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reached her. “Hey, you don’t want to twist your ankle. Here. Let me.” Planting his hands on her waist, he whisked her off her feet and set her down gently on the paving bricks arcing across the driveway. Not a hint of hanky-panky. He hoped she appreciated how good he was being.
    She rummaged in the little change purse she had on a belt around her waist and turned to him. “Here.”
    She handed him an envelope, which usually contained fifty dollars. “Thanks again for your help. I’ll be in touch.”
    Augie watched her sweet ass sway as she marched up the stairs, tossing his keys in the air as he debated whether to leave now or to follow her inside and cause more trouble for his father.

Chapter Three
    “Did you orchestrate this, Grandma?”
    Crystal stormed into the elegant study off the front hall and tossed the newspaper onto the Louis Quatorze desk behind which Rowena sat. “Did you pay the photographer to take this kind of tabloid-trash picture?” She speared a glance at Courtland—or Trey, as everyone called him, since he was the Third—sitting on the brocade wing chair alongside the desk, one ankle crossed over his opposite knee. “And you, Trey. Were you part of this circus too?”
    Her grandmother just smiled mysteriously, like a cat who swallowed a canary and had another in its sights.

    Crystal leaned forward, slapped her palms down on the desk. Her hair fell forward into her eyes.
    Impatiently she flicked it back with a toss of her head. Her shawl slipped off her shoulders and slithered to the floor.
    “And that muscleman you hired. Where did you find him, central casting? Did you figure that since I didn’t like any of the trust-funders you keep setting me up with as blind dates, that I’d go for an uncouth brute with more muscle than brain?”
    “And did you think I relished the idea of being bought like a slab of meat by a spoiled brat of a socialite?”
    Crystal whirled around to see Soren rising from the sofa against the far wall. She’d been so focused on her grandmother’s face when she’d stalked in a moment ago, she hadn’t even glanced around the room.
    “What are you doing here?”
    The smile he showed was more like a snarl. “Your grandmother seems to have tentacles all over eastern Pennsylvania.” He pointed with his chin at Trey. “They staked out Thor’s Hammer and caught me running out the back door from a Channel Five reporter.”
    She threw him a disparaging look. “And what, they overpowered you and forced you to come here?”
    He took a few menacing steps toward her. “‘Forced’ me? In a way, yes, they did. Ms. D’Angelo suggested, very forcefully, that we get the ‘transaction’ completed as soon as possible.”
    At the threat implicit in his approach, she instinctively took a step back. And caught her boot heel in the shawl lying in a tangle on the floor. Off balance, she flailed her arms, trying to get her feet back under her.
    In an eye blink, Soren was at her side. He scooped her up, one arm under her knees, the other around her shoulders.
    Without conscious thought, Crystal wrapped her arms around his neck.
    Time stopped. She looked into his fathomless blue eyes and felt the amulet pulsing warm against her chest through the soft wool of her sweater. The heat of his torso spread to her hip, her waist. She wanted nothing so much as to snuggle against the strength of him until the end of time.
    “What the hell is this, a Grade-B movie?”
    Crystal felt her feet slap to the floor as Soren let go of her. Augie stood in the archway, fists on his hips, glaring at the tableau before him.
    “Augie, dear, how nice to see you again.” Rowena stood and walked around her desk, regal in a dark blue long-sleeved sheath with three strands of exquisitely matched pearls at her neck, her arms outstretched to him.
    He suffered her handclasp while he glowered at Crystal.
    “I tripped,” Crystal explained, nonplussed at the resentful look in Augie’s eye, as though he