LITMIR.BIZ

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a captive audience, especially if it was someone of the opposite sex.

      Summer almost felt sorry for Kyle.

      Almost.

      What was he doing in the inn, anyway?

      He’d gone. She’d freshened the rooms after breakfast and made the beds. Room Seven had been empty. She’d checked.

      Kyle Merrick’s duffel bag was gone. And she’d been relieved. Okay, she’d felt a little unsettled, too, but that was beside the point.

      For some reason he was back—she had no idea why—and was sitting at the table, no doubt sharing raucous tales with Summer’s next-door neighbor. He looked up at her as she walked in and almost smiled.

      “I thought you’d left,” she said.

      “Without paying for my stay last night? Your low opinion of me is humbling.”

      He didn’t look humble. He looked like a man with sex on his mind, the kind of man who didn’t ask for commitment and certainly didn’t give it. Lord-a-mighty, the invitation in those green eyes was tempting.

      “What makes you think I’ve formed an opinion about you?” she asked.

      He smiled, and the connection between their gazes thrummed like a guitar string being strummed with one finger. Pulling her gaze from his wasn’t easy, but she turned her attention to the woman watching the exchange.

      “Would you like a cup of tea, Harriet?”

      Seventy-eight-year-old Harriet Ferris had been dying her hair red for fifty years. Before every birthday there was a discussion about letting it go gray, but she never would, just as she would never stop wearing false eyelashes and flirting with men of all ages.

      “No, thank you, dear, I really should be getting back home. I’m expecting an email from my sister in Atlanta. She refuses to text. So old-school, you know?”

      Although she stood up, she made no move toward the door until Summer leaned down and whispered in her ear.

      A smile spread across Harriet’s ruby red lips. “What would I do without you? What would any of us do? This handsome man has brought you a gift.” Harriet looked from Summer to Kyle and back again. “I won’t spoil the surprise, but I dare say if you could bottle the electricity in this room right now, you could sell it to the power company for a tidy profit. If only I were twenty years younger.”

      “You’re a cougar, Harriet,” Kyle said, rising, too.

      With a playful wink and a grin that never aged, Harriet tottered out the back door.

      Now that he and Summer were alone, Kyle handed her the gift bag. “For the next time your power goes out,” he said.

      She opened the brown paper sack. Peering at the fuses inside, she shook her head and smiled.

      He looked like he was about to smile, too, but his gaze caught on her mouth, and Summer knew Harriet was right about the electricity in this room.

      “You wanted to settle up for last night’s stay?” she asked.

      “You aren’t from Michigan are you?” he asked.

      The question came from out of the blue and caught her by surprise. Years of practice kept her perfectly still, her expression carefully schooled to appear artful and serene.

      “I can’t place the inflection,” he continued. “But it isn’t Midwestern.”

      She pulled herself together. Carrying the milk, eggs and cheese to the refrigerator, she said, “I was born in Philadelphia and grew up in Baltimore. My grandparents had a summer house on Mackinaw Island. Until my grandfather died when I was fourteen, my sister and I spent every summer in northern Michigan. What about you? Where are you from?”

      She was just making conversation, for she knew the pertinent facts about his past. She’d researched all three of the Merrick brothers after Madeline had announced her engagement to Kyle’s brother Riley a few days ago.

      “I was born and raised in Bay City,” he said, his voice a lazy baritone that suggested he had all the time in the world. “I studied out east and have traveled just about everywhere else. What did you whisper to Harriet?”

      She glanced at him as she closed the refrigerator. “I told her where she put her spare key this week. She keeps moving it and forgets where she hides it.”

      “Is that why they call you the keeper of secrets?” he asked.

      Summer stopped putting away groceries and looked at him. She prided herself on her ability to identify a person’s true nature at first sight. She wasn’t the only one in this room doing that right now. Kyle was looking at her as if she were a puzzle he had every intention of solving. That felt far more dangerous than the heat in his gaze or the fact that she was wondering if he might kiss her.

      She wasn’t about to be the first to look away, as if she had something to hide. Which she did, but he didn’t know that. And he wouldn’t.

      Okay. It was time to get both their minds on something else. “Are you flirting with me?” she asked, even though she knew he was.

      She could tell her ploy had worked by the change in his stance, the slight tilt of his head, the even slighter narrowing of his gaze. Oh yes, his mind was on something far more fundamental than her past, for nothing was more fundamental than flirting with the opposite sex.

      For months, Kyle had felt as if a spring had been coiled too tight inside him. This woman was slowly unwinding him. She’d taken a chance when she’d opened her door last night. Maybe she kept mace under the counter. If she had a stun gun, she hadn’t needed it. He’d felt hypnotized at first sight.

      Summer Matthews had hazel eyes and curves in all the right places. She was a pretty woman, and he knew his way around pretty women. He didn’t understand them, God no, but he knew when a woman wanted what he wanted.

      Summer was interested. She just wasn’t acting on it. The question was, why? She wasn’t wearing a ring, and she was no prude. Nobody with a voice that sultry and a mind that bright was shy and unsure of herself.

      She was refreshing and intriguing. Deep inside him, that taut spring unwound a little more.

      “If I were flirting with you,” he said huskily, “you’d know it.”

      Her gaze went to his mouth, but instead of continuing the flirtation, she named the amount for last night’s stay. His interest climbed another notch, and so did his regard for her.

      He liked a woman who could keep her wits about her.

      He wished he had enough time to turn those astute eyes starry, to run his hands along her graceful shoulders and feel her arms slowly wind around his neck as her lips parted for his kiss. Unfortunately he was out of time to do more than say, “I’m meeting my brother and future sister-in-law for lunch. After that I have a plane to catch, but I wanted to pay for my room before I leave town.”

      Pocketing the cash he gave her, she said, “It’s not every day a girl meets an honest man.”

      And then she did something, and there was no turning back. She smiled as if she meant it.

      Kyle couldn’t help reaching for her any more than he could help drawing his next breath. He covered her mouth with his, before either of them thought to resist.

      After that first brush of lips and air, the kiss deepened, breaths mingling, pulse rates climbing. It was a possessive joining, a mating of mouths and heat and hunger. It didn’t matter that it was broad daylight, that he had to leave in a few minutes or that he barely knew her. He kissed her because he had to. It was primal, and it was powerful, and, when her mouth opened slightly, he wanted more. He wanted everything.

      He’d imagined her body going pliant—he had a damned fine imagination—but it was nothing compared to the reality in his arms. Her hands came around his back, then glided up to his shoulders. She moved against him,

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