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that would be your first guess. Do you spend a lot of time in trouble, Mr. Daniels?”
    “Not half as much as I’d like to.”
    “Perhaps if you would haul yourself out of that hammock occasionally you’d have more success at it.”
    He marveled at her tart tone. Ms. Whoever-she-was seemed to have taken an instant dislike to him. That was promising. Nothing got his adrenaline flowing better than a real challenge.
    “Southern hospitality precludes me from pointing out that you’ve just arrived at my home uninvited and now you’re insulting me. Must be a Yankee.”
    “I suppose, if you go strictly by geographical birthplace, that I am,” she conceded. “And I’m sorry if I appear rude, but I find it very difficult to do business with a man who’s half asleep.”
    “Darlin’, let me assure you, I am wide awake. Have been ever since you walked up. I could prove it, if you’d like to snuggle down here next to me.”
    He could practically hear her swallowing hard as sheabsorbed the implications of that. He’d lay odds that if he checked her complexion it would be one shade shy of the color of her car.
    “Why don’t you tell me who you are and what you want?” he suggested.
    “I’m Gracie MacDougal,” she said, and waited as if to see if the name meant anything to him.
    “Ah,” he said. Suddenly he understood all the reports he’d heard about the city girl who’d just moved to town and started asking questions about Aunt Delia’s property on the Potomac. He’d figured she’d come calling sooner or later.
    “Pretty as a picture,” several of his friends had told him.
    Even with his eyes half closed, he could see that they hadn’t done her justice.
    “One of them globetrotters come home again,” said an old-timer with the derision of one who couldn’t imagine any legitimate need to leave the South in general and Virginia in particular.
    Kevin thought that one was probably mistaken. If Gracie MacDougal had ever lived in these parts, he would have remembered. She wasn’t coming home. In fact, from the determined jut of her cute little chin, he guessed she was invading new territory, sort of like the Yankees did a hundred and some years earlier.
    “You talk to her, watch your privates,” another acquaintance had warned. “She’s the kind who’ll chop ’em off.”
    That, of course, remained to be seen. No matter who was right, obviously it was going to be a fascinating encounter, he concluded, observing her surreptitiously from hooded eyes.
    “What can I do for you, Gracie MacDougal?”

    “Actually, I have a business matter to discuss, but I find that rather difficult when I can’t even sit down and look you in the eye.”
    Kevin patted the edge of the hammock. “There’s plenty of room right here next to me.”
    She sighed heavily, her exasperation plain. “Mr. Daniels…”
    “Don’t worry, darlin’, I don’t bite. Not on the first date, anyway, unless you ask nicely.”
    “Mr. Daniels!”
    Kevin concluded from her tone that she wasn’t going to get on with her business or give up until he sat up and took notice. He doubted that directing her to a chair a few feet away was going to satisfy her. If she wanted formality, he’d give her hundred-year-old formality.
    “Ms. MacDougal, you surely do know how to spoil a man’s relaxation,” he said, rising. “Let’s go on inside and get this over with.”
    He led the way to his office and noted the surprise on her face when she saw the book-lined shelves with volume after volume of leather-bound classics, the state-of-the-art computer system on his desk, the fax machine, and all the other accoutrements of running a business on the cusp of the millennium. Her gaze returned to him, and this time she seemed to be assessing him a little more carefully. He gestured toward one of the leather chairs left over from his father’s reign over the family fortune, then seated himself behind the desk.
    “Talk to me,” he said.
    “I understand