“We’re just friends,” said Dylan.
One of the dogs gave a sharp bark.
“Nonsense.” Ginny winked at Kaitlin. “This young man’s a catch.” She moved closer, voice lowering as if she was confiding a secret. “He has money, you know.”
Kaitlin couldn’t help but grin.
“Now this one—” Ginny made a half turn and shook a wrinkled finger in Zach’s direction “—he’s always been a hoodlum.”
“Hello, Aunt Ginny,” said Zach, with what was obvious patience.
“Caught him in the linen closet with Patty Kostalnik.”
“Ginny,” Zach protested.
“Did you now?” Kaitlin asked the older woman, her inflection making her interest obvious.
“Or was it that Pansy girl?” Ginny screwed up her wrinkled face. “Never liked that one. She used to steal my crème de menthe. It was May, because the apple trees were blooming.”
Kaitlin slid a glance to Zach, enjoying his embarrassment.
He shook his head as if to deny the accusation.
“Kaitlin and Lindsay are staying at Zach’s for a few days,” Dylan told his aunt Ginny.
“Nonsense,” Ginny retorted. “You need a wife, young man.” She moved between Kaitlin and Lindsay and took each of them by an arm. “They need to stay here so you can woo them. Which one do you want?”
“They’re staying with Zach,” Dylan repeated.
Ginny clicked her tongue in admonishment. “You’ve got to learn to stand up for yourself. Don’t let Zachary take them both.” She looked to Kaitlin. “You want him?”
Kaitlin felt herself blush. “I’m afraid I’m already—”
She turned to Lindsay, her voice a bark of demand. “What about you?”
“Sure,” said Lindsay with a mischievous grin. “Like you say, Dylan’s a good catch.”
Ginny beamed, while Zach chuckled, and a look of horror came over Dylan’s face.
Ginny drew Lindsay off to one side. “Right this way to the kitchen, young lady. You can help me with the pie.”
Dylan watched as they left the foyer and proceeded down a long hallway.
“You’re not going with them?” asked Zach, still obviously controlling his laughter.
“She got herself into it,” said Dylan with a fatalistic shake of his head. “The woman’s on her own.”
“That Pansy girl?” Kaitlin asked Zach, not ready to let him off the hook for that one.
“I was fifteen, and she was two years older.”
“Uh-huh?” Kaitlin waited for more details.
“She taught me how to kiss,” Zach admitted.
“And…?”
“And nothing. You jealous?”
Kaitlin frowned, sensing he was about to turn the tables. “Not me.”
“Right this way,” Dylan interrupted, pointing through an archway and ushering them from the foyer farther into house.
Kaitlin was happy to leave the conversation behind, and she was more than impressed by the house.
Only a few years old, the large and luxurious Gilby home was perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean and the distant coast of Connecticut. The west wall of the great room was two stories high and made completely of glass. Hardwood floors gleamed beneath open-beam ceilings, and a sweeping staircase curled toward a second-story overtop of the kitchen area where Lindsay had disappeared.
After Kaitlin had a chance to look around, they moved out onto a huge deck dotted with tables and comfortable furniture groupings. Large potted plants were placed around the perimeter, and a retractable roof was halfway shut, providing shade on half the deck and sunshine on the other.
“You must entertain a lot,” Kaitlin said to Dylan, taking in the wet bar and two huge gas barbecues.
He nodded in answer to her question. “There’s a great big party room downstairs. Plenty of extra bedrooms. And do you see those green roofs below the ridge?”
Kaitlin moved to the rail, leaning out to gaze along the steep side of a mountain. “I see them.”
“Those are guest cottages. There’s a service road that loops around the back. My mom loves to have guests here.”
Kaitlin glanced straight down to see a kidney-shaped swimming pool with a couple of hot tubs beside it on a terra-cotta patio. The swimming area was surrounded by an emerald lawn. And, beyond the Gilbys’ place, farther toward what looked like a sandy beach, and in the opposite direction of the cottages, she spied a stone spire and a jagged roofline that stuck up above the trees.
She pointed. “What’s that down there?”
“That’s Zach’s place,” Dylan replied.
Kaitlin glanced back at Zach in surprise. “You live in a castle?”