She could taste him with each inhale.

Her ears were becoming tuned to the smooth blend of cultured voice and sexy undertones.

But he wasn’t saying a word, which was starting to feel weird. She didn’t know this guy well enough to stand this near him and not talk. To be honest, she didn’t like standing still and not talking period.

Hunter whispered, “You smell intriguing.”

Her heart thumped. “Thanks.” Thanks? Talk about sounding stupid, but she was not in her element and he embodied this element. Stop worrying about what he thinks and act like a trained investigator. Get to the point of all this. She had to meet Gwen. “Um, so let’s talk about introducing me around.”

“Make you a deal.”

“What? I thought we had a deal.”

“We do. You agreed to help me catch a cheating fiancée. This is a new agreement.”

Technically, he was right, since she’d bailed on the first deal to stand with him for ten minutes. She hated when her sense of fair play got in the way.

She typed her fingers against his forearm, getting exasperated by yet another game. “What’s in this new agreement for me?”

“You want to meet people, right?”

“Maybe. Depends on what you want in exchange.”

“Are you always so suspicious?”

Yes. She’d believed another man once without question and he’d stomped on that trust. “Let’s just say I’ve been on the losing end of a proposition before and didn’t like it. Don’t make an offer you can’t back up.”

Hunter’s chest expanded with a slow breath. “Didn’t expect this to be quite so serious a negotiation, but I can meet that requirement. I don’t like unsolved riddles. If you figure out how we know each other I’ll introduce you around-”

“You already agreed to that,” she pointed out, hoping he wouldn’t call her on having walked off earlier.

“-as a friend of mine.”

That could carry more weight to help her convince Gwen to speak in private without using the hardball card Dr. Tatum had given her. “I’m game. Just who are you?”

His next breath ruffled fine hairs along her forehead. “Hunter.”

“I heard your old nuisance call you that. No last name?”

“Is it really important?” He’d asked that as if the wrong answer would somehow judge her.

She couldn’t think of a way to say, “Just how rich and important are you?” and he clearly didn’t want to share more than he had about his identity.

She should have set some guidelines before agreeing so quickly.

He really thought they’d met before now?

As if she’d forget meeting a man who looked like him?

“If I knew your last name it might help…” She paused. A waste of time asking since he didn’t respond. “But either way you still owe me for helping with this fiancée snooping.”

He stopped staring over her head and lowered his gaze to meet hers, not acknowledging or denying her point. Just giving her a scorching look that brought her dormant hormones to life.

His lips were cut like a man’s should be, not too smooth or too thin. A mouth that invited speculation.

If he rattled her that much with one long look, what would happen if he kissed her?

What was she doing even thinking something so ridiculous?

He gave all women that look. He probably couldn’t turn off his sexiness without medical intervention.

His hand smoothed upward along her spine when he glanced away, as though keeping a connection to her even when something else held his gaze.

Her skin moved toward his hand. Don’t shiver.

Where could she have possibly run into this guy? At a function she’d attended? “Been to any weddings in Chicago in the past couple years?”

He leaned back and raked her with a curious look, shaking his head. A lock of golden hair brushed his brow. His rugged chin fit with the relentless cut of his smooth jaw and cheeks. Professional grooming? No doubt.

Too perfect. Sort of like Harry the jeweler, that rotten low-life, cheating bastard. He’d screwed around on her the whole time she’d starved herself thin to drop two dress sizes and struggled with heating irons to straighten her hair.

She’d looked like his image of sexy, a total physical overhaul that never felt right.

No more starving or hair straightening.

All gone back to natural now.

Good thing. Six years ago, she’d stared into the mirror the day after catching Harry in the wrong sister’s bed-Casey’s.

Abbie hadn’t spoken to Casey since then.

She’d made a life-altering decision that morning. The next man she got seriously involved with would have to take her the way God made her, with curly hair and a few extra pounds.

And she’d walk the minute she caught him in a lie.

“What kind of writing do you do?” Hunter asked, reminding her she was supposed to be figuring out where they might have met.

“Nonfiction.” Abbie chewed on the inside of her lip, avoiding any discussion of how they met that might involve bringing up her employment with WCXB. “You do any volunteering with Greenpeace or the animal shelter?”

“No.”

Another strike against this guy. Everyone should donate time to something.

An idea popped up. Her dad had collected antique farm equipment, storing treasures in his barns. She used to hunt for additions to his private museum during her travels. Before he died. “Do you own a farm of some sort?”

“A farm? Like a working farm?”

Why’d Hunter sound so incredulous? Some very influential people had grown up on farms and they were proud of their background. She was proud of hers. “Yes, a real live farm that produces things like crops, livestock, pigs, whatever.”

“Pigs? No.”

His insulted tone underlined how they were lifetimes apart in so many ways, the way they grew up only being one difference.

Keep that foremost in her thoughts to counteract any renegade tingling or stray hormones. She gave up. “You could help. How do you think we met?”

“No idea.” He leaned back. His indolent gaze floated down to hers. “But I did meet you somewhere.”

She couldn’t be expected to figure this out with no reciprocal information. “What do you do?”

“I don’t exactly have a job.” He said that in a slow that-I-exist-should-be-enough voice.

She really hated men who did nothing. Harry thought selling diamonds was hard work.

Where were the real men in this country?

“We could get to know each other again,” he said in a tone more suggestive than his words. “Might jog our memories.”

Now that sounded like a line if she’d ever heard one.

Logic kicked in. Sure, he was hot, but underneath all that window dressing slept another lazy pretty boy who didn’t lift a hand to do serious work and would never get involved with a woman like her. A woman who’d grown up with dirt under her nails and calluses on her hands.

Hunter used a finger to toy with an errant curl dangling above her eye.

All the logic in the world didn’t stop the stampede inside her chest at his touch.

Did he know the effect he was having on her?

Of course he did. He was a man, one with lots of Lydias dying to climb into bed with him.

So why is he flirting with me? Because he considered her an easy target who would be thrilled over his attention?

She was pretty flattered, but not enough to feed an ego with an insatiable appetite.

Hadn’t she learned anything six years ago?

All men were jerks.

Never, ever, forget that.

Within an instant, all playfulness vanished from his posture. His gaze flashed up and past her shoulder, alert, at something behind Abbie. The cheating female?

A rumble of excited voices vibrated the room.

She broke away from Hunter and swung around to find out what had everyone buzzing.

Gwen Wentworth had entered the main ballroom. Finally.

Abbie had played “how did we meet” long enough. The way the crowd was flooding in around Gwen, she doubted Hunter could even see his friend’s fiancée any longer. Gwen would disappear into a gulf of humans in the next minute. Gaining her ear for more than ten seconds would be tough at this point.