I plan to do right now,” Regan said. “When will he get here?”
“Oh, he’s here already. He’s upstairs,” Ceci said. “I thought it would be nice if we dressed for dinner. Your grandfather and I used to do that and it always made dinner seem so much more special. He didn’t have a dinner jacket, but I found an old one of your grandfather’s and he said he’d make do.”
Regan groaned inwardly. It was clear her grandmother was already infatuated with this man. Dinner jackets and intimate meals for two? Someone needed to put a stop to this before Ceci got hurt, and it seemed like Regan was the only one capable of doing it. “I’m just going to go upstairs and introduce myself to him,” she said.
“He’ll be down in a few seconds. Surely you can wait.”
“No,” Regan said. “I don’t think this can wait.” With that, she turned on her heel and started for the stairs.
When she glanced back at her grandmother, she saw a worried expression on her soft features. If this man was hoping to take advantage of her grandmother, Regan would find out. There were so many unscrupulous people in the world, people capable of ruining another person’s life, people capable of stealing a person’s identity. She would never allow that to happen to her grandmother. No matter how handsome or charming the man was.
Regan climbed the log stairs to the second floor and one by one searched the six bedrooms. She found his things scattered on the bed in the last room and she stepped inside to take a look.
The sound of running water filtered through the bathroom door and she listened to it with one ear, realizing that her time to do some snooping would be limited. Regan picked up his wallet and began to rifle through it. She found his driver’s license and pulled it out to examine the photo. The breath froze in her throat.
“Oh, my God,” she murmured. “It’s him.”
Though her grandmother had said he was handsome, she’d assumed he would be a little older. The man’s driver’s license revealed him to be only twenty-seven years old, and in the picture he possessed a masculine beauty that any woman would be grateful to have in her bed.
She found herself staring at the photograph, trying to gauge the intent of the person behind the pale blue eyes. There was nothing she could tell from the license, however; nothing could be revealed beyond the fact that his parents had made a genetically perfect male.
He had nearly five hundred dollars in his wallet, along with a stack of credit cards. From the rest of the contents, she discovered he had a reliable dry cleaner, a favorite coffee shop and tickets for a Blizzard’s hockey game against New York in early December.
Regan returned the wallet to where she’d found it and picked up his phone. But to her dismay, he’d turned it off. She pushed the power button and waited for the screen to light up. Certainly she’d be able to learn more from his old texts and his photo library...
* * *
JAMIE GRABBED A towel from the pile beside the shower and wrapped it around his waist. He probably shouldn’t have taken the time for a shower, considering Celia was waiting with dinner downstairs, but he’d spent most of the day in the car, and the marble shower seemed like the perfect place to work out the kinks in his neck and spine.
He opened the bathroom door and stopped short when he found a woman sitting on the end of the bed, holding his phone. She glanced his way and he realized that he knew her. “It’s you,” he murmured, recognizing the woman from the road that morning.
She stared at him with suspicious eyes. “And it’s you. Would you like to tell me what you’re doing here, in my grandmother’s house?”
“I think the more important question is what are you doing with my phone?”
She jumped up and dropped his phone on the bed as if it were made of fire. Her gaze slowly drifted from his damp hair to his naked chest and finally to the towel that hung low on his hips.
He chuckled softly. “I didn’t expect to see you again.”
She turned toward the door, obviously torn between her desire to escape and her curiosity about the stranger standing half-naked in front of her. At the last moment, she decided to stay.
“Regan,” she finally said. “I’m Regan Macintosh. I’m Celia’s granddaughter. My father is Celia’s middle son.” She held out her hand, then realized his right hand was holding up his towel.
“It’s a pleasure to meet you, Regan,” he said. He made sure the towel was knotted and shook her hand. “I’m James Quinn, but everyone calls me Jamie.”
She glanced down at where their fingers had become entwined, her brow furrowing as if she was confused how they’d gotten that way.
She forced a smile and Jamie waited for her to explain herself. Then, suddenly, she straightened her spine and looked him directly in the eyes.
“I think we’ve had enough of this,” she said, waving her hand in the direction of his bare chest. “I’m sure you find it quite useful to wander about half-naked. I’m sure it makes all the ladies a little breathless and dizzy. But to me it all seems a bit desperate.”
“Desperate?” Jamie chuckled softly. “How so?”
“Men like you need to use their best assets to their advantage,” she explained. “It’s quite apparent that you have an incredibly hot body. But I’m sure that my grandmother will be immune to such a blatant ploy.”
“A blatant ploy?” he murmured. “What exactly do you think I’m doing here?”
“I assume you’re here to hustle my grandmother out of her life savings. Isn’t that what men like you use your bodies to do?”
A laugh burst from Jamie’s throat as he realized the conclusion she’d jumped to. “You think I’m a gigolo?”
“I suppose you prefer the term con artist?” She cursed softly. “I can assure you, if you appear downstairs in just that towel, you may give her a heart attack.”
Jamie shook his head, then walked to the end of the bed to pick through the clothes he’d brought along. He grabbed a pair of boxers and stepped into them, sliding them up to his waist beneath the towel. Then he pulled the towel off and draped it around his neck. “I’m here because I needed a place to stay and I didn’t want to go to a motel. Your grandmother kindly offered to rent me her guest house and I accepted. Then she invited me to dinner. Nothing more, nothing less.”
“Right. Don’t forget about the land you’re trying to swindle. You probably think that she’s an easy mark, living all alone out here, with no one to watch after her. But I’m watching out for her,” Regan said. “And you’re not going to get a finger on one single dollar of her money or one single acre of her land. Do I make myself clear?”
Jamie strolled to the closet and grabbed one of the shirts he found there. Yanking it over his arms, he cursed softly. “The only thing that’s clear is that you are certifiably crazy.”
“I am not!” she cried.
“If you weren’t crazy, you would politely excuse yourself, and let me get dressed on my own.”
Regan
