And she didn’t. No matter how much her mother and her cohorts had tried to teach her, Jade had never learned to enjoy being sweet while cutting, honest while evasive. She much preferred direct insults to veiled ones, outright lies to such intricate games.
Though, tonight she was setting herself up for a very intricate one, wasn’t she? The thought made her return her attention to the dark-haired stranger. She shivered a little. Intricate games, indeed.
“‘Bye, darling, have fun,” Tally said. Then she greeted the rich northerner with an air kiss and a gushing compliment on his clip-on tie, which Jade knew must be driving Tally mad.
Jade watched, then whispered, “Time to move.”
As she sipped her drink—ginger ale with a twist of lime, which would appear to most to be alcoholic—she scanned the crowd again. Even if she hadn’t been looking for the man when she’d shown up here tonight, she knew her eyes would have sought him out anyway. Just as any woman looked at something she desired but couldn’t have.
Only, Jade meant to have him.
Earlier, his blue suit had stood out in the sea of black tuxes and brightly colored gowns, but she didn’t spot him at first. Then finally she found him, leaning indolently against an arched doorway leading to another room.
Watching her.
He’d been watching her.
She flushed slightly. Darn. Caught off guard.
The man’s eyes met hers from across the room. Blue. Or green. Surrounded by lush lashes and topped by dark brows that were slightly raised as he caught her stare.
Then he smiled.
Her legs wobbled. Good lord, no man had made her legs wobble since she was twelve and her Cajun second cousin had visited from New Orleans. Stoddard was altogether too big. Too ruggedly handsome. Too powerful-looking to play games with.
Yet that’s exactly what Jade planned to do. Play games with him. And then leave him in the dirt.
But why is he here?
She didn’t mean why was he here in Savannah. She knew why—for a big architects’ convention, conveniently scheduled in her home city this year. The convention had saved her from traveling to New York to track him down.
But she’d expected him to stay at the hotel adjoining the convention center. Finding out from a friend at the hotel that he wasn’t registered there had been a shock. Even more of a shock had been learning he was staying here at the Medford House.
Ryan Stoddard had no business being in this secluded, exclusive little piece of Savannah society. No business at all. He should be sitting in a loud hotel bar with the sounds of tinkling glasses and businessmen comparing last year’s sales figures. Scoping out the women, flirting while they wondered how far they could go without technically cheating on their wives.
Not here, amid the husky laughter of bored millionaires and the scent of jasmine and magnolia that permeated the room from open French doors leading out to the lush grounds. Not in this place which many decades ago would have held tobacco planters and wounded veterans, as opposed to the bankers and stock brokers who comprised the elite set these days.
This was her turf. And damned if she wanted him on it. She’d planned to launch her attack on his ground, then slip away, back into the shadows of hers, where he’d never find her.
No way could she implement her original plan. A big chain hotel would have been simple—a pickup in a bar, a trip to his room, a heated encounter. Then walking out, laughter on her lips, leaving him naked and humiliated as he realized he’d been had. Realized he wasn’t going to get off scot-free for breaking the heart of a member of her family.
“Jenny,” she whispered, still missing her only sibling.
Her sister had gone off to try to be a star on the stage in New York City, against the family’s wishes and to Mama’s utmost horror. She’d landed on the stage, all right—a raised platform in a diner where she served chicken noodle soup and pastrami on rye between showstopping numbers.
She’d seemed happy enough, though, at least until last week when she’d come home for Mama’s wedding. Jenny had been crying about a man she’d met at the restaurant. She’d fallen hard as only a vulnerable, lonely twenty-one-year-old could. The stranger had swept her off her feet then dropped her flat.
Ryan Stoddard, aka the bastard.
It was time for him to pay. If Aunt Lula Mae found out, she’d likely want to punish him herself. And it still might come to that. If Jade couldn’t publicly humiliate him, she just might have to get some of his hair and let Lula Mae do what she did best—curse him so he’d never be able to, uh, perform again.
But not until she’d given it a shot. Her way.
Which meant Ryan Stoddard was in for the most embarrassing night of his life.
RYAN HADN’T EXPECTED her to be so beautiful.
She stood out like an exotic jungle flower among a bunch of daisies. Her silky-looking dark hair was nearly black, skimming over her shoulders and down her back until it was lost against the color of her dress. A soft, red scarf draped loosely across her shoulders provided a dramatic contrast that drew the eye again and again.
Her skin was smooth and perfect, a warm tanned color like fine coffee full of rich, sweet cream. She was taller than most of the men who’d been eyeing her all evening, and held her slender jaw slightly up, indicating confidence and perhaps a bit of arrogance.
Though in a crowd, she seemed alone. Her detached attitude was enticing because of its mysterious quality, but off-putting because of her disinterest in her surroundings.
Her body was sin, her face was flawless, her eyes were wicked.
How appropriate for a thief.
“Mr. Stoddard, are you enjoying yourself?”
Mamie Brandywine, the owner of the bed-and-breakfast and museum, joined him. She briefly pulled his attention off his target, the woman he’d come to Savannah to find. Jade Maguire.
“Very nice, thank you.”
“And you’re finding your tours of the local plantation homes helpful in your research?”
“Absolutely,” he said, trying to get his mind off the seductive, deceitful temptress and back on his job. Something he’d been putting on the back burner for the past few weeks while trying to get retribution for what had been done to his grandmother. Fortunately, his quest for justice had led him here, to the very city he needed to visit while writing an article on the architecture of the Old South.
“I’m truly enjoying the tours you’ve set up. Thanks so much for arranging for me to stay in some of the local inns,” he added, trying to find some basic element of charm—or at least cordiality—within himself. It had been buried beneath a layer of anger for weeks.
That anger had increased the moment he’d seen Jade Maguire. She should have looked like a thief, a crone, a crook.
But she didn’t. She looked
