and she wouldn’t have forgotten him.
Because he was definitely a hunk.
Get a grip, Jillian. Hunks were her particular weakness. And acting too quickly on her attraction to them was something she’d paid the price for again and again.
Mr. Racecar Driver had only been the most recent. It was the main reason she’d vowed to abstain from starting up any new relationships, at least until she met the next goal on her two-year business plan.
“You’re lucky,” the hunk drawled. “Not a scratch. Want to check my car out? ”
She glanced at her watch. No time. She’d wasted all her time checking him out. And he was coming closer again. “Look, I have an appointment in Belle Bay in five minutes. I really have to dash. Lawyers hate to be kept waiting. How about I take your word?” Reaching into her car, she grabbed her purse and fished out a business card. “I’m Jillian Brightman, and if there’s any kind of a problem, you can reach me at Haworth House.”
He took the card, studied it for a minute.
She barely kept from tapping her foot. “Are we good here?”
He nodded. “You’ll be the first to know if we’re not.”
“Great.” She slipped back into her car and started the engine. After first backing up and then edging her way carefully around the SUV, she pressed her foot on the gas pedal. It took three straight minutes of driving for her heartbeat to steady.
IAN MACFARLAND WALKED as far as the sharp curve where he’d nearly met his maker and watched Jillian’s car race down the twisting road to the village of Belle Bay. His heart was still hammering. And he didn’t think he could blame that all on the near miss he’d just had.
Although when he’d rounded the curve and seen the car nearly upon him, he thought he’d bought it. The oil slick had taken her into a spin and if she hadn’t been able to handle it, neither of them would have cheated the grim reaper.
The lady sure could drive.
But part of the reason his heart had kicked into overdrive could be laid at the door of Jillian Brightman herself. He wasn’t a man who normally went with impulse. In the five years he’d worked as an analyst for the CIA, he’d learned the value of taking his time, figuring the angles, not jumping to conclusions.
But from the moment he’d stepped out of his SUV, he’d felt the damnedest pull. Walking over to her car to see if she was all right—that he could understand. What confounded him was the almost irresistible temptation he’d had to touch her, to kiss her. For an instant while the soft curves of her body had been pressed against him, the desire to taste her had become so urgent, so overwhelming that he hadn’t thought of anything else.
Certainly not the possible repercussions.
The question was why? He’d researched the Brightman sisters, so why hadn’t he been more prepared for the impact Jillian would have on his senses? Perhaps because the image on her Web site, one that he’d returned to study more than once, didn’t even begin to do justice to the woman. Oh, it had done a fair job of replicating the large blue eyes, the tumble of gold curls and the pixielike features that could have belonged to Peter Pan’s Tinker Bell. But it hadn’t even begun to capture the energy the woman radiated in person. Jillian Brightman in the flesh had been more than he’d anticipated.
She moved as fast as she drove. He recalled how quickly she’d gotten out of and back into the car. Then there’d been that moment when she’d looked right into his eyes. He hadn’t expected the little punch he’d felt right in his gut. Nor had he expected the almost instantaneous emptying of his mind.
She’d surprised him in more ways than one. Ian’s lips curved into a smile. She wasn’t even supposed to be on the island for another week. And the fact that she was might complicate the job he’d come to do. Avery Cooper, the hotel manager who’d contacted him, had stressed that the investigation he’d been hired for had to be done incognito.
Ian recalled Avery’s initial phone call. The first thing out of the man’s mouth had been, “This is Avery Cooper. You may know who I am?”
“I do,” Ian had said.
“Are you as good an investigator as your brother?”
“Hopefully. I don’t have as much field experience as Dane does.” It was something that Ian dearly wished to rectify. “What do you need?”
“First, I need to know that you’ll keep what I tell you in strictest confidence. Not a word—even to your brother. I don’t want to interrupt his holiday with Naomi, and I don’t want the Brightman sisters unnecessarily worried. Not until I know that I’m not just being paranoid.”
“If I think I need to tell my brother, I will. I can ask him to keep it from the sisters. But I can’t guarantee anything until I know what you’re going to tell me.”
There’d been a brief pause on the other end of the line. Then Avery had told him of the incidents plaguing Haworth House in the few weeks since Ian’s brother Dane had captured swindler Michael Davenport on the premises and the story of Haworth House’s resident ghost had received extensive coverage on the twenty-four-hour news channels.
First there’d been a breakdown in the air-conditioning system. Avery had chalked that up to bad luck and the cost of doing business.
Then there’d been the poisonous mushrooms that had nearly made it into the veal marsala, the restaurant’s signature dish. It was a young chef Reese had hired who’d recognized them and saved the day. Avery had had the mushrooms tested in a private lab. The good news was they wouldn’t have proven fatal. The bad news was that whoever had eaten them would have wished they had.
Then there’d been an incident when a guest had taken a tumble on the large stairway leading from the second floor to the lobby. Thankfully, the woman had only fallen down a few steps and suffered no more than a good scare.
But when Avery had discovered the remains of a thin wire he suspected someone had strung across the top step, he’d decided to call Ian.
After hearing Avery’s story, Ian had agreed with the hotel manager on three points. He was right to be concerned, it was too soon to tell if the incidents were related and, therefore, too soon to worry the sisters.
But when he’d offered to come and investigate further, he had to wonder if that hadn’t been related to his own desire to finally become a serious operative in the field. If he was going to be a true partner to Dane, he had to contribute more than tech support. And lately, research work could become a bit tedious and he’d begun to envy his brother’s more active side of the investigative business.
But keeping his investigation under wraps was going to be a challenge now that Jillian Brightman was on the island.
Good thing he loved surprises. And challenges.
As Jillian’s car disappeared from view, Ian returned to his SUV and started it up the hill to Haworth House. Thanks to the last case he and his brother Dane had worked on, he’d done some research on all three of the Brightman sisters.
Oddly enough, the women’s backstory had certain parallels with his and Dane’s. The Brightmans had lost their parents when they were very young and they’d been raised by nuns in a convent
