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Rylan is an honest man, Katie. He might hide from his feelings, but he would never fake them.

She trusted Nick’s judgment. She always had, even when she’d doubted she had the talent he insisted she had.

He was right about that. Why not this?

Maybe he just didn’t see Ry as a woman would. Beautiful, stunning, unattainable. Unless the woman was equally beautiful, stunning, and unattainable.

She had a sudden image of Ry and Jillian together, attending some gala function, dressed to the nines and with camera flashes going off all around them as the media reacted to the simple gorgeousness of them as a couple.

And as if her thought had summoned her up—like calling up a demon? she wondered wryly—the phone still in her hand signaled an incoming call. Signaled it with the rather bitchy ringtone she’d assigned to the woman she’d just been thinking of.

She automatically lifted the phone to answer, then stopped. Did she really want to have to talk to Jillian just now, when her mind was so…distracted? Her thoughts were so messed up who knows what the woman might trick her into saying. Or admitting. Because if nothing else, Jillian Jacobs was famous for getting what she wanted out of people sooner or later.

She let it go to voice mail, noting the time so she could plead being in the shower or something. And then she put off listening to it for a while longer, but when she started worrying about the woman showing up here momentarily and wanting her ready to go, she decided she had to. Not that Jillian was much for advance notice—she simply expected everyone to be prepared to move on her whim. And that put pressure on everyone she dealt with.

She listened to the message. After the first ten seconds or so, Kaitlyn felt that pressure ease.I’m still in Austin. I have a lead on something big. I’ll be back there to hicksville in a couple of days. Just do your thing.

But then the message went on, and her stomach plummeted.I need a juicy hook. Find something for me, something sensational or scandalous about your boy. Sleep with him if you have to.

Sleep with him if you have to.

Kaitlyn sat there for a long time, wondering if she’d gotten this message yesterday it would have changed last night. If she somehow would have found the courage to urge Ry on, if she’d been under orders to do so.

And you know how well it turned out the last time.

She’d convinced herself the professor’s interest was genuine, and Jillian had just been teasingly egging her on. She wasn’t going to make that mistake again. No matter how much she wanted to follow that order.

No matter how much she wanted Rylan Rafferty.

*

“Where are youoff to?”

Ry straightened from greeting the ever-amiable Quinta and looked at his mother over the rim of his coffee mug.

“Over to the inn.”

“Kaitlyn?”

He nodded. “The exalted Ms. Jacobs is delayed, so she doesn’t have the car.”

His mother looked at him consideringly. “You don’t sound disappointed.”

“I am,” he said. “In a way anyway. I want her gone. I’ve had enough of this media thing.”

“Including Kaitlyn?”

“No,” he admitted. “She’s…different. She doesn’t ask questions that feel like she’s looking for dirt.”No, she just comes out with things that make me think, about things I’ve avoided most of my life.

“So you’re glad she’s coming back.”

He wasn’t sure what she wanted him to say. Or rather, he was sure that he wasn’t about to say it. Because it would have to be something like, “I kissed her last night, and it about blew my boots off.” And he could imagine quite clearly her reaction to that.

So he said simply and with a negligent shrug, “Sure.”

And his mother gave him a smile, one of those too knowing, motherly smiles, as if she saw right through his façade of nonchalance. “So am I. I like her.”

“Mmm.” He didn’t dare say anything, not the way he’d been thinking lately. If Mom ever got it into her head he was hot for the photographer, he’d never hear the end of it.