LITMIR.BIZ

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      “No, Ms. Ford. I haven’t.”

      She leaned back for another glide, this time arching her breasts high as the swing carried her backward. “Neither have I. Sounds like it might be fun.” The innuendo was in there and being the bold woman she was, Tori glanced at him with a smile just to make sure he was watching.

      Adam was watching, all right. And reacting.

      He’d have to be dead not to react to this woman, and he was very alive, as was his libido, which he’d obviously ignored for way too long.

      She must have recognized his struggle because she slipped out of the swing, collected her sandal and headed his way, all sultry smiles and sexy purpose.

      Adam stood his ground, refusing any show of weakness, not even a simple step backward when she sauntered right up to him and took over his personal space.

      Sliding her fingers around his tie, she loosened the knot with a few easy motions and said, “Don’t you ever want to take a deep breath, Adam?”

      “I can breathe just fine, Ms. Ford.”

      Lifting that midnight gaze, she searched his expression, a slight frown creasing her brow at what she found there. “Let me tell you a secret. My family comes with a lot of baggage. Not only our history with Laura’s family, but a lot of visibility because my father and grandfather are politicians. It was all too easy to be sucked into trying to behave the way everyone expected me to behave.”

      “What are you saying, Ms. Ford?”

      “That I was like you once, Adam.” A soft smile touched her lips. “Surprise, surprise. I was all wrapped up in things that were keeping me from enjoying what was important in life.”

      This was insight he hadn’t expected about her, and Adam wondered what had happened to make her turn that corner in her life. To transform from a woman of perfect decorum like her sister to this carefree spirit who only seemed focused on fun.

      “You don’t know me, Ms. Ford. It’s presumptuous for you to think you know what I should find important in life.”

      “That’s true. I don’t know you. But I know what I see. You’ve got a celebration happening in a hotel filled with sexy suites and a woman you share some serious chemistry with. Yet you shut yourself off to the possibilities the instant you realized you were attracted to me.”

      To Adam’s profound annoyance, he couldn’t deny her claim, which left him to accept the hard reality. This woman had gotten under his skin no matter how much he had willed it otherwise.

      3

      AFTER THEIR BREAKFAST interview earlier, Laura Granger was about the last person Tori expected to see again when she appeared in the doorway of Falling Inn Bed’s records room, dressed casually in jeans and sandals, with her long blond hair bound stylishly in a braid.

      “Got a minute?” she asked, sounding tentative. “Adam told me he left you in here.”

      No doubt. After their tour of the main hotel, he’d brought her to this archive room and abandoned her here without a backward glance. She couldn’t blame the guy, really. She’d obviously hit close to the bone, and there was a little part of her that felt downright guilty for pushing him so hard. Adam was right—she didn’t know him. And she had no real idea why he was so determined to ignore their killer chemistry and all the unique possibilities of the Naughty Nuptials celebration.

      Pushing herself up from the floor where she’d been searching through a filing cabinet that contained decades’ worth of press releases from all the inn’s various incarnations, she said, “Sure. I’m due a good stretch. What’s up?”

      Laura didn’t answer, and Tori clasped her hands behind her back, stretching to ease muscles tight from crouching over that cabinet for too long.

      She waited, wondering why Laura seemed nervous.

      “Finding everything you need in here?” Laura asked.

      Tori didn’t think that was why she came, but nodded. “Since they sprang this assignment on me only a few days ago, I haven’t had time to do my usual preliminary research on the inn’s history.”

      “The history’s important?”

      “Helps me add color to my articles. Just another way to interest my readers.” Cocking her hip against the table, she folded her arms across her chest. “So, are you here to interrogate me on my journalistic technique?”

      Laura shook her head. “I’ve been thinking about our talk this morning and I wanted to ask you a question.”

      “Shoot.”

      “Did your mother ever tell you what started all the trouble between our families?”

      Tori stifled a grin. She’d wanted to talk about what had led their grandfather to disown his eldest daughter and start a family rift, but she hadn’t expected Laura to take the bait so quickly. “Not really. As the official nosy one in my family, I’ve tried picking her brain, but she just doesn’t like to talk about what happened.”

      And she wasn’t the only one. To Tori’s knowledge her grandfather had never uttered one syllable about his eldest daughter, either, so the only thing she’d ever heard came by way of her sister, mostly gossip about how Laura’s mother had run off with a hippie to live in a commune.

      “How about you?” she asked. “What has your mother said?”

      Laura perused a framed newspaper article on the wall, an early twentieth-century announcement from Tori’s own paper about an upcoming slate of Christmas festivities. “Not much. She wanted to be an artist and open an artist retreat with my dad. The senator didn’t approve and gave her a choice—my dad and her art, or her family.”

      “And she made her choice.”

      “She did.”

      “Two points for your mother for following her dreams.” Tori could understand the need to break free. It seemed to be sort of a knee-jerk thing in her family. With the kind of pressure on everyone around the senator, one either complied or rebelled. While she’d been accused of a lot of things in her life, total compliance had never been one of them.

      “So is she happy with her choice?” Tori asked.

      “My mom and dad are the happiest couple I know.”

      “Which explains where your romantic streak comes from?”

      Laura glanced over her shoulder. “I suppose. But following her dreams didn’t come without a price.”

      There was subtext in that statement. Given what Tori remembered of their Westfalls years and how the Granger family had been ostracized by most of the town, she guessed that price had trickled down to Laura. “Your mom gets credit in my book. It must have taken guts to turn her back on everything.”

      Tori hadn’t even managed to break away for college.

      “My mom’s got guts in spades, Tori. No doubt there.”

      “She must have, to give up her place in society.”

      “I don’t think society was ever an issue. She’s your typical artist, indifferent to social standing and all that. I think giving up her family was an issue, though.”

      “Really?” This was news. Tori always had the impression that everyone was content with the distance between the two families. At least, that was the way things seemed in the family mansion.

      Laura turned back around and met Tori’s gaze evenly. “Something she said once has always stuck with me, and after talking with you this morning, I can’t stop thinking about it.”

      “What’d she say?”

      “That sometimes when someone dies, the people left behind are so hurt it’s easier to drift apart rather than face the pain of their loss.”

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