Scarlet Nights (Edilean 3)

“I don’t know. Aunt Lissie didn’t know who he was. She said the picture had been in the McDowell family forever, but she and I were the only ones who liked it. We figured it was Victorian.”

“No chance it’s a Beatrix Potter, is there?”

“I wish. No, it’s a castoff, like everything else in here. Even me,” she added as she turned away.

Frowning, Mike put the picture back on the wall, and when he looked at Sara there was a slump in her shoulders that he didn’t like. It seemed that she’d been tossed aside by her first boyfriend, and he knew that it was going to be exposed that the second one only wanted her for what he could get.

Mike didn’t think about what he did, he just reached out, took her arm, and pulled her to him. He put his lips on hers and kissed her with all the longing he’d felt since the first moment he saw her.

He half expected her to pull away, but instead, her arms went around his neck and she tilted her head. Her lips were sweet, and her body against his fit more perfectly than any other woman’s ever had.

It was all Mike could do to keep from making the kiss deeper, and from leading to much more.

He was the one to break away. He held her, his lips on her neck. “Sara,” he whispered. “I want—”

She pushed him away. “I know. I’m part of your job. And you want—” Breaking off, she hurried to the door. “Meet me at Joce’s in an hour. I need time to think about all this.”

In the next second she left the apartment and Mike sat down heavily on the leather chair. His assignment had been to do whatever was necessary to get Sara away from Vandlo.

“Hell!” Mike mumbled. “I’m being lured into this town with the bait of an old farm, comfortable furniture, and the prettiest, sweetest little temptress who ever walked the earth.” He ran his hand over his face. “If anyone is being seduced, it’s me.”

14

JOCE WAS IN her bed, surrounded by genealogy charts; a printer was on the bedside table. “Want to know who your third cousin six times removed is?”

“Not especially,” Sara said. “I have enough cousins here and now.”

Joce looked at her friend—and seventh cousin, she’d just found out—and said, “What’s wrong?”

“Mike kissed me.”

“Oh. Well. I know that’s ter

rible, since you’re engaged to another man, but before the lamentations begin, what was the kiss like?”

“Great. But then he’s had a lot of experience.”

Joce wasn’t going to comment on the last remark. “So how does he compare to Greg?”

Sara sat down heavily on the chair by the bed. “Did you ever know for absolutely sure that what you were doing was right, then something happened that made you doubt everything you knew?”

“If you’re referring to men, yes. In college I had a boyfriend I adored. I was sure he was The One. Then I went home—meaning to Miss Edi—and spent a week with her. One morning, we were sitting at breakfast and I imagined what it would be like if he were there. Instantly, I knew I’d spend every moment dealing with his jealousy. If you’d asked me the day before if he was a jealous man, I would have said no. But he was. He was jealous of my job, of my girlfriends, even of my awful stepsisters. Is that what you mean?”

“Pretty much. I’m beginning to see and remember things that a week ago I wasn’t aware of.” Sara sighed. “When Greg and I were first together it was so wonderful I would have walked through fire for him.”

“And from what Tess and I heard through the walls, you did a few times.”

Sara nodded. “Everything was great. It hadn’t been long since Brian left me and …”

Joce had never met Sara’s other boyfriend, but she’d heard about him. He was a young archaeologist from England, and he and Sara had been inseparable for over four years. Everyone, including Sara, thought they were going to get married. When he told her he was going to marry his childhood girlfriend, Sara had been devastated.

“The worst thing,” Tess told Joce, “was that everyone in town treated Sara like she was on the point of insanity.”

“Was she?” Joce asked, for she knew some about being close to breaking.

“Yeah,” Tess said. “She was.”

So now, Joce reached out to take Sara’s hand. “Greg made you feel desirable, that someone wanted you.”