A man's deep voice stopped her before she had gone a dozen steps. “He must be an extremely foolish man to turn his back and run from such beauty.”
“No! You can't do this to him!”
Charlotte whirled to face the man who stepped up on the path behind her. He must have been sitting out of her view on the stone bench in the shadow of the dogwood that reached its limbs toward the veranda.
“Forgive me,” he said. “It wasn't my intention to startle you.”
“Sim Cheong! You can't f*****g do this to him!”
In the moonlight it wasn't hard to see the amused smile playing across his lips under his mustache that gave lie to his words. That had been exactly what he'd intended. Charlotte thought as she stared up at him with no pretense of demurely lowering her eyes. He was tall, even taller th
