Once she’d donned her sunglasses, too, and he seemed satisfied that even if Kouretas got a picture it wouldn’t be good enough to sell, he stuck his head out into the yard. “Looks clear, but...let me double-check first. I’ll come back for you.”

He didn’t give her the chance to argue. He strode out, and she peered through a crack in the blinds, trying to see as much as she could while he walked the perimeter.

The light in the pool and hot tub suddenly went off. Immediately afterward, the low lighting in the yard went dark, too. It was pitch-black when he came back for her.

“All clear,” he murmured, keeping his voice low, and took the wine bottle, since she was carrying both glasses.

Using the flashlight on his phone, he guided them to the hot tub.

Chills ran through Tia’s body when she first got in. With a deep sigh, she tilted her head back to gaze up at the stars as Seth poured the wine. “It’s gorgeous out here,” she said as she accepted a glass.

“I like Silver Springs.”

“Maybe you’ll move here at some point in the future.”

“Maybe. One day. I’ve always thought I might come back, when the timing is right. How’d it go with Kiki today?”

“Pretty good, although she refuses to let me teach her anything new. I think she’s just being stubborn.”

“You’ve only been here a week or so. Maybe it takes longer.”

“It must,” she allowed.

He gazed around. “I wonder how long Kouretas will stay in town.”

“I can’t imagine getting a picture of me is important enough that he’ll last more than a few days,” she said so Seth would quit worrying about him. But knowing the persistence of the paparazzi, she wouldn’t put it past Kouretas to last a week or longer. It could even be that their encounter at the gate had made him that much more determined to win the power struggle that’d sprung up between them.

“Tell me a little more about your family,” Seth said. “You don’t seem eager to talk about them.”

She wasn’t. “There’s really nothing to say.”

“They live in Iowa?”

“Yeah. In a small farming community.”

“When I had my first showing in New York, Shiloh and I couldn’t afford to fly there. So we drove clear across the country.”

“Didn’t that cost more than flying?”

His grin slanted to one side as though he was slightly embarrassed. “No, because we slept in our car.”

She chuckled. “You climbed up the hard way, too.”

“I started with nothing. Actually, I started in the negative on most counts.”

“And look where you are now.”

“Look at you,” he said.

“I almost got somewhere. And I started in the negative, too,” she said, jokingly.

“In what way?”