“Hello.” Lord, she sounded like a breathy pin-up caricature of herself. Why was that her default response? Charm was only her defence mechanism. She was a one-trick pony.
He swivelled his attention back to her, a frown pulling between his clear, dark-grey eyes as he cleared his throat. “I’m looking for Ryan.”
Her heart hammered against her ribs in relief. “Oh.” She straightened up. He was a friend of Ryan’s. He wasn’t there to arrest her for hiding. Of course not. Hiding wasn’t a crime, not even in Canada. She tossed her hair and gave him a smile. So what if it was practiced? Nobody noticed the difference anyway.
A muscle twitched at the corner of his mouth and he looked at her again, more closely this time.
She looked right back at him. At those eyes, and the fall of light brown hair above them, a little long in the front, but regulation short on the sides. At his square jaw and long, muscled limbs. He wasbuilt, a very distracting combination of strength and leanness through the middle that made her wonder if he had six-pack abs or just one long, hard flex of muscle there.No ogling, she tried to tell herself, as she dragged her attention back to his face, and back up to that very distracting lock of hair teasing his forehead. She couldn’t tell if the lighter strands in his hair were blond or grey, and it didn’t matter.
Big, serious, and hot.
She felt her smile widening on its own. Not being arrested made her a wee bit more generous with information. “They’re all out. Shopping for the party tomorrow.”
“Ah.” He crossed his arms, the short sleeves of his uniform highlighting the flex of his thick, corded forearms. “Shouldn’t have assumed. I’ll give him a call.”
Was he looking for an invitation to stay?
Sexy arms aside, she hadn’t been looking for company for the afternoon. Even if those arms were attached to movie star good looks she couldn’t ignore now that her flight or fight response had faded.
Okay, maybe some company wouldn’t be a bad thing at all.
“I’m Dean, by the way.” He uncrossed his arms, as if he was thinking about offering his hand to shake but then thought better of it. He propped his hands on his lean hips, right next to a gun on one side and what she imagined were handcuffs on the other.
Hello, Dean.
— —
It had takenhim a minute to place the woman standing in front of him, because he’d never seen her in person, and the country music star was always made up in photographs.
But it was an open secret in Pine Harbour that Hope’s best friend visited from time to time, and always kept to herself.
Now he understood why. Liana Hansen was drop-dead gorgeous. The kind of pretty that scrambled brain cells and made grown men stupid. Maybe even more so right now, without any makeup or fancy outfits.
He couldn’t stop looking at her, cataloguing the very real, very sexy woman in front of him. Her dark, wavy hair was tousled and shoved haphazardly over one delicate shoulder. Her grey t-shirt and black yoga pants were as ordinary as could be. But the grey also made her clear blue eyes pop out of her face, and the pants seemed to highlight tight, compact curves that went on for miles.
And when she’d said hello in that breathy way, her eyes big and her voice husky, turning up at the end, his body had reacted in a completely unprofessional way. Now he jerked his gaze back to her face, only to have his eyes trip over her bare pink lips, full and lush as she parted them.
Finally he remembered the flash of alarm she’d given him when he walked around the corner. Shit. “Is something the matter? Because—”
“Everything’s fine.” She smiled as she cut him off, but it was locked down and controlled. Didn’t go anywhere near her eyes.
He lifted his hands into the air in a universaleasy theresignal. “As I said, I just popped in to catch up with Ryan. But if you wanted me to take a look around the property for some reason…”
She blinked at him, then groaned and shook her head. “No. Oh, God no. I’m just…” She winced and her lower lip caught between her teeth.
Lush.
Inappropriate, he told himself.
But it wasn’t every day he stumbled across a woman like this.
Of course his sub-conscious had a retort for that, too.High-maintenance, high-profile, high-drama.
And when Liana let out another breathy sigh and finished that thought, she reinforced all of that. “I’m on a little break from reality, okay? And I wasn’t expecting anyone to show up, so you caught me off guard is all.”
A little break from reality? Must be nice.
She gave him another one of those not-quite-to-the-eyes smiles and glided closer. “Of course, now that you’re here…”
