Love Loyal and True (Must Love Diamonds 2)

His footsteps dogged hers on the stairs. “Last night you assured me you knew exactly what you were doing.”

“And you believed me when I was that drunk?” She shot him a frown over her shoulder. “Shame on you.”

He looked guilty for a brief moment, but then he shook his head. “That’s not going to work. You can try to turn this back on me, but I had plenty of time to think after you passed out.”

She faced forward, her heart thumping madly in panic. “Hope you didn’t hurt yourself.”

“Aw, look at that.” Amusement filled his voice. “Using weak insults to avoid the truth.”

Roxanna was at her shop door now, and desperate to get inside as he crowded close enough for her to once again inhale the goodness of him. He wouldn’t follow her in there to keep up with the interrogation, would he? Clearly he had figured it out, so why the hell was he so intent on pushing this damn point, anyway?

To humiliate me even more.

Okay, then, how could she convince him the truth was not really the truth?

“You can admit you want me, Roxanna,” he taunted in a husky voice as she keyed in the lockbox code. “That’s the first step in getting over addiction.”

“Rein in the ego, jackass.” The light turned green, and she opened the door only enough to slip partially inside before meeting his gaze. “I was pretending you were your brother.”

He drew back in surprise. “Asher? I thought you two—”

“No, God, not Asher.”

“Merit?”

She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows. The moment it dawned on him exactly whom she was talking about, his whole body tensed. His face flushed, his nostrils flared, and his eyes went dark as his eyebrows slammed together.

“You said my name,” he said in a tight voice. “You said Loyal last night.”

“Of course I did,” she bluffed past the guilt that was making it hard to breathe. “Because you wouldn’t have kissed me if I’d called you Grayson.”

Chapter 9

Loyal’s fists clenched as he stared at the door after Roxanna shut it in his face. Again.

“You wouldn’t have kissed me if I’d called you Grayson.”

She was fucking right about that.

He forced his hands to relax against the urge to punch something. And just why the fuck did the thought of her and his half-brother make him crazy? He shouldn’t care if she liked Grayson.

He didn’t care. She could like whomever she wanted, because he didn’t even like her.

Liar.

No. Lust did not equal like.

He finished dressing right there in the hall, then stalked out to his Land Rover and drove back to his hotel for a shower and clean clothes.

As he dried off, he concluded he needed to go back to avoiding Roxanna. That had worked for years.

Mostly.

Once he’d put on a pair of tan khaki’s and a navy vest over a crisp, white button up, he spent a couple hours on his laptop checking out houses online. There were plenty to choose from, but nothing caught

his attention, leaving him restless and annoyed. His thoughts kept turning back to Roxanna, but iron determination shut them down each time.

When his stomach reminded him he hadn’t eaten, he shut his laptop with a grimace. Room service didn’t appeal, but neither did going out to sit somewhere alone. Spur of the moment, he texted the one person he guessed would be wide open for an early Monday lunch. The response came back a few minutes later.