Marissa reached for the cordless phone and started toward the door with Petie, who only paused long enough to let her hook his leash to his collar. On the third ring, she hit the Talk button. “Morning, Mom,” she said sleepily, opening the door and letting Petie lead the way. She hadn’t even checked the caller id. She’d known it was Mona.

But she was wrong.

“You know, of all the things I’ve been called, I don’t believe ‘Mom’ has ever entered the picture.”

At the sound of that masculine, confident tone, Marissa’s hands involuntarily tightened, along with a few other parts of her anatomy, and Petie yelped when the reaction caused a tiny jerk on his leash. “Sorry, Petie,” she mumbled apologetically.

“Petie?” sexy voice asked, while Marissa dashed a peek at the caller id. Sure enough, there was the proof.

Jackson, Trenton J.

“My dog,” she said, kneeling to rub Petie’s soft coat in an effort to formally apologize...and because her knees had turned to jelly.

“Ah, so you’re expecting phone calls from your mother at the crack of dawn, and you’re hanging out with your dog at the same time. Exciting life you live, Rissi.”

Marissa’s jaw tensed, eyes narrowed. “Obviously, yours is equally exciting, since you spend your time running stupid contests about comic strip quotes—for my picture—and spend your mornings calling women who don’t want to talk to you.”

“The first part may be true,” he said, and she could actually hear the smile in his words, “But the last part, well, I wouldn’t be so sure. You do want to talk to me, don’t you, Rissi?” he asked, then added huskily, “As much as I want to talk to you.”

Okay. That stopped her cold. How was she supposed to argue with a guy who looked like Trent Jackson, intrigued the hell out of her and admitted he wanted to talk to her? She tried to formulate a sassy response, but he didn’t give her time before forging on.

“Saw the winning quote, did you?” he asked.

“I did,” she admitted, having viewed the winning entry last night before going to bed. It was amazing she slept, given how mad she’d been. A tinge of that fury for his crazy antics rippled down her spine as she recalled the words in that cartoon bubble.

“I imagine you won’t have any trouble getting dates, with all of the males in Atlanta wanting to know if it’s true.”

“If what’s true?” she asked, before really thinking through her question. Obviously, he was talking about the quote, so obviously, he was talking about...

“Whether liars really have talented tongues,” he said, with no hint of a smile filtering through any of the words, but jumpstarting her libido just the same.