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CHAPTER NINE
     
    Grier tossed and turned until the clock by the bed blinked a mocking 3:15, after which she fell into a thin, restless sleep that left her groggy and grouchy when the alarm went off at six a.m.
    She shrugged into enough clothing to appear decent and then trekked outside with Sebbie to do his morning routine. He sniffed several bushes and a half-acre or so of grass, before finally relenting and taking care of the serious stuff.
    Back in the room, a look in the mirror made her wish for a couple more hours under the covers. But the group meeting was scheduled for eight o’clock, and she wanted to be prepared. She stood under the warm spray of the shower, thinking about last night’s visit from Bobby Jack Randall, and its ensuing effect on her sleep.
     The man had nerve, she’d give him that. She wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for or envious of his daughter. She wondered what it would have been like to have a father like that when she was growing up. Someone to walk along in front of her, not only willing, but insistent on pointing out the hairpin curves as they appeared on his radar.
    Was that what she looked like to Bobby Jack Randall? A hairpin curve he was convinced could only throw his daughter off track?
    Something about the assumption bothered her.
    But then something about the man himself bothered her, too.
    Maybe it was the arrogance. It was different from Darryl Lee’s cockiness, an attribute that had always been so obvious as to be inoffensive, sort of like Wile E. Coyote and the Road Runner.
    Bobby Jack’s dismissal of her and the reason she’d come here had nothing to do with surface level interpretations, but with his own gut check that obviously told him she and her sideshow, as he saw it, were bad news.
    Standing in front of the mirror with a towel wrapped around her, she considered the fact that from a father’s point of view, Jane Austen Girl wasn’t the highest of goals to aspire to. With the plethora of reality shows mapping TV channels today, even she could see how he might arrive at that conclusion.
    And why was she doing it? For her own gain, of course. The publicity alone would put her business on the radar of women all over the country. She couldn’t deny wanting this.
    Even so, she hardly qualified for black hat status. It wasn’t as if the girls she ended up picking would be immediately drained of their IQ like the fair-haired victims in those zombie movies they used to show in high school during lunch period.
    In all fairness, she thought it could be safely said that Bobby Jack Randall had based his opinion on a number of cliché assumptions. Having arrived at that conclusion, she resolved to shelve any lingering feelings of dismay over his surprise late night visit to her room.
    She was fine with what she’d come here to do. And she didn’t need to reassess anything based on the accusations of an overprotective father who obviously had some issues of his own to sort through. Especially when that father was a relative of Darryl Lee’s.
    She blew her hair dry and then quickly got dressed. From the things she’d brought with her, she chose a slim black Max Mara suit she could only wear when she’d been sticking to her veggies and avoiding the Italian restaurant two blocks from her apartment where they served the best Risotto Milanese this side of Milan.
    She finished up with lipstick and a spritz of Jo Malone and then leaned across to pick up Sebbie. He whined and looked at the pillow with longing. “You want to stay put?”
    He whined again.
    “Okay,” she said, setting him back onto the bed where he immediately curled up and closed his eyes. “Be good,” she said. “I’ll be back to check on you in a while.”
    He licked her cheek in response, and she stood up, rubbing his soft coat. On the lower shelf of the nightstand, she spotted a yellow phone book. On impulse, she reached for it. She kept her hand on the cover for a