All true, after a fashion, he assured himself. If he was lucky, he might be able to continue to pick his way along a fine line of omissions and insinuations.
“I guess I can understand that,” said Rose.
“Good. Because I really need your help. And I’m prepared to be generous,” he added, hoping to sway her with the more honest incentive of cold, hard cash.
At first she appeared uninterested in the offer. Then she glanced over her shoulder at the counter behind her and did that distracting, sort of pouty thing with her lips that he’d noticed she did when she was pondering something.
“How generous?” she asked.
Griff considered the price she’d charged for the string of dead flowers and named an hourly rate in keeping with it. He was desperate, he reminded himself as he saw her eyes flash with real interest, and something else—something he couldn’t quite name.
“I’ll do it,” she said. Then, before he could feel triumphant, she added, “But with a few stipulations.”
“Name them.”
“I’ll work for you, but not instead of you. I already have my hands full. I do a lot of business online,” she explained, pointing to the computer sitting on a small desk behind the counter, “so I’ll handle that part of the search. But you’ll have to be available to come along if I decide we should chase down a lead.”
“No problem. What else?”
“I’m the boss,” she declared. She waited for him to bristle the way he had the other day, and was caught off guard when instead, his eyes crinkled at the corners, and a slow, very appealing grin appeared.
“Well now, I’ve never had a lady boss. Maybe you ought to go into a little detail about how that works.”
“It’s not complicated, Griff. Think of me as your commanding officer. I’ll think of you as a raw recruit who doesn’t know his Waterford from his Wedgwood. Or, to put it more simply, I give the orders and you follow them.”
He had a little more difficulty with that one, she could tell, and she relished the moment. Truthfully, if he had asked her nicely, she would have been happy to help and would have refused to accept a penny. But he hadn’t asked; he’d waged a campaign. And she felt no qualms about recouping some of her loss on the garland.
“What sort of orders?” he asked finally.
“That’s hard to say at this point. Hunting for antiques is more art than science. You have to be constantly on the prowl and you have to have good instincts, good timing and good luck. Since we agree you don’t have any instinct for this sort of hunt, we’ll both have to rely on mine.”
“In other words, you’re the brains and I’m the muscle.”
“More or less.”
“I can live with that,” he agreed.
Rose waited. Neither his tone nor his lazy smile suggested resistance. Still, there was a prickle of apprehension at the back of her neck.
“With one little stipulation of my own,” he said.
She folded her arms. “Let’s hear it.”
“Your conditions apply to work time only. When we’re off duty, we’re on our own.”
“Meaning?”
“Meaning you can forget that rule about officers not fraternizing with enlisted men.”
“I guess I can live with that,” agreed Rose, wondering what she was getting herself into.
“Good. When do we start?”
“I’ll let you know.”
Chapter Four
The scent was all around him. Her scent…roses and wind…sweet and fresh, and he was falling into a sea of silvery green, her eyes, Rose Davenport’s amazingly beautiful eyes. She was smiling up at him, sighing softly, lost in a cloud of soft, white…ruffles? Pillows, pillows with ruffles. Hell, a motherlode of them, like the pile he’d seen on that old bed in her shop.
He’d had such thoughts about that bed and Rose, and now, like magic, here he was, stretched above her and so hot for her that not even the ruffles bothered him. Griff grinned with pure pleasure. This was like the old days—a beautiful woman tumbling into his arms after minimal effort on his part. Maybe his luck was changing.
He brushed the hair from her cheek and lowered his head to taste her lips.
She touched his mouth with one fingertip—one cool, irresistible fingertip—and screamed in his ear.
He flinched. Why the hell was she screaming at him? It’s not like he’d twisted her arm to get her here. There is no way he would ever become that desperate.
She screamed again. Longer and louder.
Griff opened his eyes to a wall covered with faded pink cabbage roses and realized that the cool fingertip against his lips was merely a damp spot on the pillowcase. He was drooling, for God’s sake.
He sat up to flip the pillow over, and whacked his head against the ceiling that slanted above the bed—just one more of Fairfield House’s charming period details. It was his own damn fault for opting to sleep in his old room. Considering his reason for being there, it just hadn’t seemed right to lay claim to Devora’s majestic four-poster. Not to mention the fact that when he’d tried, his first night there, one of the damn bed rails had let go, leaving him sleeping at a sixty-degree angle. Or trying to, anyway.
He realized it was absurd, but sometimes it seemed as if the old house knew what he had planned for it and was responding the same way its mistress would have: with regal disdain.
The earsplitting sound came again. Not a scream, he realized, but a car horn. Who the hell…?
He swung from the bed, wincing as his left leg threatened to buckle under him, and lunged toward the window. With both hands planted on the sill, he checked out the circular drive below.
Directly beneath his window was a white pickup truck. What looked like an old blue-and-white quilt spilled over the rear tailgate and a familiar logo adorned the driver’s door.
Somewhere downstairs was a shopping bag full of dead flowers with the same logo: a straw hat with black streamers that seemed to be fluttering in the wind and the words Second Hand Rose, Specializing in Has-Beens of Distinction.
So. Has-beens of distinction were Rose Davenport’s specialty. How very fitting, he thought, irritable as only a man who’s recently been yanked from a sound sleep and slammed his head into a wall can be.
Leaving the engine running, Rose hopped from behind the wheel and grinned up at him. Not, he couldn’t help noting, with anything resembling the lustful enthusiasm she had exhibited in his dream.
“Did I wake you?” she called to him.
“No,” he retorted, the rasp in his voice
