He stood at the bottom of the stairs with his hands hooked in his pockets. He wrestled with a selfish desire to follow her inside, take her clothes off, and find out if she was as unmoved by him as she pretended. Bad idea.

Sex with Gracie might be great, but she was definitely not his type. And everything about her screamed lingering complications.

Once he got back to the city where he belonged, he could have all the sex he wanted with women who knew the score. Gracie might not qualify as a virgin, but she was an innocent in his world where sexual games were the norm. And screwing with innocence had never appealed to him. He always remembered Grandfather Bradford’s advice about not playing hardball with amateurs.

“Maybe we should talk,” he heard himself suggest.

She froze midway up the stairs. “About what?”

What did they have to talk about that would keep her from disappearing upstairs without him? “Clayton and the fact that the whole town believes he’s my brother.”

She tilted her head to the side. He could almost hear the wheels turning. Finally, she sighed and motioned him upward.

Dylan stopped dead still inside the door. He had never seen an apartment quite like hers. Squeaky clean, but a jumble of possessions and collections and glaring contrasts. A lava lamp sat on top of a DVD player. A rotary phone rested beside a laptop. Carved wooden toys and X-boxes were stored side by side. More pottery. Bright color and cozy comfort everywhere.

“Back in a sec.” She opened a door off the living area. “Have a seat while I take off this shirt.”

Diverting his thoughts into areas that didn’t focus on Gracie topless in the next room presented a challenge.

Locating the sofa was another one, but he found it buried under a pile of pillows, throws, and sleeping animals. Well, just MacDuff. He’d lifted his head when they came in, but then yawned and resumed his nap.

Dylan gravitated to the shelves to examine the wooden toys. Rotating propellers adorned hand-carved airplanes and helicopters. Dogs and cats rolled their eyes and wagged their tails. A train engine’s chimney bobbed up and down when nudged.

As he rolled a duck with flapping feet, Gracie returned, wearing cut-off shorts and a faded T-shirt that declared, “Trust me. I’m a Doctor.”

“Really?” He pointed to the T-shirt, assuming it had been her former fiancé’s. “You’re a doctor?”

“I am. Do you want to consult with me about a physical problem you’re having?”

“God, no.” He winced. That probably came out wrong, but he didn’t want her looking at him naked except for purely recreational purposes.

“Good, because you’ve outgrown my specialty.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Which is what?”

“Pediatrics.”

“I’ll bet your patients are crazy about you.”

Her eyes lit up. “I’m crazy about them.”

“Where do you practice?”

“A clinic in Hartford. I’m taking a couple of weeks off to help out here. I already miss it, but it’s been forever since I’ve had a break. I’ll keep in touch and consult as needed.”

“Impressive.” Sexist of him, sure, but he didn’t know many women doctors. He didn’t know many children either. But he did know one. He pointed to the toys. “My nephew would love those.”

“If you’re serious, you can buy them in a gift shop in town.”

“Really? They look like antiques.”

“They’re not that old.” She set a propeller spinning with a flick of a finger. “Granddad made them for me when I was a child. They were such a hit that he started giving them as gifts to friends and family. Now he sells them to tourists.” She flipped on her sound system and headed toward the refrigerator. “Would you like something to drink? Juice… beer… water…soda?”

“Beer would be great,” he said, and then “Thanks,” as she handed him one of two long-necked bottles.

She twisted the cap off hers and took a swig, but he held the beer without drinking. “I guess you want a glass.”

“No, this is fine.” He checked the label. A domestic brew.

She sat in a chair at the kitchen table. “I’m sorry about what happened at Lulu’s. Jake can be overbearing, but he means well.”

“Overbearing doesn’t begin to cover Jake. How does he stay in business?”

“The food’s good, and it’s a town ritual. Not many restaurants stay open in the off-season, so the locals rotate between the available spots. On Tuesday, we go to the Lulu’s. On Wednesday, we go to the diner. On Thursday, McStone’s.”

“What if someone doesn’t want lobster on Tuesday?”

She smiled. “It’s an accepted practice, not an ordinance. The other places just know they’ll only get their regulars on certain nights.”

“You mean there are some people who weren’t at Lulu’s tonight?”

She tapped her fingers on the table. “Ginger at the diner has a big family, and they always eat at her place. The pub has a group of diehards who’d rather drink their dinner than eat, and some people stay home. But pretty much everyone else was there.”

“Great.” The outrage he’d experienced when Jake had dished up private Bradford business along with the lobster returned. He simmered over a couple more slugs of beer. “My mother’s detective reported that everyone believes Clayton’s my father’s child, but I didn’t know it was spoken of so freely. And to think I didn’t want to tip off anyone about what I’m doing here.”

He brooded over the irony. And he thought reporters were nosy. At least prying into someone else’s business was their job. For the folks of East Langden, it was an amateur avocation. “I might as well have called a town meeting.”

“It isn’t done maliciously.” Gracie jumped in to defend her friends. “Everyone cares about everyone else. Most of what Clay knows about his past is based on what he was told by the people who lived here at the time.”

Dylan believed they’d be a fount of information to one of their own, but how reliable would their recollections be? “Why is it such an accepted fact that my father is Clayton’s father?”

“You mean besides the resemblance?”

He blinked. “What resemblance?”

Gracie stopped just short of rolling her eyes. “He looks exactly like you.”

“No, he doesn’t. What other proof do you have?”

She shifted in her chair. “At the time, Clay’s mother hinted to several people that she had a wealthy, well-connected lover. And in East Langden, that narrowed the field. This isn’t a fashionable watering hole like Martha’s Vineyard or Kennebunkport, you know.”

“So far, all you’ve got is rumor and speculation. That’s not proof.” He sat back, trying to contain his disgust when he thought of another question. “What happened to his mother?”

“No one knows.” Without asking, Gracie got him another beer. He hadn’t noticed he’d finished the first one. She picked up some needlework and brought it over to the table.

“How did Clayton start out as the abandoned child of an unwed mother and end up a doctor?”

She pushed the needle through the taut fabric. “David gets most of the credit.” Interesting. She always smiled when she said the old man’s name.

“Why? How?”

“He was Lana’s cousin.” Her nimble fingers didn’t pause as she talked. When she stitched to one side of the frame, she stitched her way back to the other, occasionally stopping to count stitches. “Lana’s mother had MS and had been in a nursing home for years, so David’s family kept an eye on Lana and Clay.

“The day after she disappeared, David stopped by to take Clay to church. No one was home. He finally tracked Clay down at the babysitter’s. When Lana hadn’t shown up by the end of the day, he called the police chief.”

Dylan remembered how lost and unsettled he’d felt after his father’s death. He tried to imagine what his life would have been like without his mother too, but then he stopped. Thoughts like that would have him feeling sorry for Clayton. That was one emotion he was determined to avoid. Plenty of people already sympathized with the jerk. Gracie, first and foremost.