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opened the door to her beautifully proportioned bedroom.
    â€œNext door. But there’s no connecting door.”
    â€œAnd where do you sleep?” She couldn’t tell whether it was a casual question or not, and her heart began to pound againas her mouth tingled with sudden remembrance of his cognac-laden kisses.
    â€œI’m sleeping in the studio,” she said, moving aside to allow him to precede her into the bedroom. She hovered at the door, reluctant to follow him inside, reluctant to leave him without some sort of explanation.
    He was the first to bring it out in the open. “I suppose I should say I’m sorry about what happened in the library.” His mobile mouth quirked upward in a rueful grin.
    It took all Anne’s willpower to keep from responding, “Are you sorry?” Instead she said, “I’m partly to blame. I didn’t realize who you were.”
    He was tossing his suitcase onto her bed, snapping it open with quick efficiency and pulling out a fresh shirt. He paused to stare at her for a moment before stripping off the wool sweater. “You didn’t?” He tossed the sweater onto the bed, and to her embarrassment the wide stain of cognac was a dark patch between his shoulder blades. He seemed more curious than anything else, and as he unbuttoned his shirt and pulled it out of his pants Anne wished she had escaped when she still could with a modicum of grace. But to run now would be ridiculously coy, and it was important that she be sophisticated and unmoved by that all too brief moment of passion by the library fire.
    â€œYou said your name was Grant,” she explained, unable to tear her gaze away from his chest. He had tossed the stained shirt onto the bed and was taking an achingly long time in putting the new one on, giving Anne more than enough time to memorize the beautifully sculpted expanse of his chest, the lean, wiry strength, the golden skin with its faint trace of hair that seemed made for…
    Anne cleared her throat. “Steve Piersall arrived earlier and I assumed he was Holly’s Noah. So when you arrived and said your name was Grant, I naturally thought you were Ashley’s latest…friend.” She wondered vaguely if he’d be insulted by her false assumption, but she was still too distracted by that body to care.
    He pulled a blue corduroy shirt on, and Anne watched all that lovely skin disappear with mingled relief and regret. “You thought I was Ashley’s latest,” he repeated, amused. “No wonder you seemed so comfortable—I haven’t been used to being treated as quite so safe. Well, suffice it to say I’m not Ashley’s friend.” He moved across the room, tucking his shirt in around his lean waist, his tread light and purposeful. “And, as you discovered to your everlasting guilt, I’m not particularly safe. And I’m not Holly’s Noah, either. Does that make you feel any better?” That last question was in a deep murmur as he stood directly in front of her, not touching her, his blue eyes warm and smiling down at her.
    Those smiling eyes were hard to resist, but resist them she did. “It’s none of my business,” she replied coolly.
    â€œLiar.” He laughed, but it was a gentle laugh, with no mockery to be heard. “Am I going to get a chance to meet the upstanding gentleman?”
    â€œWho?”
    â€œThat was Ashley’s term for your fiancé,” he explained gently. “Where is he, by the way?”
    â€œWilson will be here for dinner tomorrow,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll like him.” Actually, she was sure he wouldn’t, but she couldn’t think of anything else to say.
    â€œThat remains to be seen.” Both his face and his voice were enigmatic as he casually took her elbow in one strong,capable hand. The warmth of his flesh burned through her loose chamois shirt, and Anne wanted to yank her