From This Day Forward. Christie Ridgway

alone.

      With that resolve, Griffin opened a drawer and pulled out his address book. He would find something to do and someone—a woman—to do it with. After working at home all day yesterday and then spending a few hours in the office this morning, he should enjoy Sunday afternoon, after all. But then his gaze snagged on the calendar.

      Not just any Sunday, damn it. It was the fourteenth. February fourteenth. A totally lethal day for any entrenched-for-eternity bachelor like himself. Taking a woman out on Valentine’s Day was a statement, easily misread as a commitment for at least the rest of the year. He shuddered, quickly slapping shut his address book. If he wanted to reclaim his single-man, casual-with-women lifestyle—that his workaholic ways suited him for—he couldn’t take the risk of a Valentine’s Day date.

      Which is why he was aimlessly wandering around downstairs and considering heading back to the office when his younger brother bounded through the front door. “Hey, bro,” Logan said. “Have you seen my tennis racket?”

      Griffin shoved his hands in the pockets of his slacks, slid them out. He looked over his shoulder, picked up his feet, then finally pulled at the front of his shirt to peer down at his navel. “No. I haven’t seen your tennis racket.”

      “Ha. Ha. Very funny.” Logan said. He jogged toward the staircase that led to his old room. “I can’t remember if I moved it to the condo or left it here.”

      Just bored enough to exert the energy it took to follow, Griffin started climbing the first flight of stairs after him. “Tennis with Cynthia, I presume?”

      Logan froze on the landing, then looked back down at Griffin, a horrified expression on his face. “That’s not funny either. This is Valentine’s Day, have you forgotten?”

      “Well, uh, no.” But Cynthia had been his brother’s girlfriend for ten years. From what his mother hinted at, an engagement was just a nudge or two away. “You’re doing something with her later?”

      Logan blinked, then spoke slowly, as if Griffin had lost some brain cells. “Val…en…tine’s…Day.”

      “I know.”

      “Well then you know that Valentine’s Day is lethal to any firmly entrenched bachelor. You told me that years ago. It’s not something I’ve forgotten, Griffin.”

      Griffin felt a spurt of guilt. Was it right for him to have passed along to Logan his own romantic pessimism? “I know, Logan, but—”

      “Gotcha.” His brother grinned. “The truth is Cynthia herself declined to celebrate with me today. She’s up for some local commercial tomorrow and she wants to spend all day in a cucumber—or was it carrot?—mask. But we did exchange appropriately mushy e-mails this morning.”

      Mushy e-mails? Griffin decided not to touch that with a ten-foot pole. “So who are you playing tennis with, then?”

      “Tom Sullivan,” Logan said. “He’s the cop who talked Dad into sponsoring the mentor program at the company.”

      As their father’s right hand, it was actually Logan who had convinced the old man to employ at-risk, though high-achieving, high-school students as interns at Chase Electronics. Some of those former students were already out of college and very successful in their own careers, thanks to the partnership between Chase Electronics and the Strawberry Bay Police Department.

      Thinking of the police led Griffin naturally back to recent events. “Would your buddy Tom know anything about the investigation into the bank robbery?” Griffin had told Logan about it himself, when he’d finally returned to the office on Friday.

      Logan shrugged. “I can ask. How’s Annie doing, by the way?”

      Griffin frowned. “How the hell should I know?” he asked in irritation, even though he’d wondered the same thing himself all morning, causing the report he’d been drafting to take twice as long.

      Logan’s eyebrows rose. “Hey, it was just a question.” He glanced at his watch. “If I can find that racket, maybe I have time to check on—”

      “Don’t bother.” For some reason, Griffin didn’t want his Valentine’s Day-free and not-completely-taken brother to visit Annie. “I’m going by there myself soon.”

      Thinking back on it, he remembered Logan tolerating Annie pretty well when they were kids. So Griffin didn’t think it was fair for his brother to make a February fourteenth visit. She just might get the wrong idea.

      “Whatever you say, pal.” Logan gave him one strange, thoughtful look, then headed up the stairs.

      Griffin headed down them. He’d told Logan that he’d check on Annie.

      At least it was something to do.

      It took just a few minutes to cut through the oaks and climb up Annie’s steps. When he raised his hand to knock, the sound of loud, yet mild cursing floated through the closed front door. “Darn and darn and shoot, shoot, shoot!” Something clattered against the floor.

      Eyebrows drawing together, Griffin knocked.

      There was a moment of silence—an almost embarrassed silence, he imagined—and then the noise of odd, uneven footsteps. Clop click clop click clop click. Annie opened the door.

      Griffin shoved his hands in his pockets, struck by an unbidden, unwelcome need to touch.

      Honey-haired Annie was wearing pink. A soft, talcum-powder pink. A long-sleeved top criss-crossed her breasts and tied at the side of her waist like something a ballet dancer would wear. It revealed a V of pale skin at her neck and a very modest swell of cleavage. The top was tight enough for Griffin to make out the thin outline of her bra.

      Yesterday vividly came back to him. The pang in his chest when she’d broken down, the fragile warmth of her in his arms, his hand stroking her back and the sudden realization that his palm didn’t bump over a bra strap. And then her realization of his realization. Her nipples had tightened into hard little pearls that had branded his skin.

      Just the memory shot twin arrows of heat from his chest to his groin. Griffin set his jaw and ignored the sensation.

      Forget all that. Think about today. She’s wearing underclothes today.

      But the discovery didn’t make her any less appealing, not when she was in a matching short, swingy skirt that revealed a length of slender legs. The clop click clop sound of her footsteps was explained by the fact that the strap of one cute, high-heeled shoe was buckled, while the strap of the other shoe hung free.

      He smiled at her, he couldn’t help himself. “Happy Valentine’s Day,” he said, before thinking better of it.

      Her cheeks flushed, pinker than her outfit. “Well, thanks. Same to you.”

      “I’m just checking in.”

      “Oh,” she said, making a little face.

      Another memory of the day before surfaced. Her big brown eyes wide, Annie had told him she didn’t need a keeper or a brother or a “whatever.”

      Because she had a boyfriend?

      He was annoyed that the thought hadn’t occurred to him before. Just because there hadn’t been a man in her cottage yesterday morning didn’t mean she didn’t have a man in her life. And Annie struck him as the type of woman who would be very particular about her bed partners, so if there was a man in her life, he wouldn’t be a casual kind of man.

      And she was all dressed up—in pink even—for Valentine’s Day.

      He tried peering over her shoulder to see evidence of standard February fourteenth fare, like flowers or candy. “Having a good day?”

      She made that funny little face again. “Okay, I guess. I’m having trouble with my new shoe.”

      “Can I help?” Without waiting for an answer or an invitation, he moved forward. Inside the cottage he would be able to observe more