If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

the bridesmaids, he danced with the flower girl, he danced with the married women whose husbands wouldn’t dance, and he danced with the tittering, blushing girls who were still learning how to flirt.
    He danced with so many women … so many.
    Tall, short, lean, lush.
    Short hair that barely brushed their jawline, long hair that fell to their hips. Hair upswept to leave their shoulders bare. Jewelry sparkled and glowed against toned and tanned flesh.
    Over by the bar, he spotted Roslyn Jennings talking with the bride, her curves poured into a dark green dress that clung so lovingly. Gold glinted at her neck, ears, and wrists.
    On the dance floor, he saw Hope Carson, dancing with her beau Remy Jennings, wearing a dress just like Roslyn’s, the same deep, deep green. But where Roslyn looked like a witch, Hope looked like some fey woodland nymph. Sweet and innocent and lovely. She wore little jewelry, but there were flowers in her short, shiny hair.
    Then there was the bride, her deep red locks glowing against the white of her dress, pearls at her neck, gold on her fingers.
    All the women …
    Hunger pulsed inside him, driving him mad, making him greedy and desperate.
    Desperate—but not too desperate.
    Not so desperate he’d get foolish again. Not here. Not now.
    At present, he had a girl—just barely out of college—wrapped around him, and it pissed him off. Perhaps it turned him on a little as she pressed her breasts against his arm, smiling up at him and trying to act like she was so much older than she really was. But she was just a child. Besides, he also had a lady nearby who would notice before much longer and although she would understand, he didn’t want her upset.
    Especially not by an obnoxious little bitch like this.
    As she swayed a little too close, he dipped his head and murmured, “Estella …”
    “Star. I’m going by Star now. Estella is so
old
,” shesaid, giving her lower lip what she probably thought was a seductive stroke of tongue.
    “Estella Price,” he repeated. “I don’t know why you keep rubbing against me like that. I’ve known you since you were in diapers. I’m pretty sure I probably even changed one or two.”
    He hadn’t. But it had the desired effect. She turned almost as red as the lipstick she’d slicked on her mouth and jerked away from him. Suppressing a chuckle, he lost himself in the crowd and headed toward the cash bar. He needed a drink, and he wanted to see if he couldn’t work his way out of here yet.
    If he didn’t escape soon—
    This wasn’t where he wanted to be … wasn’t where he
needed
to be. Except the whole damn town was here.
    There were places a guy wanted to be in life—in bed with a long, lean woman wrapped around him? That topped the list, as far as Law Reilly was concerned.
    Although he wouldn’t mind a cabin in the mountains, just him and his laptop. He’d be fine with swapping out the laptop for a long, lean woman.
    Or even a shack on a beach, just him and his laptop. Again, the swap-out—his laptop for a long, lean woman? That would work. And some beer on hand.
    The place he didn’t want to be, though?
    A wedding in small-town Kentucky.
    Namely, Ash, Kentucky, where he’d been living for the past ten years. Long enough that he could call the place home, long enough that most of the people knew him by face, by name … and by bank account, even if most of them didn’t entirely know where the money came from.
    They just knew he wasn’t hurting for cash and at a wedding with a lot of single women, and that was always dangerous. Even if he’d been in his sixties, balding, and carrying a spare tire, it would be dangerous.
    But Law was thirty-four, still had a full head of hair, and while he might not see himself as the cover model for any magazine, he didn’t have a spare tire, either.
    Yeah, this was a dangerous place to be, and he was in a lousy mood, anyway. His mood got darker and uglier each time one of the single women would come up and flirt, attempt to make some sly remark about his single status.
    He could handle this—get through the reception. He just had to have a game plan, and be cautious.
    Things had been going fairly well, too, for about the first hour.
    At a wedding, a guy didn’t want to make eye contact, didn’t want to stand around looking like he might be anything resembling lonely. None of that stuff, because sometimes, the single women got ideas in their heads.
    If he wanted to make it out of