Even Riley had to admit that was pretty cute. “Well, okay, thank you very much,” he said magnanimously, and was bending down to retrieve the golf ball when, to his annoyance, the little mutt snatched it up in her jaws and pranced away with it, stopping just beyond his reach.
He swore under his breath. The dog looked at him, then opened her mouth and once more let the ball drop. It made a small “pock…pock…pock” as it bounced on the patio flagstones. The dog-Beatle-watched it until it had stopped rolling, then cocked her head and looked up at Riley. Her eyes were huge and round, and every muscle in her body seemed on hair-trigger alert, as if she were about to speak.
Riley, however, was not about to be suckered a second time. He folded his arms on his chest and growled, “Okay, what do you want, a medal?”
“A simple ‘good girl!’ would absolutely make her day,” Summer said with a soft laugh as she stepped out onto the patio.
Riley turned, a whole string of stock “good morning!” phrases in his mind. But the words seemed to hang somewhere between there and his lips, run aground on the shoals of feelings he hadn’t know were there, lurking just beneath the smooth-flowing surface of his conscious thoughts.
She did look like summer personified, all right, standing there in his old blue bathrobe-a former favorite of his, coincidentally, which had become so threadbare and worn he’d banished it some time past to one of the guest room closets. Now he wondered why. It didn’t look like a ragbag candidate, not on her. It matched her eyes. It draped softly over her body. She looked like blue sky and sunshine, fresh breezes and flowers. And her eyes had a misty look.
She said softly, “I hope you know you just made their day.”
Riley cleared his throat. “Oh, yeah?”
She nodded. “I don’t know if I mentioned it, but David was on a swim team in California. It was so good for him-he’s not a naturally active child, you know, like Helen is. It was good for his self-esteem, too. I know he’s been worried about keeping it up…keeping fit…” Her voice trailed off, and she gave herself a little shake. “Anyway, thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” Riley said absently. He was watching her as she bent down to scoop up Beatle, who had gone into raptures at her appearance, dancing on her hind legs and frantically jabbing the air with tiny front paws. He frowned as Summer endured, with eyes and lips firmly closed, the same treatment he’d gotten earlier from that lightning-quick tongue, then gave the dog’s ears a scratch and set. her back on the flagstones. He frowned because, for what may have been the first time in his adult life, he felt ill at ease with a woman.
The problem was, he couldn’t place her, not here, not in this setting. Something like running into your dentist’s receptionist in the grocery store-he couldn’t quite figure out who she was. Summer Robey in court had been one thing to him-the adversary. In his office yesterday morning she’d been something else-the prospective client. He was well-experienced in dealing with those. A little less experience with last night’s incarnation, the traumatized client, perhaps, but still a role he was reasonably comfortable in. But who in the hell was she now, standing here barefoot and sun-kissed in his old bathrobe, on a morning that smelled of honeysuckle and roses? His houseguest? Well…yes. And still his client, too-he couldn’t let himself forget that. But somehow, it seemed to him, more than either of those. As hard as it was to admit it to himself, he didn’t have the faintest idea how to treat her.
Talk about the children, he decided. That was usually safe. He cleared his throat and remarked, “Seems to me that boy worries a lot.”
The words hadn’t been meant as a criticism, Summer knew, but they pricked her heart just the same. Instead of answering, she scooped up the golf ball and tossed it onto the lawn, then watched with Riley as Beatle bounded after it, keeping her smile firmly in place. When she glanced at Riley, she saw that he hadn’t bothered to make even that effort.
“I hope you don’t mind,” she said, hunching her shoulders and plunging her hands deep into the pockets of the blue flannel robe-movements that felt stiff and unnatural to her as a puppet’s. “I found this in the room next to mine. I thought, since-”
“No, of course I don’t mind-you’re welcome to it.” His tone was polite but aloof, and his gaze slid only briefly toward her before returning to Beatle, who, having run down his “quarry,” was now growling and shaking it violently to insure a quick “kill.” “I’m sorry-I should have thought to find something for you last night.”
“No, no-that’s all right. We were all tired.”
Once more silence fell between them and was instantly filled with the hum of morning… and miniature canine snarls. Summer listened to it all for a few moments, then forced an unsteady laugh. “You have no idea,” she said in a low voice, “how awkward this feels.”
His eyes flicked back to her, and this time, before he could veil them with his usual grace and faultless courtesy, she caught a look of surprise-surprise, and a glimpse of something darker, something that told her how wrong her statement had been. Not only was Riley Grogan feeling the same awkwardness she was, but it was a state he abhorred. Naturally, she thought, remembering the way he’d faced her in a courtroom and in his office, with the quiet confidence that had made her think of jungle cats. The way he’d faced down the FBI man on his own turf and promptly taken charge. Riley Grogan was not a man who would ever be accustomed to feeling at a loss.
She smiled, making it a hopeful invitation to him to do the same. “Just yesterday I hired you as my attorney. And today…”
Today, she was standing barefoot on his patio in the soft, sweet-smelling morning, dressed only in one of his old bathrobes. And the man she’d envisioned last night as Cinderella’s Prince was facing her not ten feet away, not armored in elegant evening clothes, but rather endearingly rumpled and unshaven in a navy blue robe that she knew must be silk, with his hair falling over one patrician eyebrow in the sort of disarray she thought novelists must be describing when they employed the word rakish.
Poor Cinderella, she thought as she swallowed, drymouthed. What a shock it must have been for you, waking up that first morning in the Prince’s palace, to see your polished and graceful royal suitor for the first time as…a man. Did your heart pound like this? Did your mouth suddenly taste like dust?
She took a deep breath and just managed to hold on to the smile. “This seems…really, really strange.”
Yes, and what was this sudden preoccupation with Cinderella, anyway? It never had been one of her favorite stories-oh, well, except for when she was a little girl and had identified so strongly with the way she’d taken care of the animals, and those adorable little mice… But now that she was grown up-well, actually, she did have a cat who looked an awful lot like old Lucifer…
“Strange…” Riley’s voice rumbled, bringing her back to the here and now with a start. He gave a snort of irony and looked away, scrubbed a hand over his face, then shook his head. She was more than relieved when he finally faced her again, this time wearing his version of her own smile-a bit wry, more than a little bemused. “Yeah, I guess it is, at that. Well, I don’t imagine either one of us planned on this happening. Since it has…as I said last night, I don’t see we had any other choice. For right now, anyway. You’ll be safe here until we can come up with a more comfortable arrangement for you. Meanwhile-”
He was interrupted by a bloodcurdling scream.
Chapter 6
Bloodcurdling. Earsplitting. And hair-raising. Riley could actually feel the goose bumps rising up on his arms and the back of his neck.