Irresistible Stranger by Jennifer Greene Read Free Book Online

back then. The wildest thing this town had ever seen. Gave her dad gray hair and then some. Drank, smoked funny stuff, partied and stayed out all night. No one could put a rein on that girl. Or that’s the story.”
    She’d forgotten—or maybe she’d never known—how much fun it was to get caught up in the soap operas in a small town.
    The groceries fit snugly in the back of his red convertible EOS. The car suited him. It was seriouslygreen, but it was also splashy and sassy and high tech. Not a gas guzzler, yet still perfect for a guy who wanted a sexy scoundrel’s image. “So why do I keep getting the impression,” she asked, “that you’re not quite the lazy bad boy you let on?”
    â€œYou’re such a breath of fresh air. It’s been a while anyone believed I had a serious bone in my entire body.” He shot her a glance. “Mostly because I don’t.” As if to prove his point, he gunned the baby. Of course, even driving at breakneck speeds, his place wasn’t more than a couple miles from town center—so it wasn’t as if he kept up that life-threatening pace for long. As he’d said, she could walk home later if she was so inclined or needed to.
    His place wasn’t what she’d expected. Of course, she hadn’t expected anything in particular. But his land was so close to town, and yet nothing like town. Just off the highway, he turned onto an unmarked road, sneaked up past a sea of lodge pines, into a burst of sunshine, and finally there it was, a house perched on a rock ledge, the same color as the native pale limestone.
    All the rolling hills in their Georgia neck of the woods made finding a hideaway easy enough, but Griff had made his place so…invisible. Almost as invisible as the dirt-crusted, practical pickup truck parked behind on the garage, on a slab of concrete in the shade.
    â€œLike it so far?” he asked, not referring to the pickup—which he couldn’t realize she’d noticed—but to the facade of the house.
    A half hour later she was dredging chicken into a whipped egg, then rolling each piece in a batter of freshparmesan. Griff had opened a bottle of something red and dry, poured it into a couple of fat glasses, and for a laid-back kind of guy, was jogging circles around her.
    He’d already made dessert—yet another new flavor of ice cream he wanted her to try. He’d also pulled out hors d’oeuvres from the fridge, plump white shrimp on ice, with a sauce so spicy it could turn a nun hot. His eating table was beveled glass, with thin teak slabs for placemats, already decked out with sterling flatware and water goblets.
    The view from the counter where she was forking the chicken into a frying pan, was of a mountain. The entire east wall was glass, overlooking a secret dark forest below, where occasionally she could glimpse a sterling ribbon of stream.
    â€œYou know, I didn’t really expect you to cook.” He kept circling, leaning over her shoulder. “What are you making?”
    â€œYou’ll love it. Trust me.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œYou’re male.” She grinned, took a sip of wine, then scrounged in his cupboards for the extras she needed. Aluminum foil. Spices. A good olive oil.
    He’d never exhibited a trace of nerves before—at least not around her. Yet temporarily, he couldn’t stand still or relax. Lily thought she knew why. She was discovering, whether he wanted her to or not, that Griff was a class-A liar.
    His general decorating scheme was minimalist to the nth degree, but that was misleading. He’d built the place to be a private hideaway, which it was; but the design,constructed right into the hillside, had to cost a fortune. The inside surfaces were all expensive, from hardwood to marble and limestone. The bathroom off the main living area was done up in lapis—the real lapis—and the shower itself had