a stunner. A raven-haired beauty that made him nearly breathless.
“Hey, you’re trespassing. May I help you?”
He looked beyond her to a big hulk of a man standing directly behind her in the doorway who’d asked the question in a high-pitched and agitated tone. And he was glaring at Dillon as if his very presence annoyed the hell out of him.
Dillon quickly figured that this must be the “him” the girls had been referring to, and was about to open his mouth to speak when the taller of the two girls spoke up. “No, you can’t help him because he didn’t come to see you, Fletcher. He came to see Pammie.”
A dark scowl covered the man’s face at the same time a smile touched the teen’s lips. It wasn’t hard to see she was deliberately trying to get a rise out of the man.
“Paige and Nadia, shouldn’t you be upstairs doing your homework?” the gorgeous woman asked the two before turning her curious gaze on Dillon. Unlike her male friend, she smiled brightly and had a cheerful look on her face.
“Pamela Novak?” he heard himself ask, trying to force air into his lungs. He’d seen beautiful women before, but there was something about her that was doing something to everything male within him.
“Yes,” she said, still smiling while stepping down the steps toward him. He pushed away from the car and began moving toward her, as well.
“Wait a minute, Pamela,” the hulk of a man called out. “You don’t know this man. You shouldn’t be so quick to be nice to people.”
“Maybe you should follow her lead, Fletcher.”
A new voice Dillon hadn’t heard before had spoken up, entering the fray. He glanced behind the hulk to see a young woman, probably around seventeen or eighteen, stepping out the door. Another sister, he quickly surmised, due to the similarities in their features.
Pamela Novak continued walking and when she came to a stop in front of Dillon, she offered her hand. “Yes, I’m Pamela Novak, and you are...?”
He accepted her hand and immediately felt a warmth that began to flow all through his body. Then a fluttering he felt in the pit of his stomach began to slide downward. Even the engagement ring he’d noticed her wearing couldn’t stop the sensations engulfing him.
He watched her mouth move, fascinated with her lips and thinking they had a nice shape. He felt his stomach tighten when he raised his gaze from her lips to her eyes. “I’m Dillon Westmoreland.”
He watched her brow lift ever so slightly, although she kept her smile in place. He could tell she was searching her memory for when, how and where she recalled the last name. He decided to help her. “I understand that my great-grandfather, Raphel Westmoreland, was once a business partner of your great-grandfather, Jay Winston Novak.”
The smile on her lips transformed into a full chuckle. “Oh, yes, Raphel Westmoreland. The wife stealer.”
He couldn’t stop his lips from twitching in a smile. “Yes, so I’ve heard. In fact, that’s the reason I’m here. I—”
“What does he want, Pamela?”
Dillon could tell by the stiffening of Pamela Novak’s shoulders that she wished the hulk would keep quiet for once. “Is he your fiancé?” he couldn’t help asking.
She met his gaze and studied it for a moment before saying, “Yes.”
She then inclined her head to call back over her shoulder, “This is Dillon Westmoreland. Our great-grandfathers were once business partners so I consider him a friend of the family.”
She quickly turned back to Dillon, presented him with another smile and whispered, “You know I say that loosely, don’t you, considering your great-grandfather’s reputation.”
Now it was Dillon’s time to chuckle. “The reason I’m here is to find out all I can about that reputation since I only recently discovered he had one and—”
“What does he want, Pamela?”
Before she could respond the shortest of the teen imps said, “We already told you. He wants Pammie.”
The hulk’s frown deepened and Dillon knew the young girl hadn’t meant it the way it sounded, but basically she had spoken the truth. He was attracted to Pamela Novak. Encroaching into another man’s territory had been Raphel Westmoreland’s style, but was not his. However, at that moment Dillon didn’t feel any guilt about the thoughts going through his mind, especially since it was apparent the woman was engaged to an ass. But that was her business, not his.
The man came down the steps and moved toward them and Dillon quickly sized him up. He wore a suit and an expensive pair of black leather shoes. His shirt and tie didn’t look cheap, either, which meant he was probably a successful businessman of some sort.
When he stopped in front of him, Dillon offered the man his hand. “I’m Dillon Westmoreland, and like Ms. Novak said, I’m a family friend. The reason I’m here,” he decided to add, “is because I’m doing research on my family’s history.”
The man shook his hand. “And I’m Fletcher Mallard, Pamela’s fiancé,” he said, as if he needed to stake a claim by speaking his position out loud.
Dillon took it in stride and thought that you could tell a lot about a man from his handshake, and this man had all the telltale signs. He was using the squeezing handshake, often used to exert strength and power. A confident man didn’t need such a tactic. This man was insecure.
Mallard looked at Dillon skeptically. “And just what is it you want to know?”
The smile dropped from Pamela Novak’s lips and she actually glared at her fiancé. “There’s no reason for you to ask all these questions, Fletcher. Mr. Westmoreland is a family friend and that’s all that matters right now.”
As if her words settled it, she turned to Dillon with her smile back in place. “Mr. Westmoreland, please join us for dinner, then you can tell me how we can help in your quest to learn more of your family’s history.”
It would have been so easy and less complicated to decline her offer, but there was something about Fletcher Mallard that outright irritated Dillon and pushed him to accept her invitation.
“Thank you, Ms. Novak, and I’d love to stay for dinner.”
Chapter 2
Pam knew she had made a mistake inviting Dillon Westmoreland to dinner the moment he was seated at the table. She wished she could say Fletcher was in rare form, but she’d seen him behave this way before, when another man had shown interest in her.
But what was strange was that Dillon hadn’t actually shown any interest in her, so she couldn’t understand why Fletcher was being so territorial. Unless...he had picked up on her interest in Dillon.
She pushed such utter nonsense from her mind. She was not interested in Dillon. She was merely curious. What woman wouldn’t be interested in a man like Dillon Westmoreland. He was at least six foot four with coffee-colored features. He had an angular face that boasted a firm jaw, a pair of cute dimples, full lips and the darkest eyes she’d ever seen on a man. She was engaged
