"I'm not from around here."
His words—matter-of-fact, spoken in an easy Tennessee drawl —brought Piper up short. No, he wasn't from around here and didn't want to be. There'd be no getting involved with the locals, no establishing ties with the community beyond finding someone to mow his lawn, sell him food and supplies, and clean his house.
"Miss Macintosh—"
"Piper." But she spat it out through half-clenched teeth, just daring him to treat her like a small-time nuisance. "We're neighbors, remember?"
"Piper, then." His tone was cool and deliberate and he stayed on the i longer than any northerner ever would, the result giving her name an unexpected lazy, sexy quality that rippled up her spine. "I'll let this one go. Take your aunt her valerian root. Next time we meet, I hope it will be under better circumstances."
He thought he was being magnanimous, Piper realized in disbelief. Magnanimous would have been to offer her all the valerian root she wanted, to have Piper tell her aunt that she was welcome to any of the herbs and other medicinal plants she'd left behind, just to call ahead next time. Instead, Clate Jackson thought he was being magnanimous simply because he wasn't having her arrested for trespassing and stealing.
"You know," she said coolly, "one of these days a hurricane's going to churn up the east coast and try to rearrange your little Cape Cod refuge here. You're going to want good relations with your neighbors, and if you haven't noticed, I'm it."
His eyes darkened, but she thought she noticed—or imagined— a slight glimmer of humor. "Miss Macintosh, I'd cut my losses while I could and get on home. You wouldn't want me to change my mind."
"Gladly," she said, just like her ten-year-old nephew, and marched through the gate.
Never mind Hannah's pronouncements on the subject, Piper did not consider Clate Jackson a likely prospect for the love of her life.
She decided a quick retreat was a more judicious course of action than arguing about the true meaning of magnanimity. The sky had turned a dusty lilac, daylight coming fast. She was normally a feet-flat-on-the-floor type, but Hannah's talk had thrown her off. Salt in the fire, muttered spells, casting out into the universe for a man whose attraction to her niece was so powerful, so irrevocable, that it would draw him to a place and a community he didn't know or understand.
It was weird stuff, and the physical reality of Clate Jackson— the muscles, the stubble of dark beard, the piercing eyes, the scars —wasn't helping, never mind that he showed no sign of looking upon her as anything beyond a pesky neighbor, a trespasser, and a thief. He had bought the Frye House not for its history or the prospect of a new community, but for its private, coveted location on a spit of Cape Cod occupied only by it and its neighbor, a tiny half-Cape that Piper was in the process of restoring. Surrounded by thirty acres of his own and a sprawling wildlife refuge of marsh, dunes, woodland, and an undisturbed coastal pond, the Frye House was an ideal and rare spot on the fragile, often overcrowded arm of land that jutted out into the Atlantic Ocean.
Gad, she thought. I have to get out of here.
"Well," she said, glancing back at him, "I guess I should thank you for your understanding." Such as it was, she added silently. She beamed him a fake smile. "And I'm sorry for having gotten you out of bed."
A narrowing of his deep blue eyes stopped Piper short, making her regret her ill-chosen words. He smiled sexily, deliberately. "No problem."
Love of her life, right. He was just another rake. It was an old-fashioned word that suited most of the men she'd encountered. Their idea of romance was sex and a hot meal. She liked sex, and she enjoyed good food, but she wanted more. Hannah's talk of the love of a lifetime had fired Piper's imagination. It involved a linking of souls that was seductive—and utterly hopeless.
Nearly slipping on the wet grass, she scooted down the well-kept, sloping lawn that gradually bled into marsh and water. She didn't linger over the sunrise. She had Hannah's valerian root, and she'd met Clate Jackson, and that was enough for anyone before sunup.