I don’t react, but for just a moment, I consider the way she used my nickname as an indicator that she knows who I am, and why I’m here. I quickly dismiss that idea. I’d have seen it in those pale green eyes, and I did not. But as she turns and walks away, and I watch her depart, tracking her steps as she disappears down the path, I wonder at her quick departure, and the fear I’d seen in her eyes. Was the root of that fear her guilt?

That idea should be enough to ice the fire in me that this woman has stirred, but it stokes it instead. Everything male in me wants to pursue her again, and not because I’m here for a reason that existed before I ever met her, when it should be that and nothing more. It is more. I’m aroused and I’m intrigued by this woman. She got to me when no one gets to me. Not a good place to be, considering I came here to prove she killed my father, and maybe even her own mother.

CHAPTER TWO OF PROVOCATIVE

Faith…

I stand at the library window on the second level of the mansion that I’ve called my family home, but not my home, my entire life. Nick Rogers exits the front door, pure sex and arrogance. He stops to talk to the doorman, both men laughing, before Nick palms the other man a tip, and then rounds his shiny black BMW that I’m fairly certain is custom designed. He begins to get in, but hesitates, scanning the grounds immediately around him, and then, to my complete and utter shock, his gaze lifts and lands on my window. Stunned, my heart begins to race all over again, the way it had when he’d touched me in that garden, but it’s impossible for him to see me. I know it is, but somehow, there is no question that he knows I am here. He holds his stare in my direction for several beats, in which I cannot breathe, and then lifts two fingers, giving me a wave before he disappears into his car. Moments later, he drives away and I let out the breath I’m holding. Hugging myself, I am both hot and cold, aroused and unsettled, exactly as I had been when I was with him in the garden. Every look and word I exchanged with that man was both sexual and adversarial.