If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

way, just how many Jenningses
live
around here, anyway?”
    Absently, he said, “A lot.”
    The Inn. She was staying at the Inn.
    Once he had the bacon sizzling on the stove and his hands washed, he turned back and studied her, an uneasy feeling stirring inside his chest. “You’re staying at the Inn.”
    “Yep.”
    “I take it that means you’ll be around awhile? Roz only uses the cabins for long-term stuff, a month or longer, at least.”
    “Yeah, I know. She gave me a sweet deal—three months for the price of two if I paid it all up front.” She grimaced and said, “I went ahead and did it, figured I might as well.”
    Law was quiet, thinking it through. Roz probably had her sign some sort of short-term rental agreement. But she was a fair woman—compassionate. She’d let Nia out of the deal, and Law could help her find someplace else. Blowing out a breath, he met her eyes. “You sure you want to stay there?”
    She blinked. “Why wouldn’t I?”
    “Nia … Lena works there.”
    Something moved through those golden eyes, but before he could interpret it, she looked down. When she looked back up, just a minute later, the look was gone and her gaze was unreadable. “And your point would be …?”
    “How easy is that going to be for you?” he asked, shoving away from the counter and moving to stand in front of her, reaching up to trace a finger down her cheek.
    “It won’t,” she said flatly. “But
nothing
has been easy for me for almost a year and I don’t expect that to change now.” Then abruptly, she smiled, a sly smile, as she reached out and hooked her fingers in the front of his jeans, tugged him closer. “Although, actually, I can think of
one
thing that was remarkably easy …”
    “You calling me a thing?” He wasn’t so sure he wanted to let it go as simple as that, but that was her pain and if this was how she wanted to deal with it … although he wished he could offer her something more, some sort of comfort, something to take the darkness and the sadness from her.
    “Hmmm. I don’t know. Nah, you’re not a thing. Maybe you’re a fling. Yeah, that’s more like it. Is that what we’ve got going here? A fling?”
    She nibbled her way along his bare chest and Law hissed as she bit lightly at his nipple. “A fling? Hell if I know. Can’t say I’ve ever been anybody’s fling before.” He was tempted to reach down, cup her hips under the hem of the T-shirt she wore.
    But the scent of frying bacon hung in the air. Instead, he eased away, bussed her lips lightly.
    “Maybe before we figure out what to call it, we should figure out what it is,” he decided, keeping his voice light, easy. Even though he definitely wasn’t feeling light oreasy right now. “By definition, flings are general short-term, right? But you’re not ditching town in a few days. You planning on trading me out for somebody else in a few weeks, Nia?”
    She snorted. “Trading you out? You’re not a car, Law.”
    Flipping the bacon, he shrugged. “Well, it’s a fair question. Otherwise, how can I figure out if this is a fling or not?”
    “Call it whatever you want. Just feed me. And don’t worry … I’m not much for flings myself.”
    He glanced over his shoulder at her, a smile tugging at his lips.
    The sight of that smile had her heart skipping a beat or five. Waiting until it leveled out, she tucked her hands in her lap, discreetly wiped her sweating palms on the T-shirt she’d swiped from him. It smelled of him and she knew she’d be smelling him on her all day.
    “Don’t see that it matters what we call it, anyway,” she said, striving for casual. “They are just words anyway, you know.”
    “Words.” He turned around, once more leaned against the counter, hands braced on it. “Words can do a lot of things—as much as you want, or as little as you want, if you think about it.”
    Nia arched a brow. “Sounds like you spend a lot of time thinking about words.”
    He shrugged and shoved off the counter, ambled over toward her. Her heart did that weird little skip, but all he did was reach over her head, pull a small saucepan down from the rack hanging over the island. “You okay with soup?”
    “As long as it’s nothing gross like split pea or something like that.”
    He laughed. “Nah, you’re safe. I can’t touch split pea without thinking of
The Exorcist
.”
    Nia groaned and squeezed her eyes closed. “Oh, thanks so much for that image …”
    “You’re