“You must be Blaire Gibson?” he asks.
“Yes, I am.”
A smile stretches across his cheeks. “I’m Graham. Nice to meet you.” He extends a hand as he steps out of my way, so I can enter.
We shake quickly, his palm heavy and strong, as he leads me into the back of the house. I can hear laughter coming from a room in front of us as Graham turns toward me. “I’m winding up a business meeting. It would’ve been over, actually, had my brother Lincoln not shown up.”
As the laughter grows again, I laugh too. “I have a brother like that.”
“So, you feel my pain,” he cringes. “On a serious note, Sienna has told me a lot about you. I wanted to thank your family for taking her in the way you have.”
We stop just short of the doorway. “She’s so good for my brother. He’s smitten with her.”
“I think she’s in about the same shape.” He grins. “Come on. I’ll introduce you to Linc while I grab the papers you’re after.”
He enters the room in front of me and as he pulls away along the wall toward the chair at the head of the table, I stutter step.
“And then he …” The man’s voice sitting just a couple of feet in front of me trails off as our eyes meet somewhere over the fancy tile on the floor. “Didn’t I ….”
I don’t believe my eyes. It can’t be him, but it is. There’s only one man I’ve ever met that looks like this, that sparks this rumble in my stomach.
Recovering more quickly than I anticipate, I paste on a practiced smile. “It’s good to see you again,” I say to him.
He looks at Graham before switching his eyes to me again. “You too.” It’s more of a stammer, a caught-off-guard statement than anything. “Do you know the Landry’s?”
“I’m just here to pick up some papers.”
The gazes from around the room are heavy, heating the air even more than the exchange of energy between Holt and me. The slight drop of his jaw, the furrowed brow is being replaced with a twitch of his lip and oh-so-narrowed eyes that’s enough to make me want to back out of the room slowly.
“Is this why you were late today?” A man across from him sighs. He looks like Holt with lighter hair and darker eyes.
Holt responds, bickering back and forth with the man across the table, while I take in the men around me. Graham is ignoring them all, sorting through a stack of papers. A younger version of Graham sits next to him with a wicked grin on his face.
“Lincoln Landry,” he says with a little wave. “Nice to meet ya. You must be Blaire.”
“Yes. Nice to meet you too.”
“Here they are,” Graham mutters, pulling out an envelope and handing it to me. “I put everything she needs in there. If she’s missing something, she can call.”
“Great. I’ll make sure she gets them. I can see myself out.”
“We’d love to have dinner with you this week,” Lincoln calls out. “Mom would love to meet you.”
“I need to check my schedule,” I say, reverting to my new go-to line. “I’ll get in touch if I can work it out.”
Holt’s chair scoots back in front of me. “I’ll walk you out.”
“I can do it,” Graham offers.
“Clearly, he doesn’t want you to do it, asshole,” Lincoln says to his brother. “Sit down and pretend you can see what’s happening here.”
My cheeks warming, I look between the Landry men. “Nice to meet you both. And you too …” I say, pulling my gaze to the other man.
He stands. “Oliver Mason. Holt’s brother.”
“Nice to meet you, Oliver.”
“Likewise.” He tucks his tie beneath his jacket as he takes his seat again. “I’m sure we’ll be seeing each other again.”
Not knowing what to say, I give him a tight grin and make my way through the house and to the front door. Holt’s energy ripples behind me, the musk of his cologne filling my nostrils as I reach for the exit.
He hops in front of me and opens it before I can get to it.
“Thank you,” I offer as I step onto the expansive front porch complete with hanging ferns. Breathing in the cut grass and coolness to the evening air, I look up at the colorful sky. “It’s beautiful out here, isn’t it?”
“I didn’t notice until now.”
The gravel in his voice snaps my attention to him without me even realizing it. Before I know it, I’m standing in front of Holt Mason as he peers down at me. His irises flicker a color of green mixed with gold and the colors swirl together in a heady mix of something I don’t want to name.
Passing a hot swallow down my throat, I re-grip the file in my hands. “Look at you, being all charming.”
“It’s one of my many talents.”
“Your confidence is underwhelming,” I tease.
“There’s nothing wrong with confidence if you can back it up. It becomes a problem when people tout their abilities and have nothing to fall back on.”
“I suppose that’s true,” I say, ignoring the look in his eyes and, instead, pretending to ponder his declaration. “The flaw in that logic is in the definitions. Meaning, what if someone truly believes they’re amazing at something and the other person finds them to be lackluster. Is that confidence wrong?”
“Not if they believe it,” he banters back. “It’s their truth.”
“Fair enough.”
The air flutters around us, almost dancing a private show for our benefit. Crickets sing in the distance, stars beginning to shine in the sky. It’s as if the world flipped a switch for this moment. If I believed in gooey girlish things, I’d be delighted. Too bad I’m more realistic than that crap.
“Again, nice to see you, Holt …”
“Quit it,” he sighs, brushing a stray strand of hair away from my cheek. His fingertips lightly brush my skin. They’re warm and slightly calloused in a way that makes my thighs ache. “Let’s go to dinner.”
“I have a reservation already,” I tell him, pulling away.
“For one?”
“For dinner,” I say with a roll of my eyes. “Now, if you’ll excuse me.”
I wait for him to move out of my way, but he doesn’t. Not a muscle. He just stands in front of me and grins a shit-eating grin.
“I’ll take you to the best restaurant in Savannah,” he tells me. “You’ll love it.”
“Why do men always think they know what a woman wants? It’s annoying, not to mention arrogant.”
“It’s not arrogant if I’m right.”
This should turn me off. This should be a blazing, flashing red light to dress him down, put him in his place, and be on my way. It’s what I do to every other guy that thinks he’s something I can’t live without. But, I don’t. Or I can’t. I don’t know which and I can’t even spare the mental capacity to sort it out because every synapse is firing just for him.
There’s a look in his eye, something behind the brazen façade, that intrigues me. I haven’t given a man more than a dirty look in a courtroom in longer than I can remember. Who has time? Who has energy? Who wants to deal with that bullshit?
But as I stand on the porch of this beautiful home in the middle of a perfect southern evening, I remember Sienna’s instruction to enjoy my vacation.
“You don’t know enough about me to be right,” I volley back.
“I disagree.” He shifts his weight, folding his arms across his chest. “I’ll tell you three things about you besides the obvious. If I’m right, you’ll go to dinner with me.”
“Fine,” I say, thinking there’s no way the man knows anything about me at all. I didn’t even tell him my name. “But it can’t be obvious things like hair color.”
“Absolutely not. There’s no fun in that.” He grins.
“All right. Shoot.”
“Your name is Blaire,” he says, catching me off guard. “You like gummy bears but feel like it’s a childish thing to like, so you try to be discreet about your obsession. You prefer the red ones and hate the green ones. You like shopping but hate spending loads of money on things you think are a waste.”
My jaw almost hits the floor.
“And,” he says, taking a step closer to me, “you don’t date because you don’t have time. You also find men to be barbaric, adolescent creatures which, may I add, I find offensive.”
“How could you possibly know all that?” I demand. “Are you a stalker? Do I need a restraining order?”
The heat rolling off his body clamors into me, upping the beat of my heart tenfold. I hate my reaction to him and I hate even more than I can’t control it.
“Lincoln said your name. You dropped the candy from your purse in the airport and I just happened to notice you had it hidden in a little pouch. All the red ones were gone and it was chock full of the green variety. Your lipstick was a brand my mother uses, so I know it’s expensive as hell, but your earbuds earlier weren’t name brand so I put together you don’t value them as much.”
“I just lose them constantly,” I say, still sorting his observations.
“And now you lost our bet. You ready to go?”
My summer dress billows in the breeze, reminding me, once again, I’m not home. This wouldn’t be like a dinner with a man I see regularly or could even see regularly if I wanted to. He lives almost a thousand miles from me.
What could one dinner hurt?
“Fine,” I say, stepping around him. “But I’m driving.”
“Great,” he says, much to my surprise. “Let me tell the others I’m taking off.”
“But you weren’t done. We can pick this up tomor—”
“Oh, no,” he laughs. “We were done a while ago. Just shooting the shit. I’ll be right back.”