“What are you talking about?” She swung away, marched to the nightstand beside the bed, snatched up her watch and strode toward him. “Evidently, you’re as bad as telling the time as you are at knocking on doors. Take a look. It’s not even five o’clock.”
A smug smile curved his mouth. “This is Montana, Duchess.”
“I hate that name! And what’s that supposed to mean, anyway?”
“It’s a little matter of time zones. Mountain time versus Pacific time.” The smirk faded. “It’s going on five in California, Ms. Wilde,” he said, with heavy emphasis on the Ms. “But it’s going on six here.”
Her eyes rounded. Her mouth fell open. He thought about what it would be like to close the couple of feet between them, bend his head and capture that mouth with his. A stupid thought, though, because he wasn’t a kid and he knew that men and women didn’t stop at kisses.
Kisses, real ones, the kind he wanted from her, led to bed. And bed was not a place he could afford to go.
Not with Lissa Wilde.
CHAPTER SIX
Sometimes, life was like a really bad riddle, the kind Lissa’s brothers had tortured her with when she was little.
Why is the finger on that statue of Davy Crockett eleven inches long?
Because if it was twelve inches it would be a foot.
When is a door not a door?
When it’s ajar.
They’d done it out of kindness, to divert her from the reality of the death of her mother. Well, their mother, too; Jake, Caleb and Travis had loved their stepmom as much as Lissa and her sisters had, and her death had been a terrible blow.
Lissa shut one cupboard door, yanked open another, slammed it shut, spun around and glared what she’d found of the kitchen’s bounty.
Four dusty cans of Spam.
Two cans of white beans.
Ketchup.
Six loaves of stale bread.
A bin of heading-for-eternity potatoes and another of mostly overgrown onions.
And a bottle of sweet chili sauce. She refused to waste time trying to figure out what in hell a staple of Thai cuisine was doing here, metaphorically rubbing elbows with Spam.
Which brought her to riddle time. The Triple G version.
Take six hungry men. Seven, if you counted Gentry and she supposed she had to. Add this stuff, stir well and what did you have?
Not much.
Certainly not the makings of a decent meal.
She’d come down the stairs minutes ago, wearing the same clothes she’d spent the day in, her damp hair pulled back in a ponytail. She’d been running because it was so late and who knew what the Master of the Triple G would do if she didn’t get into the kitchen quickly enough to suit him, but when she saw him standing outside what was obviously the dining room, leaning against the wall, arms folded, face expressionless, she’d slowed to a deliberate walk.
He’d looked at her. Then he’d made a show of looking at his watch.
“You finally got here,” he’d said in the kind of supposedly pleasant tone that meant there was nothing pleasant happening. “Congratulations.”
Brutus had trotted toward her, wagging his tail and wearing a doggy smile.
“Turncoat,” Lissa had said, but her voice had been soft and she’d touched his head lightly with her fingertips.