She’d just reached up into the cabinet for a mug when she heard a muttered curse. It came from a very masculine source, judging from the sound of it. It scared her so badly she dropped the mug on her foot, yelped as it shattered on the tile floor and then danced around the kitchen before even casting a glance toward the wide-open back door where none other than Ethan Cole stood with a dumbstruck yet surprisingly irritated expression on his face. It might have been years since she’d laid eyes on him, but she’d know those broad shoulders, that square jaw and those deep blue eyes anywhere.
“Well, this is awkward,” she murmured, wrapping her arms around her middle in a probably futile attempt to keep him from identifying her nightwear as something that had once belonged to him.
He stepped closer and ordered tersely, “Sit.”
Samantha couldn’t believe the audacity, first for walking in uninvited and now for giving such abrupt orders. “Excuse me?”
He gave her an impatient look. “There are chips from the mug all over the floor.” He adjusted his tone with apparent effort. “Please sit before you cut your feet and I have to stitch you up.”
“Oh,” she said, chagrined. As he stooped down and picked up the shards of china, she asked, “What are you doing here?”
He gave her a wry look. “According to Boone, I’m here to pick up something that Emily left for me, something that absolutely has to be delivered to downtown Sand Castle Bay this morning. He gave me Cora Jane’s address. He also told me to come on in, that I’d probably find it in the kitchen. Just so you know, he neglected to mention that anyone might be home. Otherwise, I would have knocked.”
“No problem,” she said, despite the racing of her heart. “No other clues?” she asked, glancing around for a package of some sort. There was nothing in plain sight.
“He said I’d recognize it when I saw it,” Ethan said, regarding her pointedly.
Samantha’s mouth gaped as she put the pieces of the plot together. She was going to kill her baby sister. She really was. “You think he meant me?”
“I’d lay odds on it, if you’re who I think you are.”
“I’m Emily’s sister,” she said. “Samantha Castle.”
Ethan sighed heavily. “Of course you are.”
She frowned at the attitude, even though her own mood was deteriorating rapidly. “Meaning?”
“It’s just that Boone gave me a heads-up about the meddling,” he said. “I rather emphatically warned him and, through him, his bride-to-be and your grandmother, to stay out of my life. Apparently I didn’t get through to any of them.”
Just great, Samantha thought wearily. She had no doubt at all about exactly the sort of meddling Boone had described. She just didn’t want to believe that Emily would do anything this outrageous to embarrass her.
She opted to try to put a better spin on the situation, even though she was pretty sure it would take someone with Gabi’s PR skills to pull it off successfully. Then, again, she hadn’t lost all her acting skills, even if they weren’t in much demand lately.
“Look, I don’t know what kind of crazy idea you have about me,” she said earnestly. “The truth is that I turned in my rental car yesterday, and everyone had to leave the house at some ungodly hour this morning, leaving me without transportation. Emily said she’d take care of it. That’s all I know.”
“Oh, I believe you,” Ethan said, his tone resigned as he dumped the remains of the mug into the trash can. “Meddling works most effectively when neither of the affected parties has a clue what’s going on.”
“In my experience it doesn’t matter if they know,” she said wryly. “In this family, we seem helpless to stop it.” She gave him an apologetic look. “I’m really sorry, Ethan, especially if you’ve gone out of your way. As you can see, I’m nowhere near ready to go anywhere.”
“I see,” he said, his gaze raking over her in a thorough survey that heated her blood by several degrees. “Mind my asking how you wound up with my old high school football jersey?” He looked into her eyes. “It is mine, isn’t it?”
She feigned surprise. “Is it? I picked it up at a yard sale down here years ago. I thought it would make a great nightshirt.”
“It definitely makes a fashion statement of some kind,” he confirmed, his gaze now frankly traveling up and down her very long, very bare legs. “So, are we going to do this or what?”
Samantha blinked and swallowed hard at the question. “Do this?” she asked, imagining every one of her teenage fantasies finally coming true.
An unexpected grin transformed his face. “Not that,” he scolded, “though I might be open to negotiations down the road. I meant get you over to wherever your sister wants me to deposit you.”
“A dress fitting,” Samantha said, trying to hide her disappointment. She also saw the sense in taking him up on his offer. “Can you give me ten minutes?”
“Ten? Seriously?”
She laughed. “Trust me. In my world ten minutes for a wardrobe change is an eternity. Help yourself to coffee. I’ll be right back.”
Of course, changing into something more presentable was only half the battle. She also had to catch her breath. That was going to be a whole lot trickier.
* * *
So this was what Boone had warned him about, Ethan thought as he watched Samantha practically race from the kitchen. Just the first tiny step in some campaign to hook him up with the maid of honor. Right this second he was having a little too much trouble seeing the downside of that. It had been a lot easier to rail indignantly when there had been no face—or body—to go with the name.
He wasn’t sure what he’d expected, but it definitely hadn’t been the sight that greeted him in Cora Jane’s kitchen. Samantha Castle was a delectable handful. Even caught off guard
