Naomi looked like she wanted the earth to swallow her up.
“You stole a car?” Waylay asked her aunt, looking impressed. I had to admit that I hadn’t seen that one coming either.
“It’s my car, but my ex-fiancé bought it. His name was on the title with mine.”
She looked like the kind of woman a man would buy cars for, I decided.
“Don’t you mean ex-husband?” Waylay piped up.
“Ex-fiancé,” Naomi corrected. “We’re no longer together. And we didn’t get married.”
“‘Cause she left him at the altar,” the girl added knowledgeably. “Yesterday.”
“Waylay, I told you that in confidence,” Naomi hissed. Her cheeks turned a bright shade of scarlet.
“You’re the one being interrogated for grand theft auto.”
“No one is being interrogated,” Nash insisted. “I’ll talk to the office in charge and clear up any misunderstanding.”
“Thank you,” Naomi said. Her eyes were filling with what looked suspiciously like tears.
Fuck.
“I don’t know about you all, but I could sure use a drink. Let’s head up to the big house and solve this over alcohol,” I suggested.
I didn’t imagine the flicker of relief that flashed over her pretty face.
I spent the short walk to Liza J’s wondering when the hell I’d turned into a sundress guy. The women I dated wore jeans and leather and rocker tshirts. They didn’t have prep school vocabularies or dresses that floated around their ankles like some summer fantasy.
I liked my women the way I liked my relationships—fast, dirty, and casual.
Naomi Witt was none of those, and I needed to remember that.
“You’re seriously going to dinner like that?” Naomi asked me as Waylon wandered off the drive to lift his leg on a dogwood.
Behind us, Waylay peppered Nash with questions about crime in Knockemout.
“Liza J’s seen worse,” I said, biting into a cookie.
“Where did you get that cookie?” she demanded.
“Waylay,” I said.
Naomi looked like she was going to slap it out of my hand, so I shoved the rest of it into my mouth.
“Those are for this mysterious Liza J I’m supposed to be making a good impression on,” she complained. “This isn’t a great way for me to meet a new potential landlord. ‘Hi, I’m Naomi. I’m squatting in your cottage, and these guys were fighting in your driveway. Please give me affordable rent.’”
I snorted, then winced when my nose started to throb again. “Relax. Liza J would be worried if Nash and I didn’t show up bleeding and pissed off at each other,” I assured her.
“Why are you pissed off at each other?”
“Baby, you haven’t got the time,” I drawled.
We reached the steps of the big house, and Naomi hesitated, looking up at the roughhewn timber, the cedar shakes. Behind overgrown azaleas and boxwoods, the porch stretched nearly fifty feet along the front.
I tried to see it from her eyes. New in town, running from a wedding, no place to stay, thrown into a guardianship she hadn’t seen coming. To her, everything hinged on this meal.
“Don’t chicken shit out now,” I advised. “Liza J hates cowards.”
Those pretty hazel eyes narrowed to slits. “Thanks for the advice,” she said caustically.
“Nice place,” Waylay said, joining us at the foot of the steps.
I thought about the trailer. The chaos outside that little bedroom with the KEEP OUT sign on the door. She’d done her best to keep the chaos and unpredictability out of her little world. I could respect that.
“Used to be a lodge. Let’s go. I need that drink,” I said, climbing the three short steps and reaching for the doorknob.
“Don’t we need to knock or ring the bell?” Naomi hissed, grabbing my arm.
And there it was again. That electricity charging my blood, waking up my body like it had been exposed to some kind of threat. Some kind of danger.
We both looked down at her hand, and she quickly dropped it.
“Not necessary around here,” Nash assured her, unaware that my blood was on fire and Naomi was blushing again.
“Liza J,” I bellowed.
The response was a fevered fit of barking.
“Oh, my,” Naomi whispered, putting herself between Waylay and the fur circus.
Waylon shoved himself between my leg and the door frame just as two dogs raced into the foyer. Randy the beagle had earned his name by humping everything in sight for the first year of his life. Kitty was a one-eyed, fifty-pound pit bull who thought she was a lapdog. Both kept Liza J entertained in her solitude.