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the engine, Dag shouldered his way out onto the porch. He was wearing jeans that Wes wouldn’t have considered owning—low-slung and faded. Wes also would have had no use for the equally antique chambray shirt that Dag wore over a white T-shirt peeking above the unfastened top two buttons.
    Shannon wasn’t sure why she was mentally comparing the two men but she couldn’t seem to stop herself as she took in the sight of Dag’s shirtsleeves rolled midway up his massive forearms. Drying his hands on a small towel, he tossed her a smile that wasn’t at all the kind of practiced-in-case-a-photographer-might-be-nearby smile she knew she would have received from Wes.
    Both men were handsome, she admitted, but in different ways. There was never a hair out of place on Wes’s dusty blond head while disarray was part of the style for Dag’s dark locks. Wes was lean and wiry and stiff backed where Dag was muscular and powerful looking, his posture relaxed—as if his confidence came from knowing he could handle himself rather than from the entitlement that came with being a Rumson.
    Rugged versus refined—that’s what Shannon concluded. Dag’s good looks were rough and earthy, while Wes’s were polished and sophisticated.
    â€œHey there! I was beginning to give up on you,” Dag called to her as he came down off the porch.
    And that was when it struck Shannon that it wasn’t only their looks that were different.
    Wes would have waited for her within the shelter of the house. He wouldn’t have come out into the cold December afternoon to greet her. But that was what Dag did. Because their styles were entirely different. While Wes was known for his charisma, what she’d already seen from Dag just in the brief time since they’d metwas a special brand of charm that—while equally as smooth—was more natural than slick.
    And when it came to sex appeal?
    When it came to sex appeal, Shannon had no idea why anything like that had even popped into her mind as Dag opened her door.
    She recalled belatedly that he’d said something a split second earlier that she’d heard through her closed window.
    What was it…?
    Ah, that he’d just about given up on her….
    â€œI’m sorry I’m so late. It took longer with the seamstress than I expected it to and then I had a phone call I had to take. I kept an eye out for your truck the whole way here in case I passed you on the road.”
    â€œAnother ten minutes or so and you would have.”
    And the sound of his voice—there was absolutely no reason why she liked the deeper timbres of Dag McKendrick’s voice better than the slightly higher octave of Wes’s but in that instant it struck her that she did.
    Then she told herself to stop this right now! She had no interest in this man. He was nothing but a friend of her brother’s and the buyer of her grandmother’s house and someone she just happened to be acquainted with for the time being. Her relationship with Wes was barely cold—not even cold enough for anyone else to know about. Her entire life had changed in the last year, she could very well be headed to a new life in Beverly Hills, and in all of that there was no room, no time, no reason, for her to be even remotely interested in this man.
    And she wasn’t.
    She wasn’t…
    â€œIs it too late? Do you need to get home?” she asked then, stiffening her spine a bit to resist his appeal.
    â€œNah. We can have a little time here and still get back for a shower before the rehearsal.”
    Had he meant to say that as if they’d be showering together? Or was this just another of those crazy blips that made her mind wander into territory where it had no business going? “Not that we’ll be showering. What I meant was that I’ll still be able to get back to take a shower,” he amended then, letting her know that she hadn’t misheard