LITMIR.BIZ

       One

      “The answer is no!”

      Mazie Tarleton ended the call, wishing she had a good old-fashioned receiver she could slam down on a cradle. Cutting off a phone conversation with the tap of a red button wasn’t nearly as satisfying.

      Behind her, Gina—her best friend and coworker—ate the last bite of her cinnamon crunch bagel and wiped cream cheese from her fingers. “Who’s got you all riled up?”

      The two women were in Mazie’s office, a cramped space behind the elegant showroom that drew tourists and locals to All That Glitters, Mazie’s upscale jewelry store in Charleston’s historic business district.

      Mazie dropped into a chair and scowled. “It’s J.B.’s real estate agent again. He’s making her badger me.”

      “You mean J.B. who wants to offer you a ridiculous amount of money for this building that’s falling down around our ears?”

      “Whose side are you on anyway?” Mazie and Gina had met as freshmen at Savannah’s College of Art and Design. Gina was aware of Mazie’s long-standing feud with Charleston’s highly eligible and incredibly sexy billionaire businessman.

      Gina flicked a crumb from her cashmere-covered bosom. “We have dry rot in the attic. A heating system that dates back to the Civil War. And do I need to mention that our hurricane policy rates are set to triple when the renewal is due? I know you Tarleton people are richer than God, but that doesn’t mean we should thumb our noses at a great offer.”

      “If it were anybody but J.B.,” Mazie muttered, feeling the noose of inevitability tighten around her neck.

      J.B. Jackson Beauregard Vaughan. The man she loved to hate. J.B. Vaughan had been on her personal hit list since she was sixteen years old. She loathed him. And she wanted to hurt him as much as he had hurt her.

      “What did he ever do to you?” Gina asked. Her perplexed frown was understandable. J.B. Vaughan was the prototype for tall, dark and handsome. Cocky grin. Brilliant blue eyes. Strong features. And shoulders that were about a million miles wide.

      “It’s complicated,” Mazie muttered, feeling her face heat. Even now, the memories were humiliating.

      Mazie couldn’t remember a time when J.B. hadn’t been part of her life. Way back when, she had even loved him. As an almost-brother. But when her hormones started raging and she began seeing J.B. in a whole new light, a spring formal at her all-girls prep school had presented itself as the perfect opportunity to do some very grown-up experimentation.

      Not sex. Oh, no. Not that. She was aware, even then, that J.B. was the kind of guy who knew things, and she wasn’t ready to go down that road.

      She called him on a Wednesday afternoon in April. With her nerves humming and her stomach flopping, she blurted out her invitation.

      J.B. had been oddly noncommittal. And then, barely four hours later, he had showed up on her doorstep.

      Her father had been locked in his study with a nightcap. Both Jonathan and Hartley, her brothers, had been out on the town doing something or other.

      Mazie had answered the front door.

      Because she felt weird about inviting J.B. inside—though he’d been there a hundred times before—she stepped out onto the wide veranda and smiled at him tentatively.

       “Hey, J.B.,” she said. “I didn’t expect to see you today.”

       He leaned against a post, his posture the epitome of cool, high school masculinity. In a few weeks he would be eighteen. A legal adult. Her heart beat faster.

       “I wanted to talk to you face-to-face,” he said. “It was nice of you to ask me to the dance.”

       “Nice?”

       It seemed an odd choice of words, especially coming from J.B.

       He nodded. “I’m flattered.”

       Her stomach curled defensively. “You didn’t actually give me an answer on the phone,” she said. Suddenly, her hands were ice, and she was shaking all over.

       J.B. shifted from one foot to the other. “You’re a cute girl, Mazie. I’m glad you’re my friend.”

       He really didn’t have to say anything else. She was smart and perceptive and able to read between the lines. But she’d be damned if she’d let him off so easily. “What are you trying to say, J.B.?”

       Now a dark scowl erased some of his cocky charm, but none of his brooding sexuality. “Damn it, Mazie. I can’t go to that dance with you. You shouldn’t have asked me. You’re little more than a baby.”

       Her heart shriveled. “I’m not a child,” she said quietly. “I’m only a year younger than you are.”

       “Almost two.”

       The real surprise was that he had kept track. Because of the way their birthdays fell on the calendar, he was right. She took three steps toward him. Inside, she was falling apart. But she wouldn’t let him see what he was doing to her self-esteem. “Don’t make excuses, J.B. If you won’t go out with me, please have the guts to say so.”

       He cursed vehemently. With both hands, he scraped his slightly-too-long blue-black hair from his face. “You’re like a sister to me,” he said.

       The words were muttered, barely audible. In fact, he spoke them in the direction of the floor. A less-convincing lie would have been hard to find. Why was he throwing up walls between them?

       Mazie was breathing so rapidly she was in danger of hyperventilating. Clearly she had misread the situation. J.B. hadn’t come here tonight because he was fond of her, or because he wanted to see her.

       He was standing on her front porch because he was too much of a Southern gentleman to say no to her over the phone.

       A nicer person might have made the situation easier for him. Mazie was tired of being nice. She slipped her arms around his waist and rested her cheek on his

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