The Brides of Holly Springs. Cathy Gillen Thacker

advice.

      “How old is he again?” Hannah interrupted, sounding as if she could barely keep track of the conversation at hand. And no wonder, given the sound of what his brother was asking her to do here! He’d be flummoxed, too.

      “Forty-five, fifty, near as I can figure. And married,” Cal said, his voice dropping another warning notch. “So—”

      “I’ll keep that in mind,” Hannah promised.

      “Good.” Cal sounded relieved. When what his orthopedic-surgeon older brother really ought to feel, Dylan thought resentfully, was guilty. Guilty as hell. For arranging anything with Hannah and a married man who was way too old for her. For heaven’s sake! Didn’t Cal think about the fact that Hannah was not exactly experienced when it came to men? Hell, Dylan couldn’t even recall Hannah even dating anyone save that NASCAR driver, Rupert Wallace, if you could even call those dates. Mostly, Dylan recalled the two of them with their heads bent over some car engine…

      Hannah, up to her elbows in grease and wrenches…

      “So where is this guy going to be?” Hannah asked.

      “You’re to meet him in an hour at Sharkey’s Pool Hall. In Raleigh.”

      Not the best neighborhood. Or the classiest establishment for a woman to go into. With or without a date.

      “If the preliminary goes well, maybe he’ll take you back to his house from there.”

      Preliminary, Dylan fumed, feeling more shocked and incensed than he had in all of his twenty-eight years. Preliminary what!

      “Yarborough’s wife won’t mind?” Hannah asked, sounding both concerned and skeptical.

      “Out of town.” Cal’s voice held a dismissive shrug. “She took the kids to California to visit family for two weeks.”

      Never dreaming what was going on behind her back, Dylan was willing to bet, recalling with chilling accuracy how he had felt when similarly betrayed.

      “So basically I’ve got that amount of time—” Hannah speculated thoughtfully.

      There was another pause, rife with meaning.

      His curiosity killing him—none of this sounded like the compassionate older brother or the affable mechanic he knew—Dylan hazarded a discreet glance around the open doorway. There were no lights on and the room was shrouded in shadow, but through the semidarkness he could see Hannah with her back to the wall, staring up at Cal. The expression on her face was the same one she wore when she was trying to figure out a particularly thorny mechanical problem on one of the expensive automobiles she worked on at the business she owned, Classic Car Auto Repair. She narrowed her eyes at Cal. “You said the guy is loaded?”

      Hands thrust in the pockets of his tuxedo pants, Cal shook his head in disgust. “Yarborough’s got so much money he doesn’t know what to do with it,” he replied in a voice that was equally calculating. Cal took his hands out of his pockets and spread his hands wide. “Which is, of course, part of the problem. Had R. G. Yarborough a little less—”

      Hannah nodded in understanding. “You’d be able to deal with him a lot more effectively,” she said.

      “Right,” Cal agreed.

      Dylan, wary of being seen, ducked back out of sight again but remained within earshot of the low, urgent voices.

      “Well, don’t worry. I’m sure I can manage him.” To Dylan’s mounting dismay, the smile was back in Hannah’s voice.

      Even as Dylan’s brother got grimmer…

      “And one more thing, Hannah,” Cal warned. “No one, and I mean no one, can know about what we’ve got going here.” His voice caught momentarily. “If Ashley were to get wind of it—”

      No joke, Dylan thought, aware what Cal’s semi-estranged wife might think. The same thing he was thinking right now.

      “I understand completely, believe me,” Hannah promised in sweet sincerity. “You don’t have to worry for one second, Cal. No one—and I mean no one—is going to hear about this from me.”

      THE TROUBLE WITH eavesdropping, Dylan thought, was what you thought something meant, might be completely misconstrued. For instance, there was no way Cal was supervising and setting up the twenty-eight year old Hannah Reid’s secret nocturnal activity with a wealthy-as-all-get-out man she had never met. And might not, from the sounds of it, even really want to meet under normal circumstances. At least not for socializing.

      So here he was, an hour later, getting out of a cab in front of Sharkey’s Pool Hall…never having had that dance he was supposed to request from her.

      He walked in, not sure what to expect. Hannah was standing by a pool table, a bottle of beer in her hand. She was dressed in a short black skirt, stockings and heels that showed off her spectacular legs. A red knit tank top with a high neck and a racer back clung to her ample breasts, and made her slender shoulders and bare arms look incredibly feminine. A man Dylan assumed was R. G. Yarborough was standing next to her. He was fifty, at least, and attractive in that money-to-burn way. That was if you liked spiked gray-brown hair and an exceptionally hard body that appeared manufactured by steroids, fancy gym equipment and maybe even plastic surgery. Plus his appearance—college T-shirt with the sleeves rolled up, baggy cargo-style jeans and an earring in one ear—practically screamed midlife crisis. All in all, not a good guy for an innocent-in-the-ways-of-the-world woman like Hannah to be tangling with.

      Jacket hooked over his shoulder, bow tie hanging undone on either side of the open collar of his pleated white tuxedo shirt, Dylan skirted the large, rectangular hall and numerous pool tables to the long wooden bar along one side. Keeping to the shadows, he approached the bartender and asked for a bottle of light beer.

      He leaned against the bar, watching. And he wasn’t the only one. A lot of male eyes were on Hannah at that particular second as she set a triangle on the green-felt tabletop. The bartender, included. “Know her?” he asked Dylan.

      Dylan nodded, but even as he did he was wondering if he really did. The sexy-as-hell woman in front of him wasn’t even close to the lady mechanic and all-around tomboy he recalled growing up with.

      “Yeah, well, she hasn’t been in here before. I guarantee I’d remember that little filly if she had been,” the bartender murmured.

      And no wonder. Hannah’s pretty face was alight with feminine mischief and barely reined-in flirtation as she bantered animatedly with the group of men standing around the pool table. Color flooded her face. Her auburn hair was flowing in unruly waves down around her bare shoulders. Every time she moved, her hair brushed her silky-looking skin and drew attention to the sumptuous curves of her breasts. Worse, as she captured another loose ball and fit it into the triangle, the tank top rode above her waist, baring even more silky-smooth skin. Dylan felt a tightening in his groin, and was willing to bet, every other man there did too.

      As she straightened, slowly, R. G. Yarborough reached out and stroked a hand along her hip. Hannah tensed visibly but didn’t resist as she turned to face him. She murmured something—Dylan couldn’t make out quite what—and the rich guy responded by pulling out his wallet and extracting several bills.

      Hannah mocked whatever he was offering, but appeared ready to take him up on his proposal.

      Normally, Dylan would have remained on the sidelines, no matter what was going on. But this was too much. He didn’t know what Cal had gotten the naive Hannah Reid into, but Dylan was for damn sure not going to stand idly by and watch someone he’d known from their elementary-school days get hurt.

      He moved away from the bar and sauntered toward the pool table where Hannah was still flirting madly. “Money?” Dylan heard her say as she tucked the bills back into Yarborough’s hands. “Come on. Surely—” Hannah batted her eyelashes at him “—you and I can wager for something a little more interesting than that….”

      Yarborough