“Are you going to tell me who you are now?” she asked.
“Who do you think I am?”
“Another game, huh?” What the hell? Phoebe would be here soon anyway. “Okay, but only because you’re so pretty to look at.”
That made him laugh again, and man, she did love the smooth sound of it.
“Let’s see . . .” She narrowed her eyes and scanned his face again. Every time she looked at him she found something new to like. This time it was his light eyes, shining clear green in the dim light. “You’re obviously not a Valencia, a Ruiz, a Washington, or a Chen.”
“You got that right.”
“Just the fact that you’re still sitting here means you can’t be part of the Hayes or Ryan families. Are you a Murphy?”
He shook his head.
“Oh, I know—you’re a Hogan boy.”
“Nope.”
She frowned, her mind toggling between his looks and her memories. “Ward? Bickler? Koller? O’Neil? Buchanan?”
“None of the above.”
“Give me a hint.”
He thought for a second. “We don’t know each other, but we know of each other.”
“What kind of lousy hint is that?”
He laughed. “I was a couple of years ahead of you in school.”
She frowned, reassessed the Rolodex in her mind, then shook her head. “Give me another.”
“I had a wicked crush on you for-freaking-ever.”
She leaned away, as if the distance would give her perspective. “No way, handsome. I would have remembered you.”
“I wasn’t your type.”
“Ah. Then you must have been a good kid, because my sole purpose in life as a teen was to piss off my father by dating the cream of the crap. I was completely self-absorbed at the time. Consider yourself lucky.”
He glanced toward the driveway. “When’s your aunt coming?”
Her mood dropped a notch. Maybe she’d brought up one memory too many and popped his balloon of interest. “I’m not sure. She’s with her bridge club, and, apparently, she’s winning—”
“Oh, hell.” He turned his gaze back to Delaney. The sight of that pretty smile and those twinkling eyes made her stomach twist and jump. “You could be here all night. Want to get in and look around?”
“Yes, but she has the keys, and as much as I’d love to break a window—or twenty—in this place, I left my bad-girl ways behind when I left town.”
His gaze sharpened, and an almost challenging look came over his expression. “Really.”
Oh, the tequila was tickling her brain. The flirty smile came out of nowhere, as if she had no control over it. “Well, maybe not all of them.”
“Thank God. Life is too damn short to waste it being good. At least that’s what I keep telling myself.” His mouth kicked up again, and a definite flare of heat warmed his eyes. “Besides, I saw you trying to jimmy the door.”
She lowered her gaze to the worn wood of the porch. “Oops.”
“With a bottle opener?” he added. “Seriously?”