Deanne jumps into relationships heart-first.

Eager to start fresh after her nasty divorce, Deanne Moore adopts a stray dog and begins the healing process. She has learned—the hard way—to take chances and just enjoy life. The one thing she isn’t expecting, though, is to get a second chance with her first crush.

Julius won’t let lust burn away the last of his brain cells.

After losing his entire family in one blinding instant, Julius Zern has learned to steer clear of happily-ever-after scenarios. Meeting Deanne stirs something tender within him. So he stays. Overnight. And falls…hard.

But just as he begins to follow his instincts—and his desire for Deanne—trouble arrives and threatens to destroy their fragile bond.

Dear Reader,

Thank you for purchasing this Carina Press launch title. During our journey these past months to acquire manuscripts, develop relationships with authors and build the Carina Press catalog, we’ve been working to fulfill the mission “Where no great story goes untold.”

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Overnight

EC Sheedy

Dedication

Always and forever for Tim.

CONTENTS

COPYRIGHT

CHAPTER 1

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 3

CHAPTER 4

CHAPTER 5

CHAPTER 6

CHAPTER 7

CHAPTER 8

CHAPTER 9

CHAPTER 10

CHAPTER 11

CHAPTER 12

CHAPTER 13

CHAPTER 14

CHAPTER 15

CHAPTER 16

CHAPTER 17

CHAPTER 18

CHAPTER 19

CHAPTER 20

CHAPTER 21

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

CHAPTER 1

Deanne heard the first knock and the second, ignored them both.

Julius Zern! Oh, my God, I’m ignoring Julius Zern.

For a dog.

She glanced down at the canine. “Come on, Samba baby, you can do it. It’s the last one, I promise.”

The weary dog gave her a disbelieving look and rightfully so. She’d used the it’s-the-last-one promise two puppies ago—and now there were four. She stared in awe at the slicked and gooey quartet on the whelping bed, totally in thrall, even while wondering how she’d gone from petless to midwife in two short weeks.

I am so-o out of my depth here.

Another knock on the door.

Another puppy slid out of Samba—this one tricolored—and like the good mother she was, Samba immediately started the clean up, giving Deanne a necessary break from the puppy action.

She stroked Samba’s head, whispered something inane about what a great job she was doing and stood. Shoving her hair back from her face, smoothing down the front of her rumpled shirt and wishing she wasn’t wearing skinny jeans, she hustled her butt to the front door, to greet one of Seattle’s most influential art collectors.

Opening the door wide, she blinded him with a smile in the vain hope he’d miss seeing the denim. “Mr. Zern.”

“Deanne Moore.”

As she’d expected, he didn’t recognize her. He also didn’t return her smile. What he did was x-ray her from her disheveled hair to her—

Oh, my God, the slippers.

Ignoring the heat inching up her neck on prickly feet, she said, “Come in, please. I’m sorry I kept you waiting. My dog is—” Damn. This meeting was about selling art, not dogs. Clancy’s next month’s rent, and her new start in Seattle, depended on her making this meeting work.

Zern gave her a quizzical look, waited calmly for her to finish whatever it was she was going to say—which she’d totally forgotten. His gaze, so fixed on hers, set her stomach on butterfly mode. It’d been a long time since that happened. Particularly with a man like this one.

A chilly man, she registered, with a stern mouth and an unwavering gaze from sharp, say-nothing eyes, their color exactly as she remembered, somewhere between gray and green. His color choices of shades of gray, topped by a black leather jacket, gave him a steely look. Big, tall and ultra cool. The phrase lean, mean, fighting machine came to mind, as did…unpretty. Severely masculine. Remote. Imposing…intimidating. Not what she’d expected. Or remembered.

“Your dog?” he prompted, his tone bass low and surprisingly mild—as if he were speaking to a verbally challenged three-year-old.

“Yes…” She still hadn’t found that other direction she was looking for, Memory Lane not being an option. When in doubt, spit it out. It had taken her the better part of a year to learn that simple concept. So the dog excuse it was. “She’s, uh, having…puppies.”

“Maybe I should come back another time.”

If she let Zern get away, Clancy would kill her—if she didn’t kill herself first. “No. No. Everything’s under control.” Hah! He took another couple of steps deeper into the room. If his step echoed on the freshly polished hardwood, she didn’t hear it, but she did catch the light scent of something like orange and sandalwood when he stepped past her.

Again they faced each other, but this time Deanne gathered up her stray brain cells and took control. “I know I’m looking a little…disorganized at the moment, but believe me, Mr. Zern—”

“Julius.”

She nodded. She was glad for his correction, because given what she knew of him, the Mister thing felt seriously strange. “Believe me, Julius, when you see Clancy West’s work, you’ll forget my dog’s bad timing, and me…wearing jeans and slippers.” She smiled—as if she were in her right mind.

“I hope so.”

Ignoring his ambiguous answer, Deanne gestured to the stark white wall, where three paintings hung in symmetry. “There they are,” she said, not above stating the obvious. She’d spent all last night and the wee hours of the morning getting ready—cleaning, painting the walls and finally hanging Clancy’s remarkable work exactly right. Other than the art, an ivory leather love seat, a tall lamp and an ebony lacquered coffee table, there was nothing in the room, making it appear larger than it was and settling the focus squarely on Clancy’s work.

Julius Zern shifted his attention from her to the paintings.

Her stomach knotted, and she drew in some silent breaths. Waited. How very different he was from…then. But then so are you, Deanne Moore. Thank God. Walking the few steps to the paintings, he leaned forward as if to study the brushwork. Deanne fisted and flexed her hands, determined not to break the silence and stay focused, despite her fuzzed brain from lack of sleep and her concern for Samba’s plight in the kitchen.

Turning back to face her, Julius looked surprised and—yes! Impressed. “They’re brilliant. I’d like to—”

Another knock on the door. This couldn’t be happening. “Excuse me.” Biting back an unbusiness-like curse, she headed for the door.

Don Summers, her vet, strode in before she got there. “Morning. Sorry, I’m late. Emergency surgery. An Airedale. In terrible shape—cuts like Samba’s.” He shook his head. “Third time this month some creep has done a number on a dog. Her owners found him roadside. Damn sick son of a— Sorry.”

“Will it be okay?” Deanne had been a dog owner for less than three weeks, but after having Samba, remembering how she’d looked that first day, cowering on her doorstep, her fur matted, the blood…She felt sick all over again.

“He’ll be fine as soon as the cuts heal. Bastard slashed the— But let’s get to Samba. Where is she?” He looked harried, as usual—as though he’d been blown backward in a wind tunnel.

“In the laundry room, off the kitchen,” Deanne said, her mind still stuck on the image of the abused dog.

Forcing another smile, she looked up at Julius. God, he was tall. Six-three, at least. “As you’ve probably guessed—this is my vet. Do you mind? It’ll only take a minute.” She was thankful Clancy wasn’t here to witness this fiasco—although knowing him he’d have gleefully added to it.

Zern looked at her, then the vet. “I’ll be fine.”

“Thanks.”

Julius watched the woman and the vet disappear into the kitchen, his gaze sliding to Deanne Moore’s backside a second before she moved out of sight. A damn fine backside—the kind jeans were created for. Stellar from the front, too. Long honey-colored hair, blue eyes—dark, a night-sky blue—and a smile to melt crystal. But judging by the dazed and confused expression on her face when she’d answered the door, he figured she was working way out of her league and making a major effort not to let it show.

Again Clancy West’s paintings drew his attention. Regardless of the woman’s sales experience or lack of it, she had a damn good eye. West’s work was some of the best he’d seen in a long time. Pure genius. Urban street scenes, gritty and uncompromising—they were painted boldly in shades of gray ranging from pearl to granite; the only color on the canvases the clothes and faces of the people populating them. The minimal use of color brought the subjects alive and gave the work a stunning energy. Brilliant.

His cell phone vibrated in his jacket pocket, and being temporarily abandoned by the artist’s stressed-out agent, he pulled it out and glanced at the call display. Guardian, Inc.

“Kit?” he said.

“Yeah. Didn’t want to bug you, Jules, but that call you were expecting came through. I just hung up. She wants to know if it’s a go, and if it is, for you to be there next Saturday—a.m. For three days.”

Julius and his partner, Joe Worth, were personal security specialists, their clients mainly businesspeople traveling with their families, people determined to ensure safety for their loved ones in an unsafe world. A world Julius knew very well, from firsthand experience. The work wasn’t something he had to do, but it was something he cared to do—perhaps was fated to do. Still, he wasn’t keen on spending time in Paris looking out for the latest cover model featured in Vogue. But at sixteen she was still a kid…Being stalked, according to her worried mother. “Tell her yes. And load up on the particulars, will you?”

“Got most of them, and I booked a Friday late-afternoon flight—just in case. But I’ll confirm the rest.” Only nineteen, Kit was the resident brainiac and go-to guy at Guardian, Inc.

“Thanks—and, Kit?” He glanced at his watch.

“Uh-huh.”

“Will you swing by the house and take Lily and Brutus for an extra long walk this morning? I’m going to be here awhile.” Lily and Brutus were his two chocolate Labs, a brother and sister, and the only family he allowed himself. Anybody ever abused them—in the way Deanne’s vet described—they’d be the ones needing emergency surgery. Point in the disorganized Deanne Moore’s favor—she had a dog.

“Sure. See you.”

Julius clicked off and stuffed the phone back in his pocket.

Moore’s raised voice drifted in from the kitchen. “Oh, my God, when is she going to stop?” She sounded desperate. “Is she going to be okay?”

The vet mumbled something Julius couldn’t hear.

He ambled toward the open doorway. Hell, he already knew he was going to buy the paintings, but if he had to wait for a whelping bitch before he did, he might as well take a look at her pups.

CHAPTER 2

The vet stood to go just as Julius arrived at the laundry room door.

“She’s done,” he said, “and the puppies are all healthy as far as I can see. Just leave them be for now. Samba will take care of things.”

The woman stared at the brood of puppies—Julius’s quick count said there were six—looking shell-shocked. Her response to the vet’s instructions was a barely-there nod. She was holding her hair back from her face with both hands, but let it fall when her wide eyes briefly touched on him.

“I’ll leave you this.” The vet waved a couple of papers in her general direction before setting them on the dryer. “Most of what you need to know is there, but call if you need me. Either way, I’ll come by later today if I can. Okay?”

“Yeah, sure. Okay.”

“And stop worrying. Everything’s fine.” He ran a hand through thinning brown hair and, when she didn’t say more, added, “I’ll see myself out.”

Julius stepped aside to let him pass.

“Good-looking pups.” He stayed standing in the doorway, kept his distance. Not smart to approach the whelping bed and upset a new mother. “And the vet’s right. They look very healthy.”

Still kneeling beside the litter, her blue eyes met his and she blinked, tilting her head as if she were coming back from a faraway place. Her dreamy gaze entered him like a shot of Scotch neat. His chest heated.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “About all this.” She dipped her chin to gesture at the dogs, then took a deep breath. “But I’ve never had a dog before—didn’t have Samba until a couple of weeks ago.”

“She’s a stray?” Julius looked down at the trim black-and-white border collie, an obvious purebred, and her multi-hued litter, so obviously not.

“I found her curled up on my back porch a few days after I moved in,” she said, stroking the dog’s back. “It had been raining all day, and she was soaked through, and bleeding from some deep cuts. I brought her in the house and called the vet. Don said the cuts were from a razor—like the ones on the Airedale he mentioned.” She shuddered. “Can you imagine someone doing that?”

“Like your vet said. A real sicko.” Unfortunately, Julius easily imagined that kind of someone—and worse. His rose-colored glasses shattered years ago. But by the looks of Deanne Moore’s shocked expression, hers were still intact.

After a second, she waved a hand over the wriggling litter—every one of them snuffling against the mother and looking for breakfast—and stood. “Anyway, now I have all of them. It’s a bit overwhelming.”

“I can see that.” In the close confines of the laundry room and under the overhead light, he picked up on her exhaustion, the shadows under her eyes. She looked beat. Judging from the boxes in the corner—the neatly stacked paint cans—she wasn’t even finished unpacking yet. And six puppies? If she’d acted as novice midwife, she’d probably been up for hours.

“But, as none of this is your problem,” she said, “and Don said I should leave Samba alone for a while, why don’t we go to the living room and get back to why you’re here. Clancy West’s work.” She moved toward where he lounged in the doorway, preceded by the scent of roses—and turpentine.

The mixture eddied in his senses, stilled him, punched him. Whoa. He needed space. Stepping aside, he let her pass, then jerked his head toward the kitchen counter. “Would you mind?”

“Excuse me?”

“That is coffee I smell, isn’t it?”

She smiled again. This one coming easier. She liked to smile, he thought, even when she was bone-tired. “Yes, it is. Sorry, I should have—”

The kitchen door banged open, and a kid waltzed in, a boy of maybe fifteen or sixteen. Moore’s face flashed annoyance but she quickly covered it with yet another smile, this one drawn and glued into place.

The woman doth smile too much…

“Kurt,” she said, “I asked you to knock. Remember?”

“Sorry,” he muttered, not looking it. “Some of your mail ended up in the big-house box.” He handed her some letters.

Deanne took the mail, said firmly, “Next time, you knock. You got that?”

“Yeah. Got it.” His gaze fired over to Julius, assessed him as if he were a dark alley. “Who’s he?”

“Kurt.” She gave him a look icy enough to freeze the Sahara.

Julius stuck out his hand. “Julius Zern. And you are?” He did some assessing of his own. Short, five-six max, a bit overweight, pale, with hair in need of a cut and a wash. He had a splotch of fine hair on his chin. Wearing none-too-clean jeans and an XXL tee, the kid had a mean, abandoned look about him—and a serious case of rude.

“Kurt Minton. From the big house. She rents from us.”

This area was far-east Seattle, where the city ended and country began. Driving the last leg of the potholed road leading to Deanne’s, Julius had spotted the big house. A gingerbread-dripping, porch-sagging, paint-chipped, dark-windowed monstrosity. Easily a hundred years old, it looked terminal. A gentle hill and a grassy expanse of open field lay between here and the sagging Victorian. A few trees separated the two properties at one end but didn’t obscure the view between them. The big house, as the kid called it, was the only other house within sight, sharing the dead end of the road with Deanne’s freshly painted cottage. On first arriving, he’d wondered what the hell the woman was thinking, running a business so far from Seattle—until he’d spotted the lake at the back of the house. Beautiful.

The boy was still staring at Julius’s outstretched hand. Finally he gave it an awkward pump. “You the plumber she’s been waiting for?”

Deanne’s face reddened. “Dear God.”

“No. I’m not the plumber.” Julius didn’t feel inclined to state the nature of his business.

“Kurt,” Deanne said. “Thank you for bringing the mail, but Julius and I are—”

“Busy. Yeah, I get it,” he interrupted. Again looking at Julius, the kid’s mouth thinned, as if he was pissed off. “No problem. I got stuff to do anyway.” He headed for the door, turned back when he got there. “I’ll come back later, give you a hand with the boxes.”

“You don’t have to—” she started.

If Minton heard, he ignored her, let the door slam shut behind him.

Julius was tempted to go after him, shake the little bastard stupid and teach him some manners. None of your business, Zern. But there was something about the kid that made his gut clench—his dim and distant early warning signal. Trouble. He could smell it.

“I’m sorry…” she said, rubbing her forehead. “And how many apologies does that make it now?”

“It’s okay. Teenage boys aren’t usually long on charm,” he said, adding, “But it looks to me like you’ve got yourself an admirer.”

“No. What I’ve got is my landlord’s son—with too much time on his hands. Kurt’s okay.” She went to the counter and poured two mugs of coffee. “Cream? Sugar?” she asked, raising one of the mugs, apparently determined to change the subject.

“Neither, thanks.”

They took their coffee into the living room and sat on the sofa facing Clancy West’s paintings.

Deanne cleared her throat. “Well,” she said, nodding toward the art on the wall. “What do you think?”

“I think they’re pure genius.” Julius balanced the mug on his knee and stretched his arm out along the sofa back. “But I’m curious about that neighbor of yours. What’s his name again? Kurt Minton?”

CHAPTER 3

Deanne, determined to get back to business, opted to ignore Julius’s second comment and concentrate on the first. “You’re right about Clancy being a genius—not to mention his work being a wise choice from an investment perspective. It will go nowhere but up.”

“I agree.” The man couldn’t stretch out his long legs because of the coffee table, but with his arm resting along the back of the sofa, he managed to look as relaxed as a sunning cat. His thick dark hair gleamed in the morning light coming through the windows, a light that intensified the silver of his eyes.

At least she’d got him off the subject of Kurt Minton. Not that she blamed him for asking—or being annoyed by all the disruptions to their meeting. He’d come to see paintings, not take a role in The Rocky Horror Picture Show.

God, what was wrong with Kurt anyway? Next time he came around she was going to tear a strip off him. Given new pups, her vet’s visit—and Kurt acting the monster teen from hell—this meeting with Julius couldn’t go any further off track. And, damn it, she couldn’t bring herself to say one more I’m sorry. She wanted to make this sale for Clancy.

His show was in three days, and if it were known in advance Julius Zern had bought his work, it would encourage other buyers. And make Clancy’s naive belief in her pay off. She knew as much about selling art as she did about birthing puppies, yet he’d insisted she rep him, stating he only worked with people he trusted. So losing wasn’t an option—except in the case of my disastrous marriage. When that thought from nowhere knotted her stomach, she pushed it back.

She got a grip and smiled at Julius, who, beyond agreeing Clancy’s work would go up in value, hadn’t said another word. Instead, he seemed lost in his own thoughts. She could only hope he wasn’t thinking about Kurt. “Maybe now, with all the interruptions behind us,” she said, her tone bright enough to light an airstrip, “we can start over. Concentrate on why you came here in the first place. Clancy’s work.”

“You always do that?” He studied her from over the rim of his mug.

“Do what?”

“Smile when you don’t feel like it.”

The question, bordering on personal, surprised her. “I suppose I do. According to my mother, a smile is a much better investment than a frown.”

“Never thought of it that way. Smart mother.”

Oh, yeah… “Does it bother you? My smiling?”

“No, but using it to avoid the unpleasant subject of your neighbor does.”

Damn, the man was a mule. She sighed, set her coffee on the table. “Look, Kurt’s okay. He’s just not…very well mannered. I’d much rather talk about Clancy’s work.”

“Nothing to talk about. West is a genius. I’m buying.”

“Without asking the price?” She sounded stunned and knew it, and yes, that was her heart in her throat. She resisted the urge to leap to her feet, punch the air with her fists and shout, Yes! until her throat collapsed.

“Are you planning to take advantage of me?” A fleeting smile, as if at an inside joke.

“No. Of course not.” And of course Julius wouldn’t worry about the price. Not only was he known for his generosity toward emerging artists, he damn near trumped Trump in the money game. Family money, Deanne knew. And after what happened to them, he was the sole heir. Deanne never thought about the Zern family without the familiar stab of guilt, the smear of if-onlys and should-haves that blurred her mind and slowed her heart. All of it so long ago…But beyond her outdated personal knowledge, her research on the Julius Zern of today hadn’t yielded much other than his passion for art—no doubt inherited from his mother, Jane—and that he traveled a great deal. According to Clancy he’d come back to Seattle five years ago and now lived on the old Zern estate. Alone. She remembered the house so well.

And she remembered Julius swimming, always swimming. The water god, that’s how she’d thought of him. And dreamed of him…

Realizing she was staring, she quickly added, “Although I do have to ask if you’ll mind leaving the paintings with us until after Clancy’s show. It’s his first, and he’s promised the gallery fifteen pieces—” she lifted a hand toward where his paintings hung on her fresh white wall, “—he’ll need these to make the count.” And I want to mingle with the crowd and let it be known Clancy’s been picked up by Julius Zern. “Will that be all right?”

“Fine.”

“Thank you.” She held back on the smile, used her most businesslike voice. She was beginning to feel like a B actress in a bad play.

“Then we have a deal.” He let his fingers play on the back of the sofa, stroking the leather behind her head. After a pause, he added, “You sure you don’t want to talk about Minton?”

“Really, I just don’t think it’s—” About to insult, irritate or otherwise rile the man now holding Clancy’s future in his hands, not to mention her own fresh start, she shut her mouth. Damn Kurt Minton anyway.

“Any of my business?” He finished for her.

“I was going to say Kurt isn’t…relevant. To our business today.”

He shrugged. “Maybe not.” His fingers stopped moving behind her.

Curious now, she asked, “Why do you care anyway?”

“Not exactly sure, but there’s something off about that kid.”

Had he touched her hair? No. She’d imagined it—that gentle stroke, that soft tug—had to have. “He’s all right. Really. Other than not respecting personal boundaries,” she said, “he’s harmless enough. Before she left Kurt and his dad, this—” she lifted a hand, waved it to encompass the room, “—used to be his mother’s studio. Add to that his dad’s away on business. He’s lonely, is all, so he’s been dropping by a bit more than he normally does.” Like two, three times a day.

Julius nodded, gave no clue about what he was thinking.

She added, “But obviously not enough for me to teach him the necessary social skills.”

“You did it again,” he said.

“What?”

“Smiled when you didn’t feel like it.”

A thread of annoyance tightened in her chest, annoyance she couldn’t afford to show. And she was getting a bit unhinged under his scrutiny. She smiled wider. “It’s that investment thing. Just can’t shake it.” And the truth was, the smiles were hard-won; she’d been far too long without them. No way was she going back to bitter days and sour thoughts. Been there, done that. After two years of wearing depression like a scratchy, ill-fitting cloak, it was sunshine time.

“Hmm.” With that noncommittal murmur, Julius got to his feet and walked toward the paintings. “When is West showing?”

“Next Tuesday night.” She stood, tried not to study his broad straight shoulders, his strong back. Failed.

“Where? I’d like to see more of his work.” He faced her now.

“The Cherry Gallery. On Forty-first.”

He looked as if he were checking his mental GPS.

She bent to the coffee table and picked up a brochure advertising Clancy’s show and handed it to him. “It’s in the University District.”

He took the brochure. “Then I’ll see you there.”

“I’ll look forward to it. And thank you, Julius. Clancy will be beyond happy to be included in your collection.”

At the door, she offered her hand and he took it. His hand was big, his grip firm, but instead of shaking her hand, he held it, and gave her a steady, speculative look.

Deanne’s nerves jumped. His look was too long, too thorough. Had he recognized her? Impossible after all these years.

Yet, there was something in his eyes, an odd warmth, a glow. A very sexy glow…

Or is the sexy thing my overheated and underused imagination working overtime? Or worse yet, wishful thinking. Could she be so stupid…? Yes, she could. For Julius.

Abruptly, as if he’d become aware he was staring, still holding her hand, he released it. “Tuesday, then.”

She nodded and curled her fingers into a loose fist, holding his heat. “Tuesday.”

At the door, he stopped. When he looked at her this time, the sexiness was gone, replaced by a cool intensity. “In the meantime, do me a favor, will you?”

She waited.

“Keep a close eye on Minton.”

CHAPTER 4

In the big house, Kurt stood at the window in the third-floor turret. Holding the dusty curtain back from the tall window, he looked down at the sleek silver Mercedes SL600 in Deanne’s driveway and waited for its asshole owner to come out of the house. Fucker had been in there an hour.

This wasn’t going like it was supposed to. First the slashed dog shows up—Wheeler’s sick idea of showing Kurt what he’d do to him if he didn’t do what he was told. That dog was a seriously bad idea. Kurt couldn’t even look at it without wanting to throw up. Now this guy shows up. A guy who looks like he has titanium bones and starts his day with six stainless-steel bowls of Honey Nuts, Bolts and Rivets. Kurt knew he was no damn plumber. Not with wheels like he was driving.

What if he started hanging around?

Jesus!

Kurt rubbed his face, brushed his lank, greasy hair off his forehead and tried to settle down. This whole business was seriously fucked. But he had to keep it together. Had to keep telling himself that when it was all over, they’d leave him alone.

His cell rang. “Hey,” he said, fixated on the Mercedes, when it would leave.

“How’s it goin’?”

Dev. Shit. He didn’t need him right now. “Good.”

“You know what I’m talkin’ about, right?”

“Yeah.” Kurt sucked up a breath. “I just came back from her place. We’re tight.”

“Tight’s good. I like them tight.” Dev laughed. “So when do we start the camera rolling?”

Kurt’s stomach lurched. “You got the roofies?” Say no, Dev, say no…

“Yup. The lady won’t remember a thing. Probably won’t feel much either. Oh, yeah, and Wheeler says your place would be best.”

“Here? How am I goin’ to get her here?”

“I don’t know. That’s your problem. But it’s something about evidence or something.”

And so I’ll be totally on the fuckin’ hook! “Wheeler said her place. That’s what he said.”

“He changed his mind. It’s what Wheeler does. You got a problem with that, talk to him. I’m sure as shit not arguin’ with him.”

Kurt said nothing. Nobody argued with Wheeler. Unless he wanted his balls barbecued.

Dev went on. “Doesn’t matter anyway. The thing’s simple enough. We slip her the pill. We make sure she’s out. Wheeler does his thing, I film. We dump her back home in her own bed. She’s not even going to remember we were there. The roofie will make sure of that.”

Rohypnol was ten times more powerful than Valium; within thirty minutes Deanne would be fuckin’ comatose. Out of it for six, maybe eight, hours. He didn’t want to think about Deanne or how she smiled at him. How…sunny she was. It confused him. Made him feel bad. But like Dev said, she wouldn’t remember anything. “I guess.” He sounded lame, hated himself for it.

“That’s it? ‘I guess’?” A pause. “Don’t you go getting icy feet, dickhead. ’Cause if you are, Wheeler isn’t going to be happy.”

“No. I’m good. Everything’s good.”

“When then?” Dev pressed. “Wheeler wants to know. He’s already found a buyer.”

Kurt swallowed. “My dad’s coming home for a couple of days this week,” he lied. “So it’ll have to be after that. Like next Friday night.”

“No shit?”

“No shit.”

“Okay. Then the Saturday after that we’ll be all over the Web. Do. Not. Fuck. Up. You got that?” He hung up.

Kurt stared at the phone and tried not to heave.

This thing was really going to happen.

A week from today, one of the worst rat faces at his school was going to fuck—no, rape—Deanne Moore on video, just so a bunch of online pervs could watch and drool in their beers. All because he’d mentioned her name at school, said how smokin’ she was. And there was nothing he could do to stop it—if he tried, his fucking life was over. Wheeler would do exactly what he said he’d do, cut him up and burn down his house. Lost in his ugly thoughts, he caught movement in Deanne’s front yard.

Big Man was coming out, walking to his car. At last. Kurt watched him look up at the sun, then shift his stance and take a good long look at the big house, like he was memorizing it or something—the look put a sack of tacks in Kurt’s soft belly. Finally, the guy took off his jacket and tossed it on the passenger seat.

Kurt swiveled his gaze to Deanne’s porch.

If she was standing on the porch watching Big Man go, he’d puke.

Nope. He settled down a bit. Maybe this Zern guy was a customer, someone looking to buy that Clancy guy’s art. Maybe he was gone and would never be back.

Jesus, he didn’t want any complications.

The Mercedes pulled out of her driveway, and Kurt was working his way to being good with his idea of the customer thing, when the cottage door opened.

Deanne came out, looked up at the sun—the way the asshole had—then leaned against a porch post and set her eyes on the road Zern had driven out on. He didn’t like the way she stood there, sort of cuddling herself and looking all dreamy.

Kurt ignored the heat cooking his chest and the equally weird sense of longing burrowing in with it.

If a girl looked like that about him, he’d hang around for sure. Like it or not the big man was in the game. This wasn’t good. Not good at all.

Deanne stayed on the porch, staring at the road Julius had driven out on for a good ten minutes. Her thoughts hovered over the past, circling like aircraft looking for landing space, and finding none either smooth or hospitable.

To get to Julius, her memories of him, she had to fly over her failed career, failed marriage, failed life—to arrive at Amanda Zern, her best-ever friend, in a friendship fired in the vitality and drama of young girls’ hearts. Tweeners is what they’d be called now, but even applying that silly label didn’t make their bond of less consequence. Her and Amanda’s friendship was forged by superlatives, grand promises and their deathless oath to be “friends forever and ever!” Back then everything was said in exclamation points.

Their birthdays were in the same month—a fact they considered a sisterhood of sorts—so they’d planned to celebrate their thirteenth birthdays together. In London. It was going to be so-o-o exciting!

It never happened.

Herein lies Amanda Mary Zern. My very, very best friend! Forever! Age 13—almost.

That was what Deanne put on the cover of the scrapbook she’d made in the weeks following Amanda’s death. Then she’d filled its pages with photos, stories, splotches of lipstick in Amanda’s favorite color—deep pink—and anything else she could think of that meant something to her. She remembered holding the scrapbook to her budding breasts and shouting at the sky. “I’ll never forget you, Amanda. Never! Never! Never!”

She never had. Nor had she forgotten she was supposed to be with Amanda on that fateful day. If the memory was still terrible for her, it must be horrific for Julius, she thought. Barely seventeen…and in one blazing, blinding instant, he’d lost both parents and his only sister. His entire family. And from what she’d heard—for years following, he’d lost himself.

The Zern family were three of eleven people killed while sitting in an open-air café having lunch. A bomb. Murder for public spectacle. Murder in the name of peace. Murder to make the six o’clock news. News the bomber wouldn’t live to see for a cause no one understood. News to break hearts and ruin lives. And, if Deanne had arrived in London as expected, news that would not have included the Zern family. They’d have been at Heathrow picking her up, not sitting in a London café a day earlier than they’d planned.

She took a breath, let it out slowly. So many years ago.

Seeing Julius today had been a rush, and other than his impassive face and…darker aura, she’d have recognized him instantly. But then she did have pictures of him in Amanda’s scrapbook. She’d had a terrible crush on him back in the day. As crushes went, it ran its course, ending when Julius went off to school in England. Something his father, English by birth, had been set on.

She rubbed her upper arms against a chill, raising her head at the rumble of a vehicle coming down the road. It was an ancient yellow Chevy truck, hurtling toward her driveway as if it were skimming along freshly laid asphalt, instead of a cratered and pitted country road. Clancy. He turned into her driveway and stopped with a screech of brakes at the bottom of her steps.

Deanne let her dark remembrances go. Her and Julius’s memories of that terrible day existed in parallel universes, and there’d they’d stay. Julius didn’t need her as a reminder of his tragedy.

Clancy West, all six beautiful feet of him, got out of the truck and headed for where she stood on the porch. His shoulder-length “artist’s” hair, as he called it, loose today, a shifting ebony gleam under the sun. Women would maim their sisters to have such hair.

Deanne’s heart warmed at the sight of him, a warmth quickly followed by minor irritation.

“Well,” he said, putting his hands on his hips and making no attempt to hide his childlike expectations.

“You—” she jabbed a finger in his direction, “—are not supposed to be here. You promised.”

He grabbed her pointing finger and kissed it. “I know.”

“You said you’d leave Julius to me, remember? That’s the only reason I agreed to rep you.” She tugged at the hand he still held. “And give me back my finger.”

He kissed it again, gave her a broad grin, and let go of her hand. “Well?” he repeated, completely unrepentant. “Tell me. Tell me.”

How could she stay mad at this crazy man-boy? She decided to try. “I should make you suffer.”

“I suffer all the time. It’s what artists do best. So spill. What did Zern think?”

Deanne cocked her head. “Samba had her puppies. Want to see?”

He opened his mouth and closed it, then draped his arm around her shoulders and started them toward her front door. “You’re a cruel woman, Deanne Moore. But if I must suffer, I might as well do it looking at puppies. I get pick of the litter, remember?”

Inside the house, Clancy glanced around the near-empty room, then at the gallery wall she’d created. He nodded his head. “Very nice. Thanks.”

“Not bad for an ex-back-office admin type, huh?”

“You were never that. You were a squandered talent and an exploited woman.”

“And what exactly does that mean?”

“It means you let that mother and A-hole husband of yours tear out the heart of your self-confidence—until they had you believing all you were good for was smoothing out their agendas.”

“Magic word—let. It was kind of comfortable being under their collective thumb rather than out here in the cold, cruel world with you.”

“You planning to buy a ticket back to Chicago?”

She laughed. “Not in this lifetime.”

“Good. Because I’m currently resetting the definition for the word broke.” He paused dramatically. “Hint. Hint. Zern. Zern.”

“I was going to call you, you know.”

“You’re killing me…”

She couldn’t hold out any longer. “He loved your work, Clancy. Said it was genius.”

Clancy sucked in a noisy breath and closed his eyes; without opening them, and after a long pause, he said, “And?”

“He bought…all three of them.”

His eyelids opened then, and he let out a breath big enough to fill a life raft. “Champagne. Where’s the champagne?”

“It’s not even noon, yet—and don’t you want to know what he paid first?”

“I already know.”

“You do?”

“He paid whatever you were asking.” Clancy looked around. “Now where’s the bubbly? Noon be damned.”

Deanne went to the fridge and retrieved the Dom Pérignon champagne they’d bought on her first day in Seattle. To celebrate her first sale, Clancy had said, with his usual fuzzy optimism and unshakable confidence.

She held the bottle out to him, but when he gripped it, she held on. “Why, Clancy?”

The bottle between them, he said, “Why what?”

“Why did you believe in me when no one else did?”

CHAPTER 5

Clancy either didn’t know how to answer or planned on doing some torturing of his own. “You really want to know?” he finally said.

“Yes, I do. And I’m holding Dom here hostage until you tell all.”

He hesitated again, which wasn’t Clancy’s style, then said, “You know I loved you in college.”

Deanne’s neck warmed. “College was a long time ago. And, if I remember right, you loved a lot of girls.”

“True.” He swept her with his intense blue gaze. “But there was only one Deanne. One beautiful, unstoppable—untouchable—Deanne, the girl who never smiled. Her goals all about doing the right thing. Get perfect grades, get the perfect job, and marry the perfect man…and live up to the standards set by her perfect mother—”

“That’s not true, I—” She stopped mid-denial. Mid-lie. Not that anyone could live up to her mother. Lauren Moore, brilliant, beautiful and successful, was one of the country’s most feted businesswomen, on a set path to the Fortune 500.

“Uh-uh. No interruptions.” Clancy pulled the champagne from her hand, started working the cap and continued, “As I fell seriously short on the perfection scale, and despite my widely acknowledged sexual prowess, I could not get Miss Idealistic into my bed. Result? We became friends instead of lovers.” He smiled, touched her chin. “A friendship I value very highly, I might add.”

“As do I, but none of that’s on point, Clancy.” Although he was so damn right about all her chasing after perfection.

“You spent—what?—twenty-eight years trying to please everyone but yourself, then you capped it off by marrying an ambitious idiot who knew exactly how to play on your insecurities—”

“This is getting scary.” Damned if he wasn’t echoing her shrink. “Maybe you should cut back on your Dr. Phil pills.”

Clancy popped the cork, grinned. “Glasses?”

She retrieved the two flutes they’d bought along with the champagne and handed them to him. He poured.

“That bastard—what was his name again?”

“Kevin, as you very well know.”

“He used you, baby. You damn well know that. He wanted what you had—”

“What my mother had.” The usual sick knot began its curl deep in her belly. It was hell to accept she’d been used. God, she’d been naive. Blind to the classic ploy of the ambitious man determined to get to the top and seeing marriage to the boss’s daughter as the most direct route. Except in Kevin’s case it turned out he’d much rather have married the boss herself. Or so he’d told her…

“Whatever. Jesus, the guy even took your surname.” He shook his head. “You worked your sweet ass off for your mother and what’s-his-name, and they were kicking said ass with their Ferragamos shoes while you did. You were too good for both of them, you just didn’t know it.” He held out his glass.

She held out hers. “Until you came along and rescued me. Or should I say had me committed.”

They clinked glasses.

“You rescued yourself the day you walked out of your mother’s office and left her and idiot boy behind. Me? I happened to be around for your pity party and the general cleanup.” He stopped. “Now, let’s drink a toast to new beginnings, yours as the hot, new agent lucky enough to land the up-and-coming artist Clancy West, and mine as a once destitute painter who will now be able to pay his rent.”

They drank, then Deanne lifted her flute again. “And to Julius Zern for his extremely good taste.” After they’d both sipped again, she grinned at Clancy.

“You look smug.” He eyed her with suspicion. “What aren’t you telling me?”

“Julius is coming to your show on Tuesday. He wants to see more of your work.”

“No shit.”

She laughed at his stunned expression. “You’re on your way, painter man.”

The champagne fizzed, danced and warmed its way down Deanne’s throat, while the thought of seeing Julius again played in her mind in full and living color, warming another part of her anatomy entirely.

Crazy. But nice…Had to be the bubbly.

Whatever the reason, she felt…happy. Optimistic. High on life. And for some curious reason seeing Julius again was the cause.

Silly, silly woman.

Still she smiled, even as she told herself to put her dreamy, schoolgirl thoughts away and relish the happiness for what it truly was—the result of a successful business transaction, and her second big step. The first was leaving Chicago and coming back to Seattle, the second was taking charge of her own life. Feeling happier and stronger than she had in years, she intended to make her take-charge attitude a habit. And that meant figuring out what she wanted and going for it. Flat-out. No detours.

Her very own golden rule.

Julius put down the phone, all arrangements for next Friday’s flight to France now in place. He was good to go.

He’d considered taking an extra few days in Paris but decided against it. Paris was for lovers, and at the moment, he didn’t have one, hadn’t for the past six months. No big deal and no great loss. Women were soft, beautiful creatures—close to mystical, in his opinion—and he loved their company, both in bed and out. But they leaned toward building happily-ever-after scenarios—two people loving and living for each other for as long as life allowed. Julius did not. Although even he had to admit he’d been more of a hermit than usual lately.

Probably the reason he’d had trouble concentrating for the past couple of days.

Since meeting Deanne Moore.

The woman hadn’t left his mind. Nor had the bizarre sensations he’d experienced when he’d stood close to her, held her hand—a swirling fusion of heat, sex and…fear. The fear like a hazy premonition with no form, no weight. Damned eerie. Not the first time he’d experienced such phenomena, but generally not at the same time. The heat and sex, he was all for. Those urges had him thinking of calling Deanne at least a dozen times—and left him semi-aroused for the better part of the past two days. But the fear thing—like danger behind a curtain—baffled him. Which meant the smart thing to do was keep his distance from the woman until he’d figured out what the fear was about, who exactly was afraid—and of what.

Maybe it was the Minton kid. Could be. Bad vibes there…But Minton wasn’t all of it. Not by a long shot.

Lily, his female Lab, lay beside his chair, curled into a ball. When she stretched, Julius stroked her soft chocolate-colored head. Brutus, bigger and a shade darker, rose from his sleep under the window and ambled over to get his share of the lovin’.

“You two have it made, you know. Catered food. Afternoon siestas. Petting on demand. Not a bad life.”

Lily got to her feet and stood beside Brutus, their tails now swinging in tandem, their eyes bright with anticipation.

“I know you want a walk, but I’m having a swim first—” maybe a few laps will clear my head of a certain artist’s too attractive agent, “—so you’re going to have to wait.” Like a matched set of chocolate bookends, they stared at him unperturbed, as if every word from his mouth had been dipped in gold—or beef gravy.

He gave them both a good scratch behind the ear, then left his office and headed for the pool, his sneaker-clad feet virtually soundless on the marble floor of his home’s spacious foyer. The dogs followed him, their nails clicking on the hard surface.

Kit came out of the library, notes and itinerary in hand. He handed the papers to Julius. “You okay with me taking off now? I’ve got a date.”

Kit’s social life had blossomed since Julius’s partner, Joe, had got on his case about being too much of a nerd, and put him on a workout regimen that built some serious muscle. With his father dead, mother a runaway years ago, Kit had pretty much made Guardian, Inc., and Julius his family, which made Julius faintly nervous.

“Go for it,” Julius said. “Have a good time.”

“What are you going to be doing?”

“A swim. Catch up on some paperwork.”

“I can stay, hang out with you, if you want.”

Jesus. He must have set his hermit mode on high—and for too long—if he looked pathetic enough for Kit to offer blowing off his date to keep him company. He damn near smiled. No one understood he was okay with being alone, that he preferred his own company.

Although not today.

Julius’s stomach clenched, the sensation sharp and tight. “Thanks, but I can do without a babysitter.” I need something else entirely. Someone else. And he wondered why in hell he was fighting it.

“I didn’t mean—” Kit had the alarmed expression of a kid who’d been caught finger-scooping the pie filling.

“I know what you mean. Now, get out of here. Enjoy your evening.”

“Okay.” He eased up. “She is kind of hot.”

“They’re all hot when you’re nineteen.”

Kit grinned. “True.”

When Kit was gone, Julius tossed the notes on a nearby table and headed for the phone. He hadn’t made a decision exactly—more like he was giving in to an irresistible force, a woman force that had activated his male autopilot. A vision of Deanne again leaped full-blown into his mind, her dark blue eyes meeting his, her quick easy smile…lush shape. The curious looks she shot his way when she thought he wasn’t looking. He wanted to see her again—no, he wanted to see her right now. Tonight.

He glanced at his watch. Four-fifteen in the p.m. He put his chances of setting something up at less than zero.

He dialed anyway.

CHAPTER 6

Arms full of paper grocery bags, Deanne took only one step into the kitchen before her phone rang.

Damn. She one-armed a bag of groceries onto the kitchen table, grabbed for the quart of milk threatening to topple to the floor—which for some reason the bagger had perched on top of her strawberries—and picked up the phone. “Hello.”

“Deanne, this is Julius Zern.”

His voice, a sexy, throaty baritone, sang its way to her chest. All the air left her lungs in one big swoosh. Her jaws clamped shut.

Oh, God, he was going to renege on the buy.

After her initial, physical reaction, the idea of his reneging paralyzed her, and she stood, quart of milk in one hand, phone in the other, as if she’d been hosed down with Super Glue. She wouldn’t assume the worst, she wouldn’t. At least not out loud. To calm herself she glanced through the open door of the laundry room at her pups, now a contented lump of fur sleeping close to their food source. “Julius,” she murmured, his name coming out somewhere between a croak and a moan, “is there something, uh, I can do for you.”

“Yes. You can have dinner with me,” he said, his voice even lower…slightly gravelly.

Her heart jumped in her chest, butting against her rib cage. “Dinner…Why?” Dearest goddess of the dating-challenged, where in hell had that come from? Afraid the heat in her face might drip down and curdle the milk she was holding, she set the carton on the table.

“Interesting question,” he said. “We could say dinner is simply a natural result of our doing business together. A way to celebrate.” He stopped. “Or we could call it a date—a tried-and-true but very old-fashioned way for a man to get to know a woman he finds both beautiful and interesting. We can call it whatever makes you most comfortable.”

Oh, that voice… Like dark water over polished stone. Her mouth went dry, and she prayed its dryness would stop yet another dim-witted response from skidding across her tongue. Guess that’s what happened when a woman hadn’t had a “date” or anything close to it since she walked out on her husband over two years ago. She’d lost her edge—her girlie patter—not that she’d ever had much of it in the first place. But something in her was applying spiked brakes to her tongue, yelling about how going out with Julius was a bad idea. A dangerous idea. So far they’d been all about business. Anything else might get…messy. Her mother never mixed business with pleasure.

While she was busy trashing that errant bit of maternal programming, Julius went on. “Rather than take your deafening silence for a no. I’ll read it as concern about the Clancy West sale.” He paused, and she heard him breathe deep. “No strings, Deanne. Whatever we might…experience on a personal level won’t affect that. You have my word. Will eight o’clock be all right?”

She thought about that messy thing again, smiled and said, “Eight o’clock is fine.” Eight o’clock is beautiful, fantastic, exciting.

“I was thinking Romano’s on the lake, maybe catch the sunset? Their jumbo shrimp with pancetta, along with a good chardonnay, is unbeatable.”

“Sounds wonderful…” God, she could listen to his deep, sexy voice forever—even if it never did anything more than recite a menu. She wanted to sigh but blinked instead, and poked what brain matter she had into a usable formation. She did, after all, have responsibilities. “But I’m thinking puppy sitting and frozen lasagna.” She waited for him to beg off, unable to imagine her idea of a date appealing to a man like Julius. But, God, she was actually holding her breath.

“I’ll bring the wine.” He sounded amused and not the least put off.

“A wise decision.”

“Then it’s my second one in under an hour.”

“What was your first?”

“Calling you.”

“Oh…” Yet another witty, sparkling reply.

“Is there anything else I can bring?” he asked. “This was my idea after all. I’m not sure your doing all the work is fair.”

His words bordered on formal, yet his voice radiated intimacy. Either that or her feminine tuner was set to pick up wishes and dreams, because suddenly her tummy felt like a just-filled champagne flute. She pressed her hand against it.

“No. Just bring yourself. That will be more than enough—I mean…” What was she saying? She coughed to cover her blooper. Not a nice ladylike cough—one more tubercular in nature, then she squeezed her eyes shut. Maybe some cool was hiding behind her lids. “I’ll see you at eight.”

After a brief silence, he said, “Tonight then,” and hung up.

When she clicked off the phone, she stood immobile, the receiver still in her hand. Tonight, he’d said. His low tone—or her imagination—making the word weighty and fearsome, like a threat…or a promise.

Little Deanne Moore had an honest-to-God date with Julius Zern. Unbelievable.

Gathering the remnants of her wits, she took a deep breath and settled herself. She hadn’t remembered Julius being so smooth and silky. While it aroused her in some strange way, it was a tiny bit frightening. The Julius she remembered—from ye olde tweener crush era—had ignored her, saw her for the awkward kid she was. Back then, he was seriously hot. She was in the warming oven. He was captain of the swim team, dating…anyone he wanted to. She hadn’t had her first period.

But she wasn’t that prepubescent girl anymore. She was a woman with all her working parts—well, whatever parts were left after her emotional bottoming out and disastrous marriage. And the grown-up Julius, except for the shadow in his eyes and the darkness in his heart that bred distance and steely reserve, was charming, sophisticated and utterly confident in his masculinity. Deanne knew that shadow, knew its origins lay in his tragic loss.

Unpacking the rest of the groceries, she wondered if Julius brought that aloofness and reserve to bed.

Maybe I should find out…She rubbed her warming cheeks. “You’re nuts, girlfriend. Totally nuts. Gotta be. You spent two years getting a grip on your whacked-out life. Only a certified nut-bar would risk all that for a night in bed with a childhood fantasy.” She opened a cupboard door, shoved in a box of crackers and a jar of jam. “It’s just dinner for God’s sake!” But it’s dinner with Julius…

She slammed the cupboard door closed, leaned her butt against the yellow counter and crossed her arms, shocked at her hormone-driven fantasies. She blew out a breath and looked at Samba, who she could see through the open laundry room door. “I’m crazy, aren’t I, mama-dog? I mean, really, look where sex got you.”

Samba raised her head and thumped her tail, and a couple of the sleeping pups started to wiggle. Deanne smiled.

She would swear Samba smiled back.

Kurt killed the dragon and ten mutant Orcs; the killings took him to level forty-five and set him up for the next quest. He sat back in his chair and rubbed his twitchy gut. He was starving. After camping his character in a safe place on the interactive game he’d been playing for the past four hours, he headed for the kitchen.

His dad had been gone over two weeks—wouldn’t be back for another two—so the kitchen was pretty much a goner. Dishes. Sticky floor. More dishes. And some garbage under the sink, reeking like dead rats wrapped in boiled cabbage. Hell, even he couldn’t eat with that fucking smell streaking up his nose. He decided to bag the crap and stash it on the back porch.

When he opened the door, Dev was coming up the back stairs.

“Hey, Kurt squirt, got a delivery for you.” He sniffed, grimaced. “Jesus, what ya got in there—” he jerked his chin at the untied black garbage bag, “—a load of ho panties?” He rubbed his nose.

With no answer to give, Kurt stacked the bag beside the others. The back porch was beginning to look like garbage-strike central. “What are you doing here?”

Dev handed Kurt a brown paper bag, lunch size. When Kurt didn’t reach for it ASAP, Dev shook the bag. “La Rocha…remember?”

The roofies. Kurt’s throat closed. Like his fists did at his sides. He couldn’t move.

“You look like bleached crap.” He shook the bag again. “Take the fucking stuff.”

Kurt stared at the bag, rubbed a hand over the thigh of his jeans and did what he was told. He took the pills—the very illegal pills. He didn’t speak, because he was afraid if he opened his mouth he’d squeak like a mouse.

“Wheeler says one’ll do it,” Dev said. “But there’s four of them in there. Insurance, he says.” Even Dev looked twitchy.

Jesus, four would fuckin’ kill her. “Where’d you get ’em?” Curious in spite of himself, he opened the bag. Inside was one of those clear prescription bottles a druggist uses. Four white pills lay innocent as shit on the bottom of it. He wondered how many years they’d put him in prison for if he got caught using the things.

A chill hustled up his spine and settled between his ears like brain freeze.

“The ‘where’s’ not your business.”

“Huh?” Kurt had forgotten his question.

“What’s with you anyway? You sniffing something?”

Kurt gave him what he knew was a blank stare.

Dev stepped up, into his face. “What I was saying was quit askin’ questions—stickin’ your nose in Wheeler’s business. You get that?” Dev acted tough, but he’d be shit on a stick if he didn’t hang with Wheeler.

“Yeah, I get it.” Kurt stuffed the bag in his pocket. He didn’t want to look at it anymore. Didn’t want to think about it. It mixed him up.

“And Wheeler wants to know about the dog.”

“Huh? What dog?”

“The one he cut. The one the woman’s got.”

“It’s okay. She called the vet.” Kurt liked Samba. Trouble was she didn’t like him, but something in him told him to shut up about the pups.

“That isn’t going to make Wheeler happy.”

“Then don’t tell him.” Just go…please. Just go. All Kurt wanted was to see his back. “We done?”

“I guess. But take care of those little white ones.” He jerked his chin in the general direction of Kurt’s pocket where the pill bottle bulged like a boil. “They’re Wheeler’s ticket to fame and fortune. He’s got some guy who’s going give him five grand for the tape. Or so he says.” Dev stopped at the door, flipped his car keys from hand to hand, looking like he was chewing on some beans he needed to spill. “Wheeler’s started packin’, you know. A Beretta.”

“Jesus! What for?”

“Didn’t ask.”

“Why’re you telling me?”

“I don’t know. So you won’t mess up, is all. Forget it, okay? And don’t tell him I told you.”

Wheeler Sachs with a fucking gun. And Kurt on his damn radar. Great. Just great. Forget that? Not likely. “Yeah.”

Kurt watched Dev go down the stairs, jump into his red Mazda MX-5 and torque out of the driveway, spitting gravel for a half mile. He hated Dev, but fuck, that car was hot.

And as to why Kurt was on Wheeler’s radar? His big mouth. He’d made the mistake of standing out from the school asswipers, by saying Wheeler’s new tattoo, a set of boobs with nipple rings he’d had inked on his back, was gross. Everybody else was smart enough to say either nothing at all or mumble how great it was. Nobody wanted to rile Wheeler—even before he had a fuckin’ gun. Kurt wouldn’t have either, if he hadn’t been doing the big-shot routine for Emma Jane. Now he was in crap up to his armpits.

As Dev shot out of Kurt’s yard, another car turned into Deanne’s driveway. A silver Mercedes SL600. Big Man was back.

Kurt didn’t know if what he felt was fear, frustration or plain stupid jealousy, but it didn’t matter because whatever he felt, it sucked. Like having your gut vacuumed.

And watching Deanne open the door and smile up at Zern sucked worst of all.

Deanne was pretty.

Emma Jane was pretty.

His mom was pretty…

Slide-show thoughts of his mother nearly brought him to his knees. Her fussing with those dried flowers of hers in the kitchen. Her smiling. Yelling. Not smiling. “You’ll be okay, Kurt. Now I need to be okay.” Her getting into a cab. Waving. The red sweater she left on the floor…

Just fuckin’ gone. Like she’d been vaporized.

Everybody had someone or something. Wheeler had his zombie fan boys, Dev had his hot car, and Big Man Zern had Deanne—and a hot car. It wasn’t fair. It just wasn’t fair. All Kurt had was an AWOL dad, and an empty house Wheeler Sachs was going to torch—with him in it—if he didn’t get to fuck Deanne Moore. On camera.

Kurt’s mom loved this house, just not the man living in it with her, or so she’d said when she walked out.

Or me, I guess.

Breathing heavy and sharp, and clamping his jaws tight against the thickness in his throat, he wished his dad was home. He swallowed hard, shoved the heels of his hands against his eyes. Shit, he didn’t cry. He never cried.

When he lowered his hands to his side, his right brushed against the pill bottle in his pocket. Fuck it. What difference did it make? What difference did anything make? Zern would get in Deanne’s pants, and so would Wheeler. Like his dad said, that’s what bitches were made for. It was no big deal. It wasn’t! And it would get Wheeler off his ass.

Fuck ’em. Fuck ’em all.

Suddenly, Friday night couldn’t come soon enough.

He cast a last glance toward the cottage, saw the door close behind the big guy, then plodded back into the still, quiet house, the dirty kitchen.

Later he’d head over to Deanne’s, check things out. He’d say he was coming to see the pups.

CHAPTER 7

Julius stepped into the room, and Deanne closed the door behind him; in the seconds his back was to her, her hands fluttered up to smooth her hair. The involuntary gesture made her think of an aged spinster caught loitering in the erotica stacks. She dropped her hands to her sides and resisted, pressing her palms against her quivery stomach.

Goddess, she was hopeless. After all the deep breathing she’d done before opening the door for him, she’d primed herself to be as cool and slick as an iced smoothie. She wasn’t. She felt more like a fragile glass bowl holding a bubbling concoction of anticipation, excitement and confusion. And worry. And a vague sense she was being dishonest by not telling him about her friendship with Amanda—her role on the day his family died. It had seemed best to ignore it when their relationship was strictly business, but things had changed. Her instincts might be sorely rusty, but they still knew their stuff. From here on whatever business she and Julius conducted, it would be much more complicated than the buying and selling of art.

And I’m okay with that…very much okay.

All she needed to do was convince her stomach it wasn’t Butterfly World. She reminded herself what she felt didn’t matter; it was what she did about those feelings that counted.

Julius held out the wine. “I hope you like it.” He didn’t smile exactly, but his eyes were warmer than yesterday. Much warmer. He wasn’t the least nervous, of course. Dressed in black slacks and a crisp open-necked white shirt, he was his usual tall, dark and handsome self.

The last thought startled her.

Two days ago she’d thought him…unpretty, tonight she thought him a cliché. Tall, dark and handsome… and magnetic. She risked another glance at his closely shaved face, the black lashes over his gray-green eyes, the strong slash of well-defined jaw, the sensuous line of his lips…Her breathing hitched. Well, if the cliché fit, wear it, she decided. Although unconventional in that his features were all hard lines and angles under the softness of his thick dark lashes, Julius fit right in with People magazine’s Top 100 Most Beautiful People.

Time to talk, Deanne. Either that or stand here and tremble like a virgin handed a ticket to Sin City.

“Thank you.” She took the offered wine. “I’m sure it’s perfect.” Probably best not to tell him she wouldn’t be above slapping a nipple on a bottle of hundred-proof bourbon and draining it—if it would settle her fraught nerves. She gestured toward the sofa. “I’m almost done in the kitchen…If you’d like to wait here, I’ll—”

“Why don’t I take that back—” he nodded at the wine bottle in her hands, “—join you in the kitchen and open it while you finish up?”

“Sounds like a plan.” She gestured toward the doorway leading to her tiny kitchen. “This way.”

“I know.”

“Yes…” She smiled at him and at herself for racking up her first, but probably not her last, inanity of the night. “But the house is so large, and Friday so long ago, I thought you might have forgotten.”

He looked down at her, his expression amused and oddly reflective, then took the wine bottle from her hand, his fingers briefly touching hers. “I don’t forget things, least of all meeting a beautiful woman.” He glanced around. “And I like your house, by the way. It’s comfortable.”

She ran a finger over where he’d touched her, leaving a spark that still heated the back of her hand. “I like it too—or will, when I get it finished. I have lots to do yet, as you can see—painting, window coverings. The kitchen sink needs to be replaced. I’ve barely started, really. I need more furniture and—” And there she was marching double-time into babble zone. She stopped. “I’m talking too much.”

Julius dropped his gaze to her still-idly stroking finger, waited a beat and said, “You’re nervous.”

She opened her mouth to deny it, then nodded. “You’re right. I am.”

“Why?”

“I’m not absolutely sure…yet.” Which was as close as she’d go to the truth. Yet.

A slight, slow smile that barely tilted his lips brought his dark features to a brilliance that made her blink and slowed her brain waves to a crawl. “If it makes you feel better,” he said, “I’m a bit nervous myself.”

“Why do I doubt that?”

“I don’t know. Why would you?” His eyes held a hint of tease.

“Maybe because,” she said, “while I feel like a Hell’s Kitchen chef about to serve an armed dictator puffer-fish sushi, you look as relaxed as a panther after a good meal?” Or maybe because I’m still looking at you through the eyes of that long-ago, awestruck girl, a girl far too young to have been thinking what she was thinking about her best friend’s older brother.

He chuckled low in this throat. “Then I’m doing a hell of a job playing it cool—because this panther is definitely hungry.” He ran a finger along her jaw, down her throat to her collar. His gaze followed the trail. “Very hungry.”

His touch was a laser, sharp and hot. Deanne felt the beginning of it and the end, the whole burning line of it shimmering along her jaw and blushing neck. “And not for pasta, I take it.”

“I love pasta.” Again that brief, enigmatic smile. “But then I love a lot of things.”

“Like?” Okay, if she were smart she’d have let the pasta comment go, rather than encourage him to run a lane rocky with innuendo and double entendres. But at the moment, she didn’t feel like being smart. She felt like placing her toe on the starting line of that path—and getting a breakaway. She felt a little bit crazed.

“You already know the answer to that.” His gaze was direct.

“I suppose I do, but I was hoping we’d…skirt the issue for a while.”

“Maybe we should define issue.”

“Maybe we should…but not yet.”

“Fair enough.” He paused. “We’ll do it your way. We’ll ‘skirt the issue’ until after dinner.”

“You’re laughing at me.”

“Not a chance. I’m not brave enough for that.”

Deanne gave him what her mother used to call her skinny-eyed look. “You’re not going to be easy to handle, are you?” And you move fast. At that thought her skin shivered.

“Is that what you do, Deanne, ‘handle’ men?” The question was posed as innocently as if he’d asked her the time of day. Only the glint in his eye gave him away.

“That depends on the man.” She couldn’t believe she’d said that—that she’d been so bold. Her next thought was, thank God. Maybe the past two years of soul-searching, clawing her way out of despair—taking charge of her life—had finally immunized her against the me-second virus, an affliction that came with the constant urge to wait for what she was given, instead of going after what she wanted. And it felt good, as if a foot-long hypodermic had been withdrawn from her spirit.

“I’m glad you’re discerning.” He lifted the bottle. “Corkscrew?”

“Follow me…Trouble.”

He laughed and did what he was told—followed her into the kitchen, the wine bottle swinging from his hand.

The door was open to the laundry room; Samba looked up from her pups and eyed the new entrant into the room. After a second or two of consideration, she honored Julius with a couple of tail wags. He immediately put the wine on the table, went to her and got down on his haunches. From a couple of feet away, he spoke to the dog. “Those are fine pups, girl. Almost as beautiful as their mama.”

That got him another swish of tail, so he moved closer, and offered her the back of his hand to sniff. The sniffing done, the extended hand was accepted, and Samba allowed him to stroke her head. Julius continued to speak to her as if she were the most brilliant, glorious creature ever created—and the first dog to give birth in the last millennium. His voice was like dark velvet, low, smooth and caressing.

Deanne couldn’t help but think that if he spoke to her like that, she’d turn as foolish as Samba, who for a moment seemed to forget she had a mob of feeding puppies locked on to her midsection and stretched out along her whelping bed as if hoping for a good belly rub. Julius went for her ears instead, giving them a good scratch before gently massaging her back, continuing to soothe and praise in deep, calm tones.

Julius’s voice was like satin and tweed, steel with a serrated edge. A baritone bound by silk. Slow caresses and a cold beer. Champagne and sweat…

Its timbre crackled along Deanne’s nervous system like ungrounded electricity.

Suddenly overly warm, she turned away from the Julius and Samba love-in and got busy, tearing lettuce as if she were an automatic shredder.

“The pups are beauties,” Julius said from behind her.

Deanne checked the oven, then started riffling through the fridge for the salad dressing she’d made earlier, glancing at Julius but trying to avoid direct eye contact—for God knew what reason. Maybe because looking at him had a blinding effect, like looking into the sun. “Yes, they’re beautiful. And you’re honored, Samba rarely lets anyone get close to her babies. Kurt for one. She won’t let him near her.”

Julius looked up, before standing to his full height. A faint frown creased his high brow. “Has he come around again?”

She snagged the Parmesan from the fridge and closed the door. “Kurt’s always around.”

Saying nothing, Julius went to the sink and washed his hands. “You should tell him to get lost. And stay lost.”

“That an order, general?” She shot him a quick look.

“Would you listen to one?”

“Probably not.”

“Then we’ll call it advice.”

She stopped what she was doing. “Something about Kurt bothers you, doesn’t it?”

“Not me. My gut. I’ve learned to listen to it.” He picked up the wine, tapped the cork.

“The corkscrew is in that drawer.” She gestured toward the middle drawer with the block of Parmesan she still held in her hand, then went back to finishing the salad. Somehow Kurt as a conversation topic wasn’t working. “And the wineglasses are above it.”

Two seconds later, he stood in front of her—too close—holding two filled wineglasses. He held one out to her and she took it. The shift of red in the glass catching a brief glow from the strong overhead lighting.

She sipped, then said, “Do you always listen to those gut instincts of yours.”

“Only when it involves two eventual possibilities.”

“Which are?”

“Threat or sex.”

She choked on her wine.

Julius appeared not to notice her miniseizure and looked over her shoulder at the counter she’d been working at. “You done there?”

“For now.”

“Good.” He took her hand, lifted it. His thumb swept her palm, and his eyes followed its movement a moment, before he tugged her toward the living room. “Let’s sit awhile. Dinner can wait. I want to hear all about Deanne Moore. Starting from the beginning.”

Her stomach lurched. The beginning would take them to Amanda. The truth about how if she’d kept her promise to be in London as scheduled, Amanda and his parents might still be alive. Maybe it had been fate’s fickle, unknowable hand, but on that day it had been a closed fist. A killing fist.

Now that same fist was wrapped around a truth she didn’t know how to tell.

CHAPTER 8

Julius, holding Deanne’s hand, enjoying the softness of it in his, led her back through the doorway to the same sofa they’d sat on during his first visit. Clancy West’s amazing paintings still hung as before, but tonight Julius barely glanced at them. The only art he was interested in was the woman sitting beside him on the sofa, clutching her wine, and looking…tense.

The setting sun, coming through the front windows, blazed hot and low into the room, its gold radiance streaking across the gloss of the wood floor and hurling shadows against the white walls.

Julius liked this room, the simplicity of it, and he liked the woman who’d created it.

He finally understood why he’d hesitated to call her, initiate further involvement. Deanne was risky business. Deeply personal business. And for a man who kept his relationships uncomplicated and risk free, this was new to him. Unexplainable. Fascinating. They’d spent very little time together, yet he felt as if he knew her—that she knew him. Odd. Because he didn’t know her at all.

But he understood her caution, her underlying reserve; it perfectly matched his own.

He’d be smart to stick to his usual routine, which—and he wasn’t proud to admit it—meant initiating what would become a hot but short-term affair. He’d make sure Deanne enjoyed herself—that would be his pleasure—but there’d be nothing more. Beyond the heat of the bed lay the usual void. The usual emptiness. That was how things worked for him. How he liked it.

Looking at Deanne now, her wary expression, the tension in her lush body, his famously prescient gut tightened, the first inkling his game plan might slip sideways, that Deanne might be more of a challenge than he anticipated.

Something in him hoped so.

Either way, it was time to stop what his partner, Joe, called his “overboard, overanalytical, overthinking process” and enjoy the moment.

“Before we…Before this—” Deanne stopped, muttered, “Damn.” She took a breath. “There’s something you need to know.” She set her wineglass on the coffee table and faced him. “About me. I want to—”

Putting a finger against her lips, he set his glass beside hers.

She frowned. “What are you doing?”

“Not sure.” But he was sure. Damn sure. He ran his hand over her shoulder, under her hair, and cupped her nape. Drawing her face to his, he brushed his mouth over hers, savored the softness of her lips, the hint of breath mingling with his, then he drew back. Her eyes were wide-open. Her mouth mere inches from his. She didn’t pull away.

“I thought you wanted to talk—”

He kissed her again, carefully, softly. Still in control, still on game, but this time he didn’t pull back. Leaving his mouth against hers, he said, “I want this first.”

He covered her mouth with his, running his hands up the sides of her face deep into her hair. Keep it light, Zern. That was the plan, the beginning of game…until he tasted her. Really tasted her.

Sweet. Promising. Warm. Hot. Giving…

Her mouth against his was magic. Black magic.

Falling into her and unable to stop the fall, he deepened the kiss, and a soft moan coming from low in her throat pierced him. Heat fired between their bodies. Bodies joined only by mouths ravenous for more.

Julius hardened to aching, shifted closer, and when she grasped his shoulders and sighed into his mouth, his game plan evaporated. He tested the seam of her lips, and she opened for him, and he entered her with his tongue. Christ…

Their tongues met, danced a slick hot dance, and Julius’s ache ramped up to sexual pain, tested the constraints of the metal in his zipper. Now a prison. He couldn’t get his breath.

I need to slow down…have to slow down.

Deanne’s hands slid down from his shoulders, and her nails bit into his biceps. She leaned into him, and another soft moan escaped her mouth, invaded his. He inhaled it and dragged her against him, tumbling them both back against the sofa. He felt her nipples, small points of heat, only fleetingly before her breasts fused to the hardness of his chest.

Heartbeat against heartbeat.

A thrumming built in his ears. His brain spun, white-hot.

His cock, hard and needing, throbbed against her thigh.

And still he kissed her. Her hands tangled in his hair; his hands slid down her back and locked on her waist, stroking, squeezing.

Only a superhuman effort stopped him from pulling up her skirt and grabbing her ass with the finesse of a beer-soaked teenager. Every fiber and cell in his body focused on the woman in his arms. Every cord of muscle and sinew grew as taut and rigid as his pounding erection.

Deanne moved over him in a soft slide, an action that initiated a powerful thrust against her thigh. He groaned, kissed her throat, her shoulder—anything he could get his mouth on—desperate for more skin, more giving flesh. He ran his hands down the sides of her breasts, up again.

Then he fell still. Very still.

She ran her hand down his chest, over the strained muscles of his stomach. Hesitated the barest moment. Down some more.

Fuck! Julius sucked up some air, held it deep, going motionless under her unexpected caress.

She ran her palm over his hardened length. One firm, deliberate sweep, encompassing, measuring…astonishing. An intimate investigation, thorough but over too quickly, ending even before his instinctual thrust.

He sensed she was as surprised by her bold stroke as he was.

She went quiet in his arms, a moment later lifting her head to look at him, her eyes smoky and intense. “I shocked you.”

“In the best possible way.”

“You’re wondering why I…touched you.”

He took some strands of her long hair in his hand, let them slip through his fingers, willed himself to cool off. “No. But I think you are.”

At that, she pulled back from him. Although, thankfully, not so far back he couldn’t hold her hand, kiss her palm, play with her fingers.

“You’re right, but…Honestly? I’m not wondering all that much.” She paused. “And while I can’t say I had exactly that in mind—”

“You mean feeling me up?” He arched a brow, smiled.

She stared at him. “You have a wonderful smile—you should use it more. It…softens you.”

“Right now, I’m a lot of things, soft isn’t one of them.”

“Yes…I know.”

“From firsthand experience.”

She coughed. “Getting back to my, uh, feeling you up.”

“Yes, let’s.”

“You’re not helping.”

“I’m not hindering.” And he enjoyed teasing her. She looked terrific, rattled as she was.

“I’m trying to be serious here.” She tugged the hand he was holding, but he didn’t release it.

“Okay. Go. Get serious. But you can’t have this back until I’m done with it.” He kissed her palm.

She took a breath, let her hand go lax in his and straightened her shoulders. “This isn’t the first time I’ve thought about you…in that way—well, maybe not exactly about doing that…touching your—I mean, but…” Looking confused and sweetly befuddled, she stopped talking, pulled her hand from his, and abruptly got to her feet. “God, this is awful.”

“In this case, ‘awful’ is definitely in the eye of the beholder.”

“The thing is—” deep breath, “—we know each other, Julius.”

He cocked his head. Impossible. If he’d ever met this woman, there was no way in hell he would have forgotten her.

“We met when I was twelve and you were seventeen.” She took a breath. “I knew your family.” A pause. “I was a friend of Amanda’s.”

Julius chilled, then heated, and his usually cool, logical mind jumbled. The name Amanda entered the white room like a black bird through an open window; the air heaved and churned, as if roiled by its powerfully beating wings. He hadn’t heard any of his family’s names aloud in too many years to count. Everyone who knew him, knew enough never to mention it.

“I spent a lot of time at your house…that summer.”

Julius knew exactly what summer she was referring to. “Then you know.” He didn’t finish. Wouldn’t go there.

“What happened to your family? Yes. I do—and while it’s years too late to say so. I’m sorry. So very sorry.”

“Why didn’t you mention this sooner?” He studied her intensely, angry with himself that he hadn’t remembered something—someone—who mattered to his sister. Deanne had been her friend, and he hadn’t recognized her. So many years…

“I didn’t think it was necessary. When Clancy suggested I contact you about selling his work, I did some checking.”

“Checking?”

“Yes. Checking, not to be confused with prying. I wanted to know about your collection, your tastes—things like that. But other things came up.” She looked uncomfortable.

“Like?”

She paused. “You’re known as a very private person. A man who keeps to himself. So I didn’t think for a moment, we’d—”

“Get personal?”

Briefly looking away from him, she said, “Something like that. When you called and asked me out for dinner, I was going to say no. And maybe I should have, but—”

“But?”

She sat again. Beside him. With her hands locked over her knees. “I was curious. And—to be completely honest—attracted to you.” She smiled, a fleeting, shy smile with a hint of embarrassment. “I wanted to know what it would be like to get to know Julius Philip Zern—all growed up.”

He stood. “And now you do.”

“Some. Not nearly enough.”

He walked to the wall where West’s paintings hung, straightened one that didn’t need straightening, before facing her again. “You should have told me right away.” He didn’t know why he thought that. Didn’t know what difference it would have made.

A timer went off in the kitchen.

Deanne got to her feet. “I suppose I should have. But it didn’t seem right somehow. And I didn’t want it to appear I was using my past connection with Amanda and your family to…ingratiate myself in some way to sell you Clancy’s work.”

Julius understood her logic, grudgingly admired it, but said nothing. He needed to turn this new information about Deanne around in his head, look at it from several angles—think about what, if anything, it meant.

Amanda would have been a woman now, like the beauty standing in front of him.

His chest constricted when he thought of the operative words: would have been. If I’d gone along with things, done what was asked of me, it wouldn’t have happened.

He’d spent years telling himself it was all chance, the impartial hand of fate, but never come to believe it. The best he’d done, judging from his reaction to Deanne’s startling announcement about knowing his family, was bury his guilt in a shallow grave. At the moment, he didn’t know whether he loathed its exhumation or welcomed it.

Deanne was staring at him, as if waiting for him to say something, when all he wanted was for this conversation to end. He wanted the black bird out of the room—and all the pain that came in with it. He wanted to kill the fucking bird, so it would never come again.

“I think,” he said, “the alarm in your kitchen is trying to tell us something.” He picked up his wine and hers, and gestured toward the doorway. “Shall we?”

CHAPTER 9

Deanne walked ahead of Julius, her stomach home to a high jumper’s face-off. Her chest a cloud of disappointment.

You blew it, Deanne Moore. Totally blew it.

When she’d mentioned knowing Amanda, his face had gone blank, even as her mouth still burned from his kisses. Julius had seduction on his mind and her stunning bad timing ended it like a bullet through its very heart—and hers. Every line in Julius’s face hardened into darkness.

She rubbed her forehead, wondered when she’d ever stop making mistake after mistake after…

All the digging in her own past—that toxic sludge of sins, stupidities and soul-killing self-loathing—obviously had some strange side effects, like making her panic over the smallest lie, especially the ones you tell yourself. Not that her knowing about Julius’s family fell in the lie category exactly, but it did feel important; enough that the longer she kept quiet about it, the more impossible it would be to talk about later.

Like it or not, compulsive or not, she wouldn’t allow lies and evasions to settle like broken glass in her psyche. Probably a failing in itself. Maybe she should have kept her big mouth shut, said nothing. It wasn’t as if she and Julius would become…anything. She could have let things go, had sex with him. One night. That’s all it would have been.

But you want more. Admit it. After that kiss you want a whole lot more.

It had taken a year of therapy and another year of hard personal work for her to become a woman capable—no, determined—to say what was on her mind.

And there was something else. She owed it to Amanda and that long-ago pledge they’d made to always be honest with each other. Julius wasn’t Amanda, but he was close enough to count. He’d deserved to know about Deanne’s relationship with his tragedy.

“Can I top this?” He held out her glass.

“No. Thanks, but you can sit down.” She took the wineglass and set it beside her plate. “Two minutes max—and you’ll be eating.” And probably ten minutes after that you’ll be out the door.

Julius sat, and she was grateful for the opportunity to turn her back to him. She held back a sigh, opened the oven and took out the lasagna. For a time the kitchen fell to silence.

Julius broke it. “It’s all right, you know. Your telling me.”

Busy tossing the salad, she half turned. He was sitting at the table at an angle that let him stretch his legs in front of him. One hand rested on his knee, the other held the stem of his glass, idly turning it on the tabletop. “I’m not sure it is. And I’m not sure whether to apologize or not.”

“Don’t.” He paused. “It was a shock, that’s all. I’m glad you told me.”

“You didn’t look glad.”

“I’m glad now. At the time my thoughts were on other things.”

“Like getting me into bed?”

He cocked his head. “That was direct.”

She put the salad on the table, and followed it with the lasagna and a warm ciabatta loaf. “A hard-won talent,” she said, sitting opposite him.

“Then you won’t mind if I take advantage of it.”

“And?”

“And ask you how you were feeling—about my getting you into bed.”

She studied him, not uncomfortable with the question so much as the motive behind it. Oh, hell! “For a few seconds there, I was counting on it.”

He didn’t smile exactly, but his eyes lightened somewhat. “I can’t believe I don’t remember you.”

“I was turning thirteen. I was wearing braces, glasses, and still carrying a good parcel of baby fat.” She picked up her salad fork. “We did swim together once. You taught me the butterfly kick—or tried to. Something about two kicks per stroke, if I remember right.” But I definitely remember your hands around my waist, the sound of your voice telling me I could do it.

He studied her with a laserlike intensity, then shook his head, looking disappointed. As if he’d failed a self-imposed test.

Deanne put her fork down. “It doesn’t matter, Julius. Amanda and I were just kids. While you swam—you were always practicing for a meet that summer—we hung around the pool and—”

“Danced. You danced, didn’t you?”

It was Deanne’s turn to be surprised. “Yes, Amanda and I used to—”

“Hook up that ugly yellow boom box thing she had and dance around the pool. You drove me nuts.”

“And ruined your concentration—or so you said.”

“Yes. I remember now.” When he looked at her again, his gaze was unreadable. “You were around a lot that summer, before—”

She nodded and her heart stilled in her chest. “Before you lost your family. Yes. That was the summer.” She paused. “I was supposed to meet them in London, you know. But I had a…disagreement with my mother, and she canceled the trip.” Her heart picked up its beat, grew erratic. “If that hadn’t happened, they’d have been at Heathrow picking me up. Instead, they were in London. I’ve always felt sick about that.”

It was the first time Deanne had stood up to her powerful, accomplished mother—and the last for many years to come. Lauren Moore never hesitated to use the Zern tragedy to point out that if Deanne had done the “right thing,” listened to her mother, and not been “stupid and rebellious,” her friend would still be alive. Lauren wasn’t into grief counseling…And Lauren was right, Deanne was stupid, for listening to her, allowing her grief and guilt, either consciously or unconsciously, to merge into a reason for her to become her mother’s lapdog.

“You were a kid. You couldn’t know,” Julius said.

She didn’t answer, didn’t want to explain it was more complicated than that, that his tragedy had also, in a lesser way, been hers.

Julius, his expression like dark glass, said nothing for a time, then, “Did you know they were in England because of me? I was traveling that summer, supposed to enter Cambridge that fall. But I’d decided I wanted to come home.” He looked away. “Cambridge—my graduating there—meant everything to my father. He’d come to London to talk me into staying. I knew we were going to butt heads…” His pause was long. Too long. “I picked the restaurant, you know. An outdoor place. Street side. Then I was twenty minutes late getting there. I arrived right after—” He was so still, so very still.

“Then you saw…” Everything inside her jellied. “Oh, God, Julius. I don’t know what to say.”

“The bomb blew the windows out of the restaurant. The canopy was across the street, shredded. The street was a mess, car doors blown off, bodies everywhere, my mother—” He rubbed a hand over his face. When he lifted it away, his voice was firm. “I don’t talk about it. Easier that way. It makes it like yesterday.”

“It wasn’t your—”

“Fault. Yes, I know that—at least my logical brain does. Still, if I hadn’t been such a horse’s ass about Cambridge…” He looked away as if seeking a new direction, then went on, his voice stronger. “Anyway, you know the drill. Life is full of if-onlys. Some of them are tough to get over—even after seventeen years.”

“Seventeen years,” she repeated, “but yes, like yesterday.” She picked up her fork, left some silence for a beat, then said, “Do you want to change the subject?”

“Yes.”

“One thing first?”

“Go ahead.”

“I loved Amanda, Julius. I loved all your family. Your mom, with her bright smile—so like Amanda’s. She liked to laugh, your mom. I remember that. And your dad, always with papers in his hand, sitting by the pool with his iced tea…They were always so good to me—so caring. They have a special place in my heart. And they always will.”

He took a breath, glanced away, then back to meet her eyes directly. His own were shot with pain and gratitude. “Thank you for that.”

Deanne nodded, then looked at the food on their plates, neither of them had touched it. “Shall we eat—before the lasagna morphs into leftovers?”

They’d finished loading the dishwasher—Julius insisted on helping—had refilled their wineglasses, and were about to head back to the living room, when there was a couple of hard raps on the glass in her kitchen door.

Kurt.

Deanne managed—barely—to contain her impatience. At least this time he’d knocked. He was learning.

She opened the door and immediately felt guilty. He looked like a homeless street kid, or an abandoned dog. And had he been crying? There was definitely something different about his normal, defensively belligerent, teenage face. Kurt drove her crazy, but damn it, she felt sorry for him. All alone in that awful house—no mom around, his father gone for God knew how long. The least she could be was kind—along with firm. “I’m a little busy right now, Kurt,” she said.

“I want to check out the pups. That’s all. I’ve decided I’m going to take one. I never had a dog before.”

“Well, considering that isn’t going to happen tonight, first because that decision has to be talked over with your dad, and second because the pups won’t be ready to leave their mother for weeks. Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow?” Plus, she wasn’t all that sure she wanted him to have one of Samba’s babies.

“I can still look, can’t I?” He headed to Samba’s nest in the laundry room. The dog’s head came up, and she fixated on Kurt; the pups were a furry lump of snooze.

Deanne glanced at Julius, who was leaning against the counter sipping his wine, his face interested but impassive.

“Kurt, really. Now is not the time.”

He took another step toward the pups; the closer he got the more Samba growled. When he took his next step, her growling came through bared teeth. That stopped him. “What’s with her?”

“New mothers are touchy. Best leave her be,” Julius said, his voice calm.

Kurt didn’t look at him, but he did take a step back.

“No creature on earth has stronger protective instincts than a mother.” He pushed away from the counter, came to stand beside her.

Kurt’s eyes shot to his. “Like I don’t know that.” He looked at Deanne, then gestured with his head to Julius. “He your new boyfriend?”

Deanne opened her mouth, but before anything came out—

“Yes, I am,” Julius said. “Although not so new. Deanne and I go way back.” He draped his arm over her shoulder, stroked her arm possessively.

At that, Deanne’s eyes had to have opened Grand-Canyon wide.

Kurt stared at Julius’s hand on her upper arm, frowned. Then looked oddly nervous. “I gotta go. I’ll pick out my dog tomorrow.”

Deanne didn’t get the chance to straighten him out about his planned pup expropriation before the door slammed behind him.

Openmouthed, she looked up at Julius. “Why did you do that?”

“What?”

“You know what. That…boyfriend thing?”

“I thought it would be best if he thought there was a man in your life.”

“What makes you think there isn’t?”

“Is there?”

She hesitated. “No.”

“Good. Then as boyfriends go, you’ll have to make do with me. As shams go, I’m one of the best.”

Make do…oh, yes. “I don’t need a boyfriend, or a sham. I need—”

“This.” With one hand already on her shoulder, turning her to him took no effort. He kissed her to silence. His mouth soft and cajoling, then insistent, he didn’t give her time to think, or say no. Not that she planned to. Why on earth would she, when his kiss warmed the very soles of her feet.

When he finally lifted his mouth from hers, he took her face in his hands. “That boy is trouble, Deanne. Possibly dangerous.”

“And you’re not?”

That slow, slight smile came back, a second before he brushed his lips over hers and said, “That depends what you call dangerous.’

She sighed. “We’re back to the predinner stage, are we?” The part where I get breathless and maybe more adventurous than wise.

“I think so. You okay with that?

When he bent to kiss her again, Deanne framed his jaw with her hands and made him look her in the eyes. “Considering I started lusting for you when I was too young to know what lust was, yes, I’m okay with it. The question is, are you okay with fulfilling that girl’s fantasy?” She tried to make her question a tease, but knew there was a truth buried in it somewhere. “That’s a tall order, you know.”

His brow furrowed.

Damn! She’d made him start thinking again. Too much talk, Deanne. Too much talk.

“I’m no one’s fantasy—at least, not out of bed. I’m a loner and I like it that way. I don’t…stay. I never stay.” He brushed her hair behind her ears, kissed her forehead. “It’s best you know that going in.” He said it as if he’d said it a thousand times.

Okay, a million words bubbled up. She beat them back. “Then why don’t we let me worry about my fantasy—while you worry about the ‘going in’ part. Will that work?”

Amusement replaced the hesitancy in his eyes. “You sure?”

“I’m sure.” She pulled his face to hers. No more talk, she told herself firmly, unless it drifts up from a pillow.

CHAPTER 10

Julius looked down at the woman in his arms, saw her easy smile, a smile filled with pure womanly invitation. The promise in them turned his gut to aspic, while everything else in his body went on hard alert.

She stroked his face. “This is going to be great, Julius. We’re going to be great.”

“Hmm.” He ran his hands up from her waist, took the weight of her breasts in them and watched her eyes close; he heard her breath deepen when he pressed on her nipples through the light cotton of her blouse.

She was braless. Two beautiful firm and free handfuls.

Surprised, pleased, and not stopping the play of his thumbs on her nipples, he said. “I like this. You without a bra.”

She kissed him lightly and pulled back, her smile gone now, and he saw the desire in her striking dark eyes. Desire she made no attempt to conceal. Thank God. “I’d hoped you would.”

“Were you planning on seducing me?”

“Depending on how things went, I was planning on offering you dessert—I just wasn’t sure of your taste.”

He bent his head, lifted her breast and kissed its jutting tip through the light fabric, his mouth leaving a moist stain on her shirt. “Your menu is perfect. Exactly my taste.”

She shuddered. “There is one thing.”

“Protection.”

“Yes.”

“I brought some.”

She pulled back, tilted her head, gave him a wicked smile. “Were you planning on seducing me, Julius?”

Her repeating his exact words amused him. “A man lives in hope—plus I was a Boy Scout.”

“Boy Scouts lead clean, healthy lives, right? Always prepared?”

He nodded. “Definitely.”

“Then you won’t need the protection.”

“You sure?” Sliding in without latex. He hadn’t considered that an option.

“I’m on the pill.” She shrugged. “For girlie reasons.”

He always used condoms, never trusted enough not to. The idea of having a child made his blood chill. Terrified him. Always had…

Deanne slipped by his silence, put her arms around him, held him close, squeezed even tighter when she murmured into his shoulder, “This has to be special. I need it to be special. You’re the—”

“The what?”

“Nothing. I talk too much.” She took his hand and led him through the kitchen doorway—towed him, to be absolutely accurate. And it charmed him.

There was a ferocity in her, a ticking and pulsing he couldn’t figure out. Something that spoke to him without words, and that he understood without hearing. Not that she had a problem with words—he smiled to himself—or with speaking her mind. Maybe that was what drew him. That honesty thing she worked so hard at. Honesty always had a fierce edge, and it was always seductive.

Shoving his overactive mind into idle, he let his lower-half brain take over. If Deanne said she talked too much, he damn well thought too much. He wanted this woman—and thanks to whoever the hell up there was in charge of the lust division, she wanted him. He’d set out his terms—his bow to honesty—so any more thinking was not only extraneous, it was a tragic waste of time.

Her room was at the back of the house. Small, and lit only by the final traces of daylight, it was cool and dim. Its only window, softened by sheer white curtains running down each side, framed a view of an untended field, the lake beyond. Evening shadow danced across the lake’s rippling water, went on to finger through the field’s tall reedy grass, making the scene a study in shifting halftones. The walls of the room were a deep pink. The bed was a wild wash of greens and more shades of pink—a color match to a vase dripping with roses that sat on the bedside table. The curtains billowed in the breeze coming through the open window, and the sultry scent of the roses ebbed and flowed along its current. It was nothing like the spare furnishings of the living room/gallery he’d first stepped into. That room was all about business, this one was all about…breakfast in bed.

She stepped away from him long enough to close the blinds.

“Roses,” he said, when she came back to stand in front of him. “Which makes you a country girl at heart?” Or a full-out romantic. He took her hands in his, kissed her knuckles and held her tightly curled fingers against his chest. Tense. It seemed, despite all her bravado, now that she had him in her room—less than two feet from her bed—she didn’t know what to do with him. Not a problem, because he did.

“Too much pink?” She glanced around as if she’d never been in the room before—or was about to launch into a decor analysis. He saw her swallow, heard the draw of a deep breath. Definitely nervous.

“It’s your bedroom—and I’m in it. That makes pink my new favorite color.” He drew her to the bed, sat on its edge, spread his legs and drew her to his knee. When she was settled, he brushed her long hair back from her face and kissed her under her ear. Closing his eyes, he took in the scent and heat of her, all of it mingling with the smell of roses and evening summer air. She moaned softly when his breath skimmed her ear and wrapped her arms around his neck, burying her hands in his hair.

His breathing hammered up his throat. Raw need hammered everywhere else.

Slow, Zern, take it slow…

When his hand moved to the buttons on her blouse, she shifted back to give him better access. He had the buttons undone and her shirt on the floor in a time that had to be his personal best. Cupping a breast, he leaned to kiss it, then looked back at her. “You’re beautiful. And your skin—” he ran his thumb over the soft flesh of her breast, circled her areola, “—is like living gold.”

“If I’m a country girl, despite all my years in Chicago—” she smiled, “—that ‘living gold’ comment makes you a poet.” She ran her hand between them, undid his zipper and slipped her hand inside his pants. “A very hard poet.” She stroked him over his briefs, and his gut clenched. Another stroke had him thrusting into her hand.

“Jesus…”

He pulled her backward onto the bed, needing her against him, as a buffer against the clamor in his groin. His hands were filled with her breasts, his head was a red fog, he was iron hard and his lungs were a hurricane.

She rubbed his erection, slowly, mercilessly, took what she could of him in her hand, squeezed until he forgot how to breathe. It was fucking heaven! And they’d barely got started. “I was planning on…taking this slow.” He ground the words out, before his mouth latched on to her nipple. He suckled deep and strong. God, the taste of her…

She lifted herself above him, not enough for her breast to leave his mouth, but enough for him to work her, knead her—and he groaned into her hot flesh as he did.

“Julius…” She said his name in a whispered rush, then nothing.

“Hmm.” He lifted his mouth; her eyes were closed. He thumbed her nipples, still damp from his tongue and blew on one softly.

Rolling her up and under him, he let her stretch out fully on the bed. Her skirt was simple, one of those full summery things with elastic at the waist. He blessed whoever invented elastic and pulled it over her hips. Looked at her. Smiled. Pink panties. Satin, like her skin. Also…gone, joining the skirt and shirt on the floor beside the bed.

He looked at her sex, cupped her and ran a finger through her labia folds, skimmed her clit. All of it wet. All of it ready. “Perfect,” he murmured, half to his sexually wired self, half to her, giving her another gentle stroke.

She gasped, clasped his hand. “Much as I’m, uh, enjoying myself…no more until you’re as naked—and accessible—as I am.”

“Fair enough.”

She got busy undoing the buttons on his shirt, while he finished what she’d started with the buttons and zipper on his slacks and tossed the works onto the floor beside the bed. He thought of the condoms in his pocket. Did nothing.

The few seconds it took to strip gave them pause—him a chance to get what brain cells he had running on at least two cylinders, and Deanne a chance to look thoughtful.

“Second thoughts?” He kissed her. Waited. Kissed her again.

She smiled up at him, ran a finger along his jaw. Closed her eyes. “Not a one. I’m right where I want to be. Under you.”

“But?” He heard the echo of it, like a distant alarm bell. Everything churning inside him wanted to ignore it, except his inconveniently ticking brain.

“I need to say something.” Letting out an irritated breath, she frowned. “But then I always need to say something.” She paused. “And I have terrible timing.”

Julius had to smile at her self-directed annoyance, then moved his hand down and over her belly, and started to play in her soft curls. “Can’t argue with that.”

Her lips ticked up, stayed up even as her eyelids drifted closed.

“What did you want to say?” He found her tight sensitive bud, hooded and nestled at the apex of moist full lips—avoiding its tip, he circled it with a finger. His mouth dry, he swallowed hard. If her skin was living gold, this was a shimmering pearl, moist and slick. And currently the center of his universe. And if he was a damn poet, she’d made him one.

“Oh, that’s good…what you’re doing. So…good.”

He kept it good, then made it better, circling closer to her center, exposing it. “You wanted to say something.”

Her smile disappeared, replaced by a straining look. Her hot breath seared his shoulder. “You have to know…before you—we—go any…further.” She lifted into his hand. “I haven’t been with anyone for…forever, and I might not be very good—”

He kissed her, long and deep, figuring his tongue had better uses at the moment than forming words.

When the kiss ended she murmured, “You could tell me to shut up.”

“Shut up, Deanne.” He kissed her again, slipped a slow, probing finger deep into her moisture, then two. His mind—finally—shut down, his concentration totally in the now—fucking her with his fingers. Feeling her slippery heat. He wanted her to come, he wanted to see her face when she did, then he wanted to plunge into her, give her all he had and take her up again. He wanted inside…deep, deep inside.

Nothing poetic about it.

He lengthened his finger strokes, going deeper, faster. Deeper. Slower.

Her moan was long, low and guttural. “Yes, oh, God…yes.” She lifted her hips to his hand. “I didn’t know…” She ran her tongue along her lower lip as if to moisten it. As if there was moisture to be had, other than what his fingers glistened with, worked in. “Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” Her words were barely a whisper.

He kissed her deeply. “Don’t plan to.” Hell, it would take a dozen linebackers to stop him now.

His erection was staggering, diamond hard. Pounding. He was crazed, obsessed, outside himself. None of which felt familiar. She was heat, liquid, and quivering flesh. She rocked on his fingers, gasped when his thumb rolled and pressed her engorged clit—the perfect placeholder until he slid down, replaced thumb with mouth—and suckled.

“Oh…No. I’m going to—” She fisted her hands in his hair, rushed them downward, clawed at his shoulders, pulling him up. “I want…”

Julius knew what she wanted—what he wanted. Raising himself, his hands on either side of her head, he watched her face, entered her—and gave it.

Slipping into her tight fluid heat as far as he could go.

Every muscle in his body maxing out.

Sweat bursting along the ridge of his shoulders.

His mind a blur of sex and concentration.

He gave…and gave. And gave.

Raking her nails along his back, streaking and grabbing, Deanne raised her hips, met him thrust for thrust in a wild, primal rhythm. The world was a bed and they were the center of it.

“I can’t— I can’t—” She shook her head from side to side, her hands flying away from his back to tear at the bedcovers on either side of her.

Julius pulled back to entry, paused there—the effort damn near killing him. He closed his eyes and went back in high, gliding his hardened flesh over her drenched clit, a final plunge, taking him to the depths of her—and the end of his control.

And hers.

Her body convulsed around his, a living vortex, sucking on him, absorbing him, owning him. Twisting wildly beneath him, she wrapped her arms around him, and…and screamed into his shoulder.

Managing a shaky grin, he shifted his weight from her and pulled her to his side. That scream—he smiled into the shadows above the bed—felt like a damn gold star.

But while he might have earned the star, he wasn’t sure he was ready for what came with it—the fullness of the heat growing in his chest as his body cooled, the sense he’d entered not just a beautiful woman’s body, but a strange new world.

CHAPTER 11

“Damn, damn, damn. I knew it. I just knew it!” Deanne shuddered, fisted her hands and ground them into her eye sockets.

Well, here she was then, coming like a shotgun-induced avalanche—and screaming like…God…like she was playing the shower scene in Psycho. She’d barely restrained herself from biting him.

Now she was lying beside him, hot, sweaty, probably with hair tangled like cat’s wool, and totally paralyzed. Not a smidgeon of energy to be found in her entire body. She couldn’t be moved without a U-Haul truck. Julius had been exactly what she expected, exactly what she wanted him to be—a dream lover.

A dream lover whose lean, strong body was a practiced—and obviously experienced—sexual instrument. Not that she was complaining. Just a bit overwhelmed.

It didn’t help that he’d propped himself up on one elbow and was now looking down at her as if she were a tray of diamonds and he was a cat burglar. He lifted a tangle of her hair and placed it behind her ear with the care of a…cat burglar. He was so smooth, so easy with himself—and her body—as if this kind of thing happened all the time, which of course, it probably did. For him. She closed her eyes briefly. This is not a competition, Deanne. It’s not about achievement, or being the best. It’s about being yourself. The thought calmed her. Somewhat.

“I guess I don’t have to tell you how great that was,” she said, determined to join him in the smooth business.

He shook his head, continued to play with her hair. “I was there, remember?”

Oh, yeah…And I’m not likely to forget you were there. Ever. Odd, she felt a tearing somewhere in chest—like a strap giving way. A safety strap. Confusing. “Yes, you were,” she said. The words sounded lame and weak compared to the storm in her chest. She turned from his gaze. Whatever courage she’d had prior to having sex with him was sliding off the bed with a whimper. She could see it slithering out under the bedroom door, looking back over its shoulder and saying…now what?

Julius tugged her chin, made her face him. No hardship. His startling gray-green eyes were dark in the waning light in the room, yet glowing with the same laser intensity they’d had when he was seventeen. Sexy eyes, she’d thought back then, before she even knew what the word meant. Now those sexy eyes, speculative and thoughtful, studied her face, warmed it from within. “You’re uncomfortable. Why?” He slid his hand down to her shoulder, squeezed it, not for a second taking his eyes from hers.

Because making love with you was more than I bargained for. “I’m…not exactly sure. Maybe because I’m semi-embarrassed by my unladylike screeching during my first orgasm. Or maybe because I’m not sure how to go about getting more of the same.”

Frowning, he went still as her bedposts.

Deanne went on, doggedly looking for a truth in a minefield of them. “Or maybe because as fantasies go, you—” she frowned, “—struck me dumb. Well, not exactly dumb, I guess, considering I’m still talking.”

Julius put a finger to her mouth. “Whoa. Let’s back up, okay?” His eyes were as still as he was.

“Okay,” she said. “Where to?”

“To where you told me you had your first orgasm.”

Did she say that? Damn. Where was the duct tape when you needed it? “So now you want a medal?” she teased, while she looked for firmer ground.

He was undeterred. “You were married.”

“Three years.”

“And he never made you come.”

“Is this conversation really necessary?’

“No, but it’s damned interesting.”

“To you.”

He nodded.

Feeling cornered and frustrated, and considering surgical intervention on her big mouth, she said, “Julius, unless you’ve lived under a turnip patch, you have to know that saying ‘I do’ doesn’t come with orgasmic guarantees.”

“What does it come with? Or to be more specific, what did it come with—for you?”

“Crap. You don’t want us to lie here naked—with the whole night in front of us—and talk about my ex, do you?”

“Maybe not the whole night. But right now? Yes.”

“Why?”

“Not sure,” he said, his brow knitting. “I just want to know.”

She cursed under her breath. He’d asked, she’d answer. “Okay, there were probably lots of reasons why our sex life was zero on the Richter scale, but here’s a couple. One, I married Kevin because my mother liked him. Two, he married me to get into my mother’s business—and possibly my mother. Kevin was all about business, in bed and out, and as he considered sex with me merely a cost of doing that business, he spent himself as little as possible. And that was okay by me.” She paused, rubbed at the old knot in her chest. “Until it wasn’t.”

He replaced the hand she had on her chest with his own, rubbed softly between her breasts. “And then?”

“You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“No.”

“Okay, but it’ll be the abridged version.” She steadied herself. “We were workaholics, Kevin and I. Toiling in the service of my mother and her five companies. I did it because that’s what I’d always done—what I was trained for, and what she expected of me—and Kevin did it because he was teeth-baring ambitious and in love with my mother. It took me a while to figure that out. You actually had to lift your head from the P&L statements to do that. But when I did, I split…apart. I had a…breakdown, couldn’t eat, couldn’t sleep, panic attacks…depression. Like they say, the whole enchilada. I finally got some professional help—thanks to Clancy, who threatened to drag me there kicking and screaming, if I didn’t go on my own.” She stopped, smiled. “Thank God for Clancy. Anyway, when I began to see the light at the end of the tunnel, I ran toward it as fast as my shaky legs would take me, and I left everything else—Chicago, Kevin, Mother, job—behind.” She looked at him, watched his face carefully. “I spent more than a year in therapy, Julius. I was a certified nut case.”

“And now?” His eyes were quiet, thoughtful. “What are you now?”

“Almost the woman I want to be.”

“Which is?”

“Me. I’m almost me for the first time in my life. My mother is a great woman, brilliant and successful, but I knelt at her feet all my life, because that’s how she liked it. She made the rules. I followed them. They had to be great rules, right? Because look at her, on the covers of business magazines, tons of awards…beauty. But they weren’t right—for me. Not her fault really—at least not completely—because she knew what made her happy, she simply assumed it would make me happy, too.”

“And Kevin?”

“He was fine with things. He was everything I wasn’t, and desperate to get her approval.”

“Her approval being more important to him than yours.”

“Yes.” She shook her head. “Poor Kevin…but then he couldn’t have known.”

“What? Known what?”

She hesitated, not sure how far to go. “Mother didn’t much like men. To her they were all competitors. She never married. Although she did have the occasional lover.”

“Your father?”

Deanne took a breath. This was always weird. “A test tube in New Hampshire.”

“Jesus.”

“Not nearly so exalted, I’m sure.” She brushed a stray hair from her cheek. “Mother was straight about it from the beginning. She was building her businesses. And while she wanted someone to carry on her empire, she didn’t want the legal and financial entanglements of a relationship.”

“I see.”

“Do you?”

“No.” He traced her ear with his finger. “So when and how did Kevin come into the picture?”

“Kevin worked for one of her competitors. He was a brilliant accountant—still is, I suppose. Mother admired his tax work. She put up no fuss at all when I started dating him—and believe me, she knew how to ‘fuss’ when it suited her. Kevin was nice enough, charming in his way, and he was the first man she’d ever approved of, actually encouraged me to see, so…”

“You married him, so your mother could steal an accountant from a competitor.”

“I didn’t see it that way at the time. And I did…care about him. Which made me blind enough that I didn’t see he’d only married me so he could skip a few rungs on my mother’s corporate ladder.” She stopped. “Honestly? It was awful from day one. And a few months later it got worse when Kevin told me the truth—about how he’d never loved me, how it had always been my mother…” A shiver tickled its way over Deanne’s skin. “Then he told her.”

“And she fired him.”

Deanne shook her head. “She called us both into her office and told us our personal problems were affecting the business—and she wouldn’t have it, and that if we couldn’t work it out, one of us had to go. Our choice, she said, and asked that when making it, we first and foremost considered what was best for the company.” She paused. “You know that straw thing? The camel?”

He nodded.

“That was my straw day. I never went back.” She took a breath, amazed at how calm she felt, how free of those ugly memories. Damn, but it was liberating. “Mother called a couple of times, which was nice.”

“And Kevin?”

“As far as I know he’s still working for her. Like I said, she admired his tax work.”

“And you don’t mind.”

“At first, I did—made me crazier than I already was. But now?” She shook her head. “No. That would mean I want what he has, the job of pleasing my mother. Been there, done that. Failed. Not going back again. I might have been an emotional mess, but even I’m not that crazy.”

Silence drifted between them, and they let it settle. End of conversation.

“You’re far from a mess. You’re smart, beautiful, you like dogs—and you have spectacular orgasms.” He smiled.

Wow…It was the first time he’d looked at her quite that way, the first time his smile softened his features and lit his eyes. It was mesmerizing, and it made her heart beat like a drum thumped on by a hundred two-year-olds. God, she was in trouble here, heart trouble of the serious kind. When she got out of this bed and had some time, she’d do some serious thinking about it. But not now. No thinking now. Only feeling. And no more talking—because only two words were necessary. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” He bent to kiss her, and she wrapped her arms around him, and sighed, loving the firmness of him, the hard, straight shoulders, the taut, tan muscles. And she kissed him back, gave all of herself to a kiss that took her to Fantasy Land on winged silver slippers.

When the kiss ended, she was breathless, and that inky, sexy darkness had once again taken hold in Julius’s eyes. “We’re going to do it again, aren’t we?” She wasn’t sure if her question was a plea or a prayer.

“Oh, yes. We’re definitely going to do it again. And again and…”

When Kurt’s cell phone rang, it scared the crap out of him. Had to be dad—just like him to call in the middle of the night. Hoping he was right, and not bothering to turn off the TV he’d fallen asleep watching, he clicked on. “Dad?”

“I want those pups.”

Jesus Christ! Wheeler. His voice sounded garbled, like it was coming from a well—or hell. Or he was drunk or cranked on somethin’. There was music and voices in the background, a girl giggling. “What? Huh?” Kurt sat up straight, moved to the edge of the sofa.

“You heard me, douche bag, I want the dogs.”

“How’d you know?”

“It don’t matter. I fuckin’ want ’em.”

Kurt pushed a hand through his hair, tried to think. “They’re too little. They can’t be taken from their mother yet.”

“They’re big enough.”

“For what? What do you want them for?”

A pocket of silence filled the line, then, “None of your fuckin’ business.”

Kurt’s breath was slamming around in his lungs. He couldn’t get it up and out. No words either. He wished his dad was home, he wished his mother hadn’t left, he wished—

“Just get the dogs, retard. Tonight. Dev’ll come by and get them in the morning.” He clicked off.

Kurt stared at the phone, sweat pushing its way through his pores. Closing his eyes, he said, “Fuck, fuck, fuck…”

CHAPTER 12

Samba barked from the kitchen.

Julius woke abruptly, disoriented.

Damn, he never fell asleep after sex, usually too busy planning his exit strategy. But with Deanne’s head on his shoulder, her eyes closed and her deep easy breathing warming its way through his chest hair, he’d dozed off—exiting the furthest thing on his mind. Bad move, Zern. And now Deanne was curled into his side, one leg resting over his hip, her knee grazing his groin, enough to unsettle him, and make him greedy for more of what they’d already spent hours doing. He shouldn’t be here.

He heard a low growl, more barking. Louder.

Shifting away from Deanne and careful not to wake her, he got up. Making a guess, based on the level of darkness—and the number of times they’d made love—it had to be after two.

Another growl. Low and damned serious.

Julius located his slacks, pulled them on and did up his fly—carefully—on the way out of the bedroom. Deanne had left a night-light on in the kitchen and he followed its dim beacon. The laundry room door was open.

An agitated Samba stood, alert, over her disturbed and irritated pups; the ones Julius could see snuffled around her feet like little planets who’d lost their sun. When Samba spotted Julius she whined, barked again.

“What’s the matter, girl?” Julius said, keeping his voice low. “This crowd here getting to you?”

Chilled night air breezed over his bare shoulders.

The back door was wide open.

He bolted for the porch, scanned the field behind the cottage and the slope leading to the big house on the hill. Nothing. No visual. No sound. No movement. Just the smell of cedar perching in the crisp night air. The sky, moonless and cloudy, created no shadows. Julius’s gut didn’t like the emptiness—or the alarms going off in his head.

“What’s going on?” The sleepy voice came from behind him.

“Check the pups.” He switched on the porch light.

“What?” Her hair was a beautiful mess, and she was tying the sash of a silky blue robe around her slender waist. Without hesitation, she reached for a switch, turned on the indirect lighting under the cupboards. She looked confused, and sleepy. And sexy as hell…

“Someone was in here,” he said. “I’m going out to take a look around. Do you have a flashlight?”

She glanced at the open door, the blackness beyond, and her confusion gave way to wide-eyed shock, but she did go to a drawer and get him a light. “You probably shouldn’t go out there. What if—”

“Already considered,” he interrupted. Now wasn’t the time to explain that security checks were standard operating procedures for him—although not necessarily performed after the best sex of his life. God, she looked good, all rumpled and concerned—for him. It had been a long time… “Check the pups,” he said again. “And try to calm Samba down. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

“Don’t be a hero, okay?” She didn’t look convinced, but she went into the laundry room.

He heard her cry before he’d cleared the last step.

“Julius! There’s only four of them. There should be six.”

“Stay with Samba.” He arced the flashlight, quickly checked the perimeter of the house, but within five minutes knew he was wasting his time, and headed back up the steps. Whoever had been in the house was long gone. But who the hell would B & E to steal newborn pups? Pups far too young to leave their mother. For those pups to survive more than twenty-four hours would take a miracle.

“I found one.” Deanne called out. “Outside the box.”

Julius stepped into the kitchen…damn near stepped on a tiny black shifting shadow. “Here’s the other one.” He picked up the tiny lump of pup, eyes still sealed shut, head shaky but determinedly looking for its mother’s teat, and carried it to the whelping bed, softly stroking its head with his index finger.

When the pups were all back with their mother, Julius stood beside a quiet Deanne. “What happened, do you think?” she asked.

“I think someone came in that door.” He gestured with his chin to the now-closed back door. “And I think Samba did what all good mothers do when their babies are threatened. Protected them. It was her barking and growling that woke me up.” Julius dropped to his haunches beside the dog. Samba was hard at work, cleaning her pups with long slurps of her tongue, going from one to the other as if doing a count.

“But someone must have gotten them out of their box—why did he leave them?”

“I don’t think he got near the pups. I think the pups were feeding—pretty much all they do at this stage—and when Samba went after whoever it was, they were latched on to her nipples and didn’t let go soon enough. It happens.” He got to his feet. “You’ve not only got a good mother here, you’ve got a protector.” And it looks as if you need one.

“I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

He tilted his head.

“You’re thinking Kurt had something to do with this.”

“And you don’t?”

She chewed on the question for a time, finally shook her head. “No. I think Kurt…hurts, if you’ll excuse the bad rhyme, but inside himself and only himself. He’s not sneaky or dishonest. He’s not the kind of kid who’d break into a house.”

“Then what do you think—about what happened here?” He’d learned long ago to insert a question in lieu of an opinion, if it would forestall a disagreement. And looking at the beautiful, tousled woman in front of him, barely covered in filmy silk, a disagreement was the last thing he wanted.

“I don’t know.” She tightened the sash on her robe. “Maybe it was somebody checking doors, to see if they were locked. Looking for a quick score.”

Out here? Far enough out of Seattle to merit the word boonies? He didn’t think so.

She went on, “And I don’t think I locked the door, so it might have been a gust of wind coming off the lake that nudged it open. It’s happened before.”

“Anything’s possible,” he said, keeping his tone mild and his opinions to himself. He wanted her to be cautious, not frightened. A fine line. “Then from here on, maybe it’d be a good idea to keep your doors locked—for Samba’s sake.” And your own.

“I usually do, but tonight I was a little, um, distracted.” Her smile was surprisingly shy, considering how they’d spent the past few hours. He was fast becoming addicted to her smile.

He went to her, untied the sash on her robe and slipped his hands under it to encircle her waist. “I hope that was my fault.”

“Definitely.” She put her hands on his bare chest.

He kissed her, keeping it light—not easy. “Good, because I’m thinking another distraction is exactly what we need right now. You up for that?” He ran his hands down and over her bare bottom, pulled her closer.

Jesus, she felt good. Too good. He kneaded her firm buttocks, lifted her against him. Dangerously good.

“Ready—” she kissed one of his nipples, “—willing—” she licked it, “—and able.” She pressed herself to him where he needed her the most and kissed his throat, under his ear. Heat shot to his groin with the blast of a flame thrower. Arousal kicked in hard and fast.

Tightening his grip on her waist, he lifted her, set her beautiful butt on the counter and positioned himself between her legs. Slipping the robe off her shoulders, he followed its slide over her upper arms with his hands, until it fell away from her completely. Until she was open to him. Her skin, backlit by the low lighting coming from under the cupboards, was all the silk he needed. All that he wanted.

Pushing her legs apart, he moved his gaze from her face to her sex, moving his thumbs on her inner thighs to keep her spread wide, he looked his fill. Oddly suspended in the moment. Fascinated. Rapt in her soft curls, the satiny, juiced lips they covered, the even deeper secret beyond them, he continued to look and not touch.

“Julius?”

“Hmm.” Without looking away from her, he ran his hands up her inner thighs. God, the heat of her. He felt it to his bones. Deeper. His breathing turned shallow.

“That’s not exactly the Mona Lisa you’re looking at.”

“No. But I think it’s what da Vinci had in mind when he painted her. Soft—” he ran a finger through her fold, “—sultry.” He inhaled the scent of her. “And endlessly mysterious.”

Her eyes, which had drifted closed the instant he touched her, opened to meet his. “There’s no mystery, Julius. It’s just me—wanting you.” She opened her legs wider, never taking her serious gaze from his. Resting back against the counter, she added, “And as much as I like you looking at me like that, you should know there’s a risk I might, uh, embarrass myself.”

“I like looking at you,” he said, surprised he got the words out of his dry mouth. What he’d said was true, but what he wanted—craved—went far beyond looking. “And I’d love for you to embarrass yourself, while I do, but—” he leaned to kiss her glistening curls, taste her, “—there’s a better way.” He entered her with his fingers, pressed her clit, and she bucked. Juiced. Raw need exploded in his focused brain, blinded him, and he pulled her roughly to the edge of the counter.

She pulled down his zipper, set his erection free. Steel hard and hurting. His breathing rough, he muttered, “Definitely a better way.”

He went in strong and deep, slipping himself between tight muscles, dewed flesh. Wrapping her arms and legs around him, she moaned. “That is so good…” She tightened around him, dug her fingernails into his lower back. “Harder. I want it hard—and fast.”

He obliged.

CHAPTER 13

At the big house, Kurt closed the kitchen door behind him, put his back to it and slid his ass to the floor. He couldn’t breathe, and his heart whacked his blood against his ribs so hard he was afraid they’d crack.

Telling himself to chill out, he shut his eyes and leaned his head back against the door. “It’s okay. You’re okay,” he said to the empty room.

The kitchen was dark and shadowed, and the smell of it nearly peeled the skin from inside his nose. Breathing through his mouth was better.

Stupid fucking dog.

But that was just pissed-off thinking, and he knew it, because something rattling in his freaked-out brain was impressed in a weird kind of way. Samba had been ready to chew him to the bone if he touched her pups. The second he’d inched the door open, she’d started growling and barking, wouldn’t even look at the steak he’d brought her. He lifted an empty hand, cursed. A steak he obviously dropped while stumbling up the hill to the house.

No way was he getting anywhere near those pups tonight, or any other night as long as Samba was around. And that Zern guy? Sure as hell didn’t take him long to make his moves on Deanne. No telling how long he’d be hanging around. That thought shot pins through his chest. He’d almost pissed himself when he’d heard Big Man coming out of her bedroom. He knew he was there—who could miss that damn Mercedes of his shining its silver on her driveway.

But Wheeler had said get the pups, so he had to try.

And I won’t think about what he wants them for. I fuckin’ won’t. It’s not like I have a choice…It’s them or me. They’re just dogs anyway. They don’t matter. I won’t let them matter.

What he needed to remember was that Wheeler was insane. Crazy. Wheeler had cut Peter Grant, then beat him so bad he had to go to the ER—and now Wheeler had a gun…Kurt rubbed his heart and dumped all thought of the pups over the back of his brain.

Four more days and it was Friday. What the hell was he going to do if Zern kept hanging around?

He got up from the floor, went to the sink and ran some cold water. After splashing some on his face, he filled a dirty glass and drank it dry. He filled it again and went to sit at the table.

Sipping the water, he sat in the cold darkness in a sweat. He wondered what he was going to tell Dev when he came for the pups. At least he had some time to figure something out, because Dev’s idea of morning didn’t include any time before noon.

Gripping his glass with both hands, he swallowed the ball of fear in his throat.

He wanted to cry.

He wanted to kick something.

He wanted to scream.

But more than anything he wanted his mom. Hell, even his fuckin’ dad would be better than nothing.

Deanne rolled over and with her eyes still closed, slid a hand toward Julius. It’s not that she had a plan or anything—yeah, right—she just wanted to touch him. She inched her hand across the sheet toward where she thought his thigh would be. But instead of morning-warmed skin, she found empty space. She patted the sheet blindly, opened her eyes and looked around the room. The empty room.

Julius was gone. Without a trace. No shirt on the floor, no shoes…no shadow.

She looked at the clock and, after blinking against the early light coming through the window beyond it, saw the time. Quarter to eight.

She shouldn’t have been disappointed Julius had left without a goodbye, but she was. She hadn’t expected him to stay—more liked hoped. Even though he’d told her how it was with him, I’m a loner…I don’t stay.

Clear enough, and fair enough. Especially since she’d told him she was okay with that, which she was…before they’d made love. Before the earth shifted under her feet. And how brainless was that? Obviously her quartet of orgasms had shorted out some critical neurons. Her problem. Not Julius’s. The man went home. It was Monday, no doubt he had things to do. So her heart ached a bit—okay more than a bit—she’d handle it.

Trying not to think of anything other than morning breath, and ridding herself of same, she headed for the bathroom. She noticed a damp towel folded over the tub, picked it up and tried to find his scent. Nothing. Washed away. Gone like the man himself, while she, sleeping like the living dead, hadn’t even heard him shower. Having decided the world would be a better place if multiple orgasms could be bottled and prescribed, she brushed her teeth and took a quick shower.

When she’d dried off, she dropped both of their towels in the hamper and headed back to her bedroom. Not once did thoughts of Julius leave her mind. Nor did the anticipation of seeing him again at Clancy’s show.

Tomorrow night. Her heart raced at the thought.

She sat on the edge of the bed, sighed, and said, “Until then…suck it up, Deanne. Just suck it up.”

“Not sure what that it is exactly, but I’m prepared to discuss possibilities.”

Deanne shot to her feet, spun to face him, her heart a rabbit in her chest. “You’re still here.” Another brilliant word burst.

“Shouldn’t I be?” He lowered his gaze to her knees, his only starting point with the bed between them, and started a slow upward scan.

“No. I mean yes, but no…that ‘I’m a loner’ thing you said…I thought—” It occurred to her she had no idea what she thought, and about the time his eyes again met hers, she remembered she was naked as a newborn. She grabbed the cover from the bed and shrouded herself in pink roses. Her body was okay from dusk to dawn, but after that it got iffy. Especially when you had Mr. Magnificent leaning in your bedroom doorway looking like a men’s cologne ad, nothing askew except a shirt, mostly unbuttoned, and a sexy hint of shadow on his jaw. In the early light, his pale green eyes gleamed with the patina of platinum.

He took her breath away. Freeze-dried her brain while warming everything else. Magic. He was magic.

And he’d stayed.

She stood, frozen as a mannequin, a wild mishmash of thoughts and feelings firing through her. She was hot, cold, crazed, awed, sad, seriously befuddled, blissed out—and utterly terrified, her senses overwhelmed, like a butterfly released from a prison jar to summer air, so bewildered by possibilities, it could only cling to the edge of its prison and flutter its wings.

Without a word, he came around the bottom of the bed and gripped her shoulders. He had to lower his head for their gazes to square off. She noticed his hair was still damp. “You thought I’d leave without saying goodbye.”

Oh, God, there was that word. Goodbye. Her stomach collapsed under the weight of it, and all she could do was nod, afraid if she opened her mouth she would, as usual, say too much, and get all the words wrong.

He shifted his hands from her shoulders and tugged at the edges of the rose-spattered quilt she’d mummified herself in, until she loosened her grip. He slid the cover over her shoulders, pulled it down to her elbows. She was left with a weak one-handed grip holding the edges of the cover low over her breasts.

He lowered his gaze to that frail hold, let his eyes tell her what he wanted.

She dropped the quilt.

He smiled, and for the first time since they’d met, it seemed to come easily. “Why would I leave without seeing you in the daylight. Having you in the daylight.” He pulled her close, his chest, with his soft coating of hair, warmed her breasts, his words warmed everything else.

“Julius, I—” Again with the talk, woman. Stop. Cease. Desist. Right now wasn’t the time for yapping about feelings, especially when you couldn’t describe them without a poet on your shoulder.

“You going to finish what you were going to say?” He cupped her breasts, pressed her nipples lightly with his thumbs. “So I can get on with things.”

She shook her head, wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed it—savored the shiver he made no attempt to hide. “All I want to say is I’m glad you’re still here.” She kissed him again. “Now…you can get on with things.”

CHAPTER 14

After breakfast, Julius carried their two coffees out to the back porch. They sat in two Adirondacks that faced the sun-glazed lake at the back of the property, and shared a wooden footstool, their bare feet touching.

Julius set his coffee mug on the arm of the chair, put his head back and eyed the view from under half-closed eyelids.

It was serenely beautiful—the morning air was warm and sweet, and the woman beside him sweeter yet. And definitely warm. Jesus, what a night. And morning. All of it perfect. For the first time in years his world felt right, balanced—in a way he couldn’t define. He’d had great sex before, so that wasn’t it. Although great didn’t cover making love with Deanne. But it had been years since he’d spent serious morning time with a woman. Years since he’d wanted to.

He’d got up at six, his plan to take a look around, then leave, but he couldn’t bring himself to walk out the door. Instead, he’d ambled into her backyard, intending to think things through, and ended up doing a thorough reconnaissance of the property, a scouting expedition that had turned up an expensive cut of beef halfway up the hill to the kid’s place. That discovery made staying a no-brainer. He had to talk Deanne into being more watchful around that boy. She wasn’t going to like it.

“You’re very quiet.” She stroked his arm to get his attention.

“This is good.” He lifted a hand to encompass the view. “And what I have to say will ruin that.”

She gave him a puzzled look.

Julius got up from the chair and went to the edge of the porch where he’d stashed the steak. He lifted it. “I went for a walk this morning.” He waved the steak. “It wasn’t a gust of wind that opened your door. It was whoever was waving this in front of Samba. They came prepared—and they knew you had a dog.”

“Damn.” She glanced past him and her gaze caught on something and held.

When he started to speak, she raised a hand. “You’re going to say it was Kurt.”

“I’m going to talk to him.”

“No, I am.”

“I thought I’d get an argument.”

“And you might have. That steak could have been anyone’s—”

“Anyone who knew you had a dog.”

“Right. And Kurt’s hardly the only person who knows that. So that’s not the reason I’m going to talk to him.”

“What is?”

“That.” She pointed at the big house, easily visible from this side of the porch.

Julius stiffened, murmured, “Son of a bitch.” The kid was at the back door of the house, looking at the cottage through a pair of binoculars. When he caught them looking his way, he scuttled inside. Like a crab going under a rock.

“Now that’s creepy,” Deanne said.

“How long has he been doing that?”

“Never before—that I know of.”

“We’re going up there. Now.” Julius tossed his coffee over the porch rail.

“I said I’d talk to him, and I will. And really, Julius, you don’t have to worry about it.”

Funny, but the last part of what she’d said—right as it was—didn’t sit well with him. His chest constricted when his thick head acknowledged that whatever or whoever might threaten Deanne did worry him—set his damn teeth on edge. And made no sense at all. “We’ll talk to him together.” He was bullying her, and he didn’t much like it. But there was no way he was letting her go up to the big house alone. No goddamn way.

Her expression turned speculative. He swore she narrowed her eyes. “Why are you so…intense about this?”

Damn good question. He gripped her arms and held her directly in front of him. “Call it instinct. People hire me for their protection. It’s my business.” Even as he said the words, he knew this compulsion to stand by Deanne, protect her, went beyond business. And that gnawed at him. If he’d kept his distance, no way would this be so…personal.

“I didn’t hire you.” She looked at his hands on her arms. “If I had, I’d be putting those hands to better use.” She smiled then, as if at a secret joke, and put her palms to his chest. Her touch went to the soles of his feet. “And you know…if you have time to go up and see Kurt, that means you’re not in a hurry to leave. And if you’re not in a hurry to leave, that means we have time to go back to bed.”

His breath snapped up his throat and tangled there.

He pulled her to him, took her mouth and fell into his own need as if he’d been shoved off a cliff. Instantly and painfully hard, he held her away from him. His voice sounding hoarse and uneven when he said, “You…this—” he kissed her again, lost it again, “—isn’t what I expected, what I wanted.”

“What do you want?” Her voice was a murmur, breathy and soft against his throat. “Tell me,” she urged, her words spilling heat into his ear. “Tell me what you want.”

He couldn’t, so he kissed her again. Easier to deal with the hot craving of a throbbing erection, than the indecipherable messages in his brain—or the mad racing of a long-abandoned heart.

Deanne pulled on her jeans, and yes, she was feeling smug. What woman wouldn’t be with well over six feet of satisfied male sprawled and dozing in her bed with only the edge of the sheet covering his spent sex. Staring at him like a lust-crazed groupie, she retracted her description. Not his sex. His cock, his singularly impressive cock—and all that came with it.

Julius. A master in bed. Who knew?

She felt herself redden, but it wasn’t embarrassment at her carnal thinking—it was heat generated by having had more sex in the past twenty-four hours than she’d had in the past two years. Realizing she was still staring, she got a grip, then tiptoed to her closet and pulled out her big white shirt.

She was doing up the last button when she heard his low smoky voice. “You’re a whole lot of trouble, Deanne Moore. And a hell of a lot more than I bargained for.”

When she looked at him, he pulled himself up and rested his head on the headboard. Dark, unshaven and mouthwateringly sexy, he lay casually, one knee bent, his arm resting on it, his gaze settled on her, fixedly, intently, with a slight furrowing of his brow as if his thoughts irritated him. Ignoring the urge to start unbuttoning and damn well leap on his beautiful bones…again, she padded over to the bed, and sat on its edge. “Since I’ve never caused anyone ‘trouble’ in my life, I kind of like the idea of that.”

His lips tilted. She could die happy seeing that half smile of his. He reached out and touched her hair, twirling strands of it in his fingers. For a moment he seemed rapt by his action, as if he were considering making curls in her hair his life’s work. “I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

The comment, so from left field, hit her tummy like a punch. She didn’t know what he meant, not in her rational mind, but in her chest—her heart—she understood completely. He cared. “Julius—”

He took her hand, lifted it to his lips and kissed her palm, then he shook his head. “I’m not talking specifically about that kid next door. It’s more than that. I don’t want anything to happen to you—ever.”

“Which means?”

He looked away. “I don’t know. I’m going to have to think about it.”

She touched his chin, made him face her. “You do a lot of that, don’t you?” I can’t stop my mouth and you can’t turn off your brain. “Thinking about things.”

“So my partner keeps telling me.”

“So doing something impulsive, feeling…rash, makes you uncomfortable?” God, she sounded like her therapist.

“I’m never rash.”

“You mean this is business as usual for you. You go on a first date with a woman, have hot, mad, crazy sex, stay the night, eat breakfast, sit on her porch and have more hot sex until—” she looked at her watch, “—noon?”

He scratched his beard-shadowed chin, eyed her a time, then said, “Yes to the first two—minus the hot, mad, crazy. No to the rest.” He set his wrist on his bare knee, let his hand drop—perfectly relaxed. “That’s only happened with you.”

“Really?” Oh, she actually squeaked that…asked for confirmation, used the one word that could best showcase every insecurity she’d ever wallowed in. She was hopeless. But she was happy, warm-all-over hopeless.

“Really.” He confirmed, keeping his eyes on her, his own expression strangely thoughtful.

Stop here, Deanne. Stop right here. But of course she didn’t. “And that…scares you.” As if anything could scare this towering hunk of masculinity—and as if he’d admit it.

“It’s a bit like being scared, yes.” He paused, his expression serious but unreadable. “And a bit like something happening I hadn’t counted on.”

The darkness in his expression puzzled her, so lightening things up seemed smart. “Like a woman who can’t keep her hands off you.”

“Really?” He echoed her teenage-style response of moments ago and smiled—a megawatt smile that took her breath.

“Are you fishing for a compliment, Mr. Zern?”

He stroked her arm. “No. Knowing you lust after me will do for now.”

She leaned in, kissed him, and when both of them threatened to drown in it, she pulled back. “Oh, I lust after you, all right.” She took a breath. “But for the moment, I’m going to ignore my raging hormones. And you and I are going to see my nosy little neighbor.”

“A change of heart?”

A heart turned inside out more like it. “Yes. But I have an ulterior motive.”

“Which is?”

She hesitated, but only a second. She wanted it; she’d ask for it. With bated breath. “I don’t want you to go. So, after we see him, you come back here and—”

“And?”

“Be rash. Spend the rest of the day with me…out of bed.”

He studied her awhile, and she knew his male mind had flipped to fight or flight mode. She had a sudden image of him, sneakers afire, shooting out her front door. Maybe she had been too assertive, maybe—

“Let me make a couple of calls,” he said.

Relief flooded through her like smooth, liquid gold. “While you do that, I’ll look in on Samba and her pups, then it’s off to see the too-curious Kurt.”

Julius stayed where he was, watched Deanne go through the open bedroom door. He heard her talking to Samba, cooing at the pups, while his gut tangled in sync with his thoughts. He was glad she was letting him go with her to see the kid. Not that he wouldn’t have gone anyway—on his own if need be. But it wasn’t Kurt who was first in his thoughts, it was how easily he’d agreed to stay, spend the day with her. That commitment was a burr in his brain.

Julius Zern didn’t stay. Julius Zern didn’t make personal connections.

He had his reasons, had thought things through, enough to know why he did what he did. Why he lived as he lived. Alone. Autopilot wasn’t one of his settings.

He’d lost one family, three people he loved, and the grief had changed him. Forever. He accepted that. He closed his eyes against the memory, the sirens, the screams, their bodies on the sidewalk, the blood…He shut the memory down, but it was harder now, because Deanne had known them, remembered them, and brought them to life again.

“Your mom, with her bright smile—so like Amanda’s. Your dad, always with papers in his hand, sitting by the pool with his iced tea…”

When he’d finally picked up the pieces of his life after their deaths—after a few lost years of his own stumbling around Europe—he’d sorted himself out, made the decision never to forget, and to remain alone. There’d be no marriage. No kids. Ever. The world was too fucking shitty. Too dangerous. The risks too many, and too random. He’d chosen instead to tend the fortune his father had built, and offer protection to strangers, other people’s children. In that scenario, if he lost, he wouldn’t come apart. A shrink would have a field day with him, call it classic avoidance. He didn’t care. He’d thought it through and made it work.

Yeah, you thought it all through, all right. Yet here you are, in Deanne’s bed, long after you should be gone—and promising to stay even longer.

His hand, still resting on his knee, clenched, unclenched.

You came here for sex, a few hours in the company of a beautiful woman with a great smile—and a great body. Hell, you didn’t even plan on overnight. So whatever the hell you’ve got yourself into, you better damn well get out of it. Fast.

He swung his legs to the side of the bed, reached for his clothes.

Whatever was keeping him here, he’d end it today. He’d see the kid, get a handle on what was going on—with luck scare the sap out of him—then make the necessary excuses. He’d be gone before this thing between him and Deanne got even crazier—before his dumb-ass cock did more damage to his usual high-functioning, self-protective brain than it already had.

CHAPTER 15

Settled in his tower, earphones on, mind in neutral, Kurt watched his disk defrag, and listened to Wet Vendetta singing something about zombie love—whatever the fuck that was. Didn’t matter anyway; the beat was solid, and all he wanted was enough blast pouring into his ears to flush out his brain.

Rapping two pens on his keyboard, he picked up the rhythm. Maybe he should take up the drums. That’d be cool. Maybe get himself into a group.

For the past hour at least, he’d put all thoughts of what he had to do on Friday night out of his mind. Thinking past it worked for him; he felt pretty good.

Then he glanced out the window. Shit.

He yanked off his headset and tossed it on his littered desktop. It clattered and horseshoed around a Coke can. He looked out again.

Mr. Big Man and Deanne were coming his way. For sure.

They couldn’t know about Friday. Could they? No way. No fucking way! Maybe she wanted to borrow something. Or something…

His guesses ran out about the time they got to the broken, mashed fence. Zern took Deanne’s hand, helped her step over the fallen gate. Panic floated in Kurt’s throat, a spiked clump of hardening bile.

His cell phone rang, and he grabbed it like it was some kind of lifeline, didn’t even check caller ID. “Hey,” he said, staring at the man and woman walking slowly across the field toward his back door; at least they weren’t in a hurry. That was a good sign.

“You doing okay?”

Kurt’s attention flipped to the voice on the phone. “Dad?”

“No, it’s your uncle Felix from Potsdam.”

“I don’t have an uncle Felix.”

“Exactly. Of course it’s me, bonehead.”

“Where are you? You were supposed to be home days ago.” Kurt damn near smiled, then all the thoughts and rages bottled up in him lined up at the back of his throat—directly behind Wheeler’s threat, keep your fucking mouth shut, douche bag, or you’re one dead nerd. But if his Dad came home…

“I was, but things got crazy.”

“How crazy can it get selling socks and jocks?”

“Wiseass.” A pause. “It’s not work.”

“What then?” Kurt asked, then heard his dad suck up a breath.

“I found your mom.” Another pause. “She’s living with some guy, north of San Diego. Would you believe he’s got three fuckin’ kids.”

Kurt took in some air of his own, but it turned to ice in his lungs. He didn’t know what was worse, his dad knowing where his mother was, or himself hearing she was shacked up with a brand-new family. Like this one never existed.

“I’m going down there,” his dad said.

Kurt stood abruptly, stepped away from his littered computer desk; the Coke can, entangled in his abandoned headset, hit the floor. Not caring, he watched its contents pool on the old scarred oak. “Don’t, Dad. Don’t go there. She doesn’t…want us.” And you’ll do something seriously stupid for sure.

“She doesn’t know what she wants. That’s the way women are.”

“What about that restraining-order thing? That’ll get you trouble. Big-time.” And I’ll end up visiting you through prison glass. Kurt rubbed his head so hard, he broke a zit—stained his right index finger with blood. He tasted the blood; it blended well with his gut-wrenching resentment. Blood and acid.

They don’t give a shit, either of them—not Mom or Dad. All they care about is themselves—what they want, what they need. The sooner you get that processed through those bits and bytes you call a brain, the better off you’ll be.

“A piece of paper,” Dad said. “Fuck it. Anyway, I didn’t call for your two bits of advice—just thought you should know what a piece of goods your mother is. And I wanted to let you know I’ll be gone a few days more. I put a few more bucks in your account, so you won’t starve. Anything else can wait until I get back. Right?”

You mean things like my helping Wheeler rape and tape our renter for an Internet show or risk getting the fucking house burnt down—and me along with it…? “Right.”

“Anything new with you?” his father asked, like he had to say something, like he wasn’t hot to get off the phone.

Not that you fuckin’ care. “No.”

“See you in a week then—maybe less. Hate to say it, because it pretty much gives you a free pass, but don’t do anything I wouldn’t do.” He laughed and hung up.

The front doorbell rang. Had to be Zern and Deanne.

Kurt’s day was getting better and better.

Julius and Deanne had first knocked on the back door; when that brought no response, they moved to the front door and tried the bell. “He’s always in that turret—his computer’s there,” Deanne said, ringing the bell again.

Giving him a perfect view of the house, Julius thought, but didn’t say. He’d leave his judgments until after a conversation with the boy.

The front door opened, enough for Kurt to stick his head out. “What do you want?”

“I want to talk to you, Kurt,” Deanne said. “Have you got a minute?” She played it perfectly, even to the point of adding a smile.

“Why’s he here?” He flicked his chin Julius’s way.

Deanne ignored the question, said, more firmly this time, “Either we come in or you come outside. Your call.”

The glower on the kid’s face made slits of his eyes, but he opened the door. He looked like last week’s laundry. Julius and Deanne stepped in.

Julius scanned the entry, and what he could see through the open doors of the rooms facing it. The house, grand in its day—now long past—was a mess. Dust dulled every surface, and it looked as if the kid ate, slept and changed clothes at random. Dishes, jeans, tees, even underwear, were strewn around every room Julius could see—and a rack load of jackets was humped over the bottom staircase newel.

“I’m going to get a drink,” Kurt said. An announcement that clearly told them to follow him when he headed for the kitchen at the back of the house.

The kitchen was worse than the foyer, and it came with a serious stink.

“So…” Kurt walked directly to the fridge and pulled out a can of pop. “What’s the deal?” He looked at Deanne, popped the can’s tab.

“I had a break-in last night. I was wondering if you knew anything about it.”

“Me? Why would I know anything?” The kid was already sheet-white, but he went whiter.

“You have a good view of my place from here. I thought you might’ve seen something.”

“Nope.” He swigged half the can of pop down in one gulp. Didn’t meet her eyes, Julius noticed.

“Heard something, maybe?” she asked.

He shook a negative.

“Not even Samba?” Deanne frowned. “She barked her head off because someone went near her pups. You didn’t hear that, either?”

“Nope. Guess I was sleeping or something.”

The three of them stood like pillars in the big kitchen, Kurt near the fridge, Deanne and Julius near the dirty kitchen table about eight feet from Kurt.

Julius closed the distance. He had a major height advantage over the kid, and he decided to use it. Standing over him, leaving only inches between them, he said, “But you are missing a steak. Right?”

A brief flare of panic lit his eyes. Bingo. But the boy rallied fast. “What steak? What’re you talking about?”

“The steak I found this morning, halfway between this house and Deanne’s.”

“I don’t know about any steak.” His lips went mulish. “I didn’t do nothing. And I didn’t hear nothing.”

Julius gestured toward Deanne. “The thing is, Deanne believes that. She likes you, Kurt. Says you’re a good kid, that you’d never mess with her house—or her dogs.”

“I wouldn’t.”

“But me,” he went, ignoring the denial. “I’m not so sure. I think it was you at the house last night—”

“You can’t prove that!”

“No, I can’t.” Julius put a hand on Kurt’s shoulder, gave it a comrade-style crunch. “But I’d advise you to consider this visit a warning. Because if there’s any more trouble at Deanne’s—any at all—the next visit will be to either your father, or the cops—or both. You got that?” Julius might not be around to do the calling—a sore point he’d poke at later—but somehow he’d make it happen.

Kurt shook off his grip. “I told you, I didn’t do nothing. And I’m the one who should be calling the cops. You bustin’ in here, threatening me—”

“We didn’t ‘bust in,’ and we’re not threatening you, but if you do want to call the cops, they can find me here.” Julius took out a Guardian, Inc., business card and set it on the dirty table. The kid glanced at it but didn’t pick it up.

“I told you,” he said. “I didn’t see anything or do anything. I’ve been hanging, that’s all.”

Deanne spoke up. “You were looking through binoculars this morning, watching the house,” she spoke calmly. “That’s not nothing, Kurt.”

That shut him up.

She took a couple of steps toward him. “What Julius said—about me liking you? That’s true, you know. And I’d like us to be friends, but your coming to my house, walking in without knocking? It’s rude and disrespectful. And the binocular thing was definitely over the line. You do get that, don’t you?”

For a minute it looked as if he might cry; instead, an indifferent expression settled into place, taking over his face like a wash of gray enamel. “Yeah, I get it.”

“Good, then we can start over.” She waved a schoolteacher finger and smiled. “You want to visit, call first. And no more binoculars, right?”

“I didn’t—” His gaze, now leaden with guilt, slid away from her face. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

Complicated kid, Julius thought. But then teenage boys generally were—one big mass of moods, adrift in a sea of bubbling testosterone, their brains no more finished than their growing bones.

“Now that we’ve got things settled…” Deanne’s eyes darted between Julius and the boy; she looked thoughtful. “Tomorrow night is Clancy’s show, Kurt, and afterward Clancy and Cherry, and a few other people, are coming back to my place. Around nine o’clock. Why don’t you join us?”

His head came up, eyes wide. “You kidding me?”

“No.”

He blushed. “Maybe I’ll show. Maybe not. I’ve got things going on.”

“Up to you,” she said, “but I’d like you to come.”

Halfway down the hill leading to her house, Deanne stopped, touched Julius’s arm and gave him a questioning look. “You don’t think I should have invited him to the house.”

“No.”

“You think I’m taking some kind of risk, but I’m not.”

“It’s none of my business.” And he wouldn’t make it his.

“I’m asking.”

They stopped as one. “All right. I don’t buy the idea that you keep your friends close, your enemies closer.”

“I suppose that makes you more of a dig-a-deep-moat-around-the-castle kind of guy.”

He ignored that. True as it was. “Minton has something on his mind, and whatever it is, it’s not good.”

“You don’t know that.”

He wanted to shake some sense into her, but knew that if he was going to back off as planned, the time was now. “You’re right. I don’t. You asked for my opinion and I gave it.” He shrugged. “And who you invite, or don’t invite, to your house, is not my concern.” Jesus, he sounded like a cold, heartless ass, which the ice pick chipping at the rime coating in his chest confirmed with every pointed thrust.

“Then you don’t…care.”

“It’s your life, and your decision to do what you please.”

Her eyes widened for a moment, shot with hurt—or maybe she felt his chill. “Yes, I suppose it is.” She started walking then, took a few steps and stopped again. “You’re not staying the day, are you?”

Looking down at her grave face, he wanted to take her in his arms, tell her he’d stay forever—stand guard twenty-four/seven—which is exactly why he said, “I’m sorry.” He refused to pave his exit with lame excuses and convenient untruths. He was what he was—and overnight was all he had to give, all he was capable of.

She studied him a long time, finally nodded and gave him a weak smile. “Don’t be sorry. I’m not. Last night was more than I expected, Julius—in so many ways. If that’s all there is, I’m fine with it.”

That lie between them, they walked back to her house.

Ten minutes later, Julius was gone.

CHAPTER 16

Deanne stacked the last wineglass in the dishwasher and leaned her tired butt against the counter, angry at herself that she’d let her disappointment cloud a great evening—one her best friend had worked toward for years.

Clancy’s show was a raging success—a sellout. It hadn’t escaped the local arts community that Julius Zern had purchased three of his paintings. How could it, when Deanne had shamelessly trumpeted the news throughout the three-hour show?

Clancy was over the moon; so was Cherry, the gallery’s owner and Clancy’s current lover. Both of them, buzzed on laughter and champagne, had left a few minutes ago. Deanne knew exactly where their more private celebration would take place. And, oh, how she envied them that.

If Julius had—

She reversed her thinking stat. Not going there. He’d been honest with her from the beginning. I mean, really, woman, what part of “I never stay” didn’t you understand? And he’d been oh-so-proper. Calling her early in the day to say he wasn’t coming and to wish her success, he hadn’t offered an excuse and she hadn’t asked for one.

He’d even sent flowers…

Cherry told her he’d been in the gallery early and requested his paintings be delivered before he left for Paris. Friday.

The idea of his leaving the country was slowly digging a hole in her heart, fence-post deep. She rubbed her tummy, picked up a dishcloth and started scrubbing the counter as if it were a barnacle-encrusted boat hull.

“Silly woman. I’m a silly, silly woman…”

“Deanne?”

She turned to find Kurt frowning at her, a couple of side plates in his hand. “Oh, hey.” She’d forgotten he was still here.

“You missed these.” He brought her the plates.

“Thanks.”

“What’s wrong?” He blurted the question out.

Caught off guard by his asking, she said, “Wrong?” She shook her head. “Nothing’s wrong. Why?”

“I don’t know. You look funny. Like you’re cryin’ or something, and—”

“And?” She draped the dishcloth over the sink divider, sniffed.

“You’re talking to yourself.”

“I was?” She’d admit to being a bit teary, but she didn’t remember any self-dialogue. At least not out loud. Had to be a crack in her brain a foot wide—or in her heart. She took the plates he held out to her.

“Yeah. You were. The big guy dump you or something?” He looked hopeful.

Oh, now, there was a yummy thought. No answer to that one. “I’m preoccupied, I guess. It’s been a hectic night.” She opened the dishwasher, added the plates. “How about you—did you have a good time tonight? Or did all the art talk bore you?”

“Nah. It was good. Clancy’s okay. Cherry—” he shrugged, “—she’s kind of weird.”

Deanne’s sentiments exactly, but she couldn’t agree with him without dissing her best friend’s girl. “Opinions on the female sex already. Boy, you guys start young.” She flicked him with the dish towel she’d picked up and forced a grin. “Keep it clean, okay? You’re too young to be messin’ with the ladies.”

She’d hoped he’d smile; instead, his face burned like a flare.

Instantly contrite, she said, “Sorry. I didn’t mean to embarrass you.”

“You didn’t, but I gotta go. Okay?”

“Okay.” Berating herself for her lack of teenage communication skills, she added, “And thank you, for all your help tonight. I appreciated it.”

He nodded and headed for the door. There, he stopped, looked back at her. She could see him swallowing from across the room. “You like old movies?”

“Doesn’t everybody?”

“My mom left some behind…after she left. Chick stuff. Maybe you can come and watch one sometime.”

She blinked. “Sure. Sometime.”

“Like maybe this Friday night? On our big screen.” He rushed the words out. “Like just you and me.”

“Uh…” A movie night with Kurt wasn’t high on her wish list, but it wasn’t as if she had anything else to do. But that big messy house of his held no appeal. “Why don’t you bring the movie here? I’ll make popcorn. I am still kind of dog sitting, you know.” Lame excuse, but Samba wouldn’t mind.

Her answer seemed to confuse him, but he finally nodded.

“Around eight. Okay?”

“Okay.” He walked out the door, letting its screen bang shut behind him; Samba barked in irritation, then settled back to her babies.

Deanne went back to scouring the counter. How did it happen? How had she gone from Julius’s arms to popcorn and Kurt in forty-eight hours?

But a better question—she straightened—was what she planned to do about it?

Kurt ran up the hill—halfway home, his stomach rolled. Then he puked his guts out.

When he got to the house, he beelined for the bathroom, puked some more.

After, while he splashed his face with cold water, his heart tried to hammer its way out of his chest. He had her. He had Deanne how they wanted her. Alone on Friday.

Wheeler wasn’t going to be joy-jumpin’ about it being at her house, but that was his fuckin’ problem. He was the one making five grand for the sex tape.

Thinking about Deanne naked, Wheeler doin’ it to her…he started to heave again.

She wasn’t nothing to him, he told himself, wiping his mouth with the arm of the clean shirt he’d put on for her party. Nothing. Maybe she was nice to him tonight, but her being nice wasn’t going to save his ass if he didn’t do what Wheeler wanted.

And the roofies, don’t forget the roofies. She wouldn’t remember anything. It’d be like it never happened.

Friday night was on—and there was no fucking way out.

Julius paced his office, one hand in his pocket, the other massaging his nape where his muscles had curled into ball bearings. His packed bag sat at the front door—the limo was due in under an hour.

Too early, but he was sick to death of his empty house and a brain filled with images of Deanne. Jesus, one night, one overnight stay, and she’d played in his mind like a never-ending movie. Alternating between triple-X-rated and the Family Channel. Past time for him to get out of town.

He might as well hit an airport bar, kill time there. But before that…He glanced at his watch, reached for the phone and dialed. It was picked up on the first ring—or most likely vibration, considering the situation.

“Hey, Jules.” Galen Byrne, ex-homicide cop, ex-alcoholic, ex-reporter, ex-pilot, ex-husband…ex a whole lot of things, and an occasional stringer for Guardian, Inc. One of their best.

“Everything okay?”

“It might be a hot Friday night somewhere, but not here. I might as well be staking out Mother Teresa. No visitors. No bogeymen. Nothing. Been the same all week, which considering the number of times you’ve called me since I started this stakeout, you damn well know. A big nada—except for that Clancy guy. He came around today, stayed about an hour. And your woman? She left, dressed to thrill, about a half hour ago.”

He didn’t want to hear that. Didn’t want to think about her dressing—or undressing—for another man. Focus, Julius, focus. “The kid. Any sign him?”

“Nope. Hasn’t gone near the house in the three nights I’ve been watching it, lives in that turret of his. I’ve got a good view of it from here.” He paused. “He’s not there now, though—hold up. He’s on the front porch talking to some boys who just pulled up, two in a little red Mazda and two in a black Ford truck. They’re going in the house. First time I’ve seen anyone go in there since I got here.”

Here for Galen was a stand of trees on the boundary between the big house on the hill and Deanne’s cottage. A vantage point that gave him cover and a clear view of both Deanne’s and the Minton property.

“Hell, I can hear the music already.” Galen chuckled. “I hope earplugs come with this job. Damn.” Silence came down the line. “And an umbrella. It’s starting to rain.”

Julius glanced out the window—rain all right, and plenty more on the way by the looks of it. He mulled over the information Galen had given him: Kurt had stayed away from Deanne, which meant their visit to him, and Julius’s threat, had the desired effect. He was busy with his friends, and Deanne had gone out. It all sounded like a regular Friday night. And Galen was about to get his ass soaked, because Julius was overreacting—fucking obsessing—about something that was no business of his and someone—dressed to thrill—who wasn’t his responsibility.

“Go home, Galen,” he said. “Get your ass out of the rain.”

“You sure?”

“I’m sure. I’ll square up with you when I get back from France. And thanks.”

“Your call, big guy. Later.” The line went dead. One thing about Galen, he never wasted time on unnecessary questions. Probably wasted even less getting himself out of the rain and back to his car.

Julius put the phone on charge and stared out the arched window behind his desk. The weather was getting serious, wind slamming rain against the glass and turning it to rivers. Rivers he fixated on, determined to erase useless memories and set the clock back to a time before his night with Deanne.

When she came home tonight, she’d be on her own—as she was before they met. Things were as they were meant to be, and it was unlikely their lives would cross again. At that thought Julius’s stomach tanked and those ball bearings between his shoulder blades gave birth to a hundred more.

The gate buzzer sounded.

Grateful for the distraction, and assuming it was the limo he’d ordered, he glanced at the gate’s security monitor.

Deanne…

CHAPTER 17

Julius’s voice, with a trace of shock, filtered through the security sound system like a metallic thread. “Deanne?”

Like he couldn’t see her mug pressed against the eye of the camera—well, not pressed exactly. More like staring at it as though it was a cyclops with the mouth of a great white, and smiling like a drunk trying to look sober. “Last time I checked,” she said, flippant, because flippant was all she could muster. She’d never felt so shaky…so fragile. “I have your paintings in the car.”

And my heart in my hand.

The gate swung open. She sucked in copious amounts of rain-soaked air—the only liquid courage available—and drove onto the grounds of the Zern estate.

She’d visited the house often as a young girl to giggle and laugh with Amanda, but tonight, giggles weren’t on the menu. Tonight she was a woman on a mission. She was grateful for the dark evening, the curtain of rain; combined they shrouded the grounds, old landmarks, and precluded a trip into the past, to happier times for both her and Julius.

Julius’s driveway was long, but not long enough for a full composure fill-up, and what little poise she had evaporated when she saw him standing, backlit, in his open front doorway, hands on his hips. So big. So tall. So…everything.

She pulled up to the stairs leading to his house, got out quickly and headed for the trunk of her car. By the time she had it open, he was beside her. “I’ll get them. You get out of the rain.” His tone was matter-of-fact, authoritative.

Disinclined to argue—with rain laying waste to her hair and dripping off her nose—she ran the steps to his door and waited on the wide portico.

Carrying the wrapped paintings, he took the steps quickly, then gestured with his chin to the open door, the brightly lit foyer beyond.

As invitations went, it wasn’t much, but she took it, and stepped inside the house. Once there, she brushed at her damp cheeks, shoved her equally damp hair back off her face and looked at him. Damn it. He took her breath away, and her oxygen-deprived brain stalled in neutral.

Silent, he studied her as if she were an unwanted delivery he had no idea what to do with.

“I—” she began.

“You didn’t have to—” he started, stopped when their words clashed.

“Didn’t have to come?” she finished. “Is that what you were going to say?”

“No…and yes. I called Cherry earlier, told her to keep the paintings until I got back.”

“I know.”

“You came anyway.”

She nodded.

His mouth moved, and his brow furrowed, but he didn’t speak; instead, he bent to prop the paintings against the wall, which briefly left his back to her.

He hadn’t yet closed the front door, and the idea of running to her car and burning up his driveway in a fast exit flashed through her mind.

No. She wouldn’t leave before she said what she came to say.

Done with the paintings, he closed the door, and waved his hand toward an open door off the domed, marble-tiled foyer. The house was as grand as she remembered it, but…emptier. Quieter.

Her high heels clicked and echoed their way to the doorway he’d indicated. She felt like a doomed man on his final walk. A peek at Julius suggested he felt the same. His face was blank, absolutely blank, which meant he was freaking out—in the way men do, by going all stony and cool. And scarily unpredictable. Deanne, you’re being melodramatic. No one ever died from hearing the word no. If you’ve learned anything from two friggin’ years of professionally assisted navel gazing, it’s that. So get your act together. Say your piece and—

“Your coat?”

He helped her out of it, ignored its dampness and laid it on the back of a leather chair.

“Drink?” Julius said, glancing at his watch.

That watch-glance curdled her spirit. I should go… “Yes.”

“What’s your pleasure?”

Now there was a leading question. “How about Scotch neat. Six fingers.”

He lifted a brow. “You sure.”

“No. I haven’t been sure of anything since you left on Monday.” And there it was, her opening salvo. Too needy by half. But she didn’t care, because if the constant aching emptiness in her stomach for the past few days was an indication, she damn well was needy.

He lowered his gaze. “Deanne, don’t.”

“Don’t what? Make a fool of myself? Make you uncomfortable? Or both?”

He walked to the bar a few steps away, went behind it. “Maybe you don’t want a drink, but I sure as hell do.”

“Wine. White. Whatever.”

He plunked a bottle on the bar’s gleaming surface. “No. I think the Scotch.” He poured for both of them, nothing close to six fingers—for her more like a pinky—came around the bar front and handed her a glass. She sat on one of the high stools; he took another. Their knees touched, and oddly it was her who shifted to avoid contact.

He sipped his Scotch; she gulped hers, gasping at the burn, the instant eye-watering. When she got her breath, she set her empty glass back on the bar.

Julius took another sip of Scotch and eyed her over the rim of his glass. “I’m glad you came,” he said, the wariness in his eyes making her suspect politeness rather than truth. “But your timing’s brutal. I’ve got a limo due to take me to Sea-Tac any minute.”

“I know. Your leaving is why I came. Why I—”

Julius held up a hand, palm out, got up from the stool and took a few steps away. “If you don’t mind, I’m going to preempt you.”

“Preempt away, but I’m going to have my say, Julius.”

He nodded. “What I did. Leaving you like that. It was—”

“Cruel and cowardly?” He wasn’t the only preemptor in the room.

His eyebrows shot up—the corners of his mouth followed, forming what she’d come to think of as the Julius smile, half mirth, half caution. “You’ve been overdosing on truth serum again, haven’t you?” He scratched a brow, looked down. “But yes, I guess it was some of both.”

She waited.

“But it was also fair and final.”

She didn’t like his using the word final, but she’d girded what loins she had for exactly this eventuality. Stepping to the edge of a precipitous emotional cliff, she leaped, and said, “Because of what happened to your family.”

In the act of lifting his glass to his lips, he froze. His eyes went ice-pellet cold. “That’s over the line, Deanne.”

“No, what happened to your family is the line.” Deanne got off the stool, and went to stand in front of him. “Everything in your life is before or after that line. That terrible day.”

“I don’t know where you’re heading with this, but I’d suggest an off-ramp. Now.”

“After your family died, you bummed around Europe for years, then you joined the army. After that you came back here and—”

His expression was glacial. “You said you checked out my art collecting. You didn’t say anything about checking on me.”

“At the time, I didn’t. But your rush from my house—my bed—a few days ago got me…reinvested in what makes Julius Zern tick. And what makes him run. So I checked again, deeper this time.” She lifted her chin, ever so slightly defensive. “So sue me.”

“I might.” He finally took that drink he’d tried for moments before. “Would it do anything to stop your amateur psychoanalyzing?”

Ouch. “No.”

“Then have at it.” This time his glance at his watch held the grim fervor of a drowning man seeking the air beyond the ocean’s surface.

She could use a little air herself. She started to pace. “After the army you came back here and got serious. You picked up your parents’ lives.” She shook her head for clarity. “No. You assumed their lives. Worked nonstop. Your father was a sharp, canny businessman—and a good one. He’d built a fortune—not just in one business, but in many. When you came back, you grabbed all his reins. Spent ten years protecting and growing what your father built.”

“Last I checked, making money wasn’t a crime.”

She ignored him. “And the art collecting? Your mother’s passion. Her life. You filled her shoes—high heeled though they might be—and made yourself into one of the most respected and eclectic collectors on the West Coast.” She paused, couldn’t help but soften her tone. “You’ve honored them, Julius. They would be so proud of you. You picked up where they…were forced to leave off and done everything they would have done had they lived, but—” She stopped, the pounding of her heart hammering in her ears.

“But.” He echoed the word like a dare, his body still, his expression somewhere between angry and bleak.

“But you’ve lived their lives at the expense of your own.”

“What about Amanda? Have you got me playing with her Barbie dolls in the dark of night?”

“No…Amanda was a soon-to-be thirteen-year-old girl. She didn’t have a life you could understand.” She bit her lip. “But she loved music…and you’ve funded more than twenty music scholarships. And you founded Guardian, Inc., a security firm that specializes in protecting families and children. Something you don’t have to do, but choose to do.”

“Are you done?” Still hard. Still unyielding.

She shook her head. “Not only have you never married, you’ve never been engaged, never lived with a woman, and from what I can find out, a three-month relationship is your max.” In uncertain territory now, she glanced at him, had to ask, “Why, Julius? Because you’re seeing the end of a relationship before you even start? Because you’re afraid someone you…care about will get hurt, like your family?”

His laugh was harsh. “Good try, Dr. Freud, but the truth is much simpler. Why settle for one woman when a hundred will do? It’s the standard bastard’s code of ethics. You should do your homework more thoroughly.”

“Julius…” She closed her eyes for a moment, gathered the final threads of her thoughts.

The gate buzzer sounded, announcing the arrival of the limo; the sound roared into the room like a flashing-red police cruiser.

“If you’re done…” He set his glass down on the nearest table, headed to the library door and opened it. The dismissal unmistakable.

Deanne gathered her coat from the back of the chair and draped it over her arm. It was still damp. “One more thing. The most important one. I’m probably not the first woman in your life to…not want you to go. And I don’t know how many might have tempted you to stay. But I might be the first one to ever call you on why you didn’t.”

“The others were too smart for that.”

Another ouch. “Or they didn’t know enough about you to see that you were too busy living other people’s lives to live your own. That you held yourself back because you were afraid you might feel something again…get hurt again.”

“I have a limo waiting.”

She ignored him, and the black hole she was in serious danger of falling into. “I came here tonight to ask you to take a chance. Not let what happened on that awful day stop you from…finding someone in the future—”

He turned on her, his mouth curling. “That someone being you, I presume.”

Shrugging into her coat, her stomach settled into an aching knot, and she searched for the right words. “Honestly? Yes. I hoped we might see where what we…shared would take us.”

“What we shared was sex, damn good sex. If I’d wanted more than that, I’d have let you know. Put you into the three-month club maybe.” The lines in his face hardened as if by force of will. “But I don’t want more. Not then. Not now. Not ever.” He stood, pillar straight, beside the open door, his expression, all taut lines and shadows, a map to nowhere. “If you knew as much about me as you think you do, you’d know that.”

Not trusting herself to speak, nauseous and hurting as if hit by battering ram, she concentrated on doing up a button on her coat, blinking back to what she knew would be a deluge of tears when she was alone and the dam truly burst.

The gate buzzer sounded again, no less intrusively as the first time, and she walked to the door, determined to get there while her legs still worked.

At the door, she stopped, looked up at him—into his marble-cold eyes—and found the barest of smiles. “I’m not sorry I tried, you know. I believed you were worth it. That we were worth it.” She touched his face. “And, unlike you, I don’t believe the kind of evil that took your family is likely to ever strike again.”

CHAPTER 18

Kurt Minton had friends in his house. Well, not friends exactly. No way were Wheeler, Dev, Towman and Gutter friends. More like shitheads. But at least they were warm-blooded company, a change from the bits-and-bytes types he hung out with online. He felt a little excited, a little sharp in the chest—and piss-your-pants scared just looking at them.

They were all bigger than him, but then pretty much everybody was. Wheeler and Gutter were both gym rats, already six feet or more. Dev and Towman weren’t much shorter. In comparison his own mushy five feet seven inches didn’t feel like much. Man, he wished he had Towman’s biceps…

They’d brought beer and weed and were into both, the four of them all spread around his Dad’s den watching the big screen. Anybody looking in would think it was a regular boring Friday night. But it turned out Wheeler wanted an audience. The plan was they were all going to watch Wheeler…have sex with Deanne. Rape her…he was going to rape her and video her while he did. The sharpness in his chest amped up. Now a dozen iced needles. His stomach cramped.

They’d all brought black ski masks; Wheeler’s had a white skull on his. The only guy moving in the room was Dev, and all he was doing was fiddling with the video camera. No one was talking much though, and that made the air heavy and tight.

Kurt held a beer in his hand, but he wasn’t drinking it, not because he didn’t like beer, but because he was afraid to dump anything on a stomach that already felt inside out.

“Hey, asswipe. You keep pigs in this place or what?” Wheeler did that laugh thing he did, kind of a sneer crossed with a choke. “You oughta clean up around here.” He swigged down some beer; his black eyes were flat, like always. It was like they only had one setting—hard watch. Made you feel he was looking at you even if he wasn’t. Between that flat look of his and those weird lip curls he did—the kind where you lift your upper lip to show your teeth—he looked like a mean dog prepped for the fighting pit.

Kurt stood in the den doorway, the beer swinging from his left hand, knives carving up his lungs. He didn’t answer the housekeeping comment, just shrugged.

“Seeing that you’re standing there doing nothing, asshole. Get me another one of these babies.” Wheeler lifted his beer can.

“Me too,” Dev piped. Towman and Gutter nodded.

Kurt, glad for any chance to get out of their faces, said, “Sure.” But before he could scuttle for the kitchen, the house phone rang. He knew it was Deanne and hesitated to pick up. Didn’t want things to…start.

Wheeler jerked his chin at the phone, his order clear: pick up.

Kurt picked up. “Hey,” he said, feeling his stomach harden and twist in on itself.

Turning away from the four sets of eyes trained on him, Kurt tried to make his ears work, get what she was saying. She sounded kind of tired, but she wasn’t backing out; she just wanted him to come earlier, so it wouldn’t be a late night.

“Yeah. Okay. No problem. A half hour.” He hung up the phone, swallowed the medicine ball in his throat and looked at Wheeler—who’d come to stand in his face—and nodded.

Wheeler did a lip curl and looked around the room. “Peckers up, boys. The good times are about to roll. A good fuck for one and all and—” he looked at Dev and the camera, “—a payday right along with it.”

Kurt’s mouth fell open and his vision went dark. “What do you mean…‘one and all’? You’re not sayin’—”

Wheeler set his hard eyes on Kurt’s wavering ones. “I’m sayin’ whatever the fuck I feel like saying.”

“You said just…that only you were going to—”

Wheeler punched him, hard, straight into the gut. A blast of lung air swooshed out, and his eyes shut off. But when he started to crumple to his knees, Gutter laughed and held him up from behind.

Wheeler clapped a hand on his shoulder, his thumb biting deep into the soft flesh below his clavicle. When Kurt winced, he increased the pressure, forcing him to hunker into his hand. “You got a problem with me sharing pussy with my buddies here?”

“No. No, I got no problem. No problem.”

“Didn’t think so,” Wheeler said, letting go of his shoulder. “Christ, you’re a loser. No fucking wonder your mama left you.” He spit, wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Now get that dumb fat ass of yours down there and give the nice lady her coma pill.”

“Why…” The question popped out, a kind of deathbed what-the-fuck question he had to ask. Or a death wish. “Why you all doing this?’

“Because we can, you dumb fuck. And because, thanks to you, there ain’t no one to stop us.”

Deanne hung up the phone. God, how she’d wanted to cancel this movie night with Kurt, but what was the point? The movie would be a distraction, delay what she knew would be a miserable night in a cold bed. Plus, Kurt didn’t need another adult letting him down.

Being let down sucked. Fresh from a firsthand experience, she knew the feeling.

When she clicked off the phone, the silence in her small house swelled big enough to fill a grand mausoleum. She rubbed her arms, went to her back door and stepped onto her covered porch—the whole ten-step journey done on autopilot. Outside, she stared into the wet blustery night. The trees sighed and complained at the wind huffing at their evergreen limbs, ruffling their sensitive fir.

Her lips quivered, and no matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop her chin from quivering along with it.

The rain mist chilled and moistened Deanne’s crumbling mask.

Tears, held since leaving Julius’s library, made their way down her cheeks.

She brushed at them, angry, frustrated and…rebuffed. Her attempt to engage the aloof Julius Zern had failed on all fronts. The evening had not gone well. She brushed at her cheeks again, sniffled and smiled at her own understatement.

Not gone well… But she’d tried. She cared about Julius, and she’d hoped for more. She’d gone to his house to get more—or at least to understand what went wrong—and she’d come up empty on both counts.

She ferreted around her psyche looking for regrets—found none. She’d taken her shot, and she had nothing to be sorry for. Julius had locked himself into living alone by making a decision during the rawest and most painful time in his life. And now he couldn’t—or wouldn’t—get past it.

And while every muscle, every tendon, every heartstring, in her body hurt for him, wished for him…wanted him, it didn’t matter.

She’d tried. And now she had to let him go.

Why did that concept sound so smart wrapped in words, and so calamitous to her spirit wrapped in feelings?

Whatever the reason, it would have to wait for that cold, empty bed she’d be in later tonight—because she spotted Kurt on his way down the dark, rain-slicked hill.

Samba, attending her ever-hungry brood, started to bark.

Heavy traffic churned on both the east and west lanes on Seattle’s I-5. Everybody in a hurry, going and coming, the lights of their cars, trucks, vans and semis slicing through the evening rain, their tires sloshing through pockets of water and hurling it against the vehicles beside them.

Julius, one hand on the armrest, his chin resting on his open palm, studied the passing landmarks; he’d gone by them a thousand times on his way to Sea-Tac: a series of industrial buildings, the occasional gas station and old houses on the hillside.

In two minutes they’d be at the exit leading away from the airport, one that would take him to Deanne.

All he had to do was lean forward and tell the driver to take the exit, turn the car around and head northeast instead of southwest. He needed to apologize, grovel at her feet for being such an unmitigated bastard.

And start something I can’t finish.

The limo shot past the exit, and Julius slouched deeper into the backseat.

They were fifteen minutes from Sea-Tac—thirty-five minutes from Deanne…

He listened to the whine and splash of the tires on the wet concrete. Every rotation taking him farther away. Now forty minutes from Deanne…fifty minutes. A lifetime.

He rubbed his forehead. Torrents of rain channeled down the windshield, the wipers, smacking back and forth at high speed, barely keeping up—their sound a mad metronome ticking away the minutes, hours…the fucking years he’d spent living alone and the years yet to come. And in the background Deanne’s accusations.

“…too busy living other people’s lives to live your own…Afraid you might feel something again…get hurt again.”

No way. She was wrong. It had nothing to do with being scared.

Years ago, he’d made a clearheaded, logical decision about how he wanted to live his life. Fear didn’t factor in. Fear drove people to hire Guardian, Inc., because they were terrified of losing someone they loved. Choosing to avoid the entanglements that led to such fear didn’t make him some kind of emotional cripple; it made him smart.

And alone. So many years now, that being alone was habitual. His partner, Joe, called it his “hermit habit.”

Deanne had come to him, asked for a short see-how-it-goes-with-us effort. He’d wanted to take her in his arms, kiss her senseless, hold her forever. Instead, he’d done what he always did. He’d kissed her off.

His hermit habit had kicked in hard.

Because he’d sensed risk, a fork in the road—glimpsed a path he’d never been tempted to travel—before Deanne. Meeting her changed everything. Brought back memories of the family he’d loved and lost, made him feel again, made him want—made him ache. So he’d tossed her offer aside—to protect his habit. His useless fucking heart.

“Terminal, sir?” the driver asked, turning the limo onto the airport entrance, unaware he’d used a loaded word. Terminal? Fatal? Incurable?

Christ, he hoped not. Julius didn’t answer. Instead, he watched the blur of trees and buildings outside the window. In a couple of hours he’d be on a plane and then on to The City of Light. Paris. The perfect distraction—fine wine, incredible food, beautiful women—exactly what he needed.

Exactly what he didn’t want.

Joe was right, he did think too much.

And he finally figured out why; it was a hell of lot easier than feeling.

CHAPTER 19

“Hi, Kurt,” Deanne said, adding, “And thanks for knocking.” She said the last with a forced smile. Like she was trying hard. When she’d closed the door behind him, her smile disappeared when she looked at him. “You okay?” she asked. “You look a little white. We don’t have to do this tonight, you know.”

“No, I’m good.” Kurt wished he could think of something smart to say, something quick and funny, but his tongue was stuck on the part of his brain trying to organize what he had to do in the next fifteen or so minutes. Nothing funny there—and his stomach hurt like hell.

Samba, barking like a wild dog from inside the laundry room off the kitchen kind of filled up the empty talking space, anyway. That dog hated him. Even dogs knew a loser when they saw one.

“Let me go quiet her down. And just so you know, she barks at anyone who comes around,” she said, like an apology or something. “Because of the puppies, I suppose. So don’t take it personal.” Deanne went into the laundry room where the dogs were. He heard her talking softly to Samba and her pups.

When Samba shut up, Deanne came back into the kitchen, closing the laundry room door behind her. “She’s good now.”

“I, uh, brought the movies,” Kurt said. “Two of them.”

“One’s all I’m up for tonight. I’m a bit tired.”

She looked tired, Kurt thought, more than tired; like she was kind of depressed or something. Her eyes were red, too. Like she’d been crying.

“That’s okay. I just brought two so you could pick the one you liked best.” He held them up to her.

“Okay, let me see—” she cocked her head, “—Now, Voyager with Bette Davis or Back Street with Susan Hayward.” She shook her head, mumbled, “Star-crossed lovers themes. Perfect.”

“Huh?”

“Nothing. But when it comes to chick flicks, I have to say, your mom has good taste.”

“Had good taste.” Kurt shot the words out, then got uncomfortable, but he just didn’t want any good talk about his mom. She was a bitch, like his dad said.

Deanne’s eyes softened in that weird way girls’ eyes do sometimes when they look at kittens or puppies—or freakin’ babies. “Have you heard from her lately?”

“No. She’s with some new guy and his kids.” He glanced down at the floor to hide his embarrassment, the shame at his mother choosing kids other than him. Thinking about it made his ears hot, his teeth lock. “Doesn’t matter. Do you have any pop?”

She looked like she was going to say something, then changed course. “Sure. In the fridge. Why don’t you go get yourself one, while I put—” she looked at the DVDs again, “Now, Voyager in the machine.”

“Okay.” He went to the fridge, the roofies in his pocket a pair of hot, jagged stones. “You want something?”

“There’s some orange juice in there. I’ll have that. Thanks.” Her voice came from the living room, kind of muffled like she had her back to him. Probably messing with the DVD player.

It was the perfect time. All I have to do is stop thinking about it and do it. Then it will be all over, and I won’t ever have to think about it again.

He got the pop and the juice, and set them both on the counter beside the fridge. Everything was going good until he pulled the pills from his pocket. He couldn’t stop looking at them. Fuckin’ paralyzed.

Move your ass, Kurt, move it or lose it—and your dad’s frickin’ house. Get this thing done. You’ve got no choice here. No choice at all…

Kurt took a breath—it went down his throat like napalm—then broke one pill and stirred it into the orange juice. Exactly what they’d told him to do. Dissolves faster that way—Wheeler should know. Fear wound around his neck like a metal cable. A thick vomit soup boiled in his belly. He was going to do this…Had to.

“Movie’s good to go,” Deanne called from the living room.

“Be right there.” He dropped the other pills, stepped on them and kicked their leavings under the table. He might have to drug her, but he wasn’t going to kill her.

Samba barked again and Kurt freaked out of his skin. There was a light tapping on the glass in the kitchen door.

“Who’s that?” Deanne called.

“Nobody. The dog, I think.” The sound of his own voice—how calm it was—surprised him. Considering his brain was a train wreck.

Jesus! Jesus!—and he said the name in prayer. It was them. Wheeler, in front, squashed his nose against the glass, making his face uglier than it already was. Then he pulled back and grinned like the Joker.

Gutter was up next. Quietly opening the door a couple of inches, he shoved his cock through, fully erect. “Ready for makeup,” he said. Kurt heard the others trying to stifle their laughter, and smelled the beer-reeking breeze they sent into the kitchen.

Kurt shook his head violently, put a hand palm out toward the door, telling them to get back. Go away. “Not yet,” he mouthed, holding up the orange juice. With his other hand he made four full-fingered flashes to indicate twenty minutes, and gave them a nothing-I-can-do-about-it shrug.

“What’s going on in there, Kurt?”

“Nothin’,” he said over his shoulder. “I’m, uh, just getting a glass, is all.”

Wheeler gave him the finger, used his fingers to sign fifteen minutes and made a cutting motion across his throat before the four of them disappeared into the darkness behind the window.

Kurt tried to stop shivering, but he was so damn scared he trickled in his pants. Thinking he might puke again, he went to the sink and hung his head over it. For a long time all he did was breathe.

Then his brain exploded.

“No. No. No!” he said to the sink drain, words which meant nothing and everything. Samba barked and growled from inside the laundry room.

“Kurt? Are you okay?” It was Deanne, leaning with her butt against the counter, looking at him as if he had a dozen heads.

The phone that sat on the counter between them rang like a burglar alarm. At least to Kurt. Deanne took her worried gaze off him long enough read the call display.

Guardian, Inc.

And while her worried gaze morphed to some woman-look he couldn’t read, Kurt snatched up the phone.

“You’ve got to come here. You’ve got to come here right now.…No…. Not hurt…yet…. No time. You gotta come. Just come for fuck’s sake! And hurry!”

Kurt slammed the phone down and looked at Deanne, who pretty much looked as if she’d been freeze-dried. And that was okay, because he didn’t want to talk anyway. Instead, he ran to the back door and flipped the lock on and opened the door to Samba Land.

Samba stuck her head out—and wonder of wonders—didn’t growl at him.

Deanne stared at Kurt and looked down at Samba, who’d left her puppies and trotted over to sit by his feet.

Unless she was losing the last of whatever marbles she had, Kurt had just talked to Julius and told him to come here. Fast. As if there were some kind of emergency. “What’s going on? Why did you tell Julius to come here? Not only is that not your decision to make, I don’t want him here.” Liar, liar, pants on fire.

Instead of answering, Kurt pulled her to the side of the kitchen farthest from the door. His Adam’s apple was bobbling like it was going to pop right out. “I can’t tell you, but you’ve got to like lock yourself in somewhere or something. Is there anywhere like that in the house?

“No.” Something in his face made her nape prickle. “For God’s sake, Kurt, what’s this about?”

He started to cry. “It’s all my fault. I never should have—”

He didn’t finish before her back door splintered open and four big men in ski masks strode into her house.

Julius checked his watch, leaned forward and said to the cabbie, “Shave another ten minutes and there’s two hundred bucks in it for you.”

“You got it.” The cab picked up speed.

He’d be there in less than fifteen minutes. What the hell was going on at Deanne’s place? If that Kurt kid had hurt her he’d…

He had no idea what he’d do, but it’d carry a life sentence.

Deanne’s stomach reeled and tilted along with her stunned brain, a brain frantic to assimilate what was happening. She pressed her back against the wall and stared, told herself to drag air into her frozen lungs. Kurt stood beside her like a stone statue.

The four masked men had taken up positions around the kitchen. They’d looked around, but so far that’s all they’d done; it was as if they hadn’t planned any next step. Kurt, his breath sounding asthmatic in the eerily quiet room, began a slow slide to the floor.

One of the men, the only one who had a skull face on his ski mask, used a booted foot to kick a chair toward Kurt. “Sit down before you fall down, you dumb fuck. We’ll get to you. Later.”

As the chair skittered across the floor, Samba lunged and sank her teeth into the skull-man’s boot. He shook her off, kicked her toward a corner. Samba yelped, fell back and went down on her haunches at Deanne’s feet, the stance of a sheepdog watching the flock, fully alert, fully engaged—and not about to make a stupid move. Skull-man looked at Samba, tilted his head and spoke to the dog. “Oh, yeah. I remember you, bitch,” he said. “And I’ll bet you remember me.” He paused. “Got some nice little babies now, huh? Gotta have me a look at those.”

He faced her then, his eyes as dark as his mask, eyes that would be impossible to see if they didn’t catch some glitter from the overhead kitchen light. “Where are they?”

Her mouth thawed enough to allow speech, but she wasn’t about to answer his question. “Who are you?” she said. “And what do you want?”

“I think I hear them in there,” he said, as if she hadn’t spoken. He jerked his head toward the laundry room. “Get ’em, Towman. Put ’em in my truck.”

“Are you crazy?” Deanne’s voice rose, held an edge of hysteria. Her puppies. Samba’s babies. This was insane. And not going to happen.

One of the men took a step toward the laundry room.

Deanne didn’t stop, didn’t think; she got in front of him and blocked the half-open door. “You’re not touching those pups.”

“Yeah, right.” He grabbed her shoulders, twisted his body and tossed her behind him as if she were a sack of laundry.

Then Samba was on him, snapping at his calves, tearing at his ankles and finally latching on to his thigh—her teeth in deep and hard.

“Ow. Get this bitch offa me!” He spun and twirled, tried to shake her off, but Samba hung on so ferociously she’d have made a pit bull proud. Blood coursed down the side of the man’s jeans.

Skullface slammed the dog on the side of the head—with a gun.

Samba hit the floor with a dull thud, lifted her head once, whined and went down. The skull pointed the gun at her.

“No!” Deanne screamed and dropped to Samba’s side, shielded her.

Skullface grabbed her arm, yanked her to her feet and pressed the gun against her temple. “You don’t want me messin’ with your dog? Then how about we go straight to the main event.” With that he dragged her toward the living room.

Cold and sharp against her head, the gun didn’t need to fire to shoot panic into her brain, fragment her thoughts. When she stumbled, he tightened his grip on her arm, his fingernails digging into her flesh, and yanked her forward.

Fight the fear. Always fight the fear. No one can control you if you don’t agree to it.

“Don’t, Wheeler. Don’t.” Kurt yelled. “Let her go. Burn my house. Burn anything you want. Cut me. Beat the shit out of me, but leave her alone.” He spun to face one of the smaller guys. “Dev, you gotta stop him. You have to.”

The man he talked to held a video camera; he said nothing.

“Shut up, asswipe,” the one he’d called Wheeler said. “None of this would have happened if you’d done what you were fuckin’ s’posed to do.”

Deanne dully registered that Kurt knew who these men were—and they knew him. She didn’t have any more time to process before the skull man tossed her onto the sofa. When she made to get up, he hit her so hard across the face, her breath tanked.

“Jesus, Wheeler.” the cameraman said. “You didn’t have to do that.”

“Shut the fuck up,” he said. “Towman, you get those pups and put ’em in the truck like I said.”

The one called Towman, pressing his hand over his bleeding leg, headed for the kitchen.

Oh, God. Samba’s babies…

“And you—” he waved the gun at the camera holder as if it were a casual open hand rather than one filled with a deadly weapon, “—you got that camera ready?”

“Why not leave the dogs, Wheeler. I mean—”

“Did I ask you for a fuckin’ opinion?”

“No, but—”

“I asked if the camera’s ready. Right?”

“Right.”

Wheeler waved the gun again. “And your answer is?”

The boy called Dev said, “It’s, uh, ready, Wheeler. Locked and loaded.”

“Just like this.” Skullface grabbed his crotch, and for the first time she realized his voice was young, fat with arrogance. He was a boy, she thought. They were all boys. Ugly, mean and dangerous boys.

Wheeler shoved the coffee table away from the sofa, stood directly in front of her. He dangled the gun at his side, his voice and stance full of swagger—and menace.

“Now,” he said to Deanne. “Let’s get this party started—take it off, babe. Take it all off.”

CHAPTER 20

One of the masked creatures still in the room laughed, his chuckle vaguely nervous. The other one, holding the camera, stood mute as stone.

“Oh, shit. Oh, God.” Kurt put his face in his hands, closed his eyes and started to rock.

Even Deanne’s shell-shocked brain got the skull’s meaning and his intent. Rape. He was going to rape her. Her blood iced up in her veins. She had to think…to delay. Figure a way out. Stay calm. “What did you say?” She played the dumb card. Time, I need time.

“You heard me. You and me are going to do the dirty, have ourselves a real fuck fest—and my, uh, pal here is going to video us for your scrapbook.” He laughed low in his throat. “And maybe a Web site or two…or a thousand. And ya know?” He glanced at the boys leaning against the same white wall that until this afternoon had hosted Clancy’s paintings. “I think it’ll be better without the roofies.” He turned back to her. “More lively, huh?” He undid his pants and pulled down his zipper.

“You want lively. I’ll give you lively.” With the perfect target centered between his macho-spread legs, she kicked his balls to his butt and beyond. Before he had a chance to recover, she head-butted his stomach.

Kurt took the cue and launched himself low, grabbed Wheeler by the knees and brought him down. Deanne heard the crack of his head on the hardwood floor. She and Kurt fell on him in a squirm of arms and legs.

But their victory was fleeting…

Someone pulled her hair so hard, she felt her scalp lift. Still holding her by the hair, he threw her against the coffee table. Her cheek slammed into its edge. “Dumb bitch!”

“Gutter, don’t. Let her go. Let’s get out of here.” It was the boy with the camera.

A voice boomed from behind her. “Stay where you are. All of you.” The words hit the room like an ice storm, freezing everyone in place.

Julius. Deanne nearly fainted with relief; instead, her knees buckled in fear. “Julius, the gun!” With her hair still held by Gutter all she could do was point.

Julius rounded the coffee table, just as Wheeler shoved Kurt off him and tried to get up. Not fast enough. Julius planted a foot on his wrist. Bending down, he lifted the gun from his hand, then looked around the room. His foot still on Wheeler’s wrist, he said, “All of you, stay put. You—” his cold eyes leveled on the boy holding her hair, “—let her go. Now.” His voice was hard and mean. And big as the boys were, Julius was bigger. And more threatening.

Gutter let go.

“And you, you no-good piece of shit—” Julius grabbed Wheeler by his belt and hauled him to his feet, “—consider yourself lucky I don’t take an hour or so and beat the sick crap out of you.”

Still holding a dazed Wheeler, Julius handed Deanne the gun, and for the first time their gazes met. His softened. “Try not to shoot them before the cops get here, okay?” he said in a voice lower and more gravelly than ever. Then he stared down Gutter and Dev. “Take off the masks. Lie facedown on the floor—and stay there.”

They went to ground with the speed of dropped sandbags.

“Fuck you!” Wheeler spun and threw a punch.

Julius evaded the punch with the ease of trained boxer, grabbed Wheeler’s fist and twisted his arm high behind his back. “You won’t have any more luck with me than you did the woman, you sick asshole. Now get on the fucking floor.” When he was on his stomach, Julius planted his knee on his back—none too gently—and said to her, “Samba have a leash?”

Her heart hammered, then contracted painfully. Samba was dead. “By the back door,” she managed to mumble.

“Get it.” He looked up, said to Kurt, “And you. Call 9-1-1.”

Deanne retrieved Samba’s leash. “There’s another boy,” she said, pressing one hand to her bleeding cheek—the slam against the coffee table had cut her—and holding out the leash to him with the other. “He might still be outside.” She started to cry. “He took Samba’s pups, Julius. Samba’s dead.” Nerves. Fear. And her own vulnerability ganged up on her fragile courage. She trembled. They’d killed Samba. They were going to rape her. She hugged herself, worked to stop the quaking, the cold quivers.

Julius, ignoring Wheeler’s string of curses, secured his hands behind his back with the leash in less time than it took to tie a shoelace. He immediately got to his feet, stood in front of her and lifted her chin so their gazes met. “Listen to me. Samba’s not dead. The vet should see her, but she’s fine. And the other boy? He’s got a mouth full of his own mask, and he’s tied to the rail on your back porch—with a very expensive silk tie. The pups are okay. He didn’t get off the porch with them. You got all that?” He took his hand from her chin, lowered his head and watched her face.

She swallowed, took in a heavy breath and nodded.

“And now that you know everything’s all right—” he took her face in his hands and kissed her forehead, “—can I hold you for a while?” He touched her damaged cheek. “Then we’ll clean this up. Okay?”

She nodded again, discovering it was difficult to talk with a heart in your mouth.

When his arms were around her, his hands smoothing her hair, his voice low and soft in her ear, and even though she knew his attention was still fixed on the figures on the floor, she decided it would be “okay” to stay right here forever.

In the distance she heard the police sirens; in the room she heard Kurt sobbing.

CHAPTER 21

The squad cars’ headlights lit Deanne’s front porch to high-noon bright, and their red flashing beacons cut through the darkness of the surrounding fields like flaming propellers. Both cars had their motors running. Both cars were loaded with handcuffed boys. And both cars were—finally—ready to leave. The cops were good guys, good enough that one of them, currently leaning against his cruiser having a smoke, allowed Julius an extra moment with Kurt Minton.

Julius put his hand on the kid’s shoulder. “You’ve got to go with them. And your best bet is to tell them everything you’ve done and everything you know. There’s no free ride on this.”

“I know.” The kid’s face was gray, streaked with tears. In the past half hour he’d lost five years of his life, looked more a sorry-assed eleven-year-old than sixteen.

“The police got hold of your dad on that number you gave them. He’ll be here tomorrow at the latest. When he gets here I’ll talk to him, explain things the best I can, but that’s not letting you off the hook to do the same.”

“Yeah.” He swiped a hand under his nose. “I’m just glad it’s over, and that nothing…really bad happened.”

Amen… “Depends what you call bad. Me. I’d say it was damn bad. You let things slide a long way wrong before you started making them right.”

He nodded, swallowed. “You think she’ll ever, you know, forgive me?”

Julius had no doubt she would, but said, “Take some time maybe. Not many women take kindly to guys who plan to drug and rape them.”

“But I—” He stopped. “Yeah,” he said again, if possible looking even more miserable.

“Come on, Minton. Let’s go.” The cop tossed his cigarette and stood away from the car. Julius walked the few steps with Kurt, stood by while the officer clapped a hand on Kurt’s head and guided him into the squad car.

Julius stood on the porch until the lights were gone and the night was dark again. He wanted to make sense of his feelings, and there was a horde of them, ganging up on his logical brain like armed mercenaries. But one feeling took point position, constricting his chest and making his gut ache. A kind of emotional panic, a sensation he’d never felt before. Kurt wasn’t the only one who worried about being forgiven. Julius had fucked up big-time, brought asshole-ism to epic new heights. He didn’t deserve Deanne’s forgiveness any more than Kurt did, but he was damn well going to ask for it.

He went back into the house. For the first time since he’d burst through her door a couple of hours ago, they’d be alone. The issue between them no longer clouded by chaos.

Deanne sat on the floor in the laundry room, ankles crossed, hands in her lap, gazing at Samba and her puppies. She sat as still as the lotus flower her position mimicked, her expression trancelike, her skin as pale as the bandage covering the cut on her bruised cheek.

He leaned against the wall. “How are you doing?”

“I’m okay. Feel kind of weird…like I’ve just been dropped off a spaceship onto a new planet.” She didn’t shift her gaze from the pups. “I don’t suppose that makes much sense.”

“It doesn’t have to.”

“I’m just so glad Samba and her babies are okay.” The dog rested quietly, eyes open, while her brood fed.

“Yeah.” He had to hand it to the vet; he’d been there within a half hour of being called, given Samba a good look over, shaved her wound, put some salve on it and—after reminding the police about the rash of dogs that had been deliberately hurt in the area—left as quickly as he’d come.

Still without looking up at him, she said, “I’m glad you came, Julius. Thank you for that. I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t.” Her words were vaguely formal, as though carefully chosen not to impart any deeper meaning.

“Seemed to me you and Kurt were doing okay.”

“You know we weren’t. It was only a matter of time before they—” For the first time she met his eyes.

“Don’t.” He offered her a hand, and she took it, rising easily to her feet. He rested his palm on the soft curve where her throat met her shoulder, caressed her still-tight muscles with his thumb. “Don’t go there. It’s over.”

She took a breath, nodded. “You’re right.” She stepped away from his touch. For a moment they stood in silence. “I’m just…sorry you found yourself so…involved.” Before he could reply, she gestured toward Samba. “I think we should leave them be, don’t you?”

Julius felt the cut of her distancing. It bled—a thick, blinding red, running through his tight gut and currently unavailable brain. Maybe like she’d bled when she’d come to him and asked that they “take a chance” on each other—and he’d blown her off, using every defense in his idiot male arsenal. He’d been sarcastic, cruel, cold…and—yeah—cowardly.

He’d been a prick.

When she went to step past him to go to the kitchen, his reflexes kicked in. He gripped her by the shoulders. “Deanne, I—”

She fluttered a hand. “It’s my turn to say don’t, Julius.”

“You have no idea what I was going to say.”

“You were going to apologize…for being who you are. What you are.” She pulled from his grasp. “No one should ever do that.”

“Even when they’re certified jerks? When they’ve made the biggest mistake of their lives?”

“Even then.” She looked at the open doorway leading to the kitchen, then at his hands on her upper arms. “Do you mind?”

He let her go, and she went into the kitchen, faced him. “Look, what happened here tonight was horrible, emotional and scary. Now that it’s over, it’s made you want to be…kind in some way. I understand that, but it’s not the time—”

“It’s the perfect time.” He closed the few feet between them and stood in front of her. Not touching her, because if she pulled away from him again, his heart would crack.

“I don’t want—” She looked down, as if she couldn’t bear to look him in the eye.

He didn’t know what killed him more, her physical distancing or her emotional detachment. He hated it all, deserved it all. “You don’t want a meaningless apology. I get that. And I don’t have one to give. I made a mistake—and yes, what happened tonight pointed that out big-time. But I was on my way here before Kurt called and—”

Her head snapped up, and her gaze locked on his. “You were?”

“I was, and thank God, because if I hadn’t been, I’d have been too late.”

“You were on your way to France. A…job.”

“I was.” He couldn’t help himself, he brushed his knuckles across her undamaged cheek. “Then I wasn’t. I called someone to cover for me.” Thank God for Galen Byrne, a man who had even less of a life than he did.

“Why?”

She wasn’t making this easy, and she was right not to. “I couldn’t leave without making things right.” Needing space, needing to get the words out, he took a couple of steps away from her. “The thing is, I said all the wrong things to you. And I’ll be honest, I’d said it all before—” he took a breath, “—to other women. But with you the words…weren’t right. For the first time, they felt like lies.”

“You’re making my head spin.”

“Then I’ll try again. I couldn’t get on that plane, because it would take me away from you. I knew that if I walked through that airport security gate, I’d be walking away from the best thing that’s ever happened to me.” He took a breath. “I came back because I want what I hope to God you still want—the chance to see where what’s between us will lead.”

“Damn it, Julius.” For a moment she clenched her eyes shut.

He put his hand on his nape, held it there, frowning on the outside and in, determined to go on, say the right things. “I don’t know much about love—don’t even know if I’m capable of it. I know I had it for my father, my mother and Amanda. And I sure as hell knew the black hole it left when they were gone. Since then…” He stopped, decided to leave the past behind, get to where he wanted to be. “The thing is, you matter to me. You’re important to me—like nothing’s been important in a very long time.” Julius felt exposed, as if he were standing in Times Square naked, as if he were standing on a high cliff on a raw, windy day, as if he were a newborn on a church doorstep. “I want to take that chance you talked about, and I want to take it with you. I want you, Deanne. In my bed, in my life—and in my heart.”

Deanne, who hadn’t moved during what Julius knew was the longest speech of his life, now put a hand to her mouth.

Christ, if she cried, he was a dead man. “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

She opened her eyes—and yes, there was a glaze of tears.

“Oh, yes, I’m definitely okay.” She moved to stand in front of him and caressed his cheek, a brief brush of her fingertips that shot heat to his knees. Then she wrapped her arms around his waist and put her ear to his thrumming heart, and didn’t say another word.

“Deanne?”

“Hmm?”

“You’re not…saying anything.”

“What do you want me to say?”

“That you forgive me for being a fool would be a start.”

Her head nodded against his chest. “Done.”

“And that you’re good with everything I said.”

She pulled away, looked up at him. “I’m in your arms, aren’t I?” She smiled—her first of the night—and it entered him sharp and warm. “Sometimes actions speak louder than words, right?”

He smiled back, thought about taking some action of his own. “I think I love you.” The words slid out of him like hope on honey, instinctive, irrational. True.

“Damn.” She sighed, took his hand and towed him toward action central—her bedroom. “Then I still have work to do.”

He didn’t resist but he did ask, “Why’s that?”

“Because that I think part has got to go.”

At just before six the following morning, Deanne eased the kitchen door closed behind her and Samba. The two of them walked the grassy path that led to the lake. Neither of them could be gone long; Samba because of her pups, and Deanne because of the man in her bed—she grinned like the insanely happy person she was—who didn’t know she was gone.

At the lake’s edge, she shielded her eyes and looked to where the sun was showing its first light over the trees at the other end of the lake.

She might not have said much last night, but she had something to say this morning. Because it was morning when gratitude showed best.

Gratitude…for her new start in Seattle, for finding Samba, for her new career path and, after her dark time with depression, her new, much lighter spirit.

Above all she was grateful for Julius…mind, body and spirit.

She loved him—and being in love was a gift beyond imagining.

She wanted to shout about it where the words would rise beyond the ceiling of her little house.

Looking at Samba, who despite her shaved head managed to look both calm and alert, as usual, she said, “You ready, girl?”

Samba’s head cocked.

“Cover your ears then.”

And she shouted, “Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!”

About the Author

I live on Vancouver Island in the moody, green and rain-washed Pacific Northwest—a short ferry ride from two great cities: Seattle and Vancouver. And because I’m just a few steps from the ocean, when I’m seriously story challenged I can often be found walking the beach, communing with the stunning and multitalented Mother Nature. (Make that begging for inspiration!) If that doesn’t work, a few minutes thinking about the quirks and foibles of human nature usually does.

I believe people are complex, vulnerable and endlessly fascinating—never more so than when they fall in love. Which is why I write romance.

On a personal note, I love my husband and family, my Rhodesian ridgeback, writing stories, my wonderful readers and laughter wherever and whenever I can find it.

You can read more about me at www.ecsheedy.com.

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ISBN: 978-1-4268-9023-9

Copyright © 2010 by EC Sheedy

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