over to where Jane had buried her nose in a copy of the Seattle Weekly . “Can we talk a minute?” he asked and seated himself at her table when she ignored him.

She rattled the paper, the go away subtext clear.

He sat without speaking and waited.

Heaving a big sigh, she lowered the weekly. Pink still tinged her cheekbones as she met his gaze. Then she sighed again, only this time it was little more than a soft exhalation.

“Okay, here goes,” she said. “I truly am sorry. For a lot of things. I’ve been throwing around wild accusations like confetti and making way too many half-assed comments. I know you’ll find this hard to believe, but I’m not usually like this. And I’m going to stop it. Starting now.”

Oh, low blow. If he didn’t get to see her naked he’d really prefer to hang on to the illusion that she was an unlikeable bitch. But since he’d come over here in the first place to show her he could be professional, he squared his shoulders.

“I’ve heard stuff coming out of my mouth that’s not familiar to me, either. Things my mother would’ve had me by the ear to wash my mouth out with soap if she’d heard. So here’s the deal. I propose a truce.”

She studied him for a moment, then nodded. “I’m for that. We’ve got to work together-are going to be working together for the next several months. And being angry all the time is exhausting.” She thrust her hand across the table at him.

Reluctantly, he met it halfway, knowing damn well that touching her would only fuel his awareness. She kept their handshake mercifully brief, however, and he discovered that she had a good, strong grip.

Discovered, too, that instead of swamping him with the undercurrent of sexuality that seemed to run like a 220 volt between them, this actually felt more like what it was intended to be: the sealing of a pact. He sat back in his chair. “So you like Spicy Basil stir-fry, too, huh? I was going to take mine home, but you want to eat here? We can get to know each other a little better.”

She appeared a little less than certain, but said, “I guess.”

What the hell. Maybe this wouldn’t turn out so awkward after all.

CHAPTER FIVE

Turns out Devlin isn’t a complete ass after all. Why does that seem worse somehow?

O KAY, THIS IS AWKWARD . Jane didn’t know about Devlin, but the laden silence as they removed their cartons from the take-home sacks and peeled wooden chopsticks out of their paper wrappings was uncomfortable as all get-out to her. She snapped the joint connecting the two sticks and opened her container, taking a peek at him. God knew she didn’t know what to say and he either suffered from the same problem or felt no need to fill the void, because several long, prickly minutes passed without either of them uttering a word.

She ate a few bites to give herself a reason for not talking. But the weighted silence gnawed at her. “Great dish, huh?”

Oh, brilliant, Kaplinski. She wanted to smack herself. Could she be more inane?

Devlin surprised her with a grin, however. “Yeah,” he agreed. “I love this stuff. I could eat it three times a day, four days running.” Shifting in his chair, he was all muscle in motion, his wide shoulders straining the seams of his black tee and the unbuttoned green-and-black flannel shirt he wore over it, the sinews of his forearms beneath his rolled-up sleeves bunching and releasing with the subtlest movement of his wrists. He settled in his seat and scooped up a couple more bites of his dinner.

A moment later he planted his chopsticks in his still half-full container and dabbed his mouth with a paper napkin. Then he caught her in the crosshairs of a seriously intense hazel-eyed gaze. “It must be pretty cool working in a museum. I’m sort of a museum junkie myself.”

A snort escaped her. “Sure you are.” Immediately, she wished the words unspoken. Oh, nicely done, Jane. Way to keep the truce going. But, c’mon. One look at that build, those reckless eyes, and she was pretty sure most people would excuse her for doubting museums were the kind of entertainment to draw a guy like this.

Particularly if they were the female half of the human race.

“No, I’m serious. It started years ago when I went to the Viking Ship Museum in Oslo.” Sliding his carton to one side and the salt and pepper shakers to the other, he leaned on his forearms, his long fingers splayed out on the tabletop and his eyes alight. “Have you ever been there? Seen the Gokstad and Oseberg ships?”

She shook her head, fascinated by the enthusiasm in his voice and the way his dark eyes lit up with it.

“They’re clinker-built oak Viking boats that were found in burial mounds on farms in Norway in the late eighteen and early nineteen hundreds. Both were built in the ninth century. Eight hundred thirty-something and eight-ninety I think it was, which just blows me away. If I could have, I’d have crawled over those babies from stem to stern to check out their construction up close. Because they may be more than eleven hundred years old, Jane, but the craftsmanship still rocks.”

He pushed back, shooting her a lightning-quick self-deprecating smile. “Anyhow, for a while after I discovered them, it was all boat museums all the time. Then I started branching out. I admit the kind of museums that mostly host paintings aren’t my thing.” The brawny shoulders she couldn’t seem to peel her gaze away from lifted in a careless shrug beneath worn flannel. “But show me stuff made by some highly skilled craftsman, and I’m all over it. Those ancient boats? Most of them were built by guys who had to make their own tools first. And the end product is a ship that’s still standing today. How cool is that?”

“Very cool.”

“Yeah. Now that’s an artist.” Pulling his container back in front of him, he scooped up another bite, chowed it down, then gave her a sheepish smile. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to go on. So, how about you? I’m guessing those painting-type museums are right up your alley, huh?”

“Oh, I like paintings well enough, especially if it’s a Renoir or something by one of the Pre-Raphaelite artists. But my true love will always be iconic objets d’art. ” Seeing his eyes go blank, she laughed. “Stuff,” she clarified. “Along the lines of what I’m cataloging now. Like you, I get off on the artistry of the craftsmen. Even the mass-produced items were made better back in the day.”

He was staring at her mouth with a sudden intentness, the chopsticks he’d been bringing to his lips suspended midair, and she faltered for a moment, wondering if a piece of bok choy had lodged between her teeth. Then she gave herself a mental shake. Short of fleeing to the restroom to check, there wasn’t a lot she could do about it if it had. So, drawing a quiet breath, she soldiered on.

“That’s how I ended up at the Met,” she said, and was relieved when he lifted his gaze and resumed eating. “It’s definitely my kind of museum. We host our share of shows featuring paintings, but most of our permanent collection falls under the history and culture umbrella, which tends to reflect areas of the human experience. Of our eleven permanent exhibits, only two are paintings. And if I ever get my act together and sort out all Miss Agnes’s stuff I’ll be adding exhibits twelve and thirteen to the nonpainting side.”

“I’ve never been to the Metropolitan. But it sounds more like a Smithsonian-type museum or something?”

“We definitely lean more in that direction than we do, say, toward the Louvre.” She grinned again. “Which, I gotta be honest, I’d kill to see in person.”

He shoved back from the table suddenly, his chair screeching across the linoleum as he surged to his feet. “I’m gonna go get a glass of water. You want a refill on your Diet Coke?”

Smile fading, she blinked up at him, thrown by the abruptness of his action. “Um, okay. Sure.” She handed him her glass but her brows knit over her nose as she watched him weave through the crowded tables and chairs. Am I boring you, bub?

Okay, so that wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. Not that anybody wanted to be considered boring, but, really, the guy was turning out to be not nearly the ass she’d expected him to be-and, face it, when she’d agreed to let him join her for dinner she had sort of been counting on that aspect of his personality to help keep him at arm’s length. Because she couldn’t lie; he seriously lit her fire.

She sure didn’t need that. It was atypical as hell, and she didn’t get it. But she was nobody’s fool-and while having the hots for a man might be a rare phenomenon for her, she couldn’t ignore how she felt.

She merely needed to find a way to work around it.

Past it.

Through it.

Whatever it took to put it behind her. It was just…

She hadn’t been prepared for him to be so likeable, hadn’t anticipated they might actually have anything in common. And learning differently was sure not helping to tamp down this fire.

She snapped erect. So, what the hey-all the more reason to embrace your blandness in his eyes. Hey, it wouldn’t be the first time she’d used her ability to blend into the woodwork to her advantage. It wouldn’t even be the tenth. Growing up all but invisible in her own home and lacking the curb appeal of her best friends, she had learned young to employ her over-lookability-particularly when it came to the opposite sex.

And if she’d sometimes gone beyond merely making use of it, and had, in fact, actively courted it? Well, big deal. Because except for that brief romance with Eric Lestat during her junior year in college, her chameleon-blending-into-its-environment factor had stood her in good stead. If she’d been half as smart at the time as she’d thought she was, in fact, she would have clung to it then, too. But she’d been enamored of Eric’s pale poet’s hands, dazzled by his high, intelligent forehead.

It was an established fact in her family that the passion gene had passed her by-and in truth she gave thanks for it. As the unwilling observer of her parents’ near-daily passion play, she’d known young that it was a dangerous, twisted emotion she would do well to eschew. So her relationship with Eric had been longer on the cerebral than it’d been on the sexual. And for a short while she’d been happy.

Until Eric had gone and changed the rules on her.

But that was all water over the dam and irrelevant to today. Except perhaps to note that she didn’t give a good G-D what Devlin thought of her.

She picked up her purse. It was time to call it a night.

But before she could close the take-home carton containing her remaining dinner, Devlin returned. And if he did find her boring, he sure had a funny way of showing it. Because the first thing he said as he handed her the refilled glass was, “So, how did you get interested in the curator business?” Setting his water glass down, he hooked his chair with his foot and scooted it back up to the table. Then he seated himself and gazed at her with bright interest.

She studied him for a second, trying to judge his sincerity and wondering in a fit of unwelcome honesty how, if she lacked the lust gene, he was able to make her feel so damn…warm.

So edgy.

Itchy.

Then, shrugging the question aside, she said slowly, “I was twelve when I started spending time with Miss Agnes. She was different from any other adult I’d ever met.”

The corner of Devlin’s mouth ticked up in a slightly cynical half smile. “How’s that?” he asked dryly. “Did she call you Grasshopper and pepper you with wise advice? Give you long, profound pep talks?”

Her own lips curled up at the memory of the woman she’d come to love so dearly. “No, that wasn’t her style-her influence was a more subtle thing. I think it was the way she turned up at all the events that were important to us and how she made her faith in us clear. Poppy was the only one used to that sort of attention from a grown-up. It’s funny that she and Ava and I have never really discussed this-” since they talked about everything else under the sun “-but I think we each got something different from her. Something that was geared to our individual needs.”

Planting his chin in his palm, he looked at her. “And what was it for you?”

“The fact that she really listened when I had something to say. That she looked at me and saw me. She was a refuge from my home life. I could breathe around her.”

He gazed at her thoughtfully and she went very still. Had she said too much? Revealed something she shouldn’t? She didn’t usually mention that refuge thing, not being a spill-your-guts kinda woman. Well, she talked to Ava and Poppy, of course. But she wasn’t exactly known for telling all to a man she hardly knew and wasn’t even sure she liked, and she scrambled to cover her tracks.

“Agnes taught me an appreciation for her treasures. And the fact that she never minded me messing around with them was just the mustard on my bologna. She encouraged me to lose myself for hours on end, simply enjoying their beauty and the skill with which they were constructed.”

Of course he had to home right in on the part she’d just as soon he ignore. “Babe,” he said, giving her a single nod. “Trust me, I get the need to escape from home.”

“You do?” She braced herself.

“Sure. You’ve met some of my family. Multiply that by about twenty, because the little you’ve seen so far is just the tip of the iceberg. There’s an entire platoon of Kavanaghs, and growing up everyone from the checkers at the local Safeway to every teacher I ever had knew them. They knew my brothers and sisters, both those who had come before me and those who came after. They knew my parents-knew my aunts, my uncles and my cousins. You couldn’t get away with a damn thing in the neighborhood because everyone saw you coming, they saw you going and they knew exactly who to report you to. There wasn’t a lick of privacy to be had.”

She stared at him. “And that was a bad thing?” It sounded comforting to her, all those people concerned about your welfare, interested in what was going on in your day.

“Hell, yeah. I was smothered. You must have suffered something similar yourself.”

“Huh?”

“Being an only child. Tell me that wasn’t constant attention of another sort.”

She stopped herself from laughing in his face, but just barely. Aside from when her folks had felt the need of an audience for their theatrics, parental attention had been in short supply in her house. Mike and Dorrie had a passion for each other that was always front and center. They fought hugely and made up extravagantly. Rarely, however, had that ardor spilled over onto her. Devlin had felt smothered by all the attention he’d received? She’d been so lonesome sometimes she’d just wanted to curl up and cry.

Luckily, she’d had Poppy and Ava to keep her from diving head-first into the pity pool. Over and over again they’d saved her from her parents’ lunacy, from being the odd one out in her own home, and Jane considered them her true family. So had Miss Agnes been.

“So am I right?” he inquired, cutting into her thoughts.

She gazed at him across the table. His bright hair glinted with exotic fire beneath the lights and his eyes were narrowed with amusement as he looked back at her.

“I’m right, aren’t I?” he demanded. “Your folks probably saw your potential early and hounded you to death to live up to their idea of it.”

Not. Oh, man, so not. But she wasn’t about to admit the way it really was-not to someone who’d had an army of people doting on his every move.

Instead she gave him a small smile.

“Wow. That’s downright uncanny. You’re obviously a student of human nature. But hey, you don’t need me to tell you that. I bet you hear it all the time.” She looked at her watch. “Oh, man, look at the time. I’m sorry, I’ve gotta run.” She had to get out of here, had to get out of here, had to-

She closed up her carton and stuffed it in its sack. Pulled on her coat.

Then met his gaze once more. “Well. This has been, um, nice. We’ll have to do it again sometime.”

Like when hell froze over.

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