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  “Sure, I could tell you that.”

  “But it would be a lie?” Lyndie let out a noise of disgust when Nina just lifted a cool brow. “Damn it. Damn it, he’s probably worried sick.” Stalking back over to her telephone, she yanked up the receiver and started punching numbers.

  “If he’s worried sick, it’s because he didn’t read my note,” said Nina with a derisive sniff. “But I doubt you will find him surprised.”

  Lyndie glared at her while she waited for Tom to pick up his phone.

  He didn’t.

  “Damn it all to hell,” she muttered while his machine clicked on.

  Tsking at Lyndie’s use of the language, Nina started folding the clothes she’d just tossed aside, and came up with a blouse slightly cleaner than the one Lyndie had on. “Switch,” she demanded.

  “This one is fine.”

  “You have a stain on your breast, you look like a slob. Switch.”

  Lyndie started unbuttoning and leaving a message for Tom at the same time. “Tom, look, your errant daughter took it upon herself to stowaway on my plane. I thought she’d have called you by now, but I should have known better, as the girl—”

  “Woman,” Nina corrected.

  Lyndie glared at her. “As she does whatever the hell she wants. Call me.”

  Just as she hung up the phone, someone knocked on her door. “Grand Frigging Central Station.” Lyndie stalked to the door. “I’m five little minutes late and the man can’t give me a break. “Look,” she called back to Nina, “I’m going to be gone until late, late tonight, it can’t be helped. Stay out of trouble.”

  “Are you talking to me or the cat?” Nina asked.

  “Both of you.”

  “I will be out of your hair by this afternoon.” Nina turned her back, her thin shoulders stiff and distant.

  And Lyndie felt like slime. “Come on, don’t get like that.”

  “I know how inconvenient it is, having me here.”

  “I never said—”

  “And I know how much of a loner you are—”

  “Well, I’m not—”

  “I am very sorry I bothered you.”

  “Nina, damn it, would you listen—”

  The knock at the door came again, louder and more impatient this time. Lyndie pointed at Nina. “Don’t move.”

  Nina crossed her arms. Lyndie recognized the stance all too well. “I mean it.” She hauled open the door. “Jeez, Sam, I have my hands full here, and—”

  “Let me guess how you have your hands full.” Brody Moore, gorgeous as ever and looking quite tense, stepped over the threshold. “Where is she?”

  Lyndie blinked. “How did you know where I live?” She tried to see the street from her porch—Had Griffin come with him?—but couldn’t see anything past Sam’s huge mansion.

  “Just tell me you’ve got her,” Brody said. “I talked to Tom, and he said I’d probably locate her here—”

  “Her who?” Nina moved into the room and eyed Brody with a cool smile. “Her me?”

  “Thank God.” He reached her in less than two strides, hauling her against him, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “Jesus, you give me gray hair.”

  Nina rumpled his already rumpled hair with her long fingers. “Stop it. There’s not a gray in the mix. Men. Always exaggerating.”

  But she encircled him with her arms and hugged him back, closing her eyes, inhaling him in, a look of such rapture on her face that Lyndie found herself staring.

  It took her back—the sigh factor she hadn’t expected, the dreamy sense of something going so right between two people she cared about. It took her back, and also left her just a little unsettled because, once again, here she stood on the outside looking in. Always slightly detached.

  Her own fault, but she didn’t know how to change it. She seemed to be missing the get-attached gene. “I have a flight,” she said.

  But they were kissing now, and not just a how-do-you-do kiss either, but a holding each other’s faces, eyes open, I’m-going-to-gobble-you-up kiss that did something funny to her knees. “So, uh, I guess we’ll talk later.”

  No answer, just more sucky-face noises. “Really,” she said, fingers tapping on the opened front door. “I have to go.”

  Behind Brody’s back, Nina waved a hand at her. Go.

  Lyndie started to walk out, then stopped. “Don’t let Dummy Kitty out, okay? I don’t want the coyotes to get him.” Why she was worried about such a thing happening, when it would only save her from buying cat food, she had no idea.

  But Brody and Nina were really getting into it now, complete with sounds that made her wish for ear plugs. She wondered if Griffin looked like that when he kissed her, with his entire heart in his eyes, if it showed in every touch and whisper.

  She’d never looked at him while he’d kissed her, but now she wished she had.

  And yet wishes were for someone who harbored regrets, something Lyndie never did. She lived her life for the here and now, forget the past, don’t think about the future.

  With that in mind, she slammed the door behind her and headed toward her day.

  26

  Lyndie ended up staying over in Cabo to get some maintenance done on her plane, and no matter how often she tried to call her place, Nina didn’t pick up the phone.

  She had no way of calling Brody—hell she didn’t even have a way to contact Griffin—but she did try Tom again.

  And had to leave another message. Odd since it was eight at night now, and typically Tom’s bedtime, as he got up with the sun.

  On the beach in Cabo, stuck waiting for her plane, watching a bunch of half-naked kids dodge the waves in the dusk, she called Rosa.

  “You coming back to me?” Rosa asked, Tallulah yipping at something in the background. “Because I just make some fresh corn tortilla—”

  “Have you seen or talked to Tom?”

  “He is right here, querida. Want me to tell him something for you?”

  Lyndie glanced at her watch again. Still eight. “What’s he doing there?”

  “Now do I ask you such a thing when you have that gorgeous firefighter in your bedroom?”

  “I—” She broke off, unsure of which had her more baffled, that Rosa had known she and Griffin had slept together, or that Rosa and Tom were possibly doing the same. She pinched the bridge of her nose and took a deep breath. “You know what? Never mind. Just tell him Nina’s at my place. Or she was. Tell him not to worry, she’s fine, but she has no plans on coming back anytime soon.”

  “That is what he suspected.” Rosa sighed and passed the news to Tom before saying to Lyndie, “Well, the girl deserves a shot at her own dreams. I’ve been trying to tell him that for years.”

  She heard Tom grumble at that, and then he must have grabbed the phone because then he was in her ear demanding, “Is she driving you crazy?”

  “Nothing I can’t handle.”

  “Look, I know I have no right to ask, but…” He blew out a frustrated breath. “Keep an eye on her, okay?”

  Lyndie thought of how she’d left Nina, in the arms of a man who looked as if maybe he wasn’t going to ever let her go. “Well—”

  “I just worry about her falling for the first man who smiles at her.”

  Lyndie thought more than likely it would be the other way around, as Brody had seemed pretty smitten himself.

  “Because really, for all her bravado, she’s naive as hell,” Tom said.

  Naive wasn’t exactly the word Lyndie would have used for the savvy, streetwise Nina, but she kept her tongue. And her head. “Tom, I’m gone more than half the time, and the other half I’m lucky I manage to feed myself—”

  “I’ll send money.”

  “I’m not talking about money. I’m talking about responsibility—”

  “You’re kidding me. Honey, you’re the most responsible woman I know.”

  “Tom—”

  “Please.” His voice was soft, devastated. “I can’t make her come back, thi