THREE-QUARTERS OF an hour later, Luke got out of his car, carrying a thick brown paper bag. Kelsey’s little house was set in a grove of old lilac bushes and tall yews; lights blazed in nearly every room. He climbed her front steps and rang the bell.

      Janis Joplin was emoting at the top of her lungs. Luke rang the bell again, then turned the handle and found the door unlocked. The song came to an end as he pushed on the door and walked in. The hinges squealed like an animal in pain.

      A woman came running down the stairs. When she saw him, she stopped dead on the fourth step down. Her hair was a tumbled mass of chestnut curls, framing eyes of a rich, velvety brown. She was slender-waisted, slim-hipped, with legs that seemed to go on forever.

      Her low-necked orange shirt clung to her breasts; her jeans were skintight. Her toenails, he noticed blankly, were painted purple.

      Her mouth…He gaped at it. Her lips, too, were orange, a glossy lipstick smoothed over their soft, voluptuous curves.

      Lust coursed through his veins. He said awkwardly, “Oh…I was looking for Kelsey North. But I must have got the wrong address. Sorry to have bothered you…”

      “Very funny,” the woman said, in a husky contralto voice.

      “Kelsey?”

      “Who did you think it was?”

      “I—er, you’ve changed your clothes,” he said. With a distant part of his brain he wondered what had happened to the Luke Griffin who’d dated famous beauties from Manhattan to Milan, and who was unfailingly suave.

      Descending the last of the stairs and putting her hands on her hips, she said coldly, “I don’t want any more boxes, and if you’ve lost your way I can direct you wherever you want to go.”

      She smelled delicious. The other Kelsey, the brown tweed Kelsey, smelled of worthy soap. Swallowing hard, Luke said, “Have you eaten dinner?”

      “No. I’ve been going through the boxes I brought home.”

      “Good.” He indicated the bag in his hands. “I brought it with me. From the bistro ten miles down the road.” The bistro on the rich side of the peninsula, he thought, the same side as Griffin’s Keep. Hadley, seven miles away, might as well be on another planet.

      “You brought dinner with you? To eat here?”

      “Yes.” He gave her a winning smile. “I couldn’t stand one more evening alone in that house.”

      Kelsey said carefully, “Am I missing something? I may only be from Hadley, but I thought it was customary to ask a woman if she wanted to have dinner with you.”

      “If I’d phoned, would you have said yes?”

      “No, of course I wouldn’t.”

      Why of course? “I don’t like rejection,” Luke said, and smiled again. “So I just arrived.”

      “I bet you haven’t been rejected in years.”

      With an edge that surprised him, he replied, “Not since I earned my first million.”

      “Poor little rich guy.”

      “That’s me. What were you going to have for supper?”

      “Scrambled eggs.”

      “I can offer borscht, capons stuffed with wild rice, and blackberry mousse. Along with a reasonable Merlot.”

      Her mouth was watering. For the food, she thought hastily. Not for the man who was leaning so casually on her newel post, his dark blue sweater deepening the blue of his eyes. Eyes that were laughing at her, full of the charm she’d professed to despise.

      Much too easily for her peace of mind, Kelsey capitulated. “I can’t very well tell you to come in, because you already did. The dining room’s through there. I’ll get a couple of placemats from the kitchen.”

      He walked down the narrow hall into a small room containing a scarred oak table, four chairs and an old-fashioned sideboard; beyond it was a living room in a barely controlled state of chaos. Cardboard packing boxes, piles of books, clothing and sportsgear… Men’s clothes, he thought. Hockey and soccer gear. What was going on?

      Looked like she’d just booted her husband out, and his stuff was following him out the door at the first opportunity.

      He studied the scuff marks on a pair of skates, his brain in high gear, his curiosity intense. Kelsey wasn’t wearing a wedding ring; he always paid attention to that particular detail. Married women had never been on the cards for him. Too complicated. Particularly when there were so many single ones all too ready to play.

      Then Kelsey marched into the dining room and put two placemats and a dish of butter on the table. “Cutlery’s in the drawer,” she said. “I’ll get the wine glasses.”

      He put the bag of food down on the table. Knives, forks and spoons were jumbled together in the drawer. All sterling silver, he noticed, and all badly in need of polishing. As she came back in with the glasses and a corkscrew, he said lightly, “Do you spend so much time organizing other people’s stuff that you don’t get around to your own?”

      “I’ve had other things on my mind. I’ll get some serving spoons.”

      As she moved past him, the overhead light caught her hair, streaking it copper and bronze. Her hips moved delectably in the tight denim. He heard himself say, with a bluntness that dismayed him, “Why the brown tweed suit? Which should, in my opinion, be tossed in the nearest garbage can.”

      “Open the bag, Luke. Let’s eat.”

      As she sat down across from him, he said blandly, “I see your train of thought—from one bag to another.”

      A smile twitched her lips. Those eminently kissable lips. “The suit belonged to my mother,” she said rapidly, watching as he put a bowl in front of her and removed the plastic lid. “She was a very pretty woman with the clothes sense of a rhinoceros. Mmm…the soup smells luscious.”

      “Have some sour cream on it. Do you always wear that suit to work?”

      “Only for unattached men with a reputation.”

      “So there’s been gossip in the village about me as well as my mother?”

      She took a sip of borscht and closed her eyes in ecstasy. “Not unfounded, in your case.”

      “I like women. So what?”

      “In the plural.”

      “One at a time,” he said, rather more sharply than he’d intended.

      “Serial fidelity?”

      “Is there anything wrong with that?”

      As she shrugged, shadows lingered in the little hollows under her collarbones. He wanted to press his lips into those hollows, find out if her skin was as silky smooth as it looked, smell her hair, trace the slim line of her throat to that other hollow at its base.

      Dammit, Luke thought, he needed to bed someone like Clarisse or Lindsay. Hot, slick sex, with no entangling emotions. Too bad he’d cooled both those particular relationships in the last year. Out of—he had to be honest—boredom.

      He could always find someone else.

      “Serial fidelity must be very convenient,” Kelsey said.