Briar laughed as Roxie got into her car. She waved her off then smoothed nervous hands over her skirt. A lucrative venture. The words echoed in her head as she stood alone on the gravel drive. The inn and her mother’s lifetime of work were slipping away slowly but surely. She had to find more investors before it was yanked from her hands and the state put it up for sale or foreclosure.
She owed her mother at least that much.
Loosening a sigh, she began the walk back to the inn. Her eyes fell on the lone vehicle in the drive, Cole Savitt’s Harley-Davidson. Where had it taken him? What all had he seen straddling its black leather seat?
Dreams. She pondered them as she passed through the garden her mother—and now she—so lovingly tended. Once upon a time, her dreams had led her to Paris where she had escaped the obligation her father had been trying to press upon her. Back then she hadn’t wanted to leave Hanna’s—a long time ago, her dream had been to run the inn alongside her mother.
Her father’s wishes, however, had carried her off to law school. Her path had been laid before her. All she’d had to do was walk within it.
Instead, she’d taken a detour from law school in the States to Europe with friends and, to her father’s consternation, had wound up settling in Paris for a semester. There she had rediscovered her love of cooking and had enrolled in culinary school. And that had become her dream.
But soon after beginning her studies in culinary arts, she fell into some bad luck. Or, more accurately, she had run headlong into it, eyes wide-open. Since then, her dreams had gone down a rocky path and hadn’t returned.
She gazed up at the face of the bed-and-breakfast she had once wanted so much to be a part of. Was it still what she wanted?
Guilt swamped her, as it always did when she let her thoughts wander back to Paris, her culinary dreams and the niggling sense of uncertainty she kept locked up inside her. What did it matter what she wanted? What she needed was to keep her mother’s dream alive—to make sure Hanna’s Inn survived the test of time.
Though judging by the dismal financial outlook in the inn’s books and its empty guest calendar, it seemed as if her bad luck was back to haunt her and tear down the solid legacy it had taken decades for her mother to build.
* * *
COLE’S FIRST NIGHT at Hanna’s turned out to be surprisingly restful. He sank into the plush bedding with the drugging fragrance of candles and the dim flicker of firelight lulling him into complacency and easy sleep.
He woke the next morning to the pale light of dawn and stepped into a hot shower, unable to remember the last time he’d woken so rested.
It’d certainly been a while since he’d dreamed of a woman’s face.
The vivid memory of the pretty innkeeper had lingered all through the night. He rubbed water over his face, trying to get the blood flowing as much as to scrub the vision of Briar Browning from the backs of his eyes.
As he stepped out and looped a towel around his waist, he recalled the way she’d watched him in his dreams. Never saying anything—just watching him with those soft honey-brown eyes. He’d felt their touch like a skin-on-skin caress.
Damn, the woman was making it difficult to focus.
He rubbed another towel over his dripping hair before he wiped a spot on the mirror clear in order to shave. Before he lifted the razor to his cheek, he heard the knock on the door. He paused, and called, “It’s open!” Making sure the towel on his waist was secure, he stepped into the room as Briar opened it.
She took one look at his bare chest, shrieked and whirled away. “I’m so sorry!” she exclaimed, gripping the knob. “I’ll come back.”
“Don’t worry about it,” he said automatically. “Nothing to see here.”
She cast him an easy for you to say glance before her eyes veered politely downward. “You have a phone call. It seems rather urgent. And breakfast is ready.”
Amused by the way her eyes averted him, he asked, “What’s on the menu?”
“Cinnamon rolls,” she explained. “And fruit salad. I’ll serve you in the kitchen when you’re ready.”
He nodded. “Sounds great.”
Her lips quirked into a brief smile. “Sorry I barged in on you.”
“It’s nothing,” he said with a shrug. When she shut the door, a wide grin broke over his face, though he couldn’t have said why as he reached for the phone on the bedside table. “Savitt,” he said, raising it to his ear.
“You didn’t call yesterday. I was beginning to think you’d changed your mind.”
The grin vanished quickly along with all the good feelings left over from his early morning encounter with Briar. “Tiff.”
“Enjoying your vacation?”
His back teeth ground together in frustration. “I haven’t found enjoyment in anything since you began your dirty deeds. But that’s exactly what you wanted, isn’t it?”
Tiffany’s laugh filtered over the line. “Don’t whine, Cole. It doesn’t suit you. I called to make sure you haven’t backed out of our deal. And to remind you what’s at stake here.”
How could he possibly forget about Gavin? “For you or for me—because I’m not quite clear on the former.”
“The less you know, the better,” she said. “Isn’t that what you used to tell me when you’d come off a crime scene? As if my delicate, feminine sensibilities would swoon just for thinking about what my flatfoot husband had encountered.”
“I’m no longer your husband,” he reminded her. And he’d learned well that there was nothing delicate about Tiffany. Hard and unyielding, like a hammer, was more like it.
“You’ve got that right. Though Gavin does seem to miss you, on occasion.”
“Don’t,” he said, the word coming out on a fierce growl as every muscle in his body tightened in defense. “Don’t dangle him in front of me any more than you already are.” He couldn’t stand it.
“All right. Just remember what I said. Get inside her head, her files, whatever you have to do to find out everything there is to know about the inn, the adjacent property and if she has investors. If she does, I want to know who and how much.”
“Are you going to buy them off, too?”
“If necessary. I’ll need a progress report every night, Cole.”
“So you can keep tabs on me, as usual.”
“So I know you’re doing your job. I’m not paying for you to stay there so you can lounge under the sun, drink mai tais and work on your tan.”
“Yeah, don’t worry. Nobody knows that more than me. I’m out.” He hung up and took a moment to steady himself. The woman could wind him up quicker than a Matchbox car. It was sickening. Fighting the urge to put his fist through one of Briar’s lovely walls, he dug through his backpack until he found something clean to wear.
* * *
BRIAR HAD MADE the mistake of looking at him again as she closed the door to the bay-view suite. And this time, her gaze had taken its time perusing freely. Beads of water had rolled down his chest from the wet, tousled tips of his black hair. The lure felt more than magnetic—it melted her. Turning away from the tempting sight, she had shut the door smartly at her back, hoping her hormones would get the message No!
Her legs wobbled on the stairs. When she made it safely to the kitchen, she managed to sink into one of the breakfast table’s chairs before she could shrink to the floor.
She fought to cool her heated cheeks, banishing the image of her guest’s sculpted chest from her