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    I left his office, nodded farewell to June, and went out into the sunlight.
    Trey was leaning against my car, which wasn’t a good idea, given how dirty it was. He wasn’t dressed in his lawyer-suit today, but in black chinos and a black polo shirt that showed off his arms. He smiled widely when he saw me. “Hello, Ms. Lull.”
    “Hello, ex-lawyer. Do you want something?”
    “I do, actually, but only if you do, too. Now that we no longer have a professional relationship, I can ask if you’d like to get a drink sometime without trampling all over my ethical or moral boundaries. Of course, for all I know you have a serious boyfriend, or you don’t care for men romantically, but I thought I’d take a chance.”
    I looked at him for a second, trying to muster up my death glare, but I couldn’t help it—a little laugh slipped out. “The way you ran out of my house yesterday, Trey, you acted like I had leprosy or something. Now you’re asking me out? Maybe some girls like the mixed-message man-of-mystery thing, but it doesn’t do much for me.”
    He ducked his head, sheepish. “Sorry about that. Yesterday, in your kitchen, I realized I was alone in a house with a client, and I was thinking a lot more about how good you looked when you stretched than about protecting your interests.”
    Well. It’s always nice to know an attraction’s mutual, but I wasn’t going to let him off the hook that easily. “Don’t the lawyer gods frown on consorting with clients?”
    He nodded. “Yes. Exactly. So I decided I’d better do something about the problem. I told my granddad my, ah, concerns, and he agreed to take over handling the estate, even though we mostly try to keep him away from clients unless they’re as old and cranky as he is. But now that I’ve eliminated the conflict of interest…”
    “A little confidence can be a good thing, but you might be getting ahead of yourself a little, don’t you think? Conflict of interest aside—what makes you think I’m interested?”
    “Just blind hope and stupid optimism. Two things I have in abundance. But I didn’t want to put you in a bad situation, either way. Now you can reject me, and when you do, you won’t have to worry about working with a guy who just hit on you inappropriately.”
    “Hmm.” I looked him over, letting him twist for a minute, and giving it some thought. Feel free to leap, but do it with your eyes open. He was cute, and there was definitely a spark, though whether it would fizzle or ignite remained to be seen.
    “I do like drinking,” I said at last. “And you have the advantage of being almost the only person in this town I know, so you’re not competing in a crowded field. And, no, I have no serious partner, and I am not entirely uninterested in men. No promises, and I’ll buy my own drink, but yeah, you can be next to me when I buy it.”
    “ Almost the only person you know? Who else did you meet? Unless you’re counting granddad and June—”
    “I met this woman, Melinda…”
    “Ah. Sure, Melinda Sharp. She lives in a little cottage on the edge of your property—technically I guess you’re her landlord, but she signed a hundred-year lease or something with Mr. Grace, and she pretty much acts like she owns the place. She’s a character.”
    “She’s got…a lot of personality.”
    “Ha. She does at that. She used to go around to the schools when I was a kid and teach us about making pottery and candles and wood carvings, and she leads classes in…oh, what is it…‘Storytelling for Self-Enlightenment,’ something like that, mostly for the tourists and retirees. There are a lot of people like that out here, semihippie sorta-kinda-artists who cobble together a living one way or another.”
    I bristled a touch. “I’m a sorta-kinda-artist, you know.”
    “Really? You don’t strike me as a sorta-kinda woman, Bekah. Seems like you’d go all out.”
    That was better. “I do my best. So Melinda’s not likely to