"So, what's a pretty girl like you doing in a tiny town like this?" She glanced up at the man sitting at the counter next to her.
"Waiting for someone who at least has a decent pickup line," she sniped. He pantomimed being wounded. She quirked an eyebrow in amusement, but didn't say anything.
"Well, I'm Dean." He pointed across the bar to a man sitting back against the wall with a computer, looking far to studious for his surroundings. Like he'd said, this was a tiny little town. The closest college was nearly a hundred miles away. "That's Sam. We're real estate assessors. We were wondering if you'd noticed anything odd in the area."
"Odd how?" she asked guardedly. He shrugged.
"Anything at all, really. See," his voice dropped and he leaned in to compensate, "honestly, we have a couple of friends who're looking to move into the area, but they wanted to be sure it's a good place to live. You know, you hear all kinds of stories these days, they're just cautious. So I told them Sam and I would check it out."
"Sam your lover or something?" Judging by his reaction, the answer was no, but still, it was amusing as all get out.
"No!" he snapped, then took a deep breath to calm himself. "Sorry. Sam's my brother. I'm just getting tired of people assuming relations that aren't there."
"Well, you've kept one eye on him the entire time we've been talking, so I figured it wasn't just a business partnership between the two of you."
"You're sharp," he said in a vaguely complementary tone. She smirked at him.
"Family trait, I'm afraid. Right up there with paranoia and lightfingers." She winked at him.
SPNSPNSPNSPNSPNSPN
His only defense he could come up with later when he realized she'd lifted his wallet and left a single slip of paper with a phone number and nothing else, was that he'd honestly thought she was teasing him.