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Kat rolled her eyes and relaxed back into the plush leather seat. “You need a little messy in your life.”
“How’s that?” he asked.
“You just seem very...straightlaced. Maybe you’re trying to compensate for your brother or something, but you never seem to make a misstep. You need to loosen up. Even your grandmother agrees.”
Sawyer turned to her with a confused arch of his brow. “You were talking about me with my grandmother?”
“Yes. She had a lot of nice things to say about you, actually. I think you’re her favorite.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Just the way she talks about you. It seems like she really wants you to find someone and settle down. She wants you to find someone who makes you happy, not just someone you think the family will approve of, like your last few girls.”
Kat watched Sawyer’s knuckles tighten and grow white as he gripped the steering wheel. “I thought this afternoon was about my family getting to know you, not about Grandmother spilling all the family gossip to you.”
She shrugged and turned back to the road. “We talked about me a lot, too. And about Finn. About Jade and Morgan’s situation. Ingrid really seemed to take a liking to me for some reason. I don’t know why.”
“Really?”
“What do you mean, really?” Kat turned toward Sawyer as he slowed to a stop in front of her house.
He turned off his engine and looked at her. “My grandmother enjoys the company of interesting people. I don’t know why you would think you aren’t interesting enough to keep her attention. You’re smart, you’re easy to talk to, you’re an artist. There’s a lot of layers to you that I’m sure she would find fascinating. I certainly enjoy talking to you.”
Kat noticed he said the last part a little more quietly than the rest. It was a curious admittance from a man who had at one time seemed adamant that she was some kind of crook out to fleece his family. “I enjoy talking to you, too,” she admitted.
An awkward silence followed. With any other man in any other situation, Kat would’ve expected Sawyer to lean in and kiss her good-night. That was the natural progression of a conversation like that. She could sense the statically charged energy inside the car. Even with the air-conditioning on, she could feel the heat of his body nearby and smell the lingering scent of his cologne.
It was enough to make her want to slip off her seat belt and scoot closer to him. Judging by the blood racing hotly through her veins and the tingle that sizzled down her spine when he looked her way, it was clear that Kat wanted him to kiss her. And yet he hesitated. And she understood why.
Their attraction to each other was nothing more than mistaken identity combined with a cruel trick of chemistry. She needed to just thank him, get out of his car and go into her house. She needed to look at her finances and start thinking about buying a new car, not about Sawyer and the way his blazer clung to his broad shoulders. Or the way the deep brown of his eyes reminded her of decadent dark chocolate.
Yes, that was what she needed to do. With a surge of self-control, she reached for the door handle and turned to say goodbye. “Would you like to come in for some coffee or something?” she said, instead of good-night or thanks for the ride.
The words slipped from her lips before she could stop herself. Why would she invite Sawyer into her house? The last time they’d spent any real time alone, they’d ended up kissing, and that was in public at her studio. What would happen late on a Saturday night at her house? With no one there to interrupt or know what was happening inside?
Her belly clenched as she awaited his answer.
“I’d like that.”
A surge of excitement and a good dose of worry washed over her. Kat was about to find out exactly what would happen if they were alone again. And deep inside, she couldn’t wait.
* * *
What are you doing? What are you doing?
Every step Sawyer took up the path to Kat’s piazza raised a chorus of doubts in his mind. He followed her inside, knowing full well that he was heading into dangerous territory.
It’s just coffee, he told himself, but he knew that was a lie even as the thought entered his mind. If he crossed that threshold into Kat’s home, it was like the point of no return. He already ached to kiss her. It had taken everything he had on the ride back not to reach over and cup her bare knee with his hand. He wanted to stroke the smooth skin he’d been eyeing all afternoon.
It was stupid. It was reckless. It was everything Sawyer typically looked upon with disapproval. And yet he couldn’t help himself. He felt a bit like Finn, doing what he wanted without thinking about what others thought.
Inside her house, he watched Kat set down her things and kick off her heels with a sigh of relief. “That’s the best thing to happen to me all day,” she said with a soft smile. “Make yourself at home. I’m going to make some coffee.”
He watched her disappear into the kitchen as he happily shrugged out of his blazer and tossed it over the back of a chair. Then he set about checking out more of Kat’s place. He had been here before, when he’d delivered the dress from Jade, but he’d been too stressed out to pay much attention to his surroundings then. Now, with her in the other room, he was able to walk around and take in the place Kat called home.
The first thing he noticed was the collection of wood carvings around the living room. He recognized them as similar in style to some of her projects at her studio. There was a tall, narrow carving of a mermaid reaching toward the surface of the water, a couple embracing as the wind twirled her hair around them, and Kat’s coffee table was an oval sheet of glass resting on the back of a green sea turtle. She really was a talented artist.
The piece that didn’t seem to fit in was a large canvas painting above the sofa. It was a chaotic mash of colors that up close seemed like a mess, but from far away, you could see a little girl in a yellow slicker splashing in a rain puddle. He looked at the signature and recognized the name from Kat’s background check. It was by her mother, Astrid Elliott. When he’d first read the name, it had sounded familiar, but now that he saw one of her pieces in front of him, he made the connection. Astrid had been a successful artist when she was alive, with the price of her works skyrocketing after her death. He’d even seen one of her pieces in the museum downtown.
