“Have I told you that you’re a very bad liar?”
“Don’t ask me any questions if you don’t like my answers,” she flared.
Owen raised his eyes briefly to the ceiling in a beseeching expression. Then he fixed her with a look of dogged patience. “Amy, the relationship between a private investigator and his client is founded on mutual trust and confidentiality. If I don’t feel that I can rely upon your answers, I won’t be able to work for you.”
“Oh.” She frowned.
He took a deliberate step toward her. “I think we need to get this relationship back on track. The fastest way to do that is to be completely honest with each other.”
“What do you want from me?” she asked.
He spread his hands. “I’ll get right to the bottom line. Did you really kiss me a few minutes ago because you were driven into a paroxysm of violent passion by the close confines and threat of incredible danger that we face together?”
“Well, no. At least, I don’t think so.”
“So why did you kiss me?”
She gripped the edge of the door and lifted her chin proudly. “If you must know, I kissed you because I’ve been wanting to kiss you ever since I sold you that Victorian horror of a house. There. Are you satisfied?”
He stared at her as if he’d just walked into a brick wall. “Amy.”
“Good night, Owen. I’ll meet you downstairs for breakfast. I shall want a complete status report on this case and a detailed outline of your plans for the remainder of this investigation by eight o’clock tomorrow morning. We have no time to waste.”
Amy slammed the connecting door behind her and hurried into her room. She took a deep breath. After a few seconds she opened the door again. Owen was still standing in the middle of the room, staring at the door. “Why did you kiss me?” she asked.
His mouth quirked and a sexy gleam appeared in his eyes. “Same reason. Been wanting to do it since I bought the house.”
Amy felt her insides turn to jelly. “Oh.”
“See you in the morning.”
“Right.” Amy closed the door again, this time very quietly. Then she snapped off the light, removed her robe, and threw herself down onto the bed.
She contemplated the shadowed ceiling for a very long while before she finally went to sleep.
Chapter 4
Owen used a copy of the Villantry Gazette to shield his gaze as he watched Amy walk toward him. The no-nonsense impact of her determined stride across the Inn’s coffee shop was severely undercut by the pink in her cheeks and the shyness in her eyes.
It took a lot to make a real estate agent turn shy, Owen reflected with some satisfaction. Last night’s events had obviously had an unsettling effect on Amy. He took that as a good sign and set about composing his strategy for the day.
She was self-conscious about what had happened between them, preferring to blame it on adrenaline and hormones. He would act as if nothing at all out of the ordinary had occurred. He would be businesslike and professional. That might help her relax.
The important thing was that now, after weeks of shilly-shallying around with the subtle approach, he finally knew for certain that she was anything but indifferent to him. She might have concocted a ludicrous reason to explain away the white-hot desire that had flashed between them, but she was definitely not indifferent.
“Good morning.” He put down the paper and lazily got to his feet as Amy reached the table.
“Hi.” She gave him a practiced real estate agent’s smile as he pulled out her chair, but her eyes reflected far less certainty. “How are things going?”
Owen blanked at the question. He seriously doubted that she was inquiring about how he had survived a night complicated by an erection the likes of which he had not endured since his late teens.
“What things?” Owen asked cautiously.
“The investigation, of course. You said you were going to make some calls this morning.”
“Oh, yeah, right. The investigation.” Owen tried a businesslike smile of his own as he resumed his seat. “It’s going just fine. I made my calls before I came downstairs. Should know something by this afternoon.”
“Great.” Amy opened her menu with a snap. “What about the next step?”
Owen cleared his throat. He did not delude himself into thinking that she was referring to the next step in their relationship. “We’ll have to see what sort of information comes in from my contacts before we can make concrete plans.”
“In that case, why don’t we go to the library later this morning.”
He shrugged. “Why not? There’s not much else to do until I get some response to my calls. We can take a look at this fancy new wing the town plans to dedicate on Friday.”
Amy looked up from the menu with a small frown. She glanced hurriedly around the room and then leaned forward and lowered her voice. “I meant that we should go to the library to do some research, not to kill time.”
“Research on what?”
“On Arthur Crabshaw.”
“In the library?”
“For Pete’s sake, you’re supposed to be the trained investigator here. Why am I having to do all the work?”
“Because you have a natural aptitude for it?” he suggested with bland innocence.
“Stop teasing me. You know perfectly well why I suggested the library.”
“I do?”
“Of course. We might be able to learn something about Crabshaw if we look through old newspapers from the time when he worked for Villantry.”
“You know something, Amy? You have a one-track mind. I suppose you need it in the real estate business, though, don’t you? What do you do? Sink your teeth into a client and refuse to let go until he signs on the dotted line?”
She gave him a puzzled look. “I’m just trying to keep you focused on the job at hand. Are you always this vague about your work? Does the pressure get to you or something? Is that what went wrong in Portland?”
Owen drummed his fingers on the table. “Amy, you are not going to find anything of interest on Crabshaw in thirty-year-old editions of the Villantry Gazette.”
“What makes you so sure of that?”
Owen swore under his breath. “Think about it. If Crabshaw had been involved in an old scandal or if he had left town under a cloud, do you honestly believe that Madeline Villantry would have been so polite and gracious to him last night?”
“Hmm. I hadn’t thought about that.”