He had to say something, start a conversation. He sliced one irate glance in Ivy’s direction, feeling deserted, and then plunged in with, “Ivy tells me that the house I bought belonged to your mother.”

The moderation with which Mitch spoke surprised him, considering that he could see the merest hint of rosy nipples through the whispery fabric of Shay’s dress. He took a steadying gulp of the white wine Todd had ordered earlier.

The hazel eyes came reluctantly to his, flickered with pain and then inward laughter at some memory. Mitch imagined Shay as a little girl, playing in that miniature house behind the gazebo, and the picture slowed down his respiration rate.

“Yes.” Her voice was soft and she tossed a wistful glance toward Ivy and Todd, who were still studying their unsuspecting prey at the lobster tanks. In that instant Shay was a woman again, however vulnerable, and Mitch was rocked by the quicksilver change in her.

He tried to transform her back into the child. “That little house in back, was that yours?”

Shay smiled and nodded. “I used to spend hours there. At the time, it was completely furnished, right down to china dishes—” She fell silent and her beautiful eyes strayed again to the water beyond the window. “I only lived there for a few years,” she finished quietly.

Mitch began to wish that he had never seen Rosamond Dallas’s house, let alone bought it. He felt as though he had stolen something precious from this woman and he supposed that, in a way, he had. He was relieved when Ivy and Todd came back to the table, laughing between themselves and holding hands.

He was so handsome.

Nothing Ivy had ever said about Mitch Prescott had prepared Shay for the first jarring sight of him. He was a few inches taller than she was, with broad shoulders and hair of a toasted caramel shade, but it was his eyes that unsettled her the most. They were a deep brown, quick and brazen and tender, all at once. His hands looked strong, and they were dusted with butternut-gold hair, as was the generous expanse of chest revealed by his open-throated white shirt. He had just the suggestion of a beard and the effect was one of quiet, inexorable masculinity.

Here was a man, Shay decided uneasily, who had no self-doubts at all. He was probably arrogant.

She sat up a little straighter and tried to ignore him. His vitality stirred her in a most disturbing way. What would it be like to be caressed by those deft, confident hands?

Shay’s arm trembled a little as she reached out for her wineglass. Fantasies sprang, scary and delicious, into her mind, and she battled them fiercely. God knew, she reminded herself, Eliott Kendall had taught her all she needed or wanted to know about men.

Ivy was chattering as she sat down, her eyes bright with the love she bore Todd Simmons and the excitement of having her adored brother nearby. “Aren’t you going to pick out which lobster you want?” she demanded, looking from Shay to Mitch with good-natured impatience.