Mystery Date. Crystal Green
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not like you’re going into an unsafe place, Leigh. Beth Dahrling said she’d meet you there, right?”
Beth Dahrling, the woman who’d bid on Leigh’s basket in place of the Mystery Man.
“Right,” Leigh said. “But I doubt she’ll be chaperoning the whole night. She’s just a friend of this guy, and she set everything up.”
“She’s a fellow sister. Plus, she told you that Mystery Man was a brother in our very favorite fraternity, and a brother would never put you in a bad situation.”
True. Riley, Dani’s fiancé and a Phi Rho Mu brother to boot, had all but promised Leigh that one of his own would never harm her. Besides, Beth would be here. Still, Riley had no idea of Mystery Man’s identity, although he’d done enough online research to try and uncover it. Margot put a hand on Leigh’s arm, and it was a comforting touch. “It’ll be a good time, you’ll see. My bet is that he’s just one of the fraternity brothers—a San Joaquin cowboy whose ranch is making the big bucks—and he’s having some fun with you. He’ll ask the TV chef to cook him dinner, and while you’re eating, you’ll have a major laugh over this whole secrecy thing.”
Leigh locked gazes with Margot, her frenemy, the woman who’d always had everything come so easily to her. The person Leigh had wanted to emulate in college and beyond, even as they went toe-to-toe with each other.
It was as if Margot saw all of that in Leigh’s eyes, and for some reason she glanced away.
This wasn’t the first time Margot had acted like this recently, and Leigh had been wondering why. Her friend had started a new book about a city girl living the country life on Clint’s cutting-horse ranch, and she had a new blog that was drawing all kinds of interest. So why did she occasionally look as if she was hiding something?
Leigh wanted to ask what was going on, but Dani was already speaking on the phone.
“Well?” she asked. “Are you going to stay in that car all night or are you going to have an adventure?”
Leigh sent one last look to the mansion, her stomach in knots...
And that growl combing over every inch of her.
* * *
ADAM MORGAN LEANED against the wall near a barred window in the top story of the rented house. He was watching the Prius that was parked at the end of the long driveway, near the open iron gates that separated him from the eucalyptus-shrouded lane that led up here.
“She’s not coming in, is she?” he asked.
Next to him, his good friend Beth Dahrling was also peering out the window. “Well, Leigh’s here, at least. I don’t think she would come this far to turn around.”
She had to be right, because he had hired a small plane, in cash, to fly Leigh down here to the Pismo Beach area from her home up in Lodi. He’d decided to have this dinner away from Avila Grande, where they’d both attended Cal-U.
For a short time, in Adam’s case.
He glanced over his shoulder at Beth, whose long dark hair was swept back into a tortoiseshell barrette. In her chic printed silk wrap dress and with her rosy-brown skin, she seemed colorful and exotic, but the melancholy expression she wore gave him pause.
“You still think this is a bad idea,” he said, a trace of amusement in his voice.
“I think it’s an odd one.” She turned her liquid-brown gaze on him. “I think all you had to do was bid on Leigh’s basket and reveal who you were.”
“She wouldn’t remember me.” He hadn’t stuck around the university long enough for there to even be a picture of him on the walls of the fraternity house, where he’d pledged for only a short time before he’d had to drop out and return home.
But several months ago, when he’d seen Leigh on TV for the first time, he’d certainly remembered her. And when Beth had mentioned the basket auction that was being held at the reunion for their connected organizations, he’d thought of Leigh as she had been fourteen years ago, laughing all the time, taking a moment to smile at the shy freshman pledge who didn’t say much to girls—the kid who’d disappeared without ever becoming an official Phi Rho Mu brother.
Beth sighed and walked away from the window. Adam turned around, folding his arms over his chest while she spoke.
“Do you blame her for being cautious about this?” she asked. “For all she knows, you could be the Phantom of the Opera in this old house.”
He dodged her comment. “I didn’t want to use any of my own homes.” Not for a one-night basket date that had sparked his imagination.
“You know damned well that it’s not your homes I’m talking about,” Beth said. “Really, Adam, this is the strangest thing you’ve ever done. In fact...”
She didn’t have to say anything else. Ever since his wife, Carla, had withered away from breast cancer two years ago, he had become a recluse, uninterested in most things that happened outside the walls of his homes, except for the many property and business investments that he’d inherited from Carla, money that kept his bank accounts flush, thanks to the way he’d multiplied the investments.
“Hey,” he said, walking over to Beth and reaching out, chucking her under the chin with his finger. “This is going to turn out all right. No worries.”
Beth rolled her eyes. “Yes, it’ll turn out all right for you. This date will provide some temporary entertainment, and then you’ll move on to whatever comes next. I’ve seen it before with your women, but none of them have ever been one of my sisters.”
She was talking about the women he’d met online. Women he would talk to behind yet another wall—this one created by the computer. They provided mental fantasies for him, and that was all he’d needed for a couple of years now....
Until he’d seen Leigh on TV, wearing a red-and-white-checkered shirt that was unbuttoned down to here, her stomach bared because of the knot she’d tied above her waist, her long blond hair pinned away from her heart-shaped face and tumbling down her back as she worked in her Come-on Down Kitchen by candlelight, creating sensual country meals on her show.
She’d taken off a lot of weight since college, but he thought she’d looked just as beautiful with her curves and soft skin back then. He’d first seen her at a casual party populated mostly by his fraternity brothers and the Tau Epsilon Gamma sorority, and his heart had skipped a beat while she’d joked with her friends across the room. Her laugh had captured him in some physical way that he’d never been able to explain, but it had consumed him that night, and he’d never forgotten. And that smile she’d given him in passing—that dazzling, pure smile that had reached inside and grabbed him.... If he’d been less shy, he would’ve taken that as encouragement, but the fact that he’d never had the chance made Leigh Vaughn into a figment of his college imagination, made her into the ultimate “what could’ve been” girl.
Of course, that had been just before he was called home after his dad succumbed to a heart attack and Adam had taken up the mantle of “man of the house.”
He turned back around, moving to the window again. He could see that the car was still parked, and even now his heart flipped. But it wasn’t because of some old never-consummated crush. It was because of tonight’s scenario.
The basket.
He’d initiated all of this out of sheer curiosity. How had Leigh turned out so many years later? Did she still have the same warmth a man could feel even from across a room?
Adam gripped the window frame. He wasn’t someone who needed warmth—it was the curiosity that was driving him. That was all. And these days he could afford to appease it.
He could afford almost anything that broke up the boredom.
As he kept looking through the barred window, he could faintly see his reflection: dark hair and nearly gold eyes from his mom’s