Twelve military heroes.

Twelve indomitable heroines.

One UNIFORMLY HOT! miniseries.

Don’t miss a story in Harlequin Blaze’s 12-book continuity series, featuring irresistible soldiers from all branches of the armed forces.

Now serving—those ready and able heroes of the U.S. Navy…

HIGHLY CHARGED!
by Joanne Rock
April 2011

HIGH STAKES SEDUCTION
by Lori Wilde
May 2011

TERMS OF SURRENDER
by Leslie Kelly
June 2011

Uniformly Hot!
The Few. The Proud. The Sexy as Hell.

Available wherever Harlequin books are sold.

Dear Reader,

Back in my graduate school days, I studied literature and really enjoyed it. But sometimes the reading was dense and difficult, so I read romance in between the texts on critical theory to mix things up a bit! When it came time to write a Master’s thesis, I thought it would be fun if I could combine some of the scholarly needs of the paper with a racy topic that would keep me engaged at the same time. Enter French diarist and erotica writer Anaïs Nin, a brilliant writer and a true character in her own right. I penned a thesis on this intriguing, groundbreaking writer and was sucked right into the drama of her life.

Fast forward a decade and a half and I found myself writing about a literature professor (hmm…). Wouldn’t it be fun to have this character inspired by a diarist and erotica author, too? My heroine, Nikki Thornton, is a fun combination of academic and sensualist. Only, what she really needed was to get in touch with her sensual side. Luckily, Brad Riddock, an explosives expert on leave is more than willing to take on the job.

It turned out to be a highly charged tale! Please drop by my website http://joannerock.com this month to enter a contest for a gift card to the bookseller of your choice and a few books to get you inspired!

Happy reading,

Joanne Rock

Joanne Rock

HIGHLY CHARGED!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Three-time RITA® Award nominee Joanne Rock is the author of more than fifty books for a variety of Harlequin series. She has been an RT Book Reviews Career Achievement Nominee and multiple Reviewer’s Choice finalist. In addition to her own writing, Joanne teaches writing, film and fiction at Plattsburgh State University in New York. The proud mother of three smart, athletic sons (not that she’s biased), she spends a great deal of time on the sidelines or on the bleachers, cheering them on. Learn more about Joanne’s life and writing at her website http://joannerock.com or find out what she’s working on today by friending her on Facebook!

Books by Joanne Rock

HARLEQUIN BLAZE

171—SILK CONFESSIONS

182—HIS WICKED WAYS

240—UP ALL NIGHT

256—HIDDEN OBSESSION

305—DON’T LOOK BACK

311—JUST ONE LOOK

363—A BLAZING LITTLE CHRISTMAS

“His for the Holidays”

381—GETTING LUCKY

395—UP CLOSE AND PERSONAL

450—SHE THINKS HER EX IS SEXY…

457—ALWAYS READY

486—SLIDING INTO HOME

519—MANHUNTING

“The Takedown”

534—THE CAPTIVE

560—DOUBLE PLAY

582—UNDER WRAPS

HARLEQUIN HISTORICAL

749—THE BETROTHAL

“Highland Handfast”

758—MY LADY’S FAVOR

769—THE LAIRD’S LADY

812—THE KNIGHT’S COURTSHIP

890—A KNIGHT MOST WICKED

942—THE KNIGHT’S RETURN

To my sister-in-law, Karen C. Rock, who made brainstorming this story so much fun. I appreciate your “year-in, year-out” enthusiasm that helps me stay excited about whatever I happen to be working on at the moment. Our visits never fail to generate ideas and new creative energy. Thank you for sharing your storytelling wisdom!

Contents

Prologue

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

Epilogue

Prologue

“CRIMINY!” NIKKI THORNTON punctured her thumb on a thorn from a locust tree branch in her haste to clean up the yard.

A literature professor who was completely out of her element in the landscaping department, Nikki balanced on a stepladder at the edge of her recently inherited property, a home that had belonged to her friend and mentor, Chloe Lissander.

“Of all the luck,” Nikki muttered, tugging off her work gloves to assess the damage. She’d been trimming low-hanging branches in a cleanup of the property before the local historical society came in to assess its potential as a historical site. She could not afford to screw up her chance to honor the memory of the only person who’d ever really been there for her.

Chloe Lissander had been a noted author who helped spur the feminist movement with her groundbreaking stories of female sexual empowerment. Nikki had been drawn to the literature’s gutsy strength—and more than a little intrigued by the erotic factor. When she’d discovered five years ago that the author lived in close proximity to the university where Nikki was working on her Ph.D., she had wasted no time interviewing her about her writing.

That interview had led to a life-changing friendship with a woman who’d been an inspiration on so many levels. Chloe had become like family to her since Nikki’s parents had never been all that interested in the role. Even so, no one had been more blown away than Nikki when Chloe had followed through on her promise to leave her rural Virgina Beach property to Nicole upon Chloe’s death six months before.

Chloe’s relatives were still in an uproar over it. And as much as Nikki hated to deprive them of the charming farmhouse and surrounding property, she could not ignore Chloe’s wishes for the place that had been falling into disrepair for decades. Chloe had entrusted Nikki to live in her childhood home and bring it back to the way it had been in her youth. Nikki had grieved for the loss of her friend for months while Chloe’s relatives fought over the will. But now, the probate had been cleared and Nikki had every intention of making Chloe’s final wishes for her old home come true.

As soon as she got some antibiotic for the thorn injury.

Setting aside her clippers, Nikki figured the wound was a sign she should quit her work for the day. Tomorrow would come soon enough and she had a to-do list a mile long to get the home ready for the historical society. She was about to climb down her stepladder when a light in a window of the small house next door caught her eye.

Was it dark out already?

She blinked in surprise at how well she could see into the house—the only other home visible from her property. There were no curtains on the windows, just a set of blinds still open. She hadn’t gotten a chance to say hello to the neighbor since she knew from Chloe that the lone resident was a military guy who was gone most of the time.

Although…he certainly wasn’t away right now. Because there he was in all his buff glory, standing in the window half-naked.

Her mouth went dry at the sight. Her stinging thumb quit hurting.

Taut muscle everywhere. Bronzed skin like a man who’d spent long days in the sun even though it was only April. His hair was dark and slick against his head like he’d just emerged from the shower, a fact underscored by the fact that he had a towel slung low around his hips.

Really low. As in, follow-the-dark-line-of-hair-southof-his-navel type low. He stalked over to the middle of the sparsely furnished space—a living room, she thought—and retrieved a remote for a big-screen television that he flipped on with a press of his thumb. When he turned to chuck the remote back on a crate that served as a coffee table, Nikki noticed one leg was swathed in gauze up to his knee. An injury of some kind—far worse than the lame hole in her thumb.

Her heart sped at the sight of him. She hadn’t meant to spy on him, but she could hardly look away now. A hockey game filled the screen behind him, but the V of his back made for more compelling entertainment than anything carried by a major network.

In a word—yum. Despite a formidable command of the English language she could find nothing else that summed it up so perfectly.

As she stood there, the towel-clad stud turned to face her. Laser-blue eyes flashed on her and for a moment, she was terrified he’d caught her leering at him. Crouching, she tried to hide herself in the overgrown foliage she’d been trimming.

But then he reached for the cord on the wooden blinds at the window and yanked it sideways, slowly disappearing behind the slats. The view went dark, leaving Nikki breathless and buzzing with a physical hum that could only mean one thing.

G.I. Joe had turned her on more in a ten-second peep show than most of the guys she’d gone out with in her spotty dating history. And damn, but that felt much too shallow of her. For a well-educated woman, she sure had gotten carried away by the sight of great abs. A powerful set of shoulders. Then there’d been that intriguing landscape the towel had hidden when he’d turned toward her….

Not that she had any business thinking about that. Chastising herself for ogling an unsuspecting stranger, Nikki climbed down the ladder and wondered what Chloe would have said if she could have seen her just now.

Screw the yard work, honey, go knock on his door!

Her friend’s voice in her head was so vivid that Nikki had to laugh out loud. Unfortunately, she’d never been as sexually adventurous as Chloe Lissander, whose infamous love life had filled several diaries and inspired her fictionalized erotica. Maybe one day. After she’d gotten the house classified as a historical site, fended off Chloe’s relatives and found the two missing diaries so Chloe’s publishers could release the full set in their original, uncensored form.

Her fantasies about G.I. Joe would have to wait. Although now that she knew about the view from under the locust tree, Nikki wasn’t entirely sure she’d be able to resist the temptation to trim the branches as frequently as possible. Because although she hadn’t reached a point in life where she was comfortable being less academic and more sensual, a girl could always dream….

1

Five days later

NAVY LIEUTENANT BRAD RIDDOCK stared at the red numbers counting down his last seconds on the explosive device in front of him. Constructed with deceptive simplicity, the bomb had only a handful of wires. A modest amount of firepower that would take out a building or two instead of a whole city block.

But looks were deceiving. The wires passed through a fragile glass casing flecked with white powder on the inside. Anthrax? Worse? Someone had gotten inventive to discourage tampering.

Brad knew how to disarm it. But with seconds ticking by…

Four, three.

He didn’t have enough time.

Two…

Sweat rolled down his back as he thought about all he would lose.

One.

Bang!

Brad jerked upright, gasping. His heart knocked the hell out of his chest; covers tangled around his bare legs like seaweed. The injury on his left calf stung from his sweat.

The soft sounds of a suburban weekend just outside of Virginia Beach greeted his ears. No explosions. No screams from the wounded or dying. Just a few bird calls and the occasional dog bark.

Taking deep breaths to dislodge the cold grip of panic at his throat, Brad wondered why the navy recruiters never warned you that time overseas would make you as jumpy as a cat in a room full of rocking chairs.

Bang!

The second time the crash sounded, he could differentiate the sound from the explosion in his recurring dream. He was home in his own bed, strung out from lack of sleep but still in one piece. And, thankfully, he would remain that way for at least the next two weeks before he shipped out again. Explosions were unlikely in the backyard of a neighborhood so rural it bordered farm country.

“What the hell?” Gladly giving up on sleep after the replay of a nightmare he was already intimately familiar with, Brad reached for a T-shirt at the end of his bed and shrugged it on before grabbing a toothbrush.

Through the crack in his blinds, he could see an obnoxious amount of daylight filtering through as he rinsed and spat. He’d been sleeping so fitfully lately he didn’t know if that meant it was past dawn or past noon.

Kicking over a stack of unread newspapers, Brad nearly stepped on a bristly haired stray mutt that had taken up residence with him since he’d been back in town. Scruffing the mutt’s head before he pulled on his jeans, Brad strained to hear what was going on outside. A motor thrummed nearby. A road crew at work, maybe?

Bang! Bang!

The thumping was loud and metallic and he ambled onto his lawn to check it out. His yard was quiet—a couple of bent camp chairs pulled up to a fire pit where he’d had a beer with one of his buddies the night before. A bowl he’d bought for the mutt even though he had no business feeding a stray since he wouldn’t be around to take care of it next month.

But through the hedges, he could see activity in the neighbor’s yard.

He’d heard the woman next door—an eccentric writer who was more wild and crazy at eighty-five than he’d ever been—had died a couple of months ago while he was overseas. Which begged the question, who was the new resident?

Yanking a beer from the cooler that still rested near the fire pit, he took a quick drink—hair of the dog and all that—and then dunked his face in the half-melted ice. Hoo-yah.

Skin stinging, he left the beer on a flat rock and strode through the hedge line for a better look at what was going on at the neighbor’s place. With two more weeks’ mandatory leave, thanks to the navy’s resident headshrinkers, Brad had nothing to do but play Good Samaritan anyhow. Dreaming more ways to blow himself up didn’t hold much appeal.

And—wow.

The sleek brunette astride a bright red International Harvester tractor was well worth the trip. Brad leaned against the trunk of an old dogwood tree to survey the scene as the woman he didn’t recognize steered the old model-A toward a dilapidated metal storage shed that appeared to be bent in half as if it was already begging for mercy. Lowering a plow that had no business playing demolition derby with a garden shed, the brunette kept her eye on the target as she rammed the big, silver attachment into the remnants of the structure.

Bang!

The woman knocked it right off its foundation, a grin of triumph kicking up one side of her lips. On the patio behind her, a caged blue jay squawked noisily while a chipmunk behind another set of bars squeaked anxiously. Her idea of pets? Clearly, she was an unusual sort of woman.

Endlessly long legs showcased by denim cut-offs made him linger over the view for a moment more. He’d never seen a plain white tank top worn so well. A sheen of sweat trickled a path between her breasts, disappearing under the shirt. Olive skin hinted at Mediterranean or Hispanic ethnicity that didn’t quite follow through in her moss green eyes. A bright turquoise bracelet on her wrist and yellow flip flops on her feet suggested she didn’t operate heavy equipment often, although that observation was also supported by the fact that she was using a farm plow as a wrecking ball.

And—by the way she seemed to be picking up the dented building—a forklift, as well.

He sauntered closer, determined to find out who she was and if a call to the cops was in order. But then, as she loaded the mangled shed into the plow bucket where it rattled precariously, he thought the better of it. After only a brief battle with the stick shift, she got the tractor into Reverse and stepped on the gas, narrowly missing a grass-munching rabbit. She squealed and braked hard, almost losing her cargo to avoid the furry beast who dove into the cover of trees. Clearly distressed, the woman took a minute to catch her breath before she let off on the brake and sped across the lawn toward an industrial-size Dumpster. She overshot the mark, flying past it with a muttered curse before inching backward, then depositing the twisted gray metal into the bin.

“Take that!” the woman shouted as the shriek of scraping metal echoed on the warm morning breeze. Wiping her hands together with a flourish, she jammed one foot on the clutch and the other on the brake before shutting off the ignition.

And turned surprised green eyes his way.

Her cheeks were flushed from her battle with the shed, but he could have sworn they gained a little more color as she spotted him.

“Can I help you?” Her chin lifted while the caged bird and chipmunk continued to chirp.

Interesting. She headed toward him with a hip-rolling, easy stride that kept his attention a bit longer than was polite.

It had been quite a while since he’d noticed a woman to this degree. Did that mean his enforced downtime was working since he could apparently think about something besides an IED-defusion gone wrong?

“Lieutenant Riddock,” his shrink had told him, “you need to relinquish the obsession with one moment in time you can’t ever change…”

Or did this sudden interest in a stranger’s walk mean he’d really fallen off the deep end since the female to capture his attention took an odd sort of glee in destroying things?

He cleared his throat as he yanked his gaze up from her thighs.

“I live next door.” He nodded toward the only other house in a ten-acre radius. “Just thought I’d see who was playing demolition derby on a vacant residence.”

“It’s not vacant anymore.” The yellow flip-flops quit their slap, slap, slap pace as she stopped a few feet away. Forgotten headphones dangled around her neck, the muted tunes classical sounding. “I inherited the house and I’m starting renovations today.”

“You call that renovating?” Amused, he peered meaningfully at the exposed shed foundation. “Seems to me you’re not going to have anything left by the time you’re finished.”

“A tacky metal shed circa 1970 was only junking up a turn-of-the-century farmhouse.” She folded her arms. “I’m going to strip down some of the add-ons like the detached garage and that old chicken coop in back. I’m trying to have the place declared a historical site and to do that, it needs to be in a form that’s closer to its original condition.”

His brain was still stuck on the phrase I’m going to strip down even though that sentence hadn’t taken the direction he had hoped. With an effort, he tried to recall what else she’d said.

“You’re one of the relatives?” He recalled old Ms. Lissander had dismissed all her extended family as greedy vultures and wondered where the hot brunette fell in the spectrum. If she was greedy in a hedonistic way he could be totally on board with that. The day was looking up.

Then again, when you awakened to nightmares about blowing up all your friends, that left a lot of room for improvement.

“I’m a student of her writing, actually. I teach literature at Old Dominion University. Nicole Thornton.” She extended her right hand, the silver and turquoise bracelet catching the sunlight. “You can call me Nikki.”

“Brad Riddock.” His palm enveloped her fingers. And no matter that the normal ritual of polite contact was observed according to standard procedure. That garden variety touch blasted his nerve endings faster than the ice cubes he’d dunked his face in. “And I remember Ms. Lissander penned some pretty racy stuff.”

Red-hot erotica, in fact, long before the women’s movement took hold. The thought of the lady professor studying that kind of thing was intriguing. He was vaguely aware that he hadn’t released her hand yet.

Curious, he stroked the juncture between her thumb and her hand. He could have sworn a flicker of awareness darkened her eyes before she snatched her fingers back.

“Chloe Lissander channeled a great deal of passion into everything she did.” Nikki nodded toward the white farmhouse behind her. “But by the time she moved back to her childhood home, she didn’t have the energy to transform this place the way she wanted. She left it to me in the hope that I’d fulfill her vision.”

Nikki stared at the sprawling farmhouse and lopsided deep porches while Brad considered the way she’d jumped when he touched her. As a man who knew a thing or two about sparks and charges, he guessed his hand wasn’t the only one still humming with the aftershock.

This grew more interesting by the minute. He’d never been able to walk away from a situation that could turn explosive at any second. And the gathering heat between him and his new neighbor was a hell of a lot more compelling than the countdown to doomsday he kept seeing in his dreams.

At a time when he needed a distraction more than he needed his next breath, Brad quickly made Nikki Thornton his new number-one priority for the next two weeks until the shrink cleared him for deployment.

“A bit daunting when you look at it from this angle, isn’t it?” he remarked, edging a half step closer while her back was turned.

“It’s daunting from every angle.” Straightening, she smoothed a twitchy hand over her glossy dark hair. “Guess I’d better get to work.”

He tracked her movements, wondering how much time they had before this rogue spark combusted. For the first time in his life, he wished he could hasten the explosive process.

“Can I give you a hand?”

SIZING UP HER SUPER STUD neighbor as he sent her surprisingly lustful glances, Nikki could think of numerous uses for his hands, none of which involved hard manual labor. And, judging by the way he’d lingered over their touch, he’d be amenable to a few of them. But she hadn’t moved out to the country to moon over a hot guy who only blew through town a couple of times a year between military stints around the world. In all the times Nikki had visited Chloe, she’d never caught a passing glimpse of him until the other night when she’d gotten far more than a peek.

The incident had played and replayed in her dreams ever since.

But even if she’d been in a position to explore her much neglected sensual side, Nikki knew herself well enough to recognize a high risk relationship. She appreciated stability. A sense of home. Community. She’d been shuttled off to strangers as a kid every time her scholarly parents had an opportunity to participate in farflung archaeological digs or teach at exotic universities, so it was only natural she was drawn to put down her own roots at Chloe’s home. Getting involved with a guy who circled the globe for his job would be foolish.

She just hoped her jumpy heartbeat and twitchy skin got the message soon.

Because, no doubt, he was even more incredible looking up close. Tall and lean, he had the easy grace of an athlete when he moved. A tattoo roped one arm, the design thick and intricate with a Celtic feel. The pattern was visible just below the sleeve of his dark blue T-shirt with some kind of navy emblem imprinted on the chest. Sleek muscles beneath the cotton gave the shirt an outline that a store mannequin would have envied, with ridges and rises in all the right places.

But even more than the killer bod, Brad Riddock’s face was the sort a woman couldn’t look away from. Aquamarine eyes were offset by the slash of straight, dark eyebrows—the menace of the latter preventing the former from being overly beautiful. In the same way, a full, sensuous mouth rested below the sharp blade of his nose, the whole package starkly appealing.

“Not to knock your efforts,” he prodded, “but at very least, I could finish up the tractor work without putting any wildlife at risk.”

Recalling the incident with the rabbit, she winced.

“I didn’t see him at first,” she blurted, guilt pinching at the thought of what could have happened if she hadn’t stopped in time. “Thank goodness he was so quick to get out of the way or—”

She couldn’t finish the thought. Maybe Brad had a point about her not belonging on the heavy equipment.

“I hope the tractor isn’t to blame for the rest of the wounded.” He pointed toward the two cages on the back patio currently inhabited by a chipmunk and a blue jay.

“Of course not. I pulled the bird from the jaws of a tomcat on the front law and the vet says he needs a few days for his wing to heal before I set him free. And the chipmunk—” But did he really need to know all about the strays she took in, just the way Chloe always had? They had been one great big family of strays. A tradition she enjoyed carrying on in Chloe’s absence. “Well, suffice it to say he was injured through no fault of my own.”

“I’m on leave from my job with the navy for a couple of weeks. I work in demolitions—explosive ordnance disposal, officially.” A shadow crossed his expression before he shrugged and she wondered if his leave had anything to do with the mass of bandages on his left leg. There were less than the first time she’d seen him, but they still covered plenty of his lower limb. “I’ve been climbing the walls between gigs anyhow. This way I can ensure that my house remains standing through the process and the local rabbits live to tell the tale.”

Frowning, she peered into the woods, certain that brown bunny had numerous friends and family. She refused to injure any wildlife in the process of renovating the house.

And she needed to make some progress. If she didn’t get the historical society’s okay, it left the home all the more vulnerable to Chloe’s slew of relatives who didn’t care about honoring their famous kin’s memory. Once she had that protection of the historical designation, she’d have enough security to turn her attention to Chloe’s other request…

“You must ensure the diaries are published in their original form, Nicole.” Chloe squeezed her hand from where she lay in a hospital bed, her grip surprisingly vital for a woman that doctors had warned repeatedly would not make it through another night. Seven days after entering the hospital, Chloe seemed to be holding her own, her short nails still painted her favorite shade of fire-engine red.

Nikki admired her so much. It had been a dream come true to meet a literary legend—one who had inspired Nikki on a personal level from the first time she’d read about Chloe’s life as a young girl, getting shuffled from house to house the same way Nikki had. They’d both grown up among strangers. Never knowing a real home.

Chloe had gone on to create a sense of home no matter where she lived, circling the globe in search of adventure and taking in strays and strangers wherever she went. Nikki had been pulled into the creative whirlwind of the older woman’s world, but she’d never managed to find the source of Chloe’s strength. Her belief in herself. Even now, battling kidney failure and the symptoms of early dementia in a sterile white room, Chloe remained a fierce, bright light.

“If they are in the house, Chloe, I promise I will find them.” Deep breaths, she reminded herself. She refused to cry in front of someone so strong. “I will make sure the originals are published.”

“I hid two of them long ago but I never told anyone where and these days I have such a hard time remembering anything. The vultures don’t want those diaries to see the light of day.” She frowned, her gray hair sticking up in tufts like a newborn bird’s fluffy feathers. A strand of red prayer beads from a Tibetan monk hung from one hand off the side of the bed. The vultures she referred to were family members who visited her twice a day in attempts to coerce her into changing her will or signing over her power of attorney. “They don’t even know what I wrote in them to begin with, so don’t let their protests stop you. My life is my own to share.”

“Of course.” Nikki had poured her a glass of water from the plastic pitcher beside the bed, unwilling to think about her life after Chloe’s death. She had no idea where to begin looking for diaries that Chloe had forgotten where she’d hidden. “Have a drink and I’ll take you for a spin in the corridor. We’ll see if the guy in Room 142 is still trying to flash the nurses every chance he gets.”

“In a minute.” Chloe set the water cup down along with the prayer beads. “I have so much I wanted to share with you, Nicole. You’re the daughter I never had, and it has meant a great deal to me that you’ve been here with me while I prepare for my next big adventure.”

She winked a wrinkled eyelid, smiling as if death was a worthy opponent she looked forward to battling. Nikki’s breath caught, her chest constricted tight.

“Where else would I be?” she finally managed, thinking Chloe was more pale today than yesterday.

“You should be out in the world, falling in love. Having wild, out of control sex.” Edging higher up on the pillow, Chloe nodded toward the wheelchair in the corner. “But since it’s too late in the game for me to tell you everything you need to know about that, I’ll settle for a ride to Room 142 so we can heckle the old flasher and give the nurses a break.”

Nikki shook off the memory that still left her heart in her throat. Maybe she’d get lucky and find those two missing volumes while she worked to methodically clean and organize the property this week.

“I have to warn you, I’m operating on a real budget here,” she told Brad finally. She would have hired help in the first place if she could have afforded it. “The inheritance tax cost me my savings, so I really can’t pay—”

“All the more reason not to keep a rented tractor sitting idle.” He pointed to the equipment parked in the middle of the rolling lawn dotted by overgrown flower-beds full of heirloom flowers. “You can tell me what’s next or if you have plans drawn up for the project, I can look those over instead.”

His eyes already roamed the landscape as if assessing the flaws for himself. Any hint of flirtation was gone—although maybe wishful thinking had imagined those hot looks earlier. Right now, he was all business and, amazingly, prepared to offer his services…for what kind of reimbursement?

The thought of being in his debt worried her, but she wasn’t in any position to refuse. The property was a gem in the rough, but Chloe’s relatives had rented it out for many years while she traveled the globe, and various renters had let it go to seed. Later in life, Chloe had used it as a home base for her work. She’d always had grand plans for it, though, insisting it held special memories of her first real romance. Sadly, the diary that would have chronicled that time period was one of the volumes that remained missing.

“I’ve got some lists and sketches inside the house if you want to take a look.” Pointing the way, she started off in that direction, trying not to dwell on those sexy ultramarine eyes of his. “I really appreciate the help. Chloe’s family has been so angry with me that it’s nice to find someone who doesn’t think this renovation is a terrible idea.”

He was quiet for a moment, and she could still feel the hum of awareness from their handshake earlier. She wondered if his eyes were on her now, and peered over her shoulder to check.

But his easy grin didn’t betray anything.

“If your property value goes up, mine does too, right?” His gaze went to the roofline of the house where several add-ons through the years had marred the classic lines of the place. And, wow, all those gables and dormers reminded her she sure had a lot of territory to scour for those two missing diaries.

Fine. She hadn’t wanted the distraction of an attraction anyhow. Just as well that he didn’t seem to have an ulterior agenda by offering her a hand. Or so she told herself. Some perverse part of her mourned the fact that his potent stare wasn’t fixed on her anymore.

“I guess you’re right.”

Now if only she could scrub the memory of what he looked like while stalking around his living room half-naked from her brain.

2

NINE HOURS LATER, BRAD had run out of daylight as he shut off the tractor.

He’d uprooted tree stumps, dug out a couple of old foundations to outbuildings that no longer existed and hacked through an overgrown section of the lawn where a garden would eventually grow. He’d used a jackhammer, an insufficiently powered backhoe and the tractor with a couple of different attachments, all of which could go back to the rental company tomorrow since he’d gone medieval on the workload to make a major dent.

It felt good to work after being idle. It felt even better to impress a woman who’d nabbed a Ph.D. by studying sexy literature. The contrast fascinated him, making him all the more determined to find that sensual side beneath the hardworking professor.

Now the scent of barbecue hung in the air as Nikki lit a few torches around the backyard. She’d been on trash patrol most of the day, arranging for a scrap-metal company to pick up the remains of the shed, some old ladders and the contents of the basement she’d been cleaning. They’d been so busy they’d barely seen each other beyond a few utilitarian conversations to facilitate one another’s projects, which was just as well since he’d gotten the distinct impression she would have refused his help if she thought he planned to hit on her.

He knew he hadn’t dreamed the leap of attraction between them when they’d shaken hands, but she’d looked about as pleased to realize it as she’d been to find a garter snake hiding in the basement earlier.

He didn’t know what that was all about, but he had two weeks left on his “vacation” to figure out a way to bypass it. Nikki was the key to replacing his apocalyptic dreams with something a whole lot more entertaining.

Approaching the old flagstone patio outside her back door, Brad set the tractor keys on a weathered wrought-iron table. At the sound of the metal clinking against the iron, Nikki turned away from the grill, a basting brush in hand.

“I hope you’ll stay for dinner.” She gestured to the table where he noticed two paper plates and a jug of iced tea. “You worked so hard today, the least I can do is feed you.”

She’d changed since he’d chased the snake from the basement. A clean white tank top and khaki cargo shorts hugged her curves. Her damp hair was starting to dry around her face, the glossy brown turning chestnut in the glow from the torchlight.

“I’d accept, but you might faint from the smell.” He sniffed the shoulder of his sweat-soaked shirt for confirmation and knew he couldn’t share a table with her like this. “Do I have time to shower?”

Her eyes wandered over his chest before she turned back to the grill.

“Sure.” She gave a jerky nod that made him wonder what she’d been envisioning. “The chicken will be ready in about ten minutes, but I can turn off the heat and keep it warm for…” she cleared her throat “…whenever you’re ready.”

Her last words came out a bit garbled, and he noticed she picked up the cup of iced tea she’d poured for herself. She took a long swig and kept her back to him.

Interesting.

“It’ll take me ten minutes, tops.”

The night air felt cool as he jogged into the darkness, away from the heat of the torches and grill and an even hotter woman. The furry brown mutt he’d been feeding was there at the hedge line, wagging its tail so hard its whole butt shook.

“Hey, Killer.” He scratched the dog’s head, thinking that taking in strays seemed to be as much a hobby for Nikki as it had been for her predecessor. Chloe Lissander had packed her yard full of bird feeders and bat houses, willing to care for all comers. “I’ll pour you some food, but my guess is the grub will be better next door if you want to try your luck.”

Inside, he showered in a hurry, eager to take advantage of every minute Nikki was willing to spare for him tonight. She was seriously hot and thinking about her penning lofty critical theories about erotica had kept his imagination steaming along all day.

Ignoring the blinking light on his answering machine, he grabbed some laundry from the dryer, knowing his buddies were calling to check up on him. They’d made noises about having a shindig tomorrow night—a party he should probably attend even though he wasn’t much in the partying mood these days. Making quick work of feeding the stray, Brad wondered if he could talk his neighbor into taking in the dog. Hell, if he could talk her into a kiss he’d be happy. One kiss from her would be enough to keep his crappy dreams at bay. At least for one night.

Judging from the resistance he’d sensed in her initially—because she clearly wouldn’t have accepted help from him if she hadn’t been hard-up—she’d only offered dinner tonight out of gratitude. Somehow, the sparks that had flown between them when they’d first touched had put her on guard. She had seemed to shove aside the obvious attraction and he wasn’t sure why. But he had no intention of letting her ignore the heat simmering whenever they got near each other.

She had no idea how much he needed that kind of distraction.

As he ducked through the hedgerow he heard an engine rev. The rumble of an old V-8 motor and a vibration beneath his feet emanated from somewhere near Nikki’s place.

What the hell?

Shoving through the branches, he was just in time to see the shadowed outline of an old pickup truck spin a doughnut and burn rubber on the middle of her lawn.

“Hey!” he shouted and took off toward the vehicle, pain slicing up his injured leg as he ran. He ignored it.

With no headlights on, the truck careened dangerously close to the house as it sped toward the road, spitting chunks of sod. He heard the crash of broken glass.

Growling, the stray mutt passed Brad, picking up on his pissed-off vibe at the intruder. Brad was still a good fifteen yards away when the truck hit the main road and gathered speed.

Nikki.

Giving up the chase, he ran toward the front door instead, the burn on his leg still stinging like hell. The dog kept after the truck, barking like a junkyard hound all the way up the deserted county road.

“Nicole!” Brad called, pausing long enough on the porch to assess the damage.

A window was broken on the far right corner. The bastard in the truck must have hurled a brick or a rock before he took off.

“I’m okay.” Nikki’s voice was surprisingly close. A moment later, her pale face appeared at the broken window pane. “There’s a rock on the living room floor.”

“Don’t touch it.” He shoved through the front door; it was swollen in the frame, the wood sticking on all sides. Inside, a glow came from the back of the house, but the front remained dark. “Are there any lights in here?”

He had his phone out to call the cops, still listening for the truck in case it returned.

“Here.” She sounded shaken in the second before she clicked on a lamp in the hall.

They were half a step apart and he was in midjog. Her arms went out as a buffer before he collided with her, but all that accomplished was to seal her forearms between their bodies as he pinned her against a wall. The feel of her curves imprinted itself on his body. The scent of earthy, sweaty flesh…

A damn fine opportunity wasted since he needed to find out who was harassing her.

“Sorry.” Straightening, he blinked past the retinablinding lamp as his eyes adjusted.

She still clutched a pair of tongs in one hand from her efforts at the grill. But no matter the circumstances, he was left with an impression of her long, lithe body against his. The memory of silken hair and soft breasts teased the edges of his consciousness as he assessed the damage in the living room.

Shards of glass glittered everywhere on the dusty hardwood floor. Moonlight spilled in the jagged hole, highlighting spiderweb cracks radiating out in every direction on the old-fashioned single pane. While he examined the mess, Nikki phoned the police. She disappeared for a few minutes, her voice growing softer as she gave them the details of the incident. Brad guessed she was storing their dinner in the fridge as she moved around the kitchen, banging doors and cabinets before returning to the living room.

She took a seat on an abandoned piano bench in one corner, the stray dog at her feet, carrying a hunk of boneless chicken with his head held high as if he’d won first prize. The mutt settled close to her, squaring the meat between its front paws before digging in. He wasn’t one bit surprised that Nikki had fed the stray without a second thought, never blinking at another animal around the house, although she was careful to keep the dog from the broken glass.

“You don’t seem all that surprised about the rock through the window.” Brad leaned on the doorframe with one shoulder, studying Nikki’s face as she clutched her cell phone in one hand. She was pale and obviously shaken, but there was also a sort of resigned determination. “Is this the first time anything like this has happened here?”

“Actually, it is. But I’d been warned that Chloe’s family was not happy to see me inherit the house.” She relinquished the phone, setting it on the bench alongside one long, lean thigh.

“I remember Chloe referring to her relatives as a bunch of ‘greedy grabbers,’ to use her term. Do you think they’re the kind of people who would go to criminal lengths to scare you off?”

In the distance, he could hear a police siren and knew she’d only have to re-tell the story when they showed up. But it pissed him off that someone would harass her and he wanted to personally ensure it wouldn’t happen again.

“I don’t know. There was a lot of grumbling at the reading of the will. The family was mad when her stepfather left it to her in the first place, rather than his biological kids, but the house had been purchased by Chloe’s real mother before she abandoned Chloe as a girl.” She wrapped her arms around herself as she stared at the broken glass, looking too damn vulnerable in spite of the fact he knew she could operate heavy machinery and bulldoze unsuspecting garden sheds. “The general consensus is that I’m a usurper in the same way Chloe was. They think I don’t deserve the house or control of Chloe’s literary legacy.”

“Did any of these relatives threaten you personally?”

Her dark gaze swung back around to him as the sirens grew louder and a flash of lights circled the room from the cop car pulling in the driveway. The exposed-wood ceiling beams were bathed in the red-and-blue glow.

“No. In fact, several of them helped me move in a couple of weeks ago. But Chloe’s oldest stepbrother, Harold, is a local town councilman and he encouraged me to change the locks as soon as possible, implying he couldn’t vouch for everyone in the Ralston clan.”

Their conversation was cut short by a knock at the door. Nikki rose to admit two uniformed officers while Brad waited on the periphery to give his statement.

He’d started work here today to distract him from his enforced downtime and to take his mind off disturbing dreams. The enticement of a sexy next-door neighbor had been more than enough temptation. But a threat to Nikki’s safety?

Today’s prankster didn’t know who he was dealing with. Because when Brad turned the full focus of his training and determination on the person responsible, the guy would be sorry he ever messed with a woman for whom Brad felt oddly protective. He had two weeks’ worth of resentment about an op gone wrong just looking for an outlet.

A little retribution seemed right up his alley.

BY THE TIME THE POLICE had finished, Nikki could smell the scent of barbecue chicken back on the grill.

The thoughtfulness of that simple act speared past the defenses she liked to erect around men who were too handsome for their own good. How could she stay strong against someone who wanted to feed her after a long, tiring day capped off by vandalism?

That would be a feat she couldn’t tackle tonight.

Nikki wound her way through the house sorely lacking in furniture but crammed full of clutter, toward the back door. She really needed to start culling Chloe’s possessions to make room for her own, but it wouldn’t be easy to part with anything. As a kid, Nikki had compensated for her lack of a real home by collecting artifacts from every place she ever visited, in an attempt to surround herself with happy memories if not security. Chloe had been the same way, and their combined hoarding legacy created a staggering amount of material goods. Nikki squeezed past a box of Mexican corn husk dolls she’d made while attending a summer camp as a teen and stepped out onto the back patio.

Brad manned the grill in the moonlight with that cute dog of his at his feet. The torches she’d lit earlier still burned in a ring around the flagstones, illuminating the wrought-iron table and a couple of place settings he’d resurrected from the kitchen counter. A bowl of grapes from the fridge served as a centerpiece next to a halfmelted candle he’d stuffed in an empty wine bottle.

His efforts touched her.

“Thank you.” She slid into a seat at the table to thwart her sudden urge to fling her arms around him. In one day, this man had accomplished more on Chloe Lissander’s neglected property than she’d managed in the last week. He’d relocated the most menacing reptile she’d ever seen, chased off a trespasser and waited with her until the police arrived. Now, he had dinner ready when she was starving and exhausted. No matter that she’d cooked it originally. She could think of boyfriends in her past who wouldn’t have bothered to reheat a leftover for her sake.

The buggers.

“Thank you. The hard part was already done.” He took the chicken off the grill and served it straight to their plates, next to foil packets of veggies and cobs of corn speared with oddball little corn holders shaped like smiling lobsters that had belonged to Chloe. “Plus, I figured the scent of our dinner might chase off the cops once the visit devolved from investigating to blatant flirting.”

She was so entranced by the taste of barbecue sauce that it took her a minute to catch his surly tone.

“Flirting? Those two?” She tried to recall one comment that could have been considered remotely personal and failed. “They didn’t use my first name once in the entire conversation.”

Brad poured tall glasses of tea for both of them while the night music of crickets and whip-poor-wills picked up volume. The scent of his soap mingled with the smell of dinner as he leaned closer.

Memories of the other time she’d seen him after a shower—her semi-accidental voyeurism—shot a flood of heat through her veins. She should have known she’d meet her neighbor face-to-face one day. Should have anticipated this overheated situation. But since he was around the house so rarely, Nikki had just assumed he would ship out before they ever got around to an introduction.

She licked her lips and hoped her heart would quit lapsing into hyperactive mode.

“Are you kidding? All those questions about where you lived before and what you teach at the university were total curiosity on the younger guy’s part.” He used his fork to tear open the foil veggie packet, releasing a puff of steam into the night. “How much you want to bet he emails you next week and asks to take one of your classes?”

Nikki realized she couldn’t recall what either of the officers looked like. How had Brad taken such careful note of what went on, especially since he’d stepped away long before they were finished?

“Too bad I’m not in the market for a man.” Better to make that clear straight from the gate—to herself as much as Brad. No matter how much she might find a certain male appealing, she wasn’t planning on acting on it.

Brad Riddock would be out of her life faster than a blink, a fact which she couldn’t ignore. How many times had she been dumped off on relatives as a kid, only to have her parents promise they’d return by Christmas and then New Year’s and then maybe for her birthday in February? She’d fallen for those promises too many times, wanting to believe they’d missed her as much as she’d missed them when they’d left on one exotic adventure after another. But the truth was, they hadn’t.

And while she’d sorted through a lot of that hurt during her adult years to become a stronger person, she knew better than to bring that sort of heartache back into her life. Especially when her plate was full with responsibilities to Chloe.

“Why? Is the cop your type?” Brad’s blue eyes caught the moonlight, dangerous and alluring.

She swallowed hard at the sudden vision of what it would be like to kiss him. Touch him.

“Actually, no. But he should be my type. I’m trying to stay away from the guys who need saving.” She pointed toward the recovering blue jay and chipmunk in their cages on the patio. “I have a problem with trying to solve the world’s problems, one broken wing at a time. But I think the police officers were only asking about my past to find out if the trespasser was someone local or if it could have been someone I knew before I moved here.”

“It’s someone who doesn’t want you to stay in this house.” His flat assessment sounded so certain.

“Why do you say that?” She agreed one hundred percent, but she had her own reasons.

“The damage done was meant to discourage you from working on the house. The torn-up patch in the yard will cost time and money to fix. The broken window ensures you don’t feel safe in addition to the expense to replace it. I’d say it’s an attack on the property as much as you.”

Her last bite of chicken leg turned dry in her throat at the thought of someone escalating a campaign to chase her out. Damn it, she’d never had a real home before. She wouldn’t let anyone scare her away from this one. She’d stayed up late on this very patio with Chloe on summer nights, sharing stories from their past and dreams for the future. That time had been magical for her and no amount of vandalism could steal that warmth in her heart when she walked through this place.

“Chloe hinted there were people in her life who wouldn’t want her missing diaries to be published.”

“Why?” Brad shook his head. “Do you know what’s in them?”

“Chloe said those years had been too special for her to share with the world yet, but that one day her story would finally be revealed.” Nikki had been over and over her final conversations with the older woman before her death, never making full sense of the bits and pieces she’d heard since the hints at a young romance had been at odds with the later diaries’ depiction of a wild and sexually adventurous decade from her mid-twenties to late thirties. “She was in and out of consciousness the last few days of her life. I sat with her whenever I wasn’t on campus because she did so much for me through the years—cheered on my writing, gave me exclusive interviews to nail down a doctorate that was a shoo-in for publication. So I wanted to do whatever I could for her at the end since her family was less than supportive.”

Nikki liked to think she and Chloe had been family to each other. Her chest tightened to think about how fortunate she was to have had Chloe in her life—someone who cared when her dissertation committee gave her a hard time or her short-lived relationship with a history professor burned out. Nikki’s own parents were in the mountains of Peru the last time they’d contacted her—four months ago to email condolences on Chloe’s death.

“She didn’t have any kids, did she?” Brad glanced toward the bushes at the edge of the property where lightning bugs blinked on and off.

Clearing her throat, she dragged her eyes away from him and focused on the lightning bugs.

“No kids. At least, she doesn’t acknowledge any. A rumor persists that she had children living overseas since she spent many years in Europe after World War II. But I don’t believe it for a second. She was far too loving a person to distance herself from any blood relative. The gossip is just another bit of the drama from a life lived unconventionally. Her books were part of the fuel for the women’s movement with the way they embraced a more sexually free lifestyle.”

She couldn’t begin to explain all the convoluted drama of Chloe’s life. Chloe’s sensual memoirs accounted for her popularity as much as her novels. She’d chronicled many passionate encounters using carefully hidden identities to protect the people those relationships were based on. The edited diaries—at least five of the seven—had already been published with names changed to protect the innocent. But Chloe had promised her fans that after her death, all seven of the diaries—in their original forms—would be available to her readers.

“So when you say her family wasn’t supportive, who are we talking about? Siblings?”

She sensed a methodical mind at work as Brad formulated a picture of Chloe’s family. Better to focus on his brain than the appealing lure of his physique. Beneath the table, their feet vied for rights to the same real estate, occasionally bumping or brushing against each other. She felt edgy from those small touches, twitchy from the desire to lay her hand in the center of that broad, hard chest. With an effort, she recalled his question.

“Two stepbrothers—Harold and Norman Ralston. She didn’t know her real father, and her mother married her stepfather when Chloe was three years old.” Nikki had cringed at the stories Chloe had told about her early life—stories that would have landed her in child protective services today. “Then the mother abandoned the family when Chloe was eight, leaving her to be raised by the stepfather’s revolving girlfriends in a household with no blood relatives.”

In addition to all the material help Chloe Lissander had given Nikki, her life had been an inspiration to help Nikki forgive her parents for emotional scars that couldn’t compare to what her mentor had endured.

“Yet she inherited the house over her stepbrothers?”

“Apparently Chloe’s mother paid for the house. Giving it to her daughter after the stepfather’s death was his way to make amends, perhaps.” Nikki shrugged, never having been able to wade through the family politics effectively. The Ralston family was well known in this part of Virginia, with Harold the patriarch a longtime councilman and active member of every local club and volunteer organization. He was staid and somber to Chloe’s wild and unconventional. The two had never seen eye to eye.

“And you think these stepbrothers could have reasons for not wanting you here beyond the obvious land grab?” He cleaned his plate and shoved it aside, giving her his undivided attention.

The effect of those eyes probing hers was unnerving. Or, if she was honest with herself, exciting. Swallowing hard, she reached for her iced tea before she answered.

“I think they fear the unexpurgated version of her diaries for some reason.” Them and half the county. “I’ve been waiting to read them all as a set once I find the two that are missing. But supposition says they’ll be as racy as the fictional erotica.”

His eyes glowed a warmer shade of blue at the mention of the sexual content.

“Unexpurgated?”

“Unabridged. You know, the original version before the author and the publisher scrub out parts that could be libelous. It’s common knowledge that Chloe gave her permission for all the original, unedited diaries to be published after her death.”

“And how would vandalizing the house prevent that? Are you in charge of those diaries?” The methodical mind was at work again, she could hear it in his tone.

She should be relieved he wasn’t thinking about the heat that lurked between them, but she missed the warmth of that knowing gaze of his. She was playing with fire to have him here, close enough to touch, all the while knowing she shouldn’t get involved.

“Some of them. But even I don’t know the location of the two that went missing long ago. Chloe hid them at some point, then apparently forgot their location as dementia set in.” She gestured toward the dilapidated house with a sweeping arm. “She asked me to do everything possible to be sure all the diaries are found and released as she promised her fans. I mean to do everything in my power to make sure that happens.”

A cool breeze chilled her skin as the torches died down.

“So maybe your vandal doesn’t want you to find those diaries.” He reached across the table and laid a warm hand on her arm. “Are you cold?”

From anyone else, the gesture would have been harmless enough. But she’d been attracted from the first moment she’d seen him half-naked. The tug of sensual interest had been confirmed in no uncertain terms this morning when he’d introduced himself. And any defense against the attraction had been sandblasted away by his help and thoughtfulness throughout this draining day.

She wanted Lieutenant Brad Riddock. Badly.

“I’m okay,” she managed, her voice cracking on a dry note while his palm made her heartbeat flutter like a sixteen-year-old girl’s.

She would have eased out from under that touch if she could have, but her body scoffed at the very idea. Besides, he would move his hand of his own accord any second now. Right?

But the moment drew out. They sat motionless, touching without speaking, until it became a grown-up game of chicken. Who would draw away first?

“I want you to feel safe here,” he said finally, sliding his palm down her forearm toward her hand.

Stroking her? Or taking the scenic route away from her body?

She tracked his progress with hyperawareness, unsure how to draw a boundary and not quite recalling why she should.

“I’ll be fine,” she assured him, though it was probably easier to feel invincible with those strong fingers resting on her skin.

“I’d like to make sure of that.” Beneath the table, his knee brushed hers briefly, distracting her. “How about I sleep downstairs tonight to keep an eye on things?”

Everything inside her stilled.

“You want to stay here?” In the same house as her?

Her pulse raced even though she knew that was a bad, bad idea. And—curse him—his thumb rested on a place along her wrist where he’d probably feel the manic rush of blood through her veins.

“I could pitch a tent out front if you’d rather.” Relinquishing her arm, his easy reform of the original suggestion made her feel like a heel for not agreeing in the first place. “That would send a message that someone’s looking out for you if anyone decides to come back tonight.”

The warmth inside her chilled at the thought. Did she really want to be here alone while someone bold enough to tear up the lawn and break her windows still lurked free?

“I hadn’t thought about that,” she admitted, looking at Brad’s prominent muscles with new eyes. They weren’t just for show. Who would dare to mess with him? Besides, she had the animals to think about. She’d feel better with help to watch over the place. “Actually, the house has plenty of rooms to spare if you really don’t mind—”

“Honestly, I’ll sleep better knowing I’m already on site if anything happens.” Standing, he blocked one of the torches from view, his big, imposing body backlit like an action-movie poster. “If I go home tonight, I’d only be lying there with one eye open anyhow.”

“That’s really kind of you.” She couldn’t imagine why he’d gone to so much trouble on her account today. “Thank you.”

“Not a problem.” With a nod, he turned on his heel. “I’ll just go grab a few things.”

In no time, he was jogging across the lawn toward his house, his little brown dog wagging its tail but not following, almost as if the scruffy furball knew his owner would be right back.

Nikki forced herself to pick up the plates instead of staring after him like his adoring mutt. What was she thinking to have a man she hardly knew stay in the house with her tonight?

A man she’d drooled over when he’d thought no one was looking.

If he’d flirted with her more, she might have been more guarded about letting him stay. But how could she argue with a man who’d done nothing but help her out today? Besides, she was genuinely worried about the troublemakers returning.

While Nikki would make sure Chloe’s wishes were honored, Chloe wouldn’t want her to sacrifice her personal safety to fulfill that promise.

Brad Riddock would keep her safe. He was a one-man protective detail.

She trusted that completely. She just hoped she could trust herself around those sexy stares of his that came out of nowhere and lit up her insides like a Christmas tree. Between the postvandalism adrenaline, the physical exhaustion from all the work of the last week and the memories of what she’d seen of Brad through the branches of her locust tree five nights ago, Nikki didn’t know how she’d begin to scavenge any distance from a man who’d slid past her barriers faster than anyone she’d ever known.

3

AN HOUR LATER, FIST RAPPING on Nikki’s back door, Brad reminded himself that his reasons for sleeping over had been semi-altruistic. He genuinely wanted to keep her safe because he hated the idea of some redneck yahoo four-wheeling through her yard and destroying the property she’d been working so hard to restore. Someone obviously hoped to scare her, and Brad had a real problem with intimidation tactics deployed on single women in old, secluded houses.

So, damn it, that’s why he was here tonight and not because his mouth watered at the sound of her bare feet padding along the hardwood to answer the door. Not because being with her overloaded his senses so much he wouldn’t have room to replay worn-out nightmares.

The bolt slid free on the other side of the door and she opened it wide to admit him.

“Come on in.” She still wore the low-slung cotton shorts and white tank top she’d had on during dinner.

Of course. Duh. Could he help it if male fantasies had her answering the door in a lace negligee and high heeled slippers? Or maybe dark stockings on her long legs and nothing else?

He really needed to get a grip.

“Thanks.” He edged past her into the kitchen where the only illumination came from a glass-front china cabinet with a lamp inside. “I would have been over sooner, but I had a few calls to return. My buddies are trying to talk me into a big beach shindig tomorrow night.”

But he’d already ear-marked that time for Nikki. He’d be here for as long—and as much—as she wanted him over the next two weeks.

Setting his bag on the floor near the cabinet, he noticed the books displayed inside. Bedroom Lessons. Secret Games. Lies from the Backseat. The covers were suggestive without being lewd. He’d read a couple of Chloe’s novels shortly after he’d met his neighbor, just out of curiosity.

The rest of the house wasn’t as well packaged as the books, though. The old farmhouse didn’t have much furniture, and the pieces that were sitting in corners were covered with books and papers, boxes and piles of correspondence. But underneath the clutter, a fine structure lurked. The paneled wainscoting and polished, exposed ceiling beams were carefully crafted, still beautiful a hundred years after someone had taken the time to carve them.

“It’s generous of you to do this in the first place. I’m sure you have other ways you’d rather be spending your downtime.” Nikki closed the door behind him, sealing them in the dark house. From a few rooms away, he could hear soft music playing—something with a jazz blues vibe. A shelf full of Russian nesting dolls hovered precariously over old road signs proclaiming Farm Fresh Eggs and U-Pick. The sound of the dishwasher hummed nearby and Killer’s nails clicked along the worn hardwood as the dog approached to greet him.

Had she even noticed she’d been dog-sitting all the time he’d been gone? The animal seemed right at home circling Nikki’s feet and she’d already laid out bowls of food and water for him. She seemed to like taking care of people and creatures alike. Damn but he hoped she wasn’t just being nice to him because he looked about as desperate as Killer had when the dog showed up on his doorstep last week.

“Not really. I’m supposed to be in physical therapy for my leg a few times a week, but mostly I’m just counting down the days until I can go back to work.”

Days he’d rather fill getting to know the sexy professor…who wanted to keep her distance. He bent to scratch the dog’s ears while she waved him forward into a dim hallway.

“I put some sheets on a futon in the den.” She paused outside an archway across from the living room. Her eyes dipped south of the belt, and for a moment, he enjoyed a rush of pure male pride. Until her gaze kept going lower. Lower. “I noticed the bandages earlier. What exactly happened to your leg?”

So much for male pride.

The remembered sound of an explosion echoed between his ears. Light flashed behind his eyelids as he blinked away crap memories.

“Occupational hazard.”

Eyes wide, she reached forward as if to touch him and then pulled back fast.

“Didn’t you say you work with explosives?” She kept her hand—the one that had been bold enough to reach for him—in a tight grip.

Had there been a lockdown on touching that he didn’t know about? And didn’t it suck that the only time she’d been tempted to reach out was when she saw him as another wounded cause? Frustration gnawed the back of his neck until he had to roll his shoulders to shove it aside.

“Not a big deal.” His injuries didn’t compare to the rest of the damage done that day. Skin would grow back. “But I’m not at liberty to discuss the details.”

That wasn’t one hundred percent accurate, but it gave him the ability to opt out of the discussion. He strode past her toward the room she’d pointed out.

A sturdy armoire stood sentinel in one corner, surrounded by stacks of old travelogues and picture books of Italy. An antique roll-top desk was likewise hidden by paperwork piled on the floor. It was tough to weed through the belongings to tell what was Nikki’s and what would have been Chloe’s. He kept an eye out for clues to the lady professor’s personality, curious about what made her tick.

“It sounds like a dangerous line of work.” She remained in the archway, keeping her distance. “Is that why I haven’t seen you around before now? Were you deployed?”

“I’m on the second leg of back-to-back tours in Iraq. I’ve got four months left once I return.” He dropped into a chair near the armoire—a straight-back that looked as if it came from a dining room set. Two others that matched it were strewn around the room amid the books and a hodgepodge of furnishings. “A buddy of mine— Joe Staley—checks on my house every couple of weeks, but other than that, you wouldn’t see anyone around. How long have you been here?”

“Back when Chloe was alive, I visited during the summers and at the holidays. Since her death, I received keys to the property from the probate court six weeks ago, but between selling my condo and moving in stages, I’ve only been here for the last two.”

“That’s how long I’ve been home.” He stood up again to pull one of the other chairs closer. They were the only seating options in the room besides the futon that was made up like a bed. “Have a seat. You must be exhausted after everything you did today.”

She looked from him to the chair. He’d seen people eyeball IEDs with less trepidation. How could a woman who dismantled buildings with such zest turn so damn cautious when it came to him?

“Maybe for a minute.” She strode into the den, taking the route that would keep her farthest from the makeshift bed as she made her way toward the sturdy ladder-back with its blue velvet cushion. “I don’t want to keep you from sleeping.”

“I don’t need much sack time.” Strike that. He would gladly submit to an abundance of sack time if it involved sharing his bed. It was sleep he didn’t need. But he felt pretty sure she would only get flustered by the distinction. “I’m a night owl by nature.”

“Me, too. Even tonight when I’m tired, I’ll stay up and think about all I have to do tomorrow.” She settled into the chair across from him and he wished he’d placed it closer to his.

He had no idea when or how he’d make his first move with her, but now that he sat near her in this big, echoing house he realized more than ever that he wanted her. The scent of her shampoo teased his nose, clean and floral.

“The curse of ambition.”

“More like obsession.” She seemed to relax a little now that they were seated across from one another. Her shoulders sagged against the heavy ladder-back. “I’m determined to restore the house to honor Chloe’s memory. She really helped inspire women, writing openly and honestly about her passions, not omitting any of the messy parts. It’s difficult for writers to be so personally vulnerable. Her fans love her for the risks she took, both with the erotica and with her journals.”

“So she inspired you, too. Are you writing a memoir?” He refrained from mentioning how amenable he’d be to helping her write erotica. He had at least twenty scene ideas in mind. Most involved rolling around with her on that futon so close he could practically touch it. But any scenario that put her naked and under him would be worth commemorating in print.

“No. At least, not yet. I just want to pay her back for the help she gave me as a struggling graduate student. I would have never published my dissertation or even finished the degree program if it wasn’t for Chloe’s help. I was really floundering when I found her. I owe her my whole teaching career.”

He waited for a moment, in case she decided to add in a confidential whisper that she was working on an erotica project when she wasn’t busy overhauling the old house.

No such admission seemed forthcoming.

“So you’ve spent the last couple of weeks making plans for renovating the house and turning it into something that her fans will enjoy,” he said finally.

“Yes.” She folded her arms, the action drawing his attention to high, round breasts that deserved a whole chapter, if and when they got around to penning a joint sexy memoir that chronicled their soon-to-be affair. “I’ve been working on the house plans and starting on the grounds—”

Her mouth snapped shut suddenly. Strangely. As if she’d said too much and wanted to stop herself. Of course, that was ridiculous since they’d been in the middle of an innocuous conversation about how she’d spent the last couple of weeks working around the property.

“So what else have you been doing in the yard?” It wasn’t just small talk. He wanted to know. Big changes were in order here, and he was curious about the end results.

More than that, he was curious about her. He’d never talk her into that affair if he didn’t get to know her better.

“Um.” She straightened, the veneer of relaxation gone. “Just pulling up some weeds and mowing down the brush.” She jumped up out of her chair. “Can I get you a drink?”

“No, thank you.” He rose as well, wondering why she’d turned edgy all of the sudden. Had he allowed his explicit thoughts about her to show in his expression? “Is everything okay?”

“Sure—yes,” she blurted awkwardly. “Fine. Perhaps I’ll get a drink for me.”

He steadied her shoulders, just to keep her in place a moment longer.

“Does it make you nervous, having me here?” he asked. His heart thudded low and hard at the feel of her against his fingertips.

He meant to release her—and he would in a moment—but he had the distinct impression she’d bolt the second he let go.

It seemed an odd reaction when they’d already been together most of the day. She hadn’t been this jumpy when they’d sat across the dinner table from each other.

“Not at all.” She seemed to realize how ridiculous that sounded when she was poised for flight, because she took a deep breath and quit edging toward the kitchen. “Okay, maybe a little nervous.”

His hands fell away. Maybe it would be tougher than he’d bargained to work his way into her favor anytime soon.

“I must have really read this wrong.” He took a step back, not wanting to intimidate her. “Because even though I only offered to come here tonight to keep you safe, I have to admit I thought there was a connection between us earlier today.”

Speechless, she shook her head, dark hair dusting her shoulders. Was she mute with horror at the prospect? Or simply denying she’d felt any such thing? This was going downhill in a hurry.

“When we shook hands this morning,” he continued, hating that he had to explain it to her when it had been plain as day to him, “I could have sworn there was a moment—”

“I know.” She backed up a step, as well, and he felt like crap for making her feel that was necessary. “I felt it, too.”

Her words eased some of the sting, at least.

“So you know what I’m talking about?”

“Yes. But that’s what makes me nervous. I’m not in a position to indulge those feelings right now. And if anything, I felt it all the more this morning because—technically—it wasn’t the first time I’d seen you.”

She held herself very still, yet Brad could have sworn she shook. Rattled, really. Her whole body seemed to vibrate with a kind of nervous energy as she held herself rigidly away from him. He went from worried to angry. He hadn’t done anything inappropriate. Had given her no reason to appear so damn anxious.

“What do you mean?”

“I have something to confess, and I’m not proud of it.”

When he said nothing, she cleared her throat.

“I was clipping the hedges between our houses earlier this week and I saw you then.”

“That’s not much of a confession.” He was missing something here.

Two bright spots of color burned on her cheeks.

“I saw you mostly naked.”

MAYBE SHE SHOULDN’T HAVE admitted it.

The temperature in the room rose from chilly to tropical in about a second and a half. It was as if someone had suddenly cranked the thermostat. The atmosphere between them crackled with awareness.

It was lucky he was trained to deal with explosives since she felt like the tension was going to detonate inside her any moment.

“Brad?” She sounded uncertain to her own ears.

“Where did you see me mostly naked?” His voice was throaty and low. Dangerous.

Sexual?

She wasn’t sure. Her heart fluttered nervously in her chest. Being with him alone had been a bad idea. He was too much of a test of her restraint. And after a long, trying year of being at Chloe’s side to the end, then fighting the relatives to ensure Chloe’s wishes were honored, she just didn’t have the emotional resources to hold strong in the face of such blatant temptation.

She’d always wanted to test out her wild and impulsive side—a side buried so damn deep she wouldn’t think she even had one except that she’d been drawn to the beautiful erotica she’d written her dissertation on even before she’d met Chloe and formed a friendship with her. But once she and Chloe had grown close, Chloe liked to tease her that she just hadn’t found the right guy to explore her erotic side with… And why did those conversations come roaring back to her right now when she needed to address Brad’s question?

“I saw you in your house.” An uncomfortable heat crawled up her back and lingered on her neck. “It was an accident. You didn’t have the blinds closed and I happened to be trimming the honeysuckle vines under the locust tree when all of a sudden—there you were.”

An ill-timed smile got away from her.

But damn it, that moment was a happy memory and it had been a total accident. Maybe now wasn’t the time to admit she’d purposely left the locust untrimmed to space it out over the days that followed, quite possibly coinciding with his shower time.

He seemed to have enough to process right now. And she didn’t have as much bad-girl chutzpah as Chloe Lissander had.

“You spied on me. That feels like an invasion of privacy.” His face was inscrutable and she wondered if anger lurked beneath the surface. “An invasion of space.”

She cringed. Guilt nipped.

“I hadn’t really thought about it that way, but yes, I guess so.”

“I think I’m going to return the favor.”

Before she could reason out what that meant, he stepped forward, nudging one knee between her thighs.

With a yelp of surprise, she grabbed his upper arms, steadying herself while she reshuffled her feet.

“I don’t know that—”

“I do.”

They were the last words he spoke before he lowered his mouth to hers.

4

NIKKI HAD WRITTEN A DOCTORAL dissertation on Chloe Lissander’s erotica. In seventy-five pages, she’d catalogued the emotional nuances underlying well-known pieces of explicit literature, highlighting sex as a multilayered metaphor for different kinds of intimacies.

But a year’s worth of research and twelve pages of footnotes hadn’t prepared her for the blatant eroticism of Brad Riddock’s kiss.

As they stood together in the darkened den, his body engulfed hers. The steel bands of his arms locked her against the heat of his chest. Their hips aligned. Legs interwove. Somehow, her arms had wrapped around his neck, utterly compliant before her brain even had time to process what was happening.

His body touched hers in so many places, she couldn’t begin to absorb it all. The raw heat of him singed her senses. The clean scent of his skin ignited a rush of longing so strong she could scarcely stand, her knees as liquid and pliable as the rest of her.

But most of all, she noticed his kiss.

His tongue stroked a path along her lower lip as if he had all the time in the world. Slow. Seductive.

Nikki swayed on her feet, caught off guard. She had dreamed about this man before she knew him, pictured him doing sweetly wicked things to her body as a pleasurable diversion before she fell asleep at night. But no amount of imagination could have anticipated the way her blood simmered in her veins at his touch, every nerve ending jumping to life.

He smoothed his palms down her spine, pressing her closer one vertebra at a time until her stomach met the rigid length of his arousal. Her heart pounded so hard she could feel the pulse leap at the base of her throat. Her body molded to his as her desire increased, higher and higher still in a wave of heat that had her breasts swelling between them.

An appreciative growl rumbled in his chest, vibrating against her sensitive breasts then deeper, right through her. The sound revved her in all the right places, firing a sharp ache between her thighs…

“Wait.” She pulled away. Breathless.

Brad loomed over her, all taut power and male strength. His eyes focused on her mouth, as if he was waiting for a signal to go in for the kill. To ravish her thoroughly and leave her begging for more.

Which was exactly what would happen if she didn’t pull herself together.

“What are we doing?” she whispered to herself as much as him, untwining her arms from around his neck.

He blinked, as if he’d only just realized she’d pulled back. But then, leisurely, he released her.

He skimmed his hands slowly, slowly away, leaving a trail of tingling skin in his wake.

“I believe—” he lifted a finger to her lower lip and brushed one last touch along the soft fullness “—we were teaching you a lesson about invasion of privacy. Or invasion of space, maybe.”

“That was my lesson?” Tough to sound indignant while panting with lust, but she made a credible effort. “What happened to ‘two wrongs don’t make a right’?”

She resisted the urge to take one more step back. Not because she was so anxious to escape his touch, but because she didn’t trust herself around such tangible temptation.

He sank down to the futon mattress, lowering his muscular bulk so that he was eye level with her navel. And what vivid imaginings that position conjured for her. Now, she didn’t just step back from him. This time, she all but scurried to return to the antique chair.

“Don’t even try to tell me that was wrong.” He leaned his elbows onto his knees.

While the posture was relaxed, the words were anything but.

She suspected he would kiss her all over again if she didn’t agree the connection had been very, very right.

“Maybe not in a literal sense.” She didn’t think trotting out any of her dissertation theories on sexual chemistry as metaphor would be appreciated at this particular moment. Even though she could make a great case for his kiss as domination—the emotional equivalent of a demand for attention.

Affection?

No. She couldn’t afford to apply literary thinking to her personal life. That would only confuse a situation that should remain perfectly clear. Hands off the military man who was just passing through her life.

“Not in any sense.” He rose to his feet and her heartbeat quickened automatically. But he didn’t come closer. Instead, he disappeared into the darkened hall and returned holding one of Chloe’s books.

Secret Games.

Before she could ask what he was up to, he cracked open the copy that must have come from the display cabinet in the kitchen. She realized she was rubbing a finger over her just-kissed lips and quickly knotted her hands in her lap.

“You said you were a student of Chloe’s work, right?” He kept flipping through pages as he spoke, sauntering closer until he stood a few feet from her chair.

Good thing she’d threaded her fingers together so she couldn’t reach out and touch at will.

“Yes. I didn’t realize you were, too.” She couldn’t imagine what he searched for in the book that some critics had panned as “pornography for the high-brow,” and others lauded as “Kama Sutra for a new era.”

“Here.” He pointed at the text, as if to mark his place. “‘Why should we plead propriety like a defense when we both want to tear off our clothes? Is it not enough proof of compatibility that just one stroke of the tongue—a thoroughly French kiss—has the power to—’”

“Point made.” She leapt from her seat to cut him off, recalling exactly where the passage went from there.

“There are just a few more lines.” He studied her from over the top of the book, clearly amused.

“I’m quite familiar with them.” While she was no prude by any stretch, she wasn’t sure her overheated libido could handle hearing Brad read about a tongue stroke inspiring imagined, phantom licks along a throbbing sex. Just the thought of it made her feel light-headed. “And any discussion of phantom licks is more than I can handle on a first date. Er—not that this is a date.”

Flustered, she clamped her mouth shut.

Brad closed the book. If he was tempted to grin at her discomfort, he did a good job of hiding it.

“I would like to have a date with you.” He stared at her with serious eyes, his expression thoughtful.

The hot rush of hormones made it difficult for her to process his words.

“I—” As a woman who made her living teaching the written word, she found it surprising to feel speechless. Taking a deep breath, she tried again. “We shouldn’t date based on physical attraction. No matter what the book says.”

Down that path lay heartache, especially with a man dedicated to a job on the other side of the world.

“So you wrote a dissertation on Ms. Lissander’s work and you don’t buy in to it?” He laid the book on the mantelpiece beside her collection of commemorative shot glasses from each state in the U.S. She’d been shuffled through all fifty before her sixteenth birthday. Sometimes her parents had driven her great distances to find the next friend or relative willing to take her in for a month or two.

Brad’s assertion hurt for reasons he couldn’t possibly understand. Chloe Lissander had survived a childhood far darker than anything Nikki had endured. Yet she’d emerged from it a bold and full-blown character with a big heart to match. She’d lit up rooms when she entered. She’d sized up people quickly and shrewdly, recognizing their foibles but always seeing room for beauty.

And Chloe had loved so deeply and fully. Fearlessly. Nikki admired her so much.

“In theory, yes, I buy in to her ideas. In personal practice? Chloe’s approach to life is a lot to live up to.” She didn’t know what else to say, feeling unaccountably prickly and possibly a little disappointed in herself. “I guess I’m just not there yet.”

When he didn’t respond right away, she forged back into the silence to smooth over the awkward moment.

“I’m surprised you’re so familiar with her work.”

He shrugged, straightening a glass in the elevated back row so the words Rhode Island could be seen more easily.

“She gave me one of her books one day after I helped her trim some branches on that hickory tree in back.” He gestured, but she knew the one he meant. “She told me to ‘read and learn’ so I could improve my love life.”

Nikki smiled, picturing Chloe’s audacious claim. “She wanted to be sure everyone experienced the world as vividly—as passionately—as she did.”

“I was too busy to pick it up for a few months, but when I did—holy cow.” He rubbed his chest as if the message of the book had just socked him there. “I was floored at the story and damn intrigued to think an elderly woman could write about anonymous sex as a life-changing experience. It was just so damn unexpected from the sweet little old lady next door, even if she did flirt with me all the time.”

Nikki watched as Brad reordered the glasses on the mantelpiece in east-to-west order. So methodical. No wonder the Navy liked his skills in explosive situations.

“Her diaries are just as sexy as the fiction.” Although maybe once she recovered all of the original diaries, they would have a different tone than the edited material. Nikki knew names had been changed and some events downplayed or omitted in the diaries that had been published in Chloe’s lifetime. She’d been very protective of her family and friends. Was that why her family resented their lack of control over the eccentric author’s estate? Maybe they didn’t want to be eviscerated in print for all eternity.

“But you’d rather not discuss them in a personal sense.” He repeated her protest from earlier, as if seeking clarification on the topic now that she wasn’t as hot and bothered.

Which made her review her thoughts on their kiss and his request for a date. She still felt like getting involved would be hazardous to her heart. But now guilt tweaked her conscience since she knew Chloe would have called her a coward for not embracing life.

Passion.

“Maybe, for tonight at least, it would be safer to get some rest instead.” The room seemed cooler now that the heat of their kiss had died down, the mild spring breeze drifting gently through from an open window. Or maybe she just felt a chill because she’d been reminded what a muddle her life was in on a personal level. She’d achieved so much professionally, but hadn’t bothered to figure out who she was in her private life. She had problems with commitment thanks to her family situation, but she’d always assumed she would explore that secret sensual side one day. Her interest in erotica had clued her in to that sexy streak, but her personal fears had kept her from exploring it in real life.

On paper, of course, had been another matter. Her dissertation had raised more than a few eyebrows around campus.

“It was a damn long day,” he agreed, putting one hand on his hip and twisting his shoulder backward as if to work out a kink.

The move put a vast array of muscles on display, rippling under the fabric of his T-shirt. Reminding her she’d stifled her sensual side for far too long.

“Thank you for staying here tonight.” She would sleep better knowing a trained military man was looking out for her.

As long as she didn’t let erotic dreams of Brad keep her awake.

“No problem. But I’ve got to be honest. My ulterior motive is that date. And definitely another kiss.”

He edged past her toward the futon before stripping off his T-shirt and tossing it on the mattress.

Her eyes widened at the sight of so much bronzed bare skin. The V of the muscles in his back tapering down to narrow hips. Time to leave before she weakened.

Her mouth was too dry to say goodnight as she slipped from the room to find her own bed. Alone. One thing was certain though. Her hope of a good night’s sleep was busted.

BRAD LISTENED TO NIKKI’S speedy retreating footsteps, knowing he’d probably pushed too hard, too fast. But with only two weeks left before he went back overseas, he couldn’t afford to let things take their natural course with her. If he didn’t pursue her now, she could be dating some other guy by the time he returned four months later. Stripping down to his boxers, he thought about sliding between the sheets and taking a shot at sleep. His muscles were tight from hard work so different from what he’d been doing. And his head was full of Nikki instead of bombs and regrets. Both those things should help him get some real rest that wasn’t interrupted by crap dreams.

But Nikki might be a little too much on his mind. He’d intended to make her admit an attraction when he pulled out that Chloe Lissander book. But there had been a noticeable effect on him, too. He couldn’t just dole out comments about throbbing sex around her and expect to walk away relaxed.

Far from it.

He scanned the room for a distraction and his gaze landed on the collection of matching book spines with Chloe’s name. Her diaries.

Not the erotica that had helped ramp up the night in the first place. But the published and edited tales of her real sex life that apparently only told half the story. Snagging one of them from the shelf, he figured he might as well learn more about the woman who’d inspired Nikki to tackle the project of renovating the aging house.

Besides, what if the writing contained a clue about who was harassing her? He should know the major players in Chloe’s life. He felt protective of Nikki. Responsible for her. Maybe it was just an inflated reaction after what had happened in Iraq—the need to save somebody to ease memories of the ones he hadn’t been able to protect.

Tension tightened his shoulders as he forced his eyes down the page in front of him—the date established the writing from the spring of 1943. Maybe this would help him take his mind off Nikki enough to rest. Retreating when he had had been wise, because the sooner Nikki felt safe, the sooner she’d be able to relax with him. Trust him.

He knew she must be interested if she’d spied on him. The thought of her watching him like that turned him inside out. Now he needed her to focus all that pent-up sexy professor energy his way so they could start turning fantasies into reality.

Los Angeles
1943

Dear Eduardo,

You have been gone only four weeks and already I am beside myself. I know I should think of your sacrifice for your country and the honor in your service. And truly, I am so very proud of you. But I am weak and think more often about how much I miss you. Maybe if I was a wise and unselfish woman of the world, I would spend my days knitting you scarves and writing diverting letters that would cheer you. But I am still piqued at you for the way we parted. You left me in an unpardonable state of longing.

Your forsaken love,
Chloe

U.S.S. Zeilin
1943

My Dearest Malcontent,

Excuse my penmanship if it is a bit shaky. I have caught cold, you see, and all my comrades agree it is because I’m the only man in the company without a scarf from home. But since your knitting talents are not your best asset and you have so many extraordinary others, perhaps you would strive to be a bit more diverting in your letters to keep me amused. Although I am not really ill, I am honestly cold at heart and could use all the warmth you can spare. Don’t hesitate to be graphic. Hearing about your state of longing in detail would do wonders to raise my temperature. If you are diverting enough, I promise to hurry home all the faster to divest you of that inconvenient virginity I insisted you maintain before I left.

Frozen Until I Hear From You,
Eduardo

BRAD TURNED THE PAGE in the diary, but the next entry from Chloe was not a letter. Instead, she discussed the weather in California when they’d made a trip to see her stepbrother Harold before he left for his next assignment. No mention of Eduardo.

Out of sight, out of mind? Brad didn’t want to think that had been the case. He knew his naval history enough to know the Zeilin would have a rough time of it that year. If Eduardo was cold, he could have easily been part of the transport’s Attu landing—a hairy operation in the Aleutian Islands during a foggy, frigid spring. And damn it, how had he gone from thinking about Nikki to another crap mission?

He supposed the idea of Chloe forgetting about Eduardo while the guy was freezing his ass off in Alaska struck too close to home. But more often than not, those relationships couldn’t survive time and distance. Maybe Eduardo had been right to concentrate on the physical in their letters.

Live for the here and now. When you risked everything day in and day out to perform a job you believed in, sometimes the best approach was to scrape together whatever happiness you could before it vanished. Or—in his case—exploded.

5

THE SHOUT IN THE MIDDLE of the night brought Nikki upright in bed.

Had the vandals returned to do more damage? Before she was fully awake, she was on her feet and running across her bedroom to the window overlooking the garden. Her gaze swept the landscape, the dark shape of the tractor taking form on the side of the yard. The overgrown rock garden tumbling down toward a small pond that needed to be cleaned and filled. But there were no people that she could see. All was quiet. Dark.

Her heart still pounding hard, she stood motionless. Alert to any hint of sound.

“Get them out of here!” Brad’s voice cut through the silence like a sonic boom.

She jerked away from the window—startled. Scared for him. Who else was in the house?

“Brad,” she shouted, running barefoot through the dark house. Thank God for the moonlight filtering in bare windows she hadn’t bothered to cover yet. “Brad, what’s going on? Whoever is down there, I have a gun and I’m not afraid to use it!”

Heart in her throat, she plucked the cordless phone off an upstairs table. She pounded down the stairs double time and skidded down the hall into the den. At first, she didn’t see anyone. On the verge of calling the police for the second time in a handful of hours, she stilled as she heard Brad’s voice. He bit off a ripe curse. Trying to quiet the rush of blood in her ears, she strained to listen to see where the sound came from. Then, a dark shape moved in the far corner of the room.

Brad’s blanket. Brad.

He was here. Alone. Dreaming.

Though relieved the vandals hadn’t returned, Nikki had a whole new batch of different things to worry about now. First and foremost, should she wake him? She could hear his breath coming fast, a whispered litany of words muttered into the pillow and punctuated by curses. Clearly, he was distressed. But wasn’t it a mistake to awaken someone in the midst of a nightmare for fear they’d remember it all the more vividly?

“Get down!” he shouted, spiking up off the futon and scaring her so badly she stumbled back a step.

His eyes were vague and distant, the way her old roommate in college had looked when she sleepwalked. The dream had him in a powerful grip. She couldn’t let him battle it out any longer.

“Brad.” She approached the bed, reaching out to touch the bare expanse of his chest. “Wake up.”

His skin burned even though the house remained cool after the sun went down. Fever?

His hand locked around her wrist, eyes open but unseeing as he turned toward her. His hold was tight and unrelenting, her arm captured at an awkward angle until she lowered herself to the bed beside him. Her crisp cotton nightgown rode up her thigh and she shifted awkwardly to stay covered. She hadn’t given a thought to what she was wearing when she’d leapt out of bed, the lightweight cotton and Battenberg lace providing little coverage.

“They shouldn’t be here,” he told her, his voice softer but no less urgent.

“You’re sleeping,” she assured him, flexing her fingers against his chest to increase the pressure—to get through that foggy barrier where dreams seemed so real. “You’re at my house. Nikki’s.”

The sound of her name finally had a noticeable effect. The ragged breathing slowed. His eyes cleared by degrees, revealing a tortured shade of blue.

“Are you okay?” She kept her hand on his chest, thinking she might be all that anchored him to the here and now. “Bad dream?”

He shook his head. But she didn’t take that to mean “no” so much as that he had no intention of speaking about whatever had just happened.

“But maybe if you talked about it—”

“I can’t.” The words were harsh, but there was such starkness behind them that she couldn’t possibly take offense.

“Is there anything I can do?” She didn’t know how to help when she didn’t know what was wrong. But the tension and raw emotion hung in the air even if he didn’t have one word to say about them.

His gaze narrowed as he finally gave her his full attention. Somehow, he’d shaken off the dream for at least that moment. His nostrils flared. His lips parted. She thought he would speak, but instead he loosened his grip on her wrist, his thumb soothing the place where his fingers had been the moment before.

“Nikki,” he said finally. “Kiss me.”

Her heart did a kind of stop, drop and roll in her chest. He was obviously upset. And it was clear he didn’t want to talk about it. He needed something else from her right now.

The intimacy of being on this futon with him, the sheets tangled around his legs so badly that it was very evident he wore a pair of boxers and no more, suddenly seemed very unwise. Hadn’t she run from this moment just a couple of hours ago?

But she was right back here, inches away from a guy who’d dominated her fantasies for over a week. And he needed her.

Whether or not he could articulate it in so many words, she understood that much.

“It’s not a date,” Brad whispered, so close that his jaw brushed her cheek while he spoke into her ear. “Just a kiss.”

The open windows ushered in the scent of honeysuckle, the fragrance that reminded her of those nights when she’d peered in through his window at this very chest. Those nights, when he’d been wrapped in a haphazard towel, and she’d seen the vee of dark hair pointing a path down his abs.

Now, hypnotized by a man far more complicated than she’d imagined, stuck in this moment that felt more like a dream, Nikki couldn’t imagine why a sane woman would say no to a kiss. It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t a relationship.

He needed her kiss and she wanted to give him one he’d never, ever forget.

“Okay. But you gave me the last one. I’m in charge this time.”

His touch skimmed up her arm to the loose sleeve of her nightgown, reminding her she wore precious little in the way of clothes, too. Her breasts pebbled at his touch.

“I want your mouth on me any way I can have it.” His questing fingers dipped beneath the fabric to cup her shoulder, his palm within deliciously easy striking distance of one tight, aching nipple.

Still, she wouldn’t waste her one opportunity to kiss him by falling on him with more hunger than finesse. She cupped his face in one hand, the bristles of late-night stubble scratching pleasurably along her palm. And, once she was certain he no longer lingered in a dream, she guided him closer. Closer.

Her eyelids fell shut at the last moment and still her mouth landed precisely where she’d wanted it, brushing his with featherweight pressure. Her breasts knew no such restraint, however, shamelessly pressing against the solid wall of muscle of his chest.

He groaned, and she thought she echoed it, the vibration of pleasure a mutual music that made all her nerve endings tingle. His hands speared deeper under her nightdress until they spanned her bare back and pressed her tight to him. He felt so very good. Even better than in her fevered dreams about him. The temptation to strip off her nightclothes and climb into the sheets with him was strong, but she’d only signed on for the kiss. And by God, it was going to be a good one.

With a dart of her tongue, she massaged his lower lip. She remembered the words of the book he’d quoted about the phantom licks along a throbbing sex and wondered if he’d been equally plagued by the notion. Ah, but it was different for a man, wasn’t it?

Parting his lips with hers, she captured his tongue and drew on it lightly. His grip on her lower back tightened, his own back arching in response.

No question, he’d felt a few phantom strokes right where she’d wanted.

Giving herself over to the pure pleasure of the moment, she reveled in the sensuality of that hot connection. All around her, a cool spring breeze blew against her skin wherever Brad didn’t touch her. By contrast, she burned everywhere his body grazed.

More.

When she pushed closer, he lifted her onto his lap.

Her thigh met the impressive resistance of his erection. She gasped at the feel of it, as rigid and well proportioned as everything else on him. “Come here,” he urged, tugging her down to the open futon with him as he fell back onto the pillows.

Not that she required urging. She didn’t think she could stop until she knew what it felt like to have his hand palm her breast. Everything about Brad’s kiss excited her, made her want more and more.

She normally felt clumsy in bed, her experience limited because of her focus on her career and her reservations about romance in general. But here in this awkward futon with Brad, Nikki felt like a goddess of pleasure. Her senses roared to life. Her sex clenched with readiness until her thighs turned damp.

And still the kiss went on and on. Languid. Delicious. She wanted more and couldn’t wait any longer, then remembered he’d promised a kiss only.

Gladly, she ended any moral dilemma he might have had about that promise by transplanting his palm to the aching weight of her breast.

Freed to touch her, Brad squeezed gently, circling the tight crest with his finger until she whimpered impatiently. Only then did he leave her mouth to trail kisses down her throat to the swell of cleavage above the neck of her nightgown. It required only the smallest effort to sweep aside lace to expose her nipple. He feasted on her there, treating each breast with thorough reverence.

And still there was no moment when she wanted to stop, no natural breaking-away point when she feared what came next might be a disappointment. No, she knew now that this highly charged current between them would only get hotter and more powerful the longer they lay together. Even now, her body wept for the completion he could offer. She had to squeeze her thighs tight against it, and that only made it worse.

“Nik?” Brad’s whisper in her ear sent sweet ribbons of pleasure chasing down her neck.

“Mmm?” She smoothed her palm across the plane of his chest and down to a tight six-pack.

“I need to stop here if we’re not going to finish this tonight.”

She struggled to make sense of that, her skin burning for more of anything he wanted to give her, not sure how she could peel herself away from him. He was addictive. She didn’t think she could get enough of him, let alone walk away. But that’s what he was warning her about, wasn’t it? She’d made it clear they couldn’t go any further and yet she was writhing around in his bed as if she hadn’t known the man all of one day.

“Oh, my goodness.” She gazed at him in the moonlight, his aquamarine eyes promising fulfillment such as she’d never experienced. She’d been the one to set the ground rules, hadn’t she? Yet he’d been the one who had to remind her of them. “I’m so sorry.”

Tugging her nightdress back into place, she covered her breasts.

“Don’t be sorry on my account.” He lay very still, not touching her, his breathing shallow. “I’ve been dreaming about what you would feel like all day.”

Embarrassed, she sat up, pulling her hem down as far as it would go and not coming close to her knees. His reference to dreaming made her remember the nightmare he’d had and how haunted he’d looked afterward. Why had he needed the distraction of a kiss so badly?

“But if you hadn’t stopped me, I would have—” She shook her head, knowing she must have looked like a tease when she put his hand on her breast. How quickly she’d forgotten all about the nightmare and how upset he’d been. “I don’t know what came over me. I’ve never—”

“You can’t imagine how happy it makes me to think I could affect you like that.” He stroked her hair, the barest brush of his fingers through tangled locks, and she felt all mushy inside. “But I know you have reservations. I can promise you I won’t take advantage of this thing between us until I’m sure all of you is on board with taking it further.”

Her eyes burned at the realization that he would hold back like that for her, even though she hadn’t been able to restrain herself. Brad Riddock had needed her for comfort and it had turned into something combustible.

“Thank you.” But she wouldn’t get carried away like that again. “And I promise I will be far better behaved in the future. Between being exhausted from working so hard and then waking up to your shout, I think I was in a kind of dream state myself.” Would he talk about what was bothering him now that he was more relaxed? “Do you know what you were dreaming about earlier? I was really worried about you.”

“Nothing.” He yanked the covers back up, establishing a barrier between them as tangible as his suddenly cool tone. “It was nothing. We’d better get some sleep if we want to get any work done tomorrow.”

“Sure.” Nikki rose, feeling dismissed and unsteady, the floor cold under her feet. She felt hypersensitive to everything around her, her body still abuzz with unfulfilled hunger. She’d been moments away from giving him everything, so it hurt to be shut out now. Still, she couldn’t resist calling back to him when she reached the door. “Sleep well.”

His grunt of assent could have meant anything. Leaving her to wonder if his growled response was a sign he was more annoyed by having to cut things short than he let on.

Or was he frustrated with her for asking about his nightmare? Tomorrow, she would find out.

HE WAS SCREWED IN THE HEAD.

Brad lay in the dark long after Nikki walked away, trying to come up with any other answer beside the obvious to explain the persistence of his nightmares.

He was sleeping in the home of a gorgeous woman who wanted him as much as he wanted her. She’d felt like an angel in his hands, her body so smooth and perfect. Her touch had been sweet and gentle when she’d awoken him from his private hell. And when things turned carnal, she’d been right there with him. Her brain might not have approved the plan yet, but her body had spoken volumes—enough to assure him they’d be finding mutual bliss together soon. He’d kissed her before bed. He’d worked his way into her good graces.

By all accounts, he should have gone to bed one happy freaking dude. Still, he’d woken up screaming like a pansy and replaying the scene in his mind before that bomb had exploded and sent his world to shit.

Brad had been wearing protective gear that afternoon when he’d dismantled the IED. The local kid who’d secretly followed him into the field hadn’t been so lucky. The kid’s father—a subsistence farmer with more offspring than resources—had pulled the kid back, shielding him at the last second. Saving the boy. Losing an arm.

How the hell would he farm now? Brad had the benefit of the U.S. government to swoop in and provide topnotch medical care for the burns and shrapnel wounds in his leg. What did the Middle Eastern farmer have for support? While military hospitals patched up any number of civilian casualties, the guy had refused assistance from a military doc for fear of retaliation from insurgents in his town.

And Brad blamed himself. Not for detonating the bomb. That was his job. He was guilty for befriending the kid in the first place, working around the language barrier to form a bond with a local boy in need of a role model. Some freaking hero he was.

He didn’t know what to do with all his anger. And it only pissed him off more that he was stuck here—motionless and useless in Virginia.

At this rate, he’d be lucky to receive his Get Out of Jail Free card from the base shrink. He pounded his head against the pillows that smelled like Nikki’s shampoo. Obviously, he’d lie through his teeth when they asked him if he was still having nightmares. But what if the flashbacks interfered with his ability to do his job?

That, he could not even consider.

Nikki had no idea how much he needed her. How much he wanted to be here, away from the four walls at home that he’d been starting to climb. At least here, she’d awakened him before the worst of the dream came, when he started to re-order all the sequence of events to try and come up with a scenario that wouldn’t have resulted in a bomb going off and almost killing that kid.

Tonight, she’d ended up in his bed afterward. And he didn’t mind waiting for her to be ready for more. He wanted to be around her in the hope all the work and the sex thoughts would chase away the bad crap clogging up his brain.

Burying his head in the pillow, he inhaled her scent. Focused on the memory of her soft skin and the sound of her sweet sighs every time he’d touched her. He wished he could indulge in those thoughts just for the pure pleasure of it.

But he had the feeling they were the only way he’d keep from losing his mind tonight. At least, she’d made it clear she didn’t want a relationship, so he didn’t have to feel guilty about the fact that he didn’t have jack shit inside himself to offer a woman emotionally.

6

“SO WHO IS EDUARDO?”

Brad’s question surprised her the next afternoon as Nikki picked up a broken beer bottle from an overgrown garden. They’d settled into a work routine early, perhaps hoping mutual avoidance would solve some of the issues between them. Apparently he wasn’t any more ready to talk about what had happened the night before than she was. She was so mixed up and confused, part of her longing to tug him back into the house to finish what they’d started. Another part insisted she keep her distance from a guy who just might be battling demons even darker than her own.

The memory of his eyes when he’d awakened from the nightmare flitted through her consciousness, reminding her how much he’d needed her touch. How much the distraction of it had worked—for a while, at least.

They’d both gotten up just after sunrise and she’d wondered more than once if he’d had as much trouble as her sleeping the night before. He’d returned the tractor and the other tools to the rental company and had come back with a new socket set and some wrenches he’d purchased for a housewarming present. He’d promised she’d be repairing her own plumbing in no time.

But other than that, they’d spoken very little until now…

“Eduardo?”

She blinked up at him in the bright sun. He was chucking rocks into the back of a trailer from a low garden wall that had fallen into disrepair.

“From Chloe’s diary,” he clarified, pausing to brush the dirt from his hands as he leaned on the metal rails of the trailer hooked up to his pickup truck. “I did some reading last night to help me get a handle on all the players in Chloe’s life. One of the early published diaries—1943—had correspondence with some Eduardo guy overseas.”

“Right.” She watched a bead of sweat trickle down the column of his throat, ending at the neck of his T-shirt, and wished she’d tasted him right there when she’d had the chance. “His identity is disputed by the handful of people who’ve studied the diaries. Some say Eduardo is a disguised version of Harry Benton, a naval captain she befriended. Others say Eduardo is the real name of a seaman she met who later died in the war effort.”

“Isn’t it as simple as looking at the ship’s roster? He served on a naval transport ship.”

She’d forgotten that detail, recalling he was in the service but not which branch. A chill danced over Nikki’s skin. While she wasn’t normally the superstitious sort, she found it interesting that her life continued to parallel Chloe’s even now. Chloe had identified with her from the start because they’d both come from homes where they were shuffled around to reluctant relatives and mostly ignored. They’d shared an interest in life writing. Erotica. Now, it seemed, they shared a wild attraction to a hot navy guy.

Had Eduardo been as closed off about his work as Brad was with her? She thought again about how quickly he’d dismissed her offer to talk with him the night before. He hadn’t even considered confiding in her.

“There’s no Eduardo on record, so that’s one of many names Chloe used to hide someone’s identity. The missing diaries are for mid-1943 to 1945, so when we find those volumes, we’ll know who Eduardo really was.” There was so much scholarship that needed to be done on Chloe’s life and work. Nikki wanted to be sure her friend’s accomplishments and contributions to literature were well-documented.

“Aren’t you tempted to start searching?” He looked ready to take apart the house himself.

If he was this dedicated to his work in the service, he must be a highly prized officer.

“Very tempted. But I need to get the house in shape for that historical society visit next week. I think the chances are good the Ralston family will try to find a reason to contest the will and take the house. But if I can have the property declared a historical site, that will at least give Chloe’s home some protection from them. Once I get that security, I’ll start looking for those diaries in earnest.” Right now, making improvements to the house felt like the best way to keep Chloe’s legacy intact.

Before Brad could reply, the stray dog who followed him around—Killer, he’d christened him—began to bark. Nikki turned to see what had caught the animal’s attention at the same time a middle-aged, wintry blonde stepped around the corner of the house. She wore plaid shorts with a pink polo shirt and carried a casserole dish in one hand.

“Hello?”

“Get ready,” Nikki muttered under her breath, leaning close to Brad and inhaling the scent of clean sweat. “You wanted to meet the people in Chloe’s life? Now’s your chance.”

Nikki turned to the visitor and waved. “Hi, Angelica.”

As they waited for the woman to pick her way down the slope of the lawn in her pristine kelly green tennis shoes, Nikki got in a last minute aside to Brad. “She’s Harold Ralston’s granddaughter.”

She also happened to be one of the people the World War II veteran had warned Nikki about. Angelica had had her eye on Chloe’s house from the time she was a little girl, apparently. Her grandfather had told her that it would not be passed down through their family, but as the product of an entitled upbringing, Angelica had never gotten the message.

Still, she was the first to try and disguise her animosity toward Nikki, sending over her teenagers to help Nikki move in two weeks ago.

“I come bearing casserole,” Angelica announced, shoving the silver foil container toward her. “My father called to tell me about your little incident last night. I thought I’d bring some baked ziti for comfort food. Am I the first to arrive?”

Peering around the yard, Angelica lifted her big sunglasses, propping them on her forehead before she gave Brad the once-over. Nikki noticed the ziti had come from a local Italian restaurant, the gesture probably a store-bought excuse to poke around the property.

“Angelica, this is Brad.” Nikki wasn’t surprised the family had been curious about the vandalism the night before. The Ralstons were usually in the know on everything that happened in town. Harold Ralston was the area’s favorite son, a WWII veteran who’d been decorated for his heroism during the war in the Pacific. Someone from the police or the local paper had probably called him last night to let him know there’d been trouble at Chloe’s old house. “He lives next door and has been kind enough to help me clean up around here. Brad, Angelica lives in town and her grandfather grew up with Chloe.”

“We can’t choose our family, though,” Angelica joked, “so don’t hold that against me! But seriously, Nicole, how are you holding up? I heard they threw a rock in the window?”

She squinted toward the house, shielding her eyes. Knowing she’d want the grand tour of the damage—wasn’t that always what nosy neighbors wanted?—Nikki turned to lead the way up to the back porch, balancing the ziti.

Brad didn’t follow, though. His gruff tone surprised her as he remained behind them.

“Angelica, do you think someone in Chloe’s family is behind this?” Arms folded, his eyes bored into the other woman’s as if he could ferret out the truth if he looked deep enough.

Angelica laughed, albeit a bit nervously. “With this family, you never can tell.”

She made to follow Nikki, but Brad didn’t relent.

“I’m serious. This is more than just disgruntled gossip. Someone threw a rock in the window that could have seriously injured her.” He appeared more than a little pissed about it, in fact. A shiver danced over Nikki’s skin at the realization he would protect her—not just from thieves in the night, but from a wolf in sheep’s clothing like Angelica of the plaid golf shorts. “Do you think anyone in the family means to harm Nikki?”

WHEN IT TOOK ANGELICA more than a few seconds to answer, Brad sensed some sort of confession was forthcoming. A name maybe? It seemed the only plausible reason that Angelica would stall for so long. Was she genuinely worried or merely trying to think up a good cover story to throw blame in another direction? But before she could utter any helpful insider information, a man’s voice shouted down to them from the side of the house closest to the driveway.

“Hey, girlie! Help an old man down.” A tall, thin older man leaned on a cane, waving impatiently with his other hand. He wore a sweater-vest over a long-sleeved shirt despite the warm spring weather. A dark green baseball cap with the insignia for army infantry caught Brad’s eye.

Nikki’s grip tightened on his arm. “It’s Chloe’s oldest stepbrother—Harold. He’s the local city councilman and he’s been running this town behind the scenes for almost a decade, I hear. He’s the one who told me I should change my locks.”

“Coming, Grampy!” shouted Angelica, bolting away on her green Keds as if she’d been caught selling secrets of international consequence.

While Angelica helped her grandfather down a path near a patch of foxgloves on one side of the house, Brad lingered by Nikki, inhaling deeply. She smelled so good. The scent of her, the feel of her body so close to his, brought him right back to the night before when he’d had her on top of him, pulling his hand to where she wanted his touch.

And damn, but those memories provided some serious sexual firepower to distract him when he should be watching the byplay among the relatives. Angelica peered into the windows of Chloe’s house more often than she watched the path in front of her grandfather.

“Do you want me to escort them from the property?” He spoke softly into Nikki’s ear. He would have been resentful to have his time with her interrupted by anyone. But add in the fact that these people had apparently all been opposed to her taking possession of her mentor’s home in the first place, and he had little patience for their questionable offers of empathy.

“I was trying to maintain peaceable relations with them.” Nikki glanced up at him through thick, dark lashes. He’d avoided looking at her for too long today, plagued by how much he wanted her in his bed—and not just because he hoped to chase away his nightmares. He hated thinking about showing her that weakness.

He ground his teeth together and tried to focus on the issue at hand.

“Why? It’s your place now and you’ve got work to do.”

“They are still Chloe’s family. They didn’t do much for her, but I don’t think she’d want me to make the house off-limits to them either.” She chewed her lip, though, a sure sign she wasn’t completely confident of that fact. “I don’t know. Maybe I’m just so romanced by the idea of a big family that I don’t want to see their bad side. No one ever brought me a casserole until I moved here.”

He couldn’t imagine putting up with resentful relatives for the sake of baked ziti, but he heard what was unsaid. “You don’t have much family?”

“None that care to stick around for more than a once-a-year visit.” She stared at the grandfather and granddaughter who were exchanging heated whispers while the blue jay with the recovering wing squawked from the patio. “Which, I guess, is not that unusual for a grown family that lives far apart. But even as a kid, I never saw my folks much.”

Brad thought about that, seeing her need to take in the wounded in a new light. She saved the abandoned. Gave a family to those in need. Even tolerated Chloe’s step-clan because she’d befriended the writer.

The relatives would pay dearly if they were hurling rocks through her window when she’d rolled out the welcome mat for them. Brad would find a way to speak to Angelica Ralston soon and see what she knew.

“Sometimes the key to being a functional relative is to know when to put up a few boundaries.”

She nodded her agreement but went over to greet the Ralston patriarch.

“Hello, Harold.” She introduced the guy to Brad, and after some small talk about his deployment and temporary leave, Brad felt himself relaxing a bit.

“I hear you had some trouble last night?” The older man’s craggy face was etched with concern.

While Nikki pointed out the tire marks on the lawn, Angelica continued to poke around the lawn, peering into crevices in an old rock wall and surreptitiously searching the foundation of the farmhouse for cracks and holes. Seeking a spot where the missing diaries could be hiding?

“The police have been alerted,” Nikki was saying to the elderly town councilman. “I should have changed the locks when you told me to since there was an attempt to break in to one of the metal sheds.”

Harold studied his granddaughter with narrowed gray eyes. “I don’t suppose you’ve asked this one for an alibi?” He jerked a thumb in Angelica’s direction.

“I can’t imagine—” Nikki began.

“Her husband’s landscaping business is in trouble. I wouldn’t be surprised if she’s hoping for a new source of income. She always said this place would made a great bed-and-breakfast.” He straightened his cap with a weathered hand as he looked up at the house where he’d grown up.

“I’ll change the locks right away,” Nikki assured him, subtly guiding him back toward the driveway, and his old model Cadillac.

“Thanks for coming,” Brad offered, seeing that Nikki was handling the drawing of boundaries pretty well on her own. “I set up an appointment with a security company first thing this morning to wire the place with alarms, so we’ll be able to catch whoever has been harassing her.”

Angelica’s head shot up at that comment, her cell phone glued to one ear as she gave up searching the house foundation. She appeared more than a little interested in the new security measures.

“Good idea, son.” Harold patted Brad on the shoulder. “I’m glad to see Nikki has a military man looking out for her.”

After goodbyes all around and another thank-you from Nikki for the ziti, Angelica and her grandfather were settled into their respective vehicles and retreating from the secluded property.

“Brilliant comment about the security company,” Nikki remarked, grinning as she sidled up next to him. “Now they’ll think twice before trespassing. And if I know the Ralston clan, word will spread quickly among them that the place will be wired with alarms.”

Brad planned to follow through on that lie as soon as possible; he made a mental note to call a security company for her.

“That’s assuming any of them are guilty.” Brad kept an eye on Harold’s car as it slowly backed out of the driveway. “But word will spread. I’ll put up a few signs from one of the security companies tomorrow even if they can’t make it out here that fast. For now, however, I have another proposition.”

A flush of color washed over her cheeks, making him wonder what kind of proposition she was visualizing. He’d bet it was a whole lot more interesting than what he actually had in mind.

“Proposition?” Her voice pitched unnaturally high.

“It’s not what you’re thinking.” He plucked the stick from her hand and laid it on the shelf next to the gas grill. “I told you I’d take things slow. I just thought I’d see if you wanted to ditch this place for a couple of hours for a party my friends are having on the beach.”

He hadn’t planned on going, but the vulnerable look in her eyes when she’d been touched by a store-bought baked ziti had gotten to him. She deserved to surround herself with good people.

Her expression now was difficult to read as she tilted her head to one side, studying him.

“Do you think it’s wise to leave the place unattended when the vandals might come back?” She peered over her shoulder at the white clapboard farmhouse as the sun dipped lower on the horizon.

“We can move the animals’ cages over to my house just until we come back. It’s better for us to be at a party than to be sitting inside this place if any more rocks are thrown through the window anyway.” The thought ticked him off anew. He’d find out who was messing with her before he returned to Iraq.

She stared at him for a long moment. What kind of reservations could she have?

“Besides,” he continued, “I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get much sleep last night. Maybe a party would—”

“A party is a great idea,” she agreed quickly, apparently spurred by the reminder that they’d been too close for comfort the night before. Well, too close for her comfort, maybe.

He’d be very glad for a whole lot more of that tonight.

“I’ll just run upstairs and change—” She pulled her cell phone from her jeans pocket and he realized it was buzzing. “Just a sec.”

She pressed a button and reviewed the screen—a text message as opposed to a call. He thought about going back to his place to grab clean clothes, also, but her gasp halted him.

She stood rigid, staring down at the phone.

“What?” Instantly alert, he moved closer, his hands hovering close to her waist without really touching. “Everything okay?”

Face pale, she flipped the view screen toward him so he could see what caught her attention.

Your security won’t prevent me from getting what I want.

The number it came from was blocked.

“Those ballsy SOBs.” He took out his own phone. “I’m calling the cops. That message should be easy to trace and it was probably one of the brain trust that just pulled out of the yard.”

“Okay.” She nodded, her brow furrowed with worry. Or was it betrayal? No doubt it felt that way given the warm reception she’d just given two members of the Ralston family. And who else could have spread the word about the upcoming security measures?

He gripped her hand, hating that someone was trying to scare her. And doing a damn good job.

“I’ll stay here while you go upstairs and get changed.”

“Changed?”

“For the beach party.” The grim determination in his voice probably didn’t inspire visions of limboing on the sand. “Why should we change a good plan just because of some disgruntled half-wit who didn’t get his share of the silverware? You deserve some fun. You’ve worked really hard the last two days.”

She hesitated a moment longer, but as the color came back into her face, she nodded.

“You’re right.” She squeezed his hand in return, a surprising—and welcome—touch. “It’ll be fun to get away for a few hours.”

Brad watched her walk away, hoping he wasn’t making a mistake to leaving the property tonight. He didn’t think Angelica or Harold were guilty as it would be ridiculously dumb to text message a threat two minutes after pulling out of Nikki’s driveway. But his bogus claim about installing security must have traveled at the speed of sound around Virginia Beach. Or at least to one very guilty individual…

He couldn’t help a quick glance over his shoulder, but there was no one around. He’d hand the matter over to the police and treat Nikki to a night out. A chance to meet genuine people. He didn’t care to think too deeply about why he was introducing her to the people he thought of as his family. Mostly, he just wanted to show her a good time and feel normal for a few hours.

It didn’t have a damn thing to do with wanting a replay of the night before. But if she ended up in his arms again, he had every intention of keeping her there until the sun rose.

7

NIKKI COULDN’T REMEMBER the last time she’d taken a day for herself at the shore.

Wind whipped through her hair as Brad’s mud-splattered Jeep bypassed the resort area of Virginia Beach for the quieter sand dunes farther south. The scent of the nearby ocean helped her to put aside the problems that awaited her back home with the threats and harassment. Tonight would be fun. She couldn’t help but think Chloe would approve of her taking time off. For all that Nikki wanted to celebrate her friend’s life and share the eccentric writer’s work with the world, she knew she lost sight of Chloe’s “seize the day” mentality all too often.

Ocean spray cooled the breeze as the houses became more secluded. Brad pointed out a place just a few moments before a volleyball net and a bonfire came into view. His friend had access to the house for the weekend and had invited his whole unit, apparently. About twenty cars with tailgates pulled down filled an empty field next to picnic blankets and lawn chairs. Southern rock music from another era blasted over one truck’s speakers. A few grills congregated to the side of a party already well underway.

Brad had barely jerked to a gravel-spitting halt before a preschool-age boy lurched out of a young woman’s arms to run toward the vehicle. Nikki worked on unloading her beach bag while Brad motioned that he would keep an eye on the boy. The young woman nodded and went to sit with a few young mothers in the shade on a blanket with some snoozing infants.

“Lieutenant Brad!” The little boy who’d targeted Brad came barreling closer.

Brad dropped the cooler and swung the child high enough to make him squeal then effortlessly held him at eye level.

“You’re almost too big for this. Must’ve grown a foot since the last time,” Brad teased as he pretended to stagger. He swung the boy around once more for good measure. Seagulls took flight, shrilling in agitation at the commotion before Brad set the boy down.

A few guys jogged up from the beach to grab chairs and a tabletop grill off the back of the Jeep. Raucous laughter and shrieks of “In your face,” “Score!” and “Take that, loser!” floated up from the shoreline and the volleyball game in progress. Nikki’s stomach rumbled at the savory smell of roasting hot dogs and hamburgers as she took in the sudden barrage of people and sound.

“Who’s this, your girlfriend?” The blond-haired boy pointed at Nikki as he ambled beside them, rolling his eyes and nudging Brad meaningfully.

Good question, thought Nikki, guessing the child was about five or six years old. She got busy digging in her beach bag to avoid overt eavesdropping. Good thing she’d packed the sunscreen. The late-afternoon sun sizzled along her bare shoulders, and reflected off the beach’s pristine white sand. The humid, salt-filled air began curling her long hair.

So much for pricey salon products.

“Nikki, meet Nate—although she’ll probably wish later she hadn’t.” Brad hauled Nate up to her. A sand-encrusted hand thrust forward to meet hers.

Good thing she’d remembered hand wipes, too. She grasped Nate’s sticky grip. “Nice to meet you.”

He shook quickly and then reached for her new beach bag. “May I help you, ma’am?”

Nate looked to Brad who nodded approvingly.

“Just bring it down to the rest of the unit,” Brad ordered. “We’ll be there in a sec.” He turned back to the Jeep, lifting the hem of his olive green tank to mop his brow. His powerful back muscles rippled tantalizingly into view, leaving Nikki in a heated state that had little to do with the 90 degree day.

“Roger that,” shouted Nate as he leapt over a split-rail fence and raced away, beach bag contents spewing in his wake.

“He’s a character,” said Brad as he tugged a cooler on wheels and gestured to the woman who’d been watching Nate that the child was headed her way again.

Walking down to the beach, Nikki picked up sunscreen, hair clips and a cheap pair of shades from where they’d fallen into the tall sea grass. Her flip-flops sank into the powdery sand, the warm, soft grains caressing her ankles. The sparkling navy and white-capped ocean lay just yards ahead. Oblivious to the surrounding beauty, the fierce volleyball competition raged. The thudding ball, cheers, jeers and groans drowned out the sound of the music and brown-blue swells steadily rolling ashore.

“How do you know him?” It dawned on Nikki that she’d never asked Brad if he’d been married. Could the boy have been his son? He’d clearly behaved like a father.

Uncertainty gripped her. Was coming here an invitation to further their ambiguous relationship? What did they really know about each other?

Brad’s relaxed expression tightened. “His father and I served in the same unit. Lieutenant Frank Peterson. Best IED defuser we had. His wife was eight months pregnant with Nate when an advance team of mine sweepers and metal detectors missed a more unconventional weapon before Frank’s team—our team—went in. Frank was right there, warning everyone it wasn’t safe—”

When he broke off, Nikki impulsively stroked the back of his rigid neck.

“How awful.” She couldn’t imagine how hard that had been for Frank’s wife, not to mention Brad’s team. And poor Nate, missing out on the chance to know his dad. “I’m sorry.”

The words were a lame offering, not coming close to easing the grief in the air.

“Yeah. Me, too,” Brad bit out. He shook off her hand like a pestering fly.

Hurt, Nikki wasn’t sure what to say. He didn’t want her comfort. She was already in over her head and their afternoon together had barely gotten underway. Pausing by the break in the split-rail fence that acted as the last barrier between them and the party, she needed to clear the air before they went any farther.

“Look, maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” Her sunglasses protested her tight grip with a small cracking sound. She eased her clenched fist, unsure of her role here.

Maybe Brad was better at giving help than he was at accepting what someone else had to offer.

He whirled to face her, kicking up sand he stopped so quick.

“It’s a great idea.” Even he must have heard how ludicrous that sounded when spoken through gritted teeth because he seemed to take a deep breath. “I’m just not good at talking about that stuff with people who—”

She lifted an eyebrow, curious how he’d finish that sentence.

“With anyone,” he finished. “It’s been a while since I’ve been with someone so I haven’t had any reason to share things like that.”

“It’s been a while for me, too.” Her last boyfriend had gotten fed up with how much time she spent on her dissertation and that had been—too many years ago.

Most guys were at least mildly intrigued at the idea of a woman writing her doctoral project on erotica. Jake had mostly been bugged she couldn’t make it to more Washington Nationals games with him on his weekends off. But that was the last thing she wanted to discuss.

“Umm, aren’t we a little late for this shindig of yours?”

Brad exhaled with a grin. “I like my hot dogs burnt.”

Nikki started forward. “Funny. I feel the same way about marshmallows.”

“One burnt marshmallow coming up. But first—” he scooped up the cooler and sprinted toward a dozen men and women dressed in khaki or athletic gear “—volleyball.”

Nikki gave him time to collect assorted high fives and shoulder punches, following more slowly. When she arrived, she tried to keep up as Brad’s military family introduced themselves. Like him, they served in an explosive ordnance disposal mobile unit. Some were on leave, while others had returned home after completing tours of duty. They insisted she join their game, their athletic builds promising certain humiliation for her limited skills. Was a sudden urge to read Wuthering Heights a plausible excuse?

“Come on, Nikki, it’ll be fun,” grunted a six-feet-seven-inch behemoth with a pulsing forehead. How exactly was she getting out of dodging speeding missiles for the next hour or two?

“None of us are pros,” a majorly toned woman assured her as she spiked a perfect serve to the opposite corner. “We just play for fun.”

The other players’ anxious glances at Nikki’s delicate frame belied this white lie. They were warriors who would fight like their lives depended on every point. Nikki would just get caught in the cross fire.

Her rescue came from an unexpected source as the blond-haired child appeared at her leg, his sitter a few steps behind.

“Wanna build sand castles?”

Nikki would have kissed Nate if she wasn’t sure she’d stick to him. Digging in wet, gritty sand never sounded so good. She assured his sitter she would take good care of him before she strolled down to the rolling surf. A few younger couples had laid out beach blankets here and one dad with a whistle around his neck and a lawn chair in the surf seemed to have appointed himself the unofficial lifeguard for the handful of kids in attendance. Rather than get her sundress dirty, she pulled it overhead, revealing a white bikini she should have replaced after inadvertently shrinking it. Under the bright, dipping sun and pink-veined sky, she felt far more exposed than when she’d tried it on in her shadowed bedroom. Fortunately, her companion was mostly interested in her ability to fashion model turrets.

She knelt down and began scooping sand. The cool sea surged beneath her, complementing the balmy air. Nate’s chatter was as steady as the cawing seagulls.

“Lieutenant Brad and me go to the county fair every year. Do you like chickens? One time, we saw one with two heads, but Lieutenant Brad said it was made of rubber and not worth our nickel, even though it cost fifty cents to see it. I didn’t say nothing, seeing as he’s got medals and all, but he doesn’t know his numbers. I can count to a hundred, and backward, too. Want to hear? one hundred, ninety-nine, ninety-eight, ninetyseven…”

The soft, salty air, the child’s babble and the mindless task of pushing sand lulled her into a relaxed state she hadn’t experienced in weeks. This was just what she’d needed after the vandalism at Chloe’s place. She smiled skyward with the sheer pleasure of being here, in this peaceful moment. She glanced over at the maniacal battle raging on the court.

Twenty yards away a shirtless Brad stretched up at the net, spiking the ball. Every glistening, sweat-coated muscle sparkled in sharp relief. His sculpted biceps, lats and pecs would have made Michelangelo weep. Nikki’s breath caught in her throat. So much for a peaceful moment. Brad turned to receive his teammates’ high fives for the game-winning point. But his hand froze in midair when he caught Nikki’s stare. She dropped her gaze and began plopping more sand on their blob of a castle. Could she have been any more obvious? Her mouth had probably watered like a damn spigot.

“Don’t feel bad,” a soft voice beside her drawled. “All the ladies react that way to Brad.” Nikki looked up to see a lovely blonde wearing a blue Staples polo shirt and beige khaki pants.

“Mama!” screamed Nate, flinging himself heart, soul and sand-encrusted body into her arms. “You’re done work?”

“For today,” she said wearily. She began plucking Nate’s tentaclelike limbs from her. She gave up and smiled at Nikki, extending a hand.

“Ashley.”

Nikki uselessly swiped her gritty hands on her equally filthy thighs then gave up and shook hands. “Nikki.”

“And you’re here with Brad, I’m assuming.” Her fullthroated chuckle was infectious, making it impossible for Nikki to feel embarrassed. “You could have swallowed him whole with those eyes.”

“That obvious?” Nikki laughed.

“Definitely. I was lucky enough to find it twice in my life.” She looked back up toward the volleyball court as the game disbanded and crowds started circling the grills.

Brad detached himself from the rest along with a tall, dark-haired man in red Hawaiian surfer shorts who looked like he hadn’t shaved in two weeks. The guy wore aviator shades that he flipped up onto his head as he spied Ashley and Nate. He smiled and jogged down toward them, wrapping an arm around Ashley.

“This is Joe Staley, my fiancé.” Ashley took care of the introductions as Brad joined them.

He winked at Nikki before planting a hard kiss on her mouth to leave her breathless. Then, never missing a beat, he half-tackled Nate, spinning the boy into an airplane position so they could race up and down the beach, Nate’s arms extended wide. Dog tags swung wildly from his small neck, the reflective metal flashing in the setting sun.

Still trying to gather her bearings after a kiss that made her heart beat faster, Nikki watched Brad crashland them both into the surf before diving him into another rushing wave. She could believe that for the right man, risking your heart would absolutely be worth it. But seeing so many couples off and young families playing at the beach would make anyone feel a little sentimental toward romance.

“Congratulations to you both,” Nikki offered before Joe joined Brad and Nate in the water. A lot of the volleyball players had jogged down to the water for a quick dip before dinner.

“Thank you.” Ashley gathered up a few shovels and pails that Nate had used, putting everything in a grocery sack. “I feel really fortunate to have found Joe. It was a hard few years after I lost Frank. I went home for a couple of years because it hurt to be around all this.” She gestured toward the heart of the party, apparently referring to the tight-knit group around them. “But I brought Nate last year to see where his dad had worked and Joe and I—well. I was lucky.”

“Nate seems really at home here,” Nikki observed, understanding the appeal of an extended family, even if you weren’t related by blood. She would have appreciated having this kind of network when she was a kid.

“He loves Virginia. And he took to all of the guys in the unit right away, especially Brad.” Ashley stepped back as a Frisbee headed their way, followed by a squealing girl in a local college T-shirt. “I really hope it works out for the two of you.”

Nikki shook her head as she watched a young man from Brad’s unit tug the girl into the bushes for a kiss. “It’s not like that between us. He’s just been helping me renovate before he ships out in a couple of weeks.”

Ashley’s unique, full-throated chuckle erupted. “With the way you two were eyeing each other? Highly unlikely. And don’t waste your time denying it. One thing I’ve learned is that every moment is precious and there are no guarantees you’ll get them back.”

Ashley’s words struck Nikki’s heart like a gong, echoing everything Chloe had ever preached about life. The message had a serendipitous feel as she watched Brad and Nate arrive with a spray of sand. Ashley’s fiancé lumbered up a few steps behind.

“Mommy, were you watching? Brad flew me real high and he’s gonna take me to the fair before he goes back.”

Ashley extricated Nate. “I’m sure he will, honey. Now, it’s time we get going. Almost bedtime.” She turned to Nikki. “It was nice meeting you. Brad’s never let us meet anyone before, but I can see he was holding out for someone special.”

Brad’s eyes flowed like blue quicksilver to Nikki’s. She only tore her gaze away to watch the young couple depart with Nate. Ashley stopped to thank one of the servicewomen for watching the boy, giving her a quick hug. Nikki looked back at Brad, his piercing eyes still locked on her.

“You’re really good with him.” She admired the way he extended warmth to a child not his own. Other than Chloe, she’d never experienced that kind of loyalty. In her world, relationships were undependable at best, absent at worst. Brad was obviously a man to be counted on—as much as his dangerous occupation allowed.

He shrugged. “Unit 12 takes care of its own. It’s what Frank would have done for any of us.”

Understanding now that this was tricky terrain for him, she left it at that, grateful just to be with him and very ready to live in the moment. She didn’t protest when he led her toward the grills for some dinner with his friends. Snatching her sundress on the way, she pulled on the cover-up and enjoyed every minute of the next two hours until the sun started to set and her glances at Brad turned as long and lingering as his were toward her.

She wanted more. Today had showed her that in no uncertain terms.

After one particularly scorching look, it was all she could do not to lift her barely touched beer bottle to her forehead and let the chilly drink cool her down.

Peering around at the crowd thinning out, she set down her drink.

“I think I might need a swim,” she croaked, her skin on fire as his gaze drifted down to her sand-dusted cleavage where her sundress was only half-buttoned. She raced for the water, diving in for a quick rinse, not caring about the dress. She had a towel somewhere.

She stumbled as a fierce undertow nearly swept her off her feet.

Brad reached her in a flash, steadying her with his electric touch. His hand traced a stream of water that made her dress cling to her spine. His head lowered to meet hers until hooting and hollering erupted from the committed party crowd still hanging around the bonfire.

Nikki grabbed his hand. No privacy here.

“Want to take a walk?”

He nodded mutely, tugging her toward shore just long enough to grab a couple of towels and her bag. She wrung out her clothes on the sand and then took his hand as they set off down the beach.

Every moment was precious. And since she’d never get this night back again, she planned to make sure she had no regrets about how she spent the rest of it.

BRAD COULDN’T PINPOINT what had happened to change Nikki’s mind about taking thing further between them, but there could be no mistaking the vibe she’d been sending his way tonight.

And he could not believe his luck. Two days ago, he’d been alone, replaying the IED nightmare like a skipping CD. Now, a smart, sexy professor meandered down the Virginia seashore beside him, her arm brushing his often enough to keep him very aware of her soft skin and tantalizing body. Red streaked the horizon, the sun barely holding itself above the waterline. In moments it would slip from view, leaving him alone with Nikki on the darkening coastline.

The sounds and signs of civilization disappeared as they strolled toward rockier, ungroomed beaches thick with tall grasses and sea oats. No one from the party would wander out this far. Although Brad made sure to choose a cove that tucked behind a boulder the size of Montana.

The only sounds now were their slapping feet against the cooling sand, squawking gulls and the waves rhythmically pounding the shore. He’d always been drawn to the water, making his navy career a natural fit.

Maybe a better man would ask himself why, after hitting the brakes on sex last night, Nikki was now driving him to distraction with come-hither looks. But hell. If she was offering, he was taking. And from the flirtatious smiles flashing his way, he’d say all systems were go.

He swung her around, reeling in his stunning catch. Her green eyes glowed in the twilight. Shadows gathered in the deep valley of her breasts. He fantasized about removing the bikini top she wore, speculating he could have it off in one deft finger flick.

But discipline kicked in. He knew better than to tackle a woman as soon as he got her alone. Although it had been touch and go there for a while when they’d been sitting next to each other at the bonfire.

“So did you enjoy the party?”

“Definitely.” She sidestepped a tortoise and Brad counted his blessings the thing hadn’t been limping or he probably would have been tasked with finding a cage for an impromptu rescue mission.

“That was great of you to hang out with Nate, especially after I shut you down when we were talking about Frank.”

Nikki let go of his hands and sat down beside a shimmering tide pool. She was silent for a few minutes then reached behind to pull him down beside her.

“It’s hard to find the right words sometimes. I’m sure you’re feeling the loss of your friend all the more with whatever you’re going through now.” She glanced meaningfully at his leg and the patch job still obvious on his calf.

And damn, but these academic types were way too observant.

“Sounds like you’ve gone through a lot yourself.” Brad wasn’t ready to talk about the IED that had blasted him along with that farmer. “What did you mean when you said your folks weren’t around much?”

“They’re professors, like me. To continue studying, they traveled. A lot. Something that’s not exactly easy to do dragging a kid around.”

“So let me guess, they dragged you to your relatives’ houses instead?” Brad’s blood pressure increased just imagining Nikki abandoned like that as a kid.

“Relatives, friends, colleagues.” Nikki shrugged, her throat constricting. “Basically anyone with a free bed.”

“And this went on for how long?” Brad demanded, frustration at her parents roughening his voice.

“Still is. I last saw my mom and dad four years ago.”

“Wow. That has to suck.” Brad ran his hands up and down her arms. No wonder she was gun-shy of getting involved with a traveling bomb detonator.

How her parents could have abandoned her he’d never understand. When he had kids, he’d be there for them one hundred percent. He wished he could have been there for Nikki growing up. Hell. He wished he could be there for her now.

“Yeah, especially when I was younger. But reading about Chloe’s childhood helped me to see my own differently.”

Nikki stroked his biceps, setting the hairs at the nape of his neck on end.

“I mean, waiting for life to hand you a guarantee before you let yourself enjoy it is a waste of time.” Her stroking extended up to his shoulder. “All my life, I waited for my parents to show up and love me. And when they finally did, all I could think about was when they would leave again. I don’t want to wait around to be happy anymore.”

She paused, letting that newsflash sink in. When it did, he began to understand her change of heart.

“Life doesn’t hand you any guarantees. You told me that on our way into the party and your friend Ashley kind of said the same thing another way. It’s funny how the universe has a way of sending you the messages you need to hear, and I’ve been beaten over the head with that one.”

She grinned and he couldn’t help but think he didn’t want to hear the messages the universe had been broadcasting for him every night when he closed his eyes. He’d never be effective at doing his job again if he allowed one crap outcome to rattle his nerve.

But he didn’t want to consider that now, not when Nikki had come around to his way of thinking.

“I hope I can be a part of helping you find some happiness today.” Brad reached for her face, tracing its curves. He tugged her gently toward him, pressing his lips against hers.

No sooner had he brushed a kiss over her lips than she pulled back.

“Wait a second,” Nikki whispered, rising to her feet.

Brad groaned inwardly. “Make it a nanosecond, and we’ve got a deal.”

Nikki reached behind her back and undid the string of her bikini top. A light breeze lifted the material’s edges, giving him an enticing peek at the full underside of her breasts.

“A gust of wind would be good right now,” Brad drawled, eying the half-undone swimsuit.

Twirling the loose strings on either side, Nikki grinned. “Why? Are you getting hot?”

“Whoa.” He got to his feet, his blood surging south and making him damn lightheaded. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to tease a red-blooded sailor on leave? You’re playing with fire.”

“Hey, I wrote a whole dissertation on erotica. I need some practical applications for my theories.”

“Well, you can be damn sure that your education isn’t going to waste.” Her enticing words, actions and smoking body were a huge turn-on. Clearly, she intended to seduce him.

And even though he wanted her right here and right now, he didn’t mind waiting to see what she had in store for him. He made no move, watching her curves silhouetted against the rising moon. A strong wave crashed against her knees, soaking her bikini.

She lifted her long, wet curls and undid the neck string, forcing the breath from his lungs.

The top slid, but then was neatly caught at the last minute. She held the material at chest level with one arm. Fortunately, enough flesh spilled out to keep him from howling in frustration.

“You want to see more?”

Nikki’s voice was a siren call to his senses.

She dropped her arm, giving Brad a brief glimpse of her full breasts and creamy skin before she whirled around and faced the sea. She looked over her shoulder and smiled coyly.

“Hope you like the bottom half as much as the top.”

Brad’s eyes drank in the pert, rounded cheeks barely covered by the scrap of white cloth.

“I’d like it better if it wore as little as the top.”

Nikki plucked the strings on either side of her waist, letting the bikini bottom drop to the ocean floor. She dropped to her knees to retrieve it, arching her back to reach the escaping piece. He sucked in his breath, too damn mesmerized by the show to help.

She rolled over in the rushing surf and stood, every inch the mermaid of a sailor’s dreams. Her perfect breasts jiggled tantalizingly as she swayed toward him. She halted just out of hand’s reach, tossing her bikini on the sand. Her slender hips and nipped-in waist rose above a dark triangle he hungered to explore.

“Come in with me.” She turned and splashed back into the pounding surf, her heart-shaped backside bouncing seductively.

Game over.

Brad leapt after her, predator to prey. He caught her two long strides from the shore, hauling her against him. Her cool, wet skin didn’t even come close to stanching the inferno within.

Her hands trailed along his waistband, making his abdominal muscles tense and contract. With a quick snap, she’d unbuttoned his shorts, stroking the tip of his cock. She rubbed the moist surface.

“Looks like someone’s already getting wet,” Nikki whispered, dragging the shorts down and off before he flung them onto the shore.

“I bet I’m not the only one,” he choked out, stroking up her bare leg and down to the vee of her thighs. Dampness flooded his impatient fingers. Hot flesh welcomed him as she snaked one long limb around his waist, giving him even deeper access. He cupped her sex, lingering over its wet warmth.

He swelled with satisfaction as she moaned and he wanted nothing so much as to be inside her. But like any military man, his mission always came first. Unleashing Nikki’s wild nature was his number one objective. Her sighs deepened as he found the tight nub that would bring her the most pleasure. He circled it with his thumb until her head lolled back, her spine arching.

His hand faltered as he took in the bounty inches from his salivating mouth. He intensified his strokes while licking the ocean salt from each taut nipple, tugging and nipping. Her leg tightened around him, pulling him closer. She shuddered beneath his insistent hand, her back arching, hips thrusting forward, pressing hard against his engorged staff. His enjoyment at her reaching satisfaction was almost as intense as if he’d achieved it himself.

While the waves continued to roll over their feet, her ragged breath slowed. Her leg dropped. Brad tightened his grip around her waist, propping her up in the pulsing tide. She’d turned as limp as a ragdoll.

Mission accomplished.

Several seconds passed as she rested her burning cheek against his rigid shoulder. He wanted to give her a minute to recover but he was hanging by a thread. He counted backward; a trick he used on high-pressure missions. He’d reached ninety-two when he felt her delicate fingers lowering to his waist. His erection.

Her cool fingers wrapped around him, gently skimming up and down the length. If she kept that up, he’d lose it in no time. What number had he left off at?

She sank to her knees, her beautiful body backlit by the glowing moon, sea foam rushing around her. He descended with her, pulling her onto his lap to shield her from the rolling waves. Her thighs straddled him as she rocked back and forth against his near-bursting hardness. He cupped her bottom, kneading the firm flesh. He used the leverage to press her core against him, making her gasp once more.

“Don’t move,” he commanded, leaning close enough to the shoreline to retrieve his shorts half-floating in the surf. His wallet was soaked, but thanks to the wonders of foil packaging, the condom he had in there would be fine. He could replace the money. But this moment—never.

He couldn’t get enough of her. Her body was a marvel he wanted to explore at leisure, if only he had the patience. As it was, he was barely able to contain himself once they’d rolled the condom in place. He traced the delicate flare of her hips, the inward turn of her waist and the slender rib cage—stopping at the soft underside of her breasts. He palmed them, groaning at their satisfying weight, delighting in the way they spilled from his hands. He lifted one to his mouth, eliciting another cry from Nikki. Her pleasure was his greatest turn-on.

And he couldn’t hold back another minute.

In one swift move, he twisted her beneath him and entered her in a smooth, long stroke.

His hips thrust powerfully, feeling her tighten around him with every stroke. Her hips arched up to meet each possessive push, her hands gripping his taut backside, pulling him in deeper. The urgent noises she made set his male instincts into overdrive.

He tried to slow down, to make the pleasure last for both of them. But he hadn’t been kidding when he said she’d been playing with fire. It had been a long time for him and he needed this. Needed her.

Their synchronized motion increased to a frenzied, heart-stopping tempo. Her breath came in fast pants which intensified to soft cries that were music to his ears. Her tight spasms and the surf pounding the beach in unison with his thrusts were too much. His release exploded in a tidal wave that left him drained and utterly sated.

He held her for a long moment. Then he rolled over and stared at the twinkling stars overhead. His pulse still pounded hard as he turned to look at her delicate profile. She was more adventurous than he’d imagined with her impromptu striptease and rollicking around in the surf. Hell, she’d been more than a match for him.

A star shot across the sky. Nikki gasped, his first indication she’d regained her wits.

“Quick, wish on it!” she urged. Her hand snaked out and caught his as they tracked the blazing trail against the midnight sky.

The sighting had been fast and vivid. He would have missed it if he’d blinked. But it had been there, brightening the sky until it burned into nothing. Would his relationship with Nikki be the same? A flash of hot color and joy in his life for two short weeks before he had to return to the reality of his job overseas? He hated to think about it like that. But with Nikki quietly contemplating the darkness alongside him, Brad guessed they might be thinking the very same thing.

Tightening his hold on her in the water, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. He’d drag them to the shore in a minute. But if this was all the time they had together, he planned to drink in every second and make the most of this affair while it still burned hot and bright.

8

NIKKI SLOWLY SWAM TO consciousness, anchored in Brad’s arms. A rough military blanket enveloped them, keeping the damp, morning sea air out and their fiery body heat in.

He’d retrieved the blanket from the roll that contained his beach towel after they’d returned to dry land farther up the beach late last night. He’d built a fire out of driftwood using little more than a Bic lighter and ingenuity, providing them with a bonfire of their own until just a couple of hours ago. Apparently Brad had come more prepared for their walk last night than she had, although she congratulated herself on the bottle of water in her purse.

Nestled against Brad’s steely contours, Nikki couldn’t help but replay last night’s sensational sex. She squirmed backward, fitting her bottom snugly into the curve of his muscular flanks. Rock-hard arms tightened around her reflexively.

Returning to sleep was definitely out of the question.

She blushed, recollecting her uninhibited behavior last night. What had come over her? A few weeks in Chloe’s house and she’d become a wanton woman.

Chloe would approve. Did she?

A long, low ship horn reverberated across the sea. Nikki cracked open her eyes, hoping the day hadn’t yet dawned. She wasn’t ready to face last night’s impulsive actions.

She took a fortifying breath of the briny ocean air and peered about. The world was gray and shadowed. Darn. Sunrise, and reality, were only moments away.

She thought about waking Brad, wanting to share their first sunrise together, then stopped. She was getting way ahead of herself. They had less than two weeks together.

How foolish to imagine a future with him full of “firsts.”

The deep rumbling of Brad’s wide chest vibrated against her back. She hated to wake him from such a peaceful sleep. After his nightmarish evening the other night, he deserved the rest.

Hopefully, he’d keep sleeping so she could sort out her feelings. She inhaled his musky, masculine scent. The longer she lingered, the less clearly she could think.

She carefully eased out of his arms. A lonely rush of chilled air buffeted her as she emerged. Quickly, she tightened the blanket around him. He stirred slightly, his arms reaching out into her now-empty space. He sighed deeply, but didn’t wake.

A short stroll brought her to the ocean’s edge. Her beach dress billowed behind her in the brisk, morning breeze. She inhaled the scent of salt, fish and seaweed. Overhead, fishing birds floated like feathered kites.

Two brown pelicans squabbled over a catch, their long bills clicking and snapping.

Someone always wanted what someone else had. Like her situation with Chloe’s family. They’d inherited most of Chloe’s estate. Why was there so much animosity over her ramshackle house and personal diaries? It just didn’t add up.

As if on cue, her cell phone trilled. She rushed to her beach bag and flipped it open. A text message icon popped up.

In eleven days, you’ll be alone again, unprotected. We’ll be waiting.

Anger surged. Did they think she was a frightened child to be scared by poisonous texts and a broken window? She could take care of herself.

Besides, Brad was more than her protector; he was now her lover—for nearly two glorious weeks. Nikki smiled, recalling the way his insistent hands had lit her on fire. She’d never felt so uninhibited, a thought that thrilled and frightened her.

What if her heart opened up to him as easily as her body? Her feet burrowed in the wet sand as she crossed her arms against a chilly ocean gust.

She glanced back at Brad, the hard planes of his face relaxed into an impossibly handsome visage.

Was a highly charged, two-week affair possible without putting her heart on the line?

The text message got it right in one sense. When Brad’s leave ended, she would be unprotected. But it wasn’t her physical safety she worried about. If she got too attached, she’d be devastated when he left. She was all too familiar with that feeling.

Nikki’s stomach churned with uncertainty as she turned back to the rough sea. For now, she needed to keep her guard up.

Feet padded behind her. Nikki’s back stiffened as she was engulfed in Brad’s powerful embrace. He rested his head atop hers, pulling her close.

“Morning, beautiful,” he murmured huskily in her ear. Heavy black clouds gathered on the horizon.

Nikki’s traitorous heart drummed, nearly drowning out the rising waves.

“Looks like rain,” she replied. Lightning forked in the distance. An ominous rumble confirmed her prediction.

“‘Red sky at night, sailors’ delight, red sky in the morning, sailors take warning.’” He tossed out the old adage as he trailed a molten flow of kisses down her neck, wreaking havoc with her senses and her willpower.

It would be so difficult to keep things light between them.

“Then we should both be warned,” Nikki managed, breathless from his touch. “We’d better get going before the downpour arrives.”

Brad’s eyebrows slashed downward, his inscrutable eyes narrowing. But the whole concept of “no guarantees” was his rule. So why did he appear more frustrated than relieved?

“Sure thing” came the clipped reply. He shook out the blanket and slid on his shorts before she’d even picked up her beach bag.

He strode up the beach, away from the shore and their night together.

Nikki jogged to keep up. What was his deal? Good thing she’d kept her distance after all. Her bare toes tangled in something, slowing her down. She prepared to pull seaweed from her foot and discovered she’d tripped on a half-buried metal chain. She squatted for a closer look. Lt. Frank Peterson’s dog tags. Nate must have lost them in the roughhousing yesterday.

Her fingers traced the embossed letters for a moment before she tucked them into her dress pocket. The tags felt so small compared to the hero they represented. How could an entire life be reduced to a piece of metal and a loyal woman’s memories?

What would it be like to be that woman?

The first raindrops fell as she reached Brad scrambling to gather the rest of their belongings by the volleyball net—their strained silence as charged as the electrified air.

They raced up the path to the open field that had served as a parking lot yesterday, trees swaying wildly overhead. The wind howled, whipping the leafy canopy into a frenzy. Just as the downpour hit, they clambered into the Jeep.

Nikki sighed. That was close.

Strangely, the deluge had kept things from getting too heavy. She’d survived one morning after without falling hopelessly in love with Brad Riddock. Only eleven more to go.

AT NIKKI’S HOUSE, BRAD HANDED over her beach bag after walking her to the door. He didn’t know what to make of the cool distance she’d opted for this morning, but a gentleman walked a woman to the door and he’d damn well honor the code even if she didn’t seem to want him there.

Nikki pushed back her dark hair, the curls soft and abundant after she’d fallen asleep with it wet the night before. “I didn’t mean to be standoffish this morning, Brad. But I thought maybe we needed a break after how intense things were last night.”

Okay. Way to address the issue head-on. He appreciated that. Nodding, he wished his chest weren’t so damn tight. Wasn’t this what he’d wanted?

“I figured as much.” But that didn’t take away how much it sucked to be shot down when he’d already been planning how to get her naked again.

“I’d still be grateful if you’d like to sleep here tonight,” she continued, setting her beach bag on the patio table. “I just need some time to think before then.”

Relief flooded through him. She hadn’t shut him out.

Killer barked from the porch, interrupting their onesided conversation.

“Come here, boy,” Brad called. Killer looked from Brad to Nikki, whined, but refused to leave the porch. “You like her better now, huh?” He reached up and rubbed the dog’s belly through the peeling porch spindles. “Can’t say I blame you.”

The blue jay squawked and the chipmunk squealed as Nikki ascended the steps. She gave them a quick once-over, then turned to pet Killer, as well.

“Brad, you’re okay with that, right?” Her green eyes peered down at him anxiously. “I’m sure you don’t want to complicate things either.”

Brad took the porch steps in one bound and backed her up against a newel post. He kissed her long and hard. Palming her ass, he hauled her up against him. When he released her, she grabbed hold of the post and gasped for breath.

Ego appeased, he grinned.

“Darlin’,” Brad said as he backed down the steps, “this can be as simple as we want to make it.”

He hopped in his Jeep and roared out of her driveway. If she needed time to mull things over, let her think about that.

He drove to the VA facility with the windows down. The air had lost its oppressive humidity and blew in the smell of freshly cut grass. The lighter weather matched his optimistic mood. He’d gone all night without playing host to the recurring dream. That meant he was straightening out, right? He couldn’t wait to tell the shrink as much, except—oh, yeah, he’d only copped to a couple of nightmares in the first place.

But first came rehab. He rode the exercise bike then went through his prescribed routine of leg pumps, curls and extensions. The large, airy space was filled with dozens of bikes, elliptical machines, weight benches and other work-out equipment. Grunts accompanied the clanging of metal on metal. The stench of sweat and iron made Brad’s nose curl. Not that he should talk. He reeked as bad as the other ten servicemen in the gym, but figured he’d hold off on a shower until after he’d worked out. One, Brad noticed, had lost an arm.

“Hey.” The guy lifted his chin at him as he handcurled forty pounds.

“Impressive.” Brad gestured to the oversize dumbbell while he worked on a military press with the barbell.

The soldier grinned and finished another set of ten before lightly placing the weight in its slot and grabbing the fifty pounder.

“James,” grunted the wounded warrior. He worked through another impossible set.

“Brad.” He mopped his brow, amazed the guy had barely broken a sweat. It felt like a hundred degrees.

“Navy?” James asked, finishing his last set at the same time Brad ended a round of squats.

“Unit 12—Norfolk.”

“Unit 4.”

An assault unit. That explained the guy’s Hulk-like strength.

“You with the explosive division?” James asked, flipping a towel over one shoulder as they headed toward the locker room.

“Yeah.” Brad thought about that missing arm, wary about where the conversation could land.

“IED specialist?”

“That would be me.”

“Bad-ass, dude.” James grinned then expertly disrobed and disappeared into the steaming showers. Brad followed suit two stalls down, and when he emerged, he found James twirling his locker combination onehanded, a towel securely tucked around his waist. The exposed amputation must have been healing for a while, the rounded, puckered flesh no longer red.

“You never seen one?” James asked, catching his stare.

“I’ve seen them.” He grimaced, his mind flashing to the Iraqi farmer’s grisly wound. “But they’re usually fresh.”

James’s locker clicked open and he efficiently donned his clothes, even buttoning his shirt with ease. Seeing how well he’d adapted made Brad wonder if the Iraqi farmer could recover some degree of normalcy after his injury.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Depends.”

“You get that from a bomb or gun?”

“IED.” He shrugged casually, shouldering his gym bag. “But what’s the difference? Life’s gonna bite you in the ass whenever it wants. It’s not like we got any say about it, right?”

“I hear that,” Brad echoed, knowing it with one hundred percent freaking certainty.

He dressed quickly and headed to a private psych facility a few blocks away; the base counselor had had too many patients to take him on. Just as well since it sort of sucked running into guys you knew while traipsing in and out of the shrink’s office. Not that there was a stigma attached to the whole ordeal…far from it. If you did combat time, chances were good you’d be in there for one thing or another eventually. But the anonymity here, away from the base, was just fine with him.

The assistant at the front desk waved him in and he put on his game face.

“Come in, Lieutenant,” boomed his doctor, Sean Leonard. He came out from behind his desk to gesture toward the informal seating nearby. “Have a seat.”

“Thank you.” Brad dropped into a straight-backed solid-oak chair that must have predated WWII. He glanced at the clock. The large white hand ticked. Only fifty-nine more minutes to go.

Dr. Leonard took out a file, flipped it open and rapidly perused its contents. He glanced up, his eyes keen. He had the clean-cut appearance of someone who’d taken care of himself his whole life—from the fit runner’s physique to the brown eyes that broadcast simple sincerity. Under any other circumstances, Brad would have probably liked him.

“The last time we spoke you said your most recent nightmare was the one witnessed by Lieutenant Staley a week ago.”

“That’s correct.” Ashley’s fiancé had borrowed his car and walked in on the nightly horror show. Brad didn’t know who’d been more freaked out—him to know someone else had witnessed his demons, or Joe who sure as hell hadn’t wanted a backstage pass to another guy’s private hell.

“Any more since then?”

“No, sir,” he lied.

The doc made a note in the chart.

“How often do you think of the incident in Mosul?”

“How often?” Brad stalled, unsure what the normal response would be.

“How frequently do you picture the events that precipitated your leave?” the doctor asked again patiently.

Brad went with the truth because, damn it, you’d have to be born without a freaking conscience not to think about it sometimes.

“At least once or twice daily, sir.”

The pen flashed again. A lengthy scrawl of sentences followed. Brad looked around the wood-paneled room, noting the doc’s educational certificates and citation awards. A yellowed picture of a much younger Leonard, his redheaded wife and their three freckled children hung on the wall beside his oversize desk.

“Would you describe your feelings and thoughts when you think of the incident?”

Sweat popped along his brow and he wished he’d thought to tell the shrink right off that he’d been working out first. Because, damn it, that’s why a bead had rolled down his back just now and not because of some knee-jerk reaction at the thought of talking about his freaking feelings. No way was he getting into all that.

“Regret.” Brad resisted the urge to mop his forehead and ended up looking at the clock instead.

Damn.

“And what is it that you regret, Lieutenant?” the doctor queried, still scribbling.

The guy’s cool detachment bugged him. How could he sit across from him, dry as a freaking Right Guard commercial, while Brad sweated it out trying to find the correct answers to impossible questions that would allow him to go back out and do his job?

“How about regret that a civilian lost his arm? Regret that befriending the civilian’s son led to his father’s injury. Mix in some regret that the same kid had to see the horror with his own eyes and then top it all off with a crapload of regret that getting close to anyone ends up being dangerous as hell in my experience!”

The quiet in the room seemed intense after an outburst that had ended with a little more volume than he’d intended. Taking a deep breath, he swallowed back any urge to say more.

The doctor finally looked up; his brown eyes assessing Brad carefully.

“Regret is a normal emotion,” the shrink began. “But thinking that personal closeness is dangerous is not.”

Brad kept his face impassive. Never show doubt or fear.

“Would you describe the relationships you are currently in?” asked the doc. Brad was not falling for that game again.

“I have a dog.” The mutt had adopted him before he’d found Nikki, after all. Surely that counted as a relationship. “He’s a scrawny thing—maybe some daschund in the mix—so I called him Killer—you know, help the little guy’s self-image.”

Leonard didn’t seem inclined to discuss the psychology of small canines.

“How long have you had the dog?”

Brad swallowed. “One week.”

“I see. Your parents?”

“Passed away ten years ago, sir.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. And my apologies, Lieutenant. I see there’s a note in your file about the plane crash.” The oak chair squeaked as he squirmed under the doc’s penetrating stare. “Any other relationships?”

Since he didn’t want to get into his need to help out Frank’s widow and her son, he found himself saying, “A girl, Nikki.”

The pen clicked again, poised over the folder.

“And what is the status of your relationship?”

Good question. If only he knew the answer.

“Physical, I think.”

“So no emotional attachment?”

Brad hesitated. He couldn’t bring himself to deny the feelings she aroused in him. For that matter, something about Leonard’s tone made him think that a lack of emotional attachment equated with a one-way pass to Crazy Town.

“I wouldn’t go that far, sir. It’s just hard to say where things will lead when we only met three days ago.”

The pen started scribbling furiously and Brad wondered why his relationships were so important. Wasn’t emotional detachment critical to his job?

“Brad, our time is nearly up,” began Doc Leonard. Brad looked up at the clock, shocked the minutes went so quickly this time. “But I want to see you back next week and hear how things are going with Nikki and—” he looked down at his notes “—Killer.”

Brad stood quickly, ready to jet out of there.

The doc raised a thick, gnarled finger, holding him. “This week explore what you’ve begun with Nikki, beyond the physical. Try to remember that not every personal relationship is harmful. That’s not to say either one of you won’t get hurt in the process, but the point is, you have to be open, and willing to try.” His yellowed teeth flashed in a kindly smile. Brad suddenly realized that the doc was older than he thought and had probably worked beyond his retirement.

“Yes, sir.” Brad nodded his thanks before hightailing it out of there with an appointment card in hand. The session might have moved faster today, but he still couldn’t wait to leave.

And, hot damn, had he just received a prescription for hanging out more with Nikki? For the first time in the history of his crappy injury, he decided he would be a very compliant patient.

9

MIDAFTERNOON SUN ROASTING the back of her neck, Nikki was grateful for an excuse to shut off the power sander when her cell phone rang in the middle of the afternoon. Still, she approached the device like a rattlesnake, knowing chances were high it would be another creepy text message. She really needed to create a separate ring tone for her texts.

“Hello?” She didn’t recognize the number, but at least it was a real call and not a text.

“I’m looking for the hot professor that all the kids at school have been talking about—”

“Hi, Brad.” She peeled off the gloves she’d been wearing and leaned back on the porch spindles she’d tackled today. “I’m glad you called. I forgot to tell you I found Nate’s dog tags on the beach this morning. You’ll probably want to contact his mom to let her know you have them.”

“I’ll do that. I have to call Ashley anyway to set up a time to take Nate to the fair this week.” He sounded as if he was in the Jeep, the drone of an engine combining with the whip of wind in the background. “How’s it going at the house? No trouble with harassers?”

“It’s been quiet except for the power sander.” She brushed some paint chips from her T-shirt.

“Any time to search for the diaries?”

“No. But I’ll step up my efforts on that score now that we’ve made some serious progress on the house. If the Ralston family succeeds in taking the house from me, I’ll want to know that I searched the property as much as possible first. Having all the original diaries published together was really important to Chloe.” And from a scholarly perspective, Nikki couldn’t wait to read them to see what they contained that was so important to her friend. What secrets might they reveal?

“I think the harassment is going to stop once the diaries are made public. My gut says whoever is behind the threats is trying to suppress their release. So the sooner we find them and hand them over to a publisher, the safer you’ll be.” His voice took on that growly tone that sent a ridiculous thrill through her.

“You might be right.” She clutched the phone tighter, enjoying the completely unfamiliar feeling of having someone look after her. She could become way too used to this. “What have you been doing today?”

“Miss me already?”

“Possibly.” She hugged herself like a teenager on the phone with her first boyfriend. Damn it, how old was she? “But don’t evade the question.”

“I went for a workout and a round of therapy for my leg.” The way he said it—stilted, somehow—reminded her that he’d never told her the circumstances surrounding the wound.

She sensed it all tied in with the nightmare.

“You can tell me all about it when we’re searching for the diaries tonight.” Maybe this time she’d distract him with readings from Chloe’s work.

“Is there a striptease involved?”

Her breath caught as her heartbeat sped up. “If that’s what it takes…”

“I’ve got one more stop to make and then I’ll be over there.”

She was wound up now, eager to see what would happen if she let her guard down again. He’d made her feel so incredible on the beach. And she’d had enough time to corral her emotions since the morning. She could handle this.

“You’re sure it can’t wait?” she asked, as breathless as if he’d just touched her.

“I’m stopping by Angelica’s house to see what she’s not telling about family members who might have it in for you. She knows something.” He lowered his voice. “If it was anything else, I’d blow it off and see you now.”

A smile warmed her insides. She liked that he had priorities.

“Are you sure you don’t want to let the police talk to her?” She agreed that Angelica had appeared as though she had something to share before they’d been interrupted when she’d brought the casserole. “They know we’re suspicious of the Ralston family.”

“But with the grandfather a city councilman and the father a prominent businessperson, I’m not sure how willing the police will be to rock that boat without more evidence.”

“You may have a point.” She sighed at the thought of waiting longer to see him. “Then I guess we’ll have to let the anticipation build.”

Heat washed over her skin as she imagined how hot things might get between them tonight.

Maybe she’d do a little prep on the erotica front by doing some reading before he arrived.

“I’ll be there soon,” he promised.

And even though a lot of people in her life had let her down on that score, she absolutely believed Brad when he said he’d show.

“I’ll look forward to it,” she purred through the phone, done with the sanding for the day.

SEXUAL URGES SURGED THROUGH him like adrenaline as he downshifted to exit the highway. He wanted to be with Nikki now. And he would damn well quiz her about that erotica dissertation to find out all the details. He’d learn what appealed to her most and then incorporate it into his personal repertoire posthaste.

He tried to shut down those thoughts as he arrived at Angelica’s house—her address as easy to secure as looking in the phone book. He drove up her circular driveway, parking in front of an imposing white Tudor home with two-story columns and shiny black shutters. The overpowering aroma of her rose-lined circular driveway, complete with a burbling stone fountain, reminded him of a funeral parlor. Even though it wasn’t his cup of tea, it was obvious this woman didn’t need Chloe Lissander’s house for any financial reasons.

The heavy brass knocker thudded loudly against a mammoth front door with glass side panels.

Within moments, a blonde teenage girl opened the door. She wore a red-and-white cheerleader outfit emblazoned with the word Chiefs. She looked him up and down.

“Can I help you?” she asked, smiling flirtatiously.

“Let’s start with you acting your age and end with you getting your mother.”

The teenager’s lower lip pouted. She strode down a gleaming marble hall screaming, “Ma!” He stood in the open doorway.

Angelica’s Ked sneakers, red this time, flashed down a curved mahogany staircase. She, too, was dressed in red and white. Her warm-up suit had Chiefs stretched across its front, as well.

“Lieutenant Riddock, so nice to see you.” She batted her lashes like a woman who’d had lots of practice. Like mother like daughter. “Won’t you come in?”

She led him across the two-story foyer into a bright room with floor-to-ceiling windows and yellow, floralpatterned couches. The scent of lemony furniture polish suggested a recent cleaning.

“I’m sorry that we can’t visit longer, but Emily and I have cheer practice.” Angelica lifted her chin. “I’m the coach.”

“This will just take a moment.” Brad would have his answers.

“I appreciate that. The competition to lead a five time National Division–winning cheer team is fierce, but we…”

Brad stared at her until she brushed imaginary lint from her pristine track suit.

She babbled on. “You can’t imagine the dirty doings going on behind the smiling hurdler jumps and basket throws. I mean we don’t use dagger hands for nothing.”

“The dirty doings going on with Nikki are the reason I’m here,” said Brad.

“I’m not sure what you mean.” Angelica straightened.

“Mean-girl tricks might work in cheerleading, but they are not going to continue with Nikki,” he began forcefully.

“You don’t mean to suggest I threw that rock in her window?” Angelica held up her scarlet-tipped nails. “Do you really think I would jeopardize a hundred-dollar manicure?”

“No. But I think you have an idea who did. Scaring Nikki is going to stop. I expect you to tell me everything you know.”

Angelica’s eyebrows lifted as much as Botox allowed. “The fact that Chloe left her home to some random university professor is crazy. The house and its contents should stay in the family.”

Brad looked around Angelica’s far more lavish home.

“Your father is the most successful contractor in town, and your grandfather is a city councilman. Nikki said Chloe left your family her money, not that you need it. So why the opposition?”

“I’m sorry, I really need to go—”

“You need to tell me who is threatening Nikki.” He brought out the military don’t-eff-with-me stare. “This isn’t some adolescent game.”

Angelica’s eyes locked with his, her expression too frozen to read. The room was silent save for the whirring ceiling fan. Finally, she exhaled, shoulders slumped.

“Look. All I know is something I overheard between Grampy and Dad.”

“And that was…?” Brad urged, thinking a woman who took as much pride in her ruthlessness and competitive drive as Angelica did would throw her family under the bus in a heartbeat. But he still couldn’t imagine why she’d give a rat’s ass about an eccentric author’s ramshackle property.

“Something about some missing diaries and something that happened back in WWII.”

“Why would they care about that?”

“All I know is that Grampy served in the war, so I think it’s related somehow.” She pointed to a framed black-and-white photo of a young army sergeant above her mantel.

Brad’s mind buzzed. They wanted the diaries back because they revealed something that happened during the war? Something no one knew even now.

It had to be bad to warrant this level of interest. Had it been the kind of personal transgression that could break up a family? An unethical act that could taint a councilman’s political career?

“Did Harold serve in Alaska—on the Aleutian Islands?”

Angelica’s eyes widened. “Army Infantry. He was on Attu when American forces recaptured it. How did you know?”

Just a hunch. One that proved Eduardo and the councilman—one retired Sergeant Harold Ralston—had crossed paths on an infamous mission during WWII. Coincidence?

Probably not, unless of course, Angelica excelled at deflecting blame. In which case, she’d be sending him on one heck of a wild goose chase.

“Thanks,” he muttered to Angelica, showing himself to the door.

Brad threw himself in the Jeep and chewed up a couple of bushes in his haste to return to the house. Angelica might not be targeting Nikki to find those diaries, but someone in her family sure as hell wanted them. And without knowing what the stakes were for that person, Brad had no way of telling how far they would go to get what they wanted.

SHE WAS ALL ALONE.

Nikki felt almost guilty stealing outdoors in the late afternoon with the book of erotica in hand. What naughty intentions she had. But it was all Brad’s fault.

The man had a potent physical affect on her. She felt like a different person around him. Her senses had never been more alive. The sun warmed her skin in a full body caress. The scent of cut grass hung in the air with a sweetness that made her breathe deep.

A chittering from the chipmunk’s cage caught her attention, distracting her from her private destination point. She squatted for a closer look. The animal’s torn ear had healthy pink edges without sign of infection or inflammation.

“Guess it’s time for you to go, buddy.” Nikki hoisted the metal confine and carried it down to the wooded area behind the house. Beneath a wild cherry tree, she opened the cage and backed away.

The chipmunk hesitated, cowering in the back of his cage, but before long, the call of another chipmunk tempted him outside. Soon, he scampered about with two other friends, seeming to find his place in the world.

Leaving the cage behind, Nikki ventured deeper into the woods with her book. Once, Chloe had mentioned a private wildflower meadow that held special memories for her and she hadn’t made time yet to hunt it down since she’d inherited the home. She’d called it her secret garden.

Dense underbrush tickled Nikki bare legs as she hiked. Overhead, a woodpecker tapped a rotted tree, the hollow sound echoing through the woods. Gradually, the filtered light dappling her arms and face grew more intense. She burst into an open, fragrant space. Purple coneflowers, Queen Anne’s lace and black-eyed Susans rippled in a delicate dance with the breeze. Monarch butterflies flitted from bloom to bloom, their beauty as colorful as their targets. Nikki inhaled the floral-scented air and wished she could bottle the heady fragrance.

In the center lay a large limestone rock in varying shades of gray and brown. Perfect for sun-bathing.

She picked her way across the meadow and stretched out on the warm stone. Cloud puffs sailed across a cerulean sky as she cracked open the book and began to read. Erotica was so much more fun when it wasn’t the subject of scholarly dissection. Now, she could just imagine her and Brad in the place of the frolicking couple in her book. Her eyes drifted closed, lulled to sleep by the humming bees, warbling larks and rustling trees…

A soft caress against her cheek woke her. Brad’s lustrous blue eyes gazed down at her, his dimples creasing in an incredibly hot smile. Nikki brought his head down, kissing him long and deep. She groaned as his lips possessed hers, their stroking tongues tangling.

Grabbing his wide shoulders, she pulled him on top of her. The feel of his muscular torso, powerful legs and hardening erection made her moan. She slid his hands over her sensitive breasts, desperate for his touch. When she could no longer take the mounting tension, she guided his hand lower. She spread her legs, feeling the pulsing heat of the bright afternoon sun between her hips. He stroked her slippery softness with increasing speed until she screamed, the fierceness of her release waking her.

She bolted upright and shook her head. Brad was nowhere in sight.

An erotic dream. Her first.

Yet the dampness between her thighs suggested parts of her reverie had been very real. Her cheeks flushed at the memory even as she smiled. If she and Brad ever did work on something more long-term, she could at least envision how she might get through the deployments without him. The dream had been like having him right there beside her.

Not that she was imagining some rosy future, damn it. The thought was just that—a thought.

The tall grass flattened as she jumped down. She strode from the private paradise, eager to return home and start the search for Chloe’s missing diaries. After this and last night’s tantalizing experiences, Nikki un derstood better why Chloe had exhorted her to express her sensual nature.

Chloe had been a visionary—a woman before her time who’d embraced her passion rather than suppress it. Generations later, why did Nikki struggle to do the same?

She needed to learn what made Chloe so fearless. Understanding the source of her strength might empower Nikki to take an emotional risk with Brad.

In minutes she’d reached the porch, given the nearly healed blue jay food and water, and let Killer inside. She gave him a cold drink and bowl of kibble before taking the stairs two at a time. After a quick shower and change of clothes, she grabbed one of Chloe’s earliest diaries from a mahogany bookcase in the bedroom.

This one was an original, but Nikki wasn’t certain how many people knew it since Chloe had sewn the binding of a dry, nineteenth-century political treatise onto the journal. She hadn’t given Nikki the original diaries for her dissertation, but had assured her she’d have access to them after her death. And she’d been true to her word. Nikki has hoped to gather all the books before she sat down to read them as a set. But since she hadn’t found the others yet, maybe there would be a clue as to where the missing journals were located here.

The lowering sun glowed through her eyelet lace curtains in the master bedroom. No way was she reading this indoors when spring beckoned outside. She grabbed a pillow and blanket before climbing through the gable window. It was a slippery scramble across the slate roof to a flat widow’s walk encircled by an intricate, black iron fence.

Inside the enclosure, she leaned against the downy pillow and began leafing through the journal. Much of it was the same as the published, edited diaries she was already so familiar with. There were no references to Eduardo, the mystery lover, in this diary since it traced events prior to 1943. However, as Nicky leafed through the pages, a yellowed scrap of paper fluttered loose from the book. At first, she thought she’d found an old letter. But as she opened it, she realized she’d found a misplaced diary entry from one of the volumes they were missing.

The entry was dated April, 1943.

Dear Diary,

Eduardo’s last letter filled me with longing. He asked for letters to keep him warm, despite having left me too innocent to write such heated words. I have yet to reply, afraid my inexperienced scribbling will be all wrong.

Today, I stumbled upon the means to ending that ignorance in the most unexpected and pleasurable way. As usual, I finished my afternoon stroll at the secret garden meadow, picking a wildflower bouquet. I rested on the rock, the silent witness to our final tryst. The copper veins running through the gray stone reminded me of Eduardo’s bronzed skin. How it glistened in the sun when he’d doffed his uniform shirt!

He’d begged me to stop as I traced the firm squares of his stomach with a white daisy. I wanted to make him break his pledge to keep me pure until our wedding—a secret event I dare only share with you, Diary. How I wished to be that flower, especially when it dipped beneath his belt buckle. The effect was immediate. He sat up as if stung, breathing hard. How could a simple flower evoke such a powerful response?

Impulsively, I decided to recreate that moment, hoping to alleviate my yearning. I stepped out of my dress, unrolled my stockings and lay on the rock, twirling a wild red rose—the rest of my bouquet scattered around me.

My stomach quivered at the soft touch of the flower petals against my bare skin. No wonder Eduardo had gasped when I’d done the same to him. My pulse quickened. I traced the bloom up my rib cage and stopped, wondering if I dared go farther. I unhooked my bra, imagining Eduardo’s strong hands on my back. My breasts sprang free, as if seeking his touch. I blushed hot at the thought of him fondling them, cupping their heavy fullness.

I brushed the rose against each quivering nipple, pretending his fingers brought me this intense pleasure. A tightening began in my lower abdomen, tempting me to bring the flower lower where I wanted it most. As I rested it on my sensitive inner thighs, a loud groan tore the quiet country air. I was amazed the crude sound was mine! I inched the rose higher, eliciting another wail in the back of my throat. What a relief that Eduardo hadn’t witnessed me in such a state. Yet perhaps this is what he wants to hear in my letters after all.

When the silken petals brushed my most intimate place, it forced the breath from my lungs. Never had such fierce delight overtaken me. A deep, desperate craving for more instantly followed. I widened my legs and began tracing the flower along damp, tender flesh. Quickening pants erupted with every silken stroke. Eventually, the rose broke under the passionate pressure. Unable to stop, my hand took over. I imagined Eduardo’s touch instead of mine.

Within moments, exquisite release swept over me, shaking me to my very core. I shrieked in mindless bliss as tremors of ecstasy rippled through my womb. When the spasms ceased, I lay upon the rock as limp as a dishrag hung out to dry.

This, then, was how I’d made Eduardo feel on our last day together. What torture he’d endured! If I knew the frantic need such innocent actions created, I would have insisted we reach this fiery fulfillment together. I will not miss such an opportunity with him again.

I hunger for his return, ready to share these delights. Our time apart reminds me of the frenzied moments before today’s ecstatic release—full of pleasure, longing, need and desperation. Such tortuous feelings heighten the thrill of fulfillment. Separation will be the spice that sweetens our time together.

I must go and write Eduardo. My letter will be hot enough to melt glaciers! Let’s hope he keeps it safe from you-know-who. If my parents found out about Eduardo, they’d lock me in a convent—and undoubtedly ban me from the forest. Both would be terrible fates—for I have many fantasies to play out in the meadow until my love returns.

Good night, dearest Diary.

A secret wedding? Nikki wondered if it had ever taken place. Not once had Chloe mentioned Eduardo or any engagement. Had she hidden such a thing the whole time Nikki had known her? She took a deep breath and shuddered. Once more her life had strangely paralleled Chloe’s.

If rocks could talk…

She peered through the bars of the widow’s walk, seeking signs of Brad. He would want to know about the diary entry. But instead of the rumble of a Jeep’s engine, she heard only a weak meow whispered down from above. Nikki squinted through the dense white oak towering over her. Finally, she spotted it, nearly a good fifty feet from the ground. On a branch narrower than her wrist clung a tiny ginger kitten.

A wind gust buffeted the limb. The kitten held on, swaying perilously.

Nikki’s hand rose to her mouth, panicked at the kitty’s dangerous predicament. She had no idea if she was strong enough to climb that high. And if she did reach it, would her weight send them both tumbling?

Nikki stepped over the low wrought-iron railing. A slate shingle slid beneath her foot and dropped over the edge. She flinched as it shattered into pieces three stories below.

Another desperate meow sounded. Nikki inhaled deeply, grabbed hold of the nearest ranch, and peered up. The kitten seemed so far away. He must be hungry to scale those heights in search of food.

“Don’t worry,” she called with more confidence than she felt. “I’m coming.” As if understanding, the kitten meowed even louder.

Where was a hero when she needed one?

As if on cue, Brad’s Jeep swerved into view.

10

BRAD’S TIRES CRUNCHED over fragmented stone as he screeched to a halt. This mess of gray rock hadn’t been here this morning. Had Nikki been working on another project? Or had someone been here causing more damage?

He took the porch steps in one bound and slammed through the screen door.

Why had she left it unlocked when someone was out to cause trouble for her?

“Nikki!” he shouted from the living room. Book piles littered the floor, unchanged to his trained eye. The plywood-covered front window was still intact—but that didn’t mean an intruder hadn’t strolled right through the front door.

Brad ran his hands through his closely cropped hair, tugging the short strands in frustration. Did she not grasp the danger she faced? Maybe hearing Angelica’s news would make her take things more seriously. Either way, dead bolts were going on the doors tomorrow.

He raced to the kitchen. Killer wagged his scruffy tail, but barely lifted his head from a bowl of dog food, his ears flopping on the sides to drag on the floor. Nikki’s keys, cell phone and beach bag lay on the table. She had to be home, so why couldn’t she hear him?

His protective instincts shifted into overdrive. He flipped open her cell, scanning for clues—like more threatening texts.

He swore when he read this morning’s message.

Those bastards. As if he would leave Nikki alone and unprotected. Brad vowed her crisis would be resolved before he left. And when he finished with the responsible parties, they’d wish they’d had more protection.

But why hadn’t Nikki shared it with him?

Upstairs, he checked her bedroom. A yellow terrycloth robe sprawled across the bottom of her white, four-poster bed. Open drawers spilling tops and shorts suggested she’d dressed quickly.

Had she heard an intruder? Gotten an unexpected visitor?

As he turned to go downstairs, he heard more stone shatter in the still, early evening air. Instinctively, he ducked, then sprang to the window.

At the edge of an unstable slate roof perched Nikki, her fingers wrapped around an overhead branch barely within reach. In attempting to keep her balance, she must have sent the tile flying. That at least explained the mess in her driveway.

His breath caught at the precariousness of her position. Given the degree she leaned out from the rooftop, she had nowhere to go but down.

“Nikki,” he called softly. “Don’t turn and don’t let go. I’m coming for you.”

She nodded but otherwise remained silent. Probably frozen in fear. Why would she do something so crazy? Had someone threatened her, forced her out here?

He slipped out the window. His sneakers slid slightly on the tiled surface. Another part of the old house that needed work. One wrong move and he might send them both flying.

He reached her in three heart-pounding steps.

“On the count of three, you’ll feel my arms around you. Then, and only then, will you let go, pushing backward with your feet at the same time. Got it?” he directed.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

“Yes, you can.” He’d used the same tone with edgy insurgents. Calm, authoritative. “I won’t let you fall. You’re a hundred percent safe.”

A stiff breeze picked up, rustling the oak canopy.

Brad swore inwardly as Nikki swayed with the branch, one of her feet momentarily losing contact with the roof.

“Actually, I’m not trying to get back to the roof.” Her dark curls bounced as she nodded upward. “I was on my way out to get the kitten.”

For the first time, Brad heard a soft meow from above. Was she risking her life for an animal? He pictured the blue jay and chipmunk. She was serious.

Time to change strategies.

He peered through the tree limbs to find the kitten’s location. It wasn’t too far above her head. And he could hardly argue with her obstinate compulsion to help those in danger. They had more in common than great sex.

He’d take care of this crisis himself—as soon as he’d secured Nikki.

“I see it.” He took off his shoes as he prepared to go out on a limb. “And if you let go when I grab you, I promise to go after it. Okay?”

“Thanks, Brad.”

“Ready?”

She nodded.

“One. Two. Three.” He grabbed her by the waist as she let go. Their combined backward momentum sent them sprawling against the hard roof. For a few heart-stopping moments they lay against the cold stone roof, Nikki flung over his chest.

Reminding him why he’d rushed over here like a bat out of hell. Not just to tell her what he’d found out at Angelica’s. But to strip all her clothes off and bury himself deep inside her.

She squirmed to his side then sat up, clearly thinking about cat rescue more than sex right now. As another frantic meow floated down, he knew he needed to get moving.

He half walked, half slid to the roof edge, grabbed the nearby branch and vaulted up.

“Be careful,” she called.

He didn’t respond. This operation required focus and daring. Being careful would only keep him on the ground.

NO MAN SHE’D EVER KNOWN would have done this for her. Nikki hadn’t dated widely, but she hadn’t been a nun either. And thinking back over the guys who’d been in her life, she was certain none of them would have rescued a cat fifty feet up on a swaying oak limb. None of them had understood how important it was to her to take in a stray that might otherwise be forgotten. Alone.

She’d already dashed into the pantry for some pet food and milk for the poor little thing, laying the bowls at the foot of the bed for when Brad saved the animal.

“Hey, kitty,” Brad called. He stretched, full out, along a limb above her that didn’t look any thicker than his arm. It dipped with his weight but seemed to be holding, for the moment. Just out of reach huddled the miniature beige-and-white-striped feline.

She saw him extend his hand, his fingertips just brushing the kitten’s branch.

“Wouldn’t you like to come with me? We have warm milk inside,” he coaxed.

The kitten’s ears pitched forward, listening.

“Come here, kitty. Come on.”

Another breeze sent Brad and the kitten gliding through the air. Nikki covered her mouth to keep in a cry of dismay, waiting for one or both to tumble to the ground. Miraculously, they held on. When the wind stilled, the kitten inched closer, sniffing Brad’s finger. He held up his hand and the kitten butted its head against it. Instantly, Brad snatched the young animal, holding it gently by the scruff of the neck.

Her relief suddenly turned to concern. It dawned on Nikki that Brad’s one-handed descent would be far more dangerous than his climb. Fearlessly, he swung and dropped from limb to limb with agility even an Olympic gymnast would envy. Within moments, he reached the roof.

The ungrateful animal clawed its way free and leapt through the open window to safety in her bedroom.

Straight to the bowls she’d laid out. The ginger kitten dug in, winding its tiny tail around its body to devour the meal. She’d just adopted a new pet.

“You’re a hero.” Nikki flung herself in Brad’s arms, eager to give him a proper thank-you. Relief and gratitude mingled with all the other things she felt for Brad—warmth, attraction, admiration…it was starting to form one heck of a powerful package of emotions.

She rubbed the bunching back muscles beneath his snug, army-issue tank. How could a woman express herself in the face of his completely unselfish act? “Thank you.” She wanted to make sure he understood how much she appreciated what he’d done.

“You’re welcome.” He breathed the words over her mouth before brushing another kiss along her lips. “I locked the door downstairs if you’re ready to shower me with gratitude.”

“Mmm.” She pressed herself to him fully, loving the feel of his toned, hard body.

“Come on.” He tugged her back into the house as the twilight shadows deepened.

Nikki let herself be led, more than ready for him after allowing the anticipation to build all afternoon. She toppled him to the bed as she dropped inside the window, landing on the four poster with more eagerness than finesse.

“I had a dream about you today,” she confided, her skin tingling with hunger and memories.

“Please say this dream ended with us naked,” he murmured, already nibbling her sensitive earlobe. Electricity sizzled along her neck.

“At the start, I was in a secret meadow, thinking about us,” she began, trying to shrug out of her tank top to provide him greater access.

“You’re starting at the beginning of the dream? You have a habit of making me wait.” Brad’s tongue traveled a serpentine path to her jaw and throat.

She almost tore her own shirt off. “I pulled you on top of me.”

“Like this?” Brad stretched out over her in a single, fluid motion.

She rolled her hips against his and arched her spine. He’d hardly arrived and she was already so keyed up she couldn’t think.

His hands tangled in her hair. His teeth found the neckline of her tank top and yanked down enough to expose the swell of her breast.

Suddenly the sun slipped away, leaving them in near darkness.

Not that Nikki needed to see Brad’s raw masculine appeal to enjoy it. The feel of his shifting shoulder muscles made her shiver with pleasure. His lean, six-pack stomach pressed firmly against hers. Solidly muscular thighs settled with a satisfying heaviness between her thighs.

Erotic dreams and the touch of flower petals had nothing on this. Right now, she wanted to feel the strength and power of him, to revel in the all the hard planes of his body.

He lifted his mouth from her breast long enough to peel her shirt off. She helped him by opening the front clasp of her bra, feeling the cool night air rush against her exposed breasts from the open window. Her fingers tangled in Brad’s hair as she guided him toward them, feeling deep satisfaction as he suckled each one long and hard.

She licked a path along his shoulder, savoring the taste of him. The clean scent of soap mingled with the musky hint of male. She nipped him with her teeth and then shivered as he returned the favor on the underside of her breast. Slick heat built between her thighs. Her hips gyrated against the exhilarating stiffness of his lengthy manhood, eliciting a ragged sigh from Brad.

“You feel good,” Brad whispered against her chest. He mapped the deep valley between her breasts with his hands before traveling lower to the edge of her jean shorts. He unsnapped and pulled them to her ankles in one hard tug.

Vaguely, she thought she ought to halt him since he deserved all the sensual attention tonight. But then his teeth locked on the lace of her panties and she couldn’t have moved if she’d tried. His breath caressed her hip bone. He pulled the lace down, down. She wriggled to help him inch the fabric off, needing to be naked for him.

More than ready for what came next.

He shouldered his way between her thighs, making a place for himself there. She twisted helplessly against the pillow, a willing prisoner of his hands on her hips and his…mouth.

His kiss came hard and unrelenting, a deep stroke of his tongue into the heart of her. She came instantly, shattering so fast he had to hold her to keep her together. Or at least she felt like he did. Her whole body convulsed and swayed, bucking against him as he worked every last spasm from her.

She was pretty sure she didn’t remember her own name by the time he was done. The aftershocks went on and on, shivering up her nerve endings in a slow, sensuous dance each time.

By the time he lifted himself off her and ditched his shorts, she was drowning in endorphins and driven by the need to give him every bit as much pleasure as he’d given her.

Reaching across the bed, she retrieved a condom from her nightstand drawer and opened the packet with shaky hands still trembling from the overdose of feel-good action in her neurons.

Straddling him, she rolled the sheath slowly down his straining erection. Then, positioning him right where she wanted him, she guided him inside—only slightly. She suspended herself for a moment, letting anticipation build.

She leaned over and licked a flat nipple. His pectoral muscles tightened beneath her mouth. And as much as she wanted to slide down the length of him to take him deep inside her, she knew it was important to savor rather than rush. Gently, she swayed her hips, letting the heat crank up all over again.

His gasps mingled with her sighs. She felt a trail of sweat on Brad’s chest and she knew the effort to hold back cost him, as well.

On instinct, she lowered herself swiftly, burying him within her. He guided her upward then pulled her down, the friction impossibly good.

She undulated her hips, prolonging their enjoyment. But then Brad’s hand cupped a breast while the other stroked her mound and she knew she didn’t have much time left. Exquisite pleasure sizzled through her. She bucked wildly against him with abandon. His powerful hips thrust upward to meet her, driving him impossibly deeper each time.

She didn’t know how long they were locked together that way, but soon, an uncontrollable, shuddering contraction racked her. In the next instant, Brad stiffened and found his release, his shout of satisfaction driving her higher.

When she’d wrung every ounce of pleasure she could from them both, Nikki collapsed against him, nearly unconscious. It was several minutes before she realized he spoke.

A deep sigh of satisfaction escaped her as she nestled against the strong, muscular planes of his chest. Exhaustion overtook her. She struggled to keep her eyes open. There was something she needed to say.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

His sexy baritone filled her ear.

“You are incredible.” Brad’s arms tightened around her.

She knew there were things they both needed to say. Important things. But right now, the moment was too perfect to do anything besides hold each other. And Brad seemed to agree; he pulled a corner of the quilt over her shoulder and held her while she drifted toward sleep. It was the most beautiful evening she could remember.

Until the sound of gunfire split the night.

11

IT WASN’T THE FIRST TIME Brad had awakened to gunshots.

He knifed out of bed and yanked on shorts. Nikki stared at him with wide, frightened eyes, the whites so saucer-round he could see them in the moonlit bedroom.

“Call the police,” he spoke softly, still listening to whatever was happening outside. The view from outside the upstairs window didn’t reveal any activity, just the dark sweep of leaves blowing in a soft spring breeze. “I’m going to check downstairs. Stay up here and lock the door.”

She nodded jerkily, already pushing buttons on her cell phone.

Another shot rang out and he identified an odd sort of pistol. An antique weapon maybe? As he pounded down the stairs and through the living room, he wished he could remember the training he’d had on gun acoustics better. He’d learned to differentiate an M-4 shot from an M-16, but he couldn’t tell much about the quick blast that had sounded somewhere close to Nikki’s house.

He burst outside, desperate to get some kind of visual or to at least gauge where the shots had been fired from. He didn’t even know if they were aiming toward the house or if some wing nut could be attempting target practice in the dark. But his gut told him Nikki was at risk.

He stood still on the patio for a moment, listening. The screen door banged behind him, echoing through the night. Perhaps it was that sound that startled the unwanted visitor because a moment later, a truck engine fired to life.

Brad’s feet churned up the ground as he tore off to the east, toward the fading rumble. He couldn’t even discern the outline of the truck, but the dull gleam of the dark paint job and a glint of chrome gave him the impression of a newer model vehicle. Midsize. The license plates had been removed, leaving a blank void where they ought to be.

The bright white Chiefs bumper sticker remained intact, however. Giving Brad a damn good clue where to look next.

AN HOUR LATER, AFTER the police pulled out of the driveway, Nikki had to drag Brad back into the old farmhouse to keep him from driving over to Angelica’s house for a little frontier justice.

Or, at the very least, to see what kinds of cars lurked in her garages.

“Did you see the way those cops shut down at the mention of the Ralston name?” he fumed, glaring through the sagging screen door in the direction the law enforcement officers had driven. “They’re not going to take on the town’s big dogs.”

Brad had asked the officers to look into the whereabouts of Angelica’s family that night, citing the Chiefs bumper sticker and his conversation with the woman earlier in which he’d pressed for more information about who in the family might be out to get Chloe. Privately, Brad had told Nikki that Angelica had admitted her grandfather had served on a mission in the northern Pacific, probably at the same time as Chloe’s mysterious Eduardo. But their exchange had been cut short by the investigators and she still wasn’t sure what to make of that information.

Nikki called to Killer before she locked up for the night. The dog raced through the screen door as she held it open, his nails skidding on the hardwood before he slowed his pace.

“Maybe they were just being diplomatic. They can’t appear to take sides, right? And a city councilman in a small town can be very influential, so it’s not surprising they’d be cautious where he’s concerned.” She rubbed a hand on her arm to ward off a chill. She’d thrown on a hoodie with a pair of pajama pants for the pow-wow on the lawn after the shooter had driven away, but they hadn’t been enough to prevent the evening from giving her goosebumps.

The chill had more to do with someone wanting her out of the house badly enough to fire shots at the place than any reaction to the spring temperature.

“Right.” There could be no mistaking the strong taint of sarcasm in his response. He punched the butcherblock countertop in the kitchen while she shut off the lights. “I’m telling you, the only way we’re going to get to the bottom of this is to find the diaries and see what secret Chloe sat on her whole life. I can’t believe if it was that damn important, her family wouldn’t have harassed her more while she was alive. Not that I wish they’d done that, but why the big press to find the books now?”

Nikki warmed inside at the fierceness of his tone, far too swayed by his he-man protectiveness. In fact, she was pretty sure her heart fluttered a little. Truly.

Fluttered.

“I don’t know. Maybe her family thought the diaries would be lost forever once they heard she’d been diagnosed with dementia. Perhaps they assumed she would forget where they were hidden and the books would never see the light of day. Which is sort of what happened, except they hadn’t counted on me inheriting the house and having access to search for them.” She twined her fingers through his and urged him toward the stairs. “But I discovered today that I didn’t know Chloe as well as I thought I did. I started reading one of the original diaries and a misplaced entry from the missing 1943 volume fell out of the pages.”

“You have some of the original diaries here?” He stopped on the third step near a painting of the Seine that Chloe had purchased from a street artist on a longago trip to Paris. “And you’ve never read them?”

“Chloe showed them to me ages ago. But I never read them because they were personal. She didn’t publish them unedited when she was alive because of the private nature of the contents.”

“Maybe the big mystery is hidden in the diaries you already have.” He started up the steps again. “Are they up in your bedroom?”

“Yes, but—” She hurried to follow him as he passed her. Quickly, she explained the revelation about a secret engagement to Eduardo. “So I’m beginning to think the edited diaries might vary quite a bit from the versions she first penned.”

They hurried down the hall, past an old mannequin wearing a negligee that would have been suggestive in its time.

“No doubt.” Brad dropped onto the bed where they’d made love just a few hours ago, now occupied by the sleeping ginger kitten he’d rescued from the oak tree. “Do you think her family even knows now about an engagement to this Eduardo guy? Could there be any reason they’d want to lock that down?”

He cracked open the journal that Nikki had already read while she rounded up four others that had been hidden behind the covers of various books Chloe kept on her shelves.

“This isn’t the forties. What taboos could there be about a marriage that would bother anyone in this day and age?” She stacked up the other diaries on the bed and sat down next to Brad to read. “I don’t think that’s it.”

Nikki wished she’d quizzed Chloe about the journals a little more, but the older woman had been so distracted at the end and Nikki hadn’t wanted to press.

An hour of side by side reading passed before Brad’s cell phone rang, startling them both and sending the recently rescued ginger kitten diving under a pillow.

“Riddock,” he barked into the phone. A long silence followed as he listened. “Of course we’re pressing charges,” he shot back finally. “If anything, the kid is probably guilty of a whole slew more of—”

His jaw went rigid as the party on the other line—a police officer, obviously—cut him off. Nikki stared down at the passage in Chloe’s journal that he’d been reading before the call came—the scene of self-discovery in the meadow that she’d read earlier. He said little else before disconnecting the call.

“They found the person who fired the shots?”

She didn’t realize she felt cold all over again until Brad pulled her hip next to his, wrapping her in one arm.

“They’re saying it was Angelica’s daughter and her boyfriend.”

“Emily? The cheerleader?” Nikki found it hard to believe. “I’m being harassed by a high school junior?”

“Apparently the boyfriend is a track star who ‘borrowed’ the starting pistol from the school to make the sound of gunfire. But since it’s a closed barrel weapon, there was no possibility of injury and the police encouraged us to let them off with a warning. At most, they could receive a misdemeanor for violating local noise ordinances.”

“They weren’t interested in asking the kids about the threatening text messages or the brick through the window?” As much as she’d like to think she’d been a victim of teenage mischief gone too far, it seemed rooted deeper than that.

“The boyfriend drives a brand-spanking-new Ford F-150, so it definitely wasn’t the old pickup that tore up the yard.”

Nikki stared unseeing down at Chloe’s journal in her lap as she thought about the dismissive attitude of the police. Even if the kids hadn’t been the ones to tear up the lawn, they were joyriding, shooting off things that could be mistaken for gunshots—what if some poor scared homeowner shot back? Wasn’t there a zero tolerance policy for underage kids with things that clearly looked like guns? Rules should be rules no matter how rich your daddy was.

“My head’s too foggy for this,” she announced, slamming the book closed in her frustration. “We’ve been puzzling over this for too long and it should be simpler. If Chloe didn’t reveal what happened to those original diaries in the first place, she must have felt some sort of security that I’d find them without her help, right?”

Brad shrugged. “You knew her a lot better than me.”

Nikki nodded. “I don’t want to waste my time left with you by talking about ancient history. I feel like I’ve shared my whole life with you these last few days and I hardly know anything about you besides the fact that you’re a kick-butt volleyball player and you can climb tree branches like Tarzan.”

Shuffling aside the stacks of leather-bound volumes, she lay down on the rumpled white chenille bedspread, plucking the kitten from its resting place to resettle the animal under her chin.

Brad switched off the bedside Tiffany lamp so that only the moonlight and the glowing numbers from a bedside clock lit the room. Her heartbeat jumped and skipped at the sensation of having him here, in her bed, all to herself. Last night had been fueled by a need to take a risk and indulge her pleasures for the sake of feeling fully alive and uninhibited. Earlier today she’d been overwhelmed by gratitude at what he’d done for her in rescuing the kitten. But right now, there was no urgency. No rush to prove anything to herself.

Just a room ripe with the possibility for intimacy.

“Don’t forget my mad skills with a tractor,” he prompted, reaching toward the bedside table to retrieve some thing.

A daisy from the wildflower bouquet she’d collected on her walk this afternoon.

He held it over her, allowing a droplet of water from the stem to fall on the skin bared above the zipper teeth of her hoodie. The bead rolled down into the hollow at the base of her throat.

“Brad?” Did he know he was dripping flower water on her? By the way he held the stem, poised and steady above her, she’d say yes.

“Hmm?” He scooped up the kitten with his other hand and tucked it onto a pillow on the floor.

“What are you doing?” She noticed the flower stem never wavered even with all his maneuvering.

“I’m helping you get to know me better.”

Drip.

“How so?” The droplets warmed against her skin, then rolled down the side of her neck, pooling somewhere along the base of her scalp.

“I’m making sure that the next time you list the things you know about me, you include something like ‘Sexual Dynamo.’” He said it with a perfectly straight face.

As if he really felt his bedroom prowess was on par in importance with his military training or his strong sense of honor. Maybe she knew more about him than she gave herself credit for.

“And covering me with flower water will help your cause?” She decided to feign ignorance of what he had in mind. It served him right when she had the strong suspicion he’d led the conversation away from himself very purposely.

Dropping the stem to the zipper on her sweatshirt, he used it to lower the teeth inch by inch. Slowly, he revealed the lace-and-silk bra she’d wriggled into after the gunfire sounded. Then, popping the zipper free at the base, he skimmed the flower petals along the tops of her breasts.

He brushed the petals down onto the navy blue lace of her bra, circling the nipple so lightly she began to fully appreciate his intent. He meant to recreate the scene in the diary. The sensual encounter in the secret garden meadow.

She would have smiled if she hadn’t been frozen in place by the erotic tease of such a delicate touch when the heavy heat of Brad’s hands waited so close by—restrained by his need to build anticipation.

Instead, a gasp caught in her throat, a soft inhalation that whispered against her lips. Her eyes slid closed, her body focused on the trail of the silky soft petals along her skin.

Being distracted had never been such a pleasure.

BRAD PROMISED HIMSELF he’d talk to Nikki more later. That way, he didn’t have to feel like he was being purposely evasive.

Right now, he just wanted to stock up on memories with her to take with him when he left in ten days. After reading the scene in the meadow that Chloe had written—and knowing that Nikki had dreamed about him in that very same spot today—he wanted to implant himself in that moment somehow. He couldn’t be there with her earlier, but he could give her the sensual thrills for real that she’d only imagined. When they were half a world apart, he wanted to know he’d imprinted himself in her memory in every way possible.

“I think you need to be more naked for the full impact,” he observed as she strained against the clothing he’d left on her.

Setting aside the flower, he tugged down the straps of her bra before he unhooked it. He was careful not to touch her too much because his restraint couldn’t be trusted. If he started, he might not be able to stop.

The lace cups fell away from her breasts and his mouth went dry. He’d never get tired of seeing her.

“Just keep in mind that turnabout is fair play.” She undid the ties on her pajama pants for him, the sound of silk sliding through her fingers like a sigh.

“I’m very aware.” He allowed himself one kiss just below her navel, his tongue darting across her skin for a taste while he shoved the filmy fabric down her legs. He straightened to find her panties—

Absent?

He swallowed his tongue. Her body was utterly perfect in the moonlight, her breasts puckering for his kiss. Her legs parted just enough to give him room there.

“You went commando,” he finally managed, the word pushed from a dry throat as he fought the urge to cover her.

“I dressed in a hurry,” she reminded him, smoothing her palm down her hip and halting just above the cradle of her thighs.

He watched, mesmerized, as her fingers played over her skin. Then, recalling her threat about turning the tables, he put the daisy stem in her hand.

“Why don’t you show me where you want me first?” He’d have to work up to teasing her with the flower when he wasn’t plagued with this fierceness to have her. As it was, his pulse slammed through his veins harder than if he was facing down a booby-trapped bomb.

She surprised him by skimming the petals higher. Higher. Finally landing on her lips to circle her mouth.

“Oh, yeah, I want that, too.” Leaning over her, he claimed her mouth in a hungry, possessive kiss. He stroked her tongue with long, sinuous licks, savoring her like the last of an ice cream cone.

She followed his movements with her own, her fingers clamping around his neck to keep him close. He inhaled her. Devoured her. And she writhed under him impatiently, arching her back to graze her breasts against him.

With superhuman effort, he forced himself back, inserting some space between them on the bed.

“Where else, Nikki?” He gazed down into her dark, slumberous eyes glittering in the moon glow. “Where else should I touch you?”

The daisy had grown a little bedraggled, crushed between them during the kiss. But she splayed the petals against her neck and rubbed them along her throat, lingering at the soft depression at the base.

He leaned forward, eager to follow through. Dying for another taste of her. But she placed her palm on his chest and held him back with gentle force. Confused, he saw her continue the flower’s journey. Lower. Lower.

His head swam.

He had a vague impression of her circling back up to the rosy pink crests of her breasts, but by then, he was already on her. He slid his thigh between hers, bracketing her hips with his hands to keep her steady. He kissed her neck, taking a straight line to the deep cleavage between her breasts. She smelled like flowers and meadows, soap and sex. He’d only known her a short time, but he’d recognize the scent of her anywhere.

He couldn’t kiss her enough and shed his clothes, too, but he made a hell of an effort at both. She helped him, her hands shoving away his shirt and hauling down his shorts whenever his attention lingered too long on her. He throbbed to be inside her, his erection straining to painful lengths. She helped him there, too, pulling a whole strand of condoms off the nightstand until she managed to tear off one and roll it over him.

“I can’t wait,” she pleaded in his ear, her words a strange manifestation of what he’d just been thinking himself.

Palming her thigh, he shifted her where he wanted her, his thumb grazing the damp, pulsing heart of her sex. She rolled her hips toward him in blatant invitation and he plunged deep. Hard.

Their shout of satisfaction mingled into one sound and he stayed there, buried inside her, for a long, hot moment. He cupped her face in his hand, needing to connect with her in every way possible. The commune that went on there was wordless but profound. He could have lost himself in her dark gaze. Breaking the moment with a blink, he slowly withdrew from her, only to return harder. Deeper.

They danced together that way for endless moments, as if time stopped to give them the gift of the night. He wrapped her in his arms and rolled her on top of him, wanting to see her, poised above him with her dark hair tousled in a wild, silken tangle, her lips full and red from his kisses, a slight sheen on her skin.

She was more than beautiful. She was The One.

The realization startled him almost as much as her sudden arch against him, her body racking in spasms so hard he could feel them squeeze his release from him in turn. His breath left his body in a whoosh and he wasn’t sure if it was ever coming back. But the grand finale she’d wrung from him was so amazing he couldn’t find it in himself to care.

For long minutes they lay beside each other in the half light, breathing in the cool spring air blowing in the open window. He wasn’t sure what to say next. The moment seemed so fragile and so ripe for shared declarations neither of them were ready to make yet.

If anything, the connection he’d felt to her scared the hell out of him when he didn’t have his head screwed on straight and didn’t know what the future held for him—professionally or personally. Too late, he understood Doc Leonard had been right and that Brad should have been focusing on getting to know her better—and not just in the physical sense.

Funny that he’d initiated sex because he hadn’t been ready to share anything more about himself when she’d wanted to talk. Yet what they’d just shared had somehow tied them together more deeply than he could even begin to comprehend.

And as scared as he was of screwing up with her and sending her running, he realized he couldn’t avoid the inevitable any longer. Not with a woman who’d given herself to him the way Nikki just had.

Come hell or high water, he’d at least give her what she’d asked for.

“I couldn’t defuse a bomb fast enough.” He hated trotting out his baggage for a woman he really didn’t want to send running. “That’s what happened to my leg.”

The trees outside the window creaked and moaned in the gathering wind, the overgrown branches scraping the window screen like fingernails on chalkboard. Or maybe it was just because the truth raked him raw that the sound went right through him like that.

“Is that why you had a nightmare on the futon?” She lay very still beside him, staring up at the ceiling as the cool breeze blew through the room. “Because of that bomb?”

“Pretty much. The explosive in the dream is a little different. The circumstances more muted. But I know what it means. It started coming to me right after that accident.”

“You’ve had it more than once?” She sounded concerned, and she hadn’t even heard about the Iraqi farmer or his kid yet.

His chest hurt and he had to tell himself not to be such a candy ass. His leg would heal. He had to keep in perspective how lucky he’d been.

“I’ve had it a lot,” he admitted, able to tell her the truth since she wasn’t the one who had to sign off on the papers that would clear him to go back to work. “But last night, I didn’t have it when I was with you. I’ve been seeing a shrink—that is, a psychiatrist—and he seems to want to know I’ve gotten over those dreams before I return to Iraq.”

If she thought seeing the doc made him a head case, she hid it well. She turned toward him, settling her head on his biceps in a way that felt…nice.

“You must have been very fortunate not to have been hurt worse. As the guy defusing the explosive, you’re obviously the closest person to it, right?”

He closed his eyes; seeing that day vividly behind his eyelids, he wrenched them back open again.

“Yes. But we have protective gear. I’d suited up to check out the bomb. It wouldn’t have been a big deal except—” His throat caught on a dry note. “There were civilians nearby.”

“Oh, God.” Her hand flew to her mouth. “There were other casualties?”

“No deaths.” He tried to remind himself of that, but sometimes the farmer’s fate had felt worse than a death if he hadn’t received good medical treatment. Or if he couldn’t figure out how to adapt with only one arm. But since meeting James, he had at least a little ray of optimism for how some people made that work. “But there was a kid nearby, a boy I’d befriended other times when I was off the base. I tried to tell him to go, but with the language barrier and everything splitting my attention, his father had to come out to the field to haul him away. The kid was fine, but his father lost his arm.”

She covered her eyes as if she couldn’t bear the vision that created for her. And yeah, he totally understood how that felt. He was sweating even though he wasn’t hot, the ceiling fan clicking overhead not doing him a damn bit of good. If he wasn’t careful, the shakes would kick in soon.

“How awful for all of you.” Her hand slid away and her eyes glistened with unshed tears when she met his gaze. “For you. For the boy. For the dad.” She shook her head in mute sympathy. “But thank God that boy was okay and the father saved him in time.”

It hadn’t occurred to him to thank God for any part of that hellish day. His muscles eased a fraction even though he still felt nauseous.

“The kid had to see the whole thing.” He couldn’t get past that part. That and the fact that the boy had been there because of Brad in the first place. “He was in that field to see me. Because we were pals after I’d seen him around town a few times.”

“You’re so good with kids.” She brushed her fingers along his chest and then laid her hand there, over his heart. “And I’m sure you can imagine exactly how that farmer felt seeing his boy in danger. He was ready to sacrifice his life for his son, as any good parent would be. But he’ll walk away from that injury and have more days to be with his boy. If you ask him, I’ll bet he’s thankful at how it turned out.”

Brad wasn’t so sure he agreed. He hadn’t even brought up the fact that the guy might not have had good medical care afterward. He just didn’t know. But Nikki had shown him a different perspective on the day. If a bomb threatened Nate, hell yes, Brad would gladly throw himself between the kid and danger. It felt different to be the hero though, than the guy who’d failed to defuse the bomb in time.

He closed his eyes, weary of the dream and the past that he could never set right. A moment he’d never be able to change.

“I hear what you’re saying,” he told her finally, glad to at least have shared it with her. He hadn’t told anybody else but the shrink and that had only been because he’d had no choice. “But I’m not quite there yet as far as dealing with it goes.”

She reached over him to plant a kiss on his cheek.

“You’re an amazing man. And you do a job that would scare most people out of their shoes. Thank you.” She eased back down to tuck into the cradle of his arm, her dark hair blanketing him in silky curls. “I hope tomorrow you’ll tell me all about the explosives you disarmed successfully. I’ll bet there are lots more of those.”

There were. He just hadn’t thought about those in quite a while.

As Nikki’s breathing turned into a slow, even rhythm, his chest slowly eased. She hadn’t been horror stricken or run screaming when he told her. She even behaved as if he still had something to offer.

Maybe he really could kick the nightmares and get on top of the memories before he returned. Trouble was, between the incredible sex and the warmth in his chest that he felt after talking to her just now, he had a whole new fear churning around in his gut.

He was falling for the last woman on the planet who would want to be with a military man for more than a heated affair. And wasn’t that just a bomb of another kind altogether?

12

NIKKI AWOKE WITH A START, heart beating fast.

Ears straining in the darkness just before dawn, she wondered what had disturbed her. Another gunshot? Brad saying something in his sleep? But no, the world was quiet all around her. Her gorgeous hunk of a military man slept soundly by her side, a sight that touched her heart all the more knowing that he had trouble sleeping peacefully because of the awful dreams.

Not wanting to wake him, she tucked the quilt higher on his shoulder and remained still. His adopted dog—soon to be her adopted dog, no doubt—snoozed in a ball between their feet at the end of the bed. The ginger kitten was tucked up against Killer’s belly, chin on her paws.

Lying back on her pillow, Nikki stared up at the exposed-beam ceiling and struggled to recall what had brought her awake so suddenly. A dream, she recalled.

She’d been dreaming about the wildflower meadow…

That’s it!

She gasped, excitement surging through her veins at the realization that had just blasted through her brainwaves.

He rolled over toward her automatically, apparently having heard her sharp intake of breath. His arm wrapped around her waist to draw her closer. Her skin tingled in response before she remembered she couldn’t indulge herself right now.

“I’m sorry to disturb you.” She wriggled back a little before she got caught up in the feel of him. “Go back to sleep.”

“What is it?” He sat up, instantly alert, and she cursed herself for bothering him. “I’m awake.”

When it become obvious he wasn’t falling back to sleep, she figured there was no harm in sharing the news.

“I just realized I know where the missing diaries are.”

“You found them in the middle of the night?” He peered around as if expecting to see the volumes.

Killer yawned and stretched before sighing and dropping his head back down to the bed, uninterested.

“No, but I was having a dream and realized where they must be.”

“Well?” Brad lifted a dark eyebrow, appearing skeptical.

“Where would you hide your most secret things?” She could see it perfectly now, understanding what Chloe had done.

“Safe-deposit box?”

“Secret things go in a secret place. Like Chloe’s secret garden meadow.”

“The place you went today?”

“Yes!” She nodded, thinking they’d be able to see well enough if they left now. The sun was going to be over the horizon any moment. “Chloe never mentions it in the original diaries, yet she specifically showed it to me once. And she always referred to it as her secret place. Where else would you hide a secret but a secret place?”

“You knew her better than me.” Brad shrugged, still appearing unconvinced. “If you think she’d do something like that, we can go take a look.”

She practically bolted out of bed. The cat and dog both jerked upright. “The only trouble is, I’m pretty sure they’re hidden under the biggest rock you can imagine.”

THE GOOD NEWS WAS, HE KNEW exactly where to rent a metal detector.

When Brad had returned the tractor to the local equipment-rental place, he happened to notice they had a few metal detectors available. And after seeing the behemoth that Nikki wanted him to move, he figured that was their best bet. Nothing short of an earthquake would dislodge that sucker, so he felt pretty sure Chloe Lissander hadn’t managed the job to hide the journals under it in the first place.

“So you think the journals are in a box that will set off the metal detector,” Nikki mused as she walked another slow circle around the huge rock in the middle of the wildflower meadow. Her long, dark curls swayed in the breeze. She wore a bright pink sweatsuit with the name of her university stitched on the sleeve of the hoodie—Old Dominion.

“Absolutely. She wouldn’t bury it without protection from the elements. She probably just tucked it near here, but I hate to dig up the whole perimeter of the rock when we can find it faster with the metal detector. That way, if it’s not by the big-ass boulder, we can expand the search easily.”

She nodded, but she was biting her lip in thought.

He could tell she was disappointed he hadn’t offered to start shoveling now, but he didn’t want to undertake backbreaking labor without a plan.

“What makes you think this place is such a secret anymore? If Chloe grew up in that house, her whole family must know about the meadow and how she liked it out here.” He could see why it was a special spot. Different from the surrounding woods, the sudden pop of color up here was unexpected.

And the thought of Nikki lying half-naked on that rock just yesterday, stretched out like some kind of pagan sacrifice and dreaming about him…

He’d be lucky to leave the meadow without begging for a reenactment so he could see that for himself.

“Chloe’s family didn’t own this part of the property when she was younger. She bought it about ten years ago when the former owner died.” She paused her circling by a thatch of some purplish flowers and knelt down to examine the ground there. “When she was growing up here, she said the boys rode their bikes into town to hang out with their friends. She was the one who roamed the countryside on her own.”

He supposed she could have bought up the land to ensure her secrets were safe there. And who knew how long ago she actually “lost” the diaries? She could have hidden them there at any point over the years.

“See anything?” He moved closer, wondering what caught her eye.

“Chloe loved Virginia bluebells.” Pointing to the spiky blooms, she grinned. “I’m betting this is the spot.”

They walked back through the woods together, crossing a dead log over a rushing creek and climbing down a tall hill. In the few years he’d owned the house right next door to Nikki’s, he’d never known any of this existed. His first glimpse of her place from this angle was a revelation, as well. The old farmhouse with its oddly fanciful widow’s walk truly was a neat property.

“The house is going to be really cool one day,” he told her, knowing Nikki would make sure it came together just the way it should. She’d worked so hard already. “Is it the first place you’ve owned?”

She nodded. “My first real home.”

No wonder it meant the world to her; she’d never had a place to call home in the tumultuous race from house to house that had constituted her childhood. Understanding that made him all the more determined to get as much done as he could before he left in nine days. By the time he came back, they’d probably be ready to put on some finishing touches if the contractors she hired didn’t—

Shit.

Had he really thought about a future with her?

He’d tried not to think about his realization of the night before, hoping maybe he’d been wrong about what he felt for her. Didn’t he know better than to start something with a woman so intent on putting down roots and staying in one place? Things his job just didn’t make possible?

No doubt about it, he should be putting on the brakes before someone got hurt. Tough to do when he had nothing else to do for the next nine days but climb the walls and return to his nightmares. Not to mention, he wanted to keep her safe from whoever was trying to oust her.

Speaking of which.

“Uh-oh,” Nikki muttered at the same moment he saw a sporty Mercedes convertible in the driveway. Bright red.

He’d recognize the car of a wealthy cheerleader mom from a mile away.

“We can see about a restraining order,” he suggested, though Nikki was already shaking her head and picking up her pace to greet the visitors.

“I’m not going to cut them all off because one or two of them are making trouble.” Still, she threaded her arm through his and he liked that she reached his way for back-up.

Yeah, he was liking that a whole lot. The protective charge that gave him made him want to give the sporty Mercedes a good he-man shove right out of the driveway and the Ralstons out of Nikki’s life.

“Trouble is, we don’t know who to trust.” He could see Angelica now. And she’d brought her precocious teen with her. Their bright red track jackets contrasted with the house’s faded red screen door.

“Hi there,” Nikki called, waving at them with her free arm.

Brad tucked the other arm even tighter to his side, wondering what Nikki would think if he installed eightfoot fencing and a security gate.

“Hello.” Angelica shoved her daughter forward as Brad and Nikki closed the distance between them. “Emily has something to say to you.”

The teenage flirt who Brad had met at the door yesterday now had puffy red eyes and a far more contrite demeanor. She looked as if she’d been up all night and—considering the late-night trouble she’d caused—she probably had.

“I’m sorry!” she blurted, staring at the ground while Angelica stepped back a few feet to give her space. “My boyfriend was the one with the idea to fire the shot because he said he heard Granddaddy saying we should chase you back to Tennessee or wherever it is you come from.” Emily glanced up, shrugging helplessly as if she couldn’t be responsible for what her grandfather said.

Brad had a feeling where this was leading, directly to a request for Nikki not to press charges, and it was all he could do not to order both of them off the property. But that wasn’t his call and it wasn’t his land. And, oh, man, this possessive thing was going to be tough to fight. He had Nikki clamped to his side as if the cheerleader might drag her off any second. He carefully loosened his grip to a more appropriate reassuring squeeze.

“So you came out here in the middle of the night to scare me because it was your boyfriend’s idea?” Nikki did not sound like a woman swayed by teenage tears and he had a vision of her as a kick-butt mom some day. He’d bet she’d seen plenty of adolescent-drama teaching college courses.

“I—we—that is, I’d been drinking a little.” She lowered her voice over this part and peered back at her mother as if scared to confess it.

And to be fair, Angelica looked like she might take the girl’s head off, but she simply kept her arms tightly crossed, her Botox no match for her frown. Brad could almost feel sorry for her.

Emily turned her attention back to Nikki. “But I’m breaking up with him today. He’s a bad influence and I’m really sorry. I guess he thought that prank we pulled would impress my granddad enough to give him a job on his crew, but—” she rolled her eyes in a move perfected by girls of that demographic everywhere “—guess that’s not gonna happen now, is it?”

Nikki pursed her lips.

Emily cleared her throat. “Anyway, I’m sorry for what I did and I came to offer my help in fixing up the house if you want. I can rake or mow or—” she peered around the property “—something. I understand if you want to press charges, and either way the offer stands because Ralstons fix their mistakes.”

After this last bit, and Brad admitted it was a good ploy, the girl dared a hopeful glance back at her mother, who continued to glare at her.

Nikki gave a nod.

“I appreciate the offer and I will take it into consideration after I speak to the police this afternoon. Thank you for coming.”

Angelica returned the nod, and then marched her daughter back to the sports car, depositing her in the front seat before the two of them roared away.

“How much you want to bet there are no slots on the cheer team for kids with police charges pending?” Brad observed.

“For a Ralston? In this town? There’ll be a slot even if she’s serving hard time. That offer to work off the bad behavior is all Angelica’s doing. I know you don’t think much of her, but I’m telling you, she’s not half-bad.”

“So when are we going to talk to the granddad who put the target on your back?”

Nikki spun in his arm, smiling. “We don’t have to, because we’re going to find the diaries today and have all our answers straight from Chloe herself.”

She pressed against him in a way that made him think he could have her all to himself in that bed upstairs with just a little effort. And he wanted that. Badly.

But she was looking forward to digging up around the rock and he needed to be careful of falling any deeper into dangerous terrain with her. He settled for pulling his keys out of his pocket instead.

“How about we go rent a metal detector?”

“Deal.” She headed toward the Jeep. “But if we find those diaries under the purple flowers, just like I said? I’m going to seduce you on that rock and use one of those blooms to torment you just like you did to me last night.”

His mouth watered on cue.

As they tore out of the driveway and up the street toward the heart of the town, Brad knew he should say something to Nikki about the things he was feeling for her—to give her a chance to cool things off if she wanted. Who’d have thought a brief no-strings affair could have tied his heart in knots within days? But when a woman went Terminator on your nightmares and warmed your bed in the most amazing way possible, any guy would be in trouble.

His efforts to help Nikki find her inner vixen had worked a little too well. She seemed to be thriving on the sensual combustion while Brad had taken a direct hit.

Doc Leonard had tried to tell him not to focus so much on the physical, but he’d figured being with Nikki was the best thing that had happened to him in a hell of a long time, so what could go wrong?

Yeah, that’s why Leonard had the psych degree and Brad was the one sitting for the head exam.

NIKKI THOUGHT SHE NOTICED a distance in Brad that afternoon as they worked with the metal detector around the rock in the garden meadow. She wasn’t quite sure when it had taken root, but it sat between them like a palpable thing despite the gorgeous day and an activity that was a heck of a lot easier than tearing down the chicken coop or reshingling the porch roof, or any of the other hundreds of tasks she needed to tackle at the house.

Now, digging in the third spot the metal detector had chimed, she took a break with her shovel while he continued to spear down into the earth with his. Muscles strained and flexed in the warm spring sun, his arms moving in easy harmony with the demands he made of his body. Dirt lifted and relocated according to his dictate, worms and roots tangling together as he pulled up weeds and stones. She debated asking him if anything was wrong, but part of her hated to wade into that territory with him. He’d demonstrated a clear discomfort with talking about his feelings—shutting her out more times than he’d let her in. Or maybe he was simply reinforcing the boundaries between them, making sure things didn’t become too entangled before he returned to his life overseas without her.

“Did you see something?” Brad had paused in the digging, his gaze shifting between the gaping hole in the meadow floor and the pile of displaced earth beside it.

Wrenching her attention back to the present, she brought her shovel over to the mound of dirt and began sifting through it.

“Not really.” Certainly nothing the size of two missing diaries. Then her shovel tip scraped along something metallic. “Oh, wait.”

He yanked the hem of his T-shirt up to wipe at the sheen of sweat on his forehead, providing her with a tantalizing glimpse of six-pack abs and a narrow waist. The band of his boxers peeked just over the low-riding cargo shorts.

The temptation to drag her knuckle along that bare patch of skin bit her hard. Not only because she wanted him. Also because there was no confusion about where they stood with each other on a physical plane. While they were getting naked, they understood each other perfectly.

“You see something?” He peered down into the raked-through earth beside her, his shoulder brushing hers.

Shovel slipping under the edge of her find, she held it up for him to look at.

“Can you tell what it is?” Not a book by any stretch. They’d dug up a coin and a wad of aluminum foil the first two times the detector had beeped.

He removed the object from the blade and shook it off. “Congratulations, you’re the proud owner of an old brass candlestick.”

Disheartened, she eyed the purple flowers again.

He must have caught the direction of her gaze because he tossed aside the candlestick and circled the patch of Virginia bluebells by the rock.

“You’re convinced it’s under here?” He knelt to examine the base of the dense green leaves dotted with buds and a few early blooms. “Even though the metal detector didn’t go off?”

“Didn’t they say the device wasn’t all that reliable below twelve inches? Maybe the journals are just buried deeper than that.” She couldn’t explain why she had such a good feeling about that spot.

“Can’t hurt to try.” He forked the shovel down into the earth again, stepping on the heel of the blade to drive it deeper.

Nikki’s heartbeat quickened as he dug around the flowers and pried them out, preserving the roots in a wad of earth and laying them aside to replant. She joined in the effort and they tunneled farther and farther down, widening the gouge in the earth until they stood in a shallow hole about a foot deep and six feet wide. He’d burrowed out more than twice as much as she had so far and her still arms were shaky from the strain.

“Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea.” Defeated, she set aside the shovel, wondering if she’d been a nutcase to come out here because of a dream. “I didn’t really have any concrete proof the journals were in the meadow anyway. I probably should have waited—”

“Can you hand me the metal detector?” He pointed to the device where he’d last laid it down, close to her feet.

“Sure.” She hefted it up, even that much weight feeling like a chore after all those shovelfuls of dirt to unearth a bunch of nothing. “But I don’t see—”

As he fired up the detector again, she finally understood his intent. Now that he’d excavated down another foot, he would be able to use the equipment to test what lay beneath this area for the next twelve inches. He double-checked the discriminator dial to be sure it was set to pick up anything, then began slow, methodical sweeps of the new terrain.

The strong, steady beep began about a foot away from the rock. Their eyes met. Held.

She brought him his shovel at the same time she carried over her own. In wordless agreement, they each began to dig. And as intrigued and excited as she was about the potential find, Nikki couldn’t help but spare a thought that maybe she and Brad understood each other out of bed after all. They’d worked effectively together on the big dig today and they’d also been one heck of a team the day they’d tackled the hard chores at Nikki’s house, ending with a dinner she’d cooked but that he warmed up and served.

Those were small things, maybe. But she liked the idea of working beside him, understanding what he wanted before he asked half the time.

Her heart ached with the knowledge that it wouldn’t last—

Clink.

His shovel hit something with a metallic thud.

Nikki’s pulse spiked again, her hopes elevated even though she told herself it was probably nothing. A fork, maybe. Or some old toy that had been lost and forgotten for decades…

“I feel a definite straight edge.” Brad set the shovel down and worked with his hands, brushing, digging and tugging.

He withdrew a rectangular tin box about six by eight inches that had probably been painted at one time. Now, crusty and warped, and dented from the shovel, the container protested his efforts to pry it open. Nikki watched, holding her breath, as he gripped the box under one arm and tugged hard against the lid until it finally popped free. A leather pouch tumbled onto the ground, the string that tied it closed slipping partially open. The corner of a binding—a book binding—peeked through the slit.

“Oh!” She reached for it, lifting the heavy packet out of the dirt. Opening it the rest of the way, she found two books inside and a stack of letters tied with bale twine.

“Jane Eyre?” Brad read one of the titles over her shoulder. “The House of the Seven Gables?”

“She liked to hide the journals inside the covers of books her stepbrothers wouldn’t pick up.” All her tiredness from shoveling was gone. New energy poured through her, her veins tingling with the electric pulse of discovery. “Which apparently wasn’t hard since they hated to read.”

“These are really what we’ve been looking for?” He took one of the books from her hand and opened the cover.

Chloe’s handwriting was immediately recognizable.

“Mine says 1944,” Nikki pointed out, showing him the frontispiece for her book. “Yours says summer 1943. We’ve got them.”

“What now?” He wiped his palms on his cargo shorts. “Once you hand these over to Chloe’s publisher, you’re home free, right? The Ralstons have no reason to threaten and make trouble anymore after the publication is a done deal. Whatever bad news is in here about them, the whole world will know it soon enough.”

She sensed an eagerness to be done with the whole sordid mess. To be done with her?

She wished the idea hadn’t come to mind so readily. What if he’d only stuck to her side to protect her? He’d go back to sleeping at his house. Maybe he’d go back to being just a next-door neighbor.

“If we’re right about the Ralstons being the guilty party, yes.” She flipped a couple of pages, mindful of the soil on her hands. “But I’d like to have a quick preview of what’s in here before we do anything.”

She needed to know how things turned out between Chloe and Eduardo. Had she sent her fiancé off to war and never seen him again? She wanted some reason to hope that relationships could work even in the face of insurmountable odds. But Chloe and Eduardo hadn’t worked out since Chloe was a single woman until the day she died. Nikki had to know what happened between them, even knowing the inevitable heartache ahead. Kind of like her own life…

Nikki’s eyes cut to Brad as a lump rose in her throat. When he said nothing, frowning his disagreement, she swallowed the lump down so she could speak again.

“As the caretaker of Chloe’s literary legacy, I really need to know what’s in here first. If I could just go home and have a day or two to read—”

“We can make copies so the publisher has them simultaneously. That would end the threat.” Brad’s methodical brain worked as quickly as his hands, which were already shoveling in the hole he’d dug. “Then you’d have time to read them and you’d still be safe.”

How…practical.

“Aren’t you a little curious to find out what happened to Chloe and Eduardo? Maybe these books will tell us Eduardo’s real identity since we know that’s not his true name.” She wanted to cut the bale twine on the stack of letters and see if they were signed “Eduardo,” as well. But even more, she wanted Brad to care about this romance as much as she did.

No, she wanted him to care about their romance as much as she did. But she could practically see him thinking through what it would mean to have the threat of danger gone. He’d be free to return to his house, free to do whatever it was he’d been doing before they’d met.

She listened to the wind flit through the trees while she waited for his answer.

“I’m more interested in finding out what incriminating things these books have to say about the Ralstons.” His jaw flexed as he worked, frustration evident. “What past sins were so important to hide that they had to threaten you?”

So that’s what it had been about for him. Protecting her. Having a cause even when he was taking a leave from the military. Honor and a sense of justice were innate facets of his personality.

“So we can take today to read?” she prodded, hurt and trying not to show it.

The triumph of their find had been tainted by the realization that Brad wanted—needed—to back off their relationship.

He nodded. “One more day.”

It sounded like more than the end of the Ralstons’ reign of harassment. It sounded like the end of her time with Brad.

13

BRAD HAD NEW RESPECT for the rigors of scholarship after four hours of closely reading the diaries for any signs of what the Ralston family was so desperate to suppress. He’d assumed he and Nikki would open a journal, find a dark secret and be done with the mysterious threats. The Ralstons would have to face up to whatever bad family karma they had going, and that would be that.

But he’d mostly read a lot of steamy letters between Eduardo and Chloe—a tough gig sitting across the patio from Nikki, who looked even hotter in her nerdy professor glasses that she used for reading than she had in a string bikini. And he still had no further clue of Eduardo’s real identity, what happened to the couple after the war or why the Ralstons felt the need to hide any of it. The guy Chloe referred to as “Eduardo” even signed his letters that way, making them wonder if it was a nickname or family name he went by—like calling John “Jack” or Margaret “Molly.”

Nikki had been thrilled that there were letters from Chloe in the pile in addition to the letters from Eduardo. She seemed to think that meant the guy had survived the war, envisioning Eduardo returning home to add the letters he’d received to the one he’d sent. Brad hadn’t told her his own theory—that the letters might have been returned to her as a courtesy by one of Eduardo’s friends afterward.

Brad identified a little too well with the guy.

Now, poring over the find in Nikki’s sunny backyard, a pitcher of sweet tea between them, Brad tried to maintain focus. Chloe was missing her man overseas. She’d had to make up excuses to her family regarding why she didn’t want to date other men, but as far as he could tell, she never revealed that she had a sweetheart in the war. Why keep so many secrets?

“You sure we can’t flip to the back and read the last pages first?” He’d asked her that one before—about both the stack of letters and the diaries. “What if we’re wading through these page by page and nothing happens until the very end?”

Although, truth be told, he’d sneaked a peek at the final page of the journal on his lap a few hours ago, and it had looked fairly benign. There’d been a mention of a New Year’s Eve party and some discussion of what to wear, a lengthy debate he couldn’t relate to since guys tended to sniff out whatever was clean and go with that. Chloe’s ending wasn’t exactly earth-shattering stuff.

“It’s not fiction,” she informed him, peering over her black eyeglass frames like a megahot librarian. “Chloe didn’t write her diaries in a way that built tension and plot into some kind of explosive moment at the end. She just wrote down what happened to her on a day-to-day basis. Some days were more exciting than others and we’ll miss important information if we don’t read each entry carefully.”

“Well, I can tell you one thing.” He set aside the journal and turned his attention back to the letters, still convinced that Chloe’s fiancé was the real key to the mystery. “This Eduardo guy is having one hell of a rough time.”

U.S.S. Zeilin
1943

My Dearest Spitfire,

Our ship is frozen in ice and every churn of the ocean beneath the hull slaps frosty chunks in a teeth-grinding wail against our sides. Absurdly, it is foggy here even in the frozen temperatures, so the world is endlessly white.

On another note, I am abashed to admit that some of your letters have attracted the attention of military censors. While I have been warned that your warming words may be inappropriately stirring, I believe two were confiscated specifically so they could heat censors in need of a bit of feminine warmth. Your support of the war effort is commendable.

Because of this interest in our correspondence, I will refrain from saying any more about your relative. I will see him soon enough when we reach our destination. I have heard he takes more pleasure than most in the harshness of his mission.

I propose a worldwide tour when I am done with this war so you may experience all the places you dream of. You will live in peace from those who upset you, free to write every day in your inimitable way, and I will have you all to myself. Be thinking of where you’d like to go first. I shall come to spirit you away when you least expect it.

Yours,
Eduardo

“Brad?” Nikki peered his way across the patio table, a curious expression on her face as she covered his hand with hers. “Have you found anything?”

He wondered how she knew. He was going to miss this connection with her.

“I’m not sure.” He stared at the yellowed page written half a century ago, the words deliberately vague because of military censors. “I wouldn’t have looked at it twice if I didn’t know someone wanted to suppress these things.”

Turning the crinkled paper her way, he watched Nikki’s reactions as she smiled over the bit about Chloe’s war efforts. The corners of her lips flattened and turned downward as she read about the stepbrother. When she was done, she glanced up at him, but he could see her thoughts were still swirling around in that quick mind of hers.

“They planned to travel the world together.” Nikki’s expression was distant, full of hope for dreams that weren’t even her own.

No surprise that she craved happy endings. Brad couldn’t make that happen for her any more than Eduardo had done for Chloe.

“Maybe she decided to follow through on their plan even when he didn’t—that is, even though he might not have come home.” Brad knew she didn’t like the idea of Eduardo not returning from the war.

Her gaze cleared. Focused on him.

“What if he did come home and she never told anyone she spent the time abroad with him?” She flipped through the diary pages now, breaking her own rule about looking ahead. “We know she went on to visit every corner of the globe. What if she was still hiding their relationship even long afterward?”

“Why?” That made no sense to Brad and she had keyed in on a completely different point in the letter than the one he’d tried to show her. “Chloe Lissander was an icon of the sexual revolution for her forthright accounts of sex. That doesn’t sound like the kind of woman who would try to hide her lover.”

“Maybe they were threatened by her family somehow. They must not have wanted her to be with him if she went to so much trouble to hide his identity.”

Brad took the letter back and glanced over the words again.

“You see this part?” He pointed to the paragraph about the “relative” that had to be Harold Ralston. “He talks about Chloe’s stepbrother taking ‘pleasure’ in the harshness of the mission.”

She nodded. “Harold isn’t exactly the warm and fuzzy type. Maybe he liked ordering people around and being the boss. He had a squad underneath him, I hear.”

“Or else he liked to play God with a weapon in his hand.”

Nikki frowned. “What do you mean?”

He hated pointing out stuff like this since he took a lot of pride in his service. Dishonorable behavior in the military was rare. That didn’t mean it didn’t happen.

“It’s probably a stretch, but I’d be on the lookout in the rest of the letters for anything that hints at bloodlust in Harold. Possibly war crimes. We have a lot of watch systems in place today for guys who can’t handle the stress, but back in that time—”

“You think Harold could be guilty of something…like that?” Nikki’s jaw fell open, her voice lowering as if someone was watching from the bushes.

He shrugged. “I have no idea. But there’s a dark secret in here the Ralston family wants to hide. I’m just pointing out possibilities.”

“Eduardo did make a point of telling Chloe he couldn’t speak plainly.” She pondered a moment then rose to her feet. “It would make sense if he hid something with vague words after a comment like that. Almost like he was warning her that he was understating, right? I’m going to retrieve the rest of the diaries.”

Standing, he followed her toward the screen door leading to the kitchen.

“Maybe we should grab a bag so we can carry it all down to a copy center.”

He almost slammed into her back, not realizing she’d come to a dead halt in front of him.

She spun to face him, her pretty mouth parted in an “oh” of surprise.

“I thought we agreed this was going to be a reading day?” There was an edge to her tone he couldn’t quite interpret.

“It has been.” Where had she been for the last four hours? His eyes ached from studying all those pages. “But if we don’t make copies of everything today, we won’t have anything to overnight to the publisher in the morning.”

Her lips pursed, then flattened in a thin line.

“And then I’ll be safe,” she monotoned, not sounding nearly as relieved about that as she should.

“Exactly. Then things can get back to normal—”

“That will make it easier for you when you go, won’t it?” She gripped the stone wall ringing two sides of the patio, her fingers clenched in a crevice where a rock had fallen out of place. “It’s good to have no loose ends.”

He understood the tension between them now.

Damn it. This wasn’t how he wanted to spend his time before shipping out—arguing and drawing boundaries. “I thought we agreed not to let this get too complicated.”

“And it hasn’t.” She bit the words out with crisp articulation, but he guessed there was real hurt behind them. “You’re making sure to remind me every day how simple this needs to be. But it doesn’t feel all that simple to me. And if you’re already looking for the exit four days after we met, maybe that’s a sign you ought to just leave now.”

He blinked. She wanted him gone?

“How did this go from a discussion of making some copies to you trying to show me the door?” His chest tightened and he felt like he couldn’t get quite as much air as he wanted.

“You can’t deny a certain coolness descended over things today, can you?” Nikki propped a hand on her hip, her tank top riding high above her green and purple floral shorts. “I offered to play sex games with a flower and you know what your response was?”

He remembered her saying something about that. And he recalled himself salivating before he tried to rein himself in.

But had he ever replied?

“Nothing,” she informed him. “Absolute silence. You can’t pretend that you’re not pulling away. And I’m okay with that if this is too much too soon, but I wish you wouldn’t pretend like things are the same between us when I can see your thoughts are already a few thousand miles away from me.”

“Nikki—” The word stuck in his throat a little and he had to clear it. “You don’t understand.”

He’d hardly had time to wrap his head around what he was feeling. This week had been like a pressure cooker, their days together all the more intense for him because of the bad dreams and lack of sleep. What could he say to her that wouldn’t send her running even faster?

“Actually, I think I do.” Her voice softened and he thought she blinked away some moisture in the corners of her eyes. “I understand too well. Why don’t I go get the diaries and we’ll make the copies tonight?”

He took a breath again, grateful she’d decided to be reasonable.

“We still have time to make an announcement to the local press,” she continued, outlining the plan. “We’ll spread the word about the journals being in the mail and you’ll be free to sleep in your own bed tonight.” She leaned closer to give him a kiss on the cheek.

The brush of her lips on his skin was so quick he hardly had time to enjoy it. But then again, as his brain processed her words, he realized he wouldn’t have enjoyed it anyhow.

Nikki hadn’t come to some equitable compromise.

She’d just kissed him goodbye.

IT WASN’T LIKE SHE WAS MAD as she pounded her way upstairs to the bedroom, taking the steps two at a time. It was more like she was wounded. Deeply.

She flung herself into the bedroom and onto the bed, taking refuge in the chenille that had covered them just the night before. She’d get up in another minute. For now, she needed to catch her breath before the big bubble of emotions swelling in her chest threatened to burst like a raincloud and pour tears down her cheeks as if she was five years old again.

Crap. She would not, could not let this happen to her. How could she have given a man so much power over her heart in such a short space of time? Dragging in deep breaths, she released the blanket and forced herself upright. The wide-eyed ginger kitten that Brad had rescued snuggled on a pillow near the headboard. He stared at her with the same eerie animal empathy that had sucked Nikki in the first time one of her distant cousin’s dogs had licked her tears away after her parents had dumped her off on their relative’s doorstep.

That dog had been her best friend and her security blanket rolled in one for the next six months. And she’d been okay then. She would be okay again now, too. Even after Brad left. Which made her wonder—if she was so freaking strong, why couldn’t she have at least tried a relationship with him?

Maybe after all the time she’d spent fending for herself, she was actually really well equipped to deal with Brad’s deployments. What if she’d been seriously underestimating herself, only looking at safe relationships that didn’t begin to fulfill her emotionally?

The ginger kitten mewed at her and marched closer, lifting little paws high on the squishy bed, perhaps trying to keep her claws from getting stuck in the chenille. Nikki scooped her up, remembering how Brad had gone out on that limb for her.

Yet, when the opportunity had arrived, she hadn’t done the same for him. She’d confronted him out of fear, suggesting they break things off the minute she sensed he was pulling away. Not exactly healthy to strike first to avoid being hit yourself. In fact, that sounded juvenile and not at all like the woman she wanted to be.

Would Chloe have ever behaved that way?

Cuddling the kitten closer, Nikki rose from the bed. Leaving the diaries on the bookshelves, she went downstairs, her heart picking up speed along with her feet. She didn’t quite know what to say to Brad, but she’d think of that once she saw him. Once she assured herself he hadn’t already left.

Hurrying into the kitchen, she was about to head for the screen door when a big, bulky object on the kitchen counter caught her attention. Had it been there when she came in and she hadn’t seen it?

For a moment, she wondered if it was a package from a delivery service that Brad had brought inside for her. It looked like a box from the back. But as she rounded the butcher block counter top island and saw the front, she froze.

The face of the object revealed a wire contraption with simple circuitry attached to fat sticks covered in brown paper. A digital timer with bright green numbers ticked away softly in the quiet kitchen.

1:45, 1:44, 1:43…

She could actually count along with it and know how many seconds it took her to find her voice. Honest to God, nothing came out at first when she tried to scream.

Squeezing the kitten tight in her arms, she bolted for the screen door just as a shriek finally rose from her throat.

14

“BOMB!” NIKKI’S SCREAM was a nightmare come to life.

Brad sprinted toward the house as she bolted through the screen door onto the patio. Face drained of color, she shouted as she ran toward him with the kitten in a stranglehold.

“Where?” He halted her and held her steady long enough to get the answers he needed. “Where is it exactly?”

“Kitchen counter.” She breathed hard. Possibly the start of hyperventilation. “It’s counting down. Only a minute and a half left.”

“Take the animals to my house. Get in the basement. Call 911.” He spent a precious extra half second waiting to see if she understood, waiting to be sure she would do this.

At her nod, he took off running toward the house. Someone must have entered her home while they’d been out digging or at the rental place.

He leaped a patio chair like a hurdle, never slowing down. The screen door damn near came off the frame as he wrenched it open and skidded into the kitchen.

He saw it immediately. Bulky, homemade construction. Simple wiring. The kind of thing they might have made back in the Second World War…

Timer ticking down.

1:15, 1:14, 1:13…

Not enough time to transport it elsewhere for safer defusion. Not enough time to call in a team of specialists.

Sufficient dynamite to level Nikki’s house to rubble.

Worse, there was a good chance this much firepower could take out his house next door. Where he’d sent her for safety. While he trusted she would be more protected in the basement, that didn’t mean she would escape without injury. Flying debris, falling beams, sudden fires…

He couldn’t let anything happen to her, not to mention anyone who might be driving by their properties.

Sweat beaded on his brow. His nightmare was playing out just as he’d seen it in his dreams so many times over the last weeks. He was face-to-face with a bomb. Lives were in his hands. The life of someone he cared about.

He had to defuse it.

Wiping his hands on a kitchen towel, he dried the sweat so nothing slipped. Precision was everything. Sinking to eye level with the bomb, he tracked the wires to see how they went together.

1:01, 1:00, :59…

Three months ago, he would have done this in the blink of an eye. But since the premature detonation in a barren field in Iraq? He quaked inside like the San Andreas fault even though his hands remained rock steady.

He cursed every foul oath he knew in a slow, purposeful stream. Sort of like the release valve on a pressure cooker. Then, he retrieved a pair of butcher’s scissors from the block on the counter and hoped they were sharp.

They were his wire cutters.

:40, :39, :38…

Why hurry now? He had time to think about whether or not he was doing the right thing. He could still sprint back to join Nikki in the basement next door. But then, he’d be writing off this house that was the only home she’d ever known.

A home he’d even—briefly—pictured himself in one day. With her.

It didn’t matter that Nikki had given him his walking papers. He would sleep better knowing she was here, in this house she loved, safe.

Because so help him, he would defuse this freaking bomb and deliver it to the local cop shop with a red ribbon tied around it to bring down whoever had placed it here. That was the best reason of all to defuse it.

The possibility of fingerprints.

:10, :09, :08…

Brad slid the lower blade of the kitchen scissors under a faded red wire. You had to respect these homemade bombs cobbled together by people who didn’t know what they were doing.

Taking a deep breath, he closed the scissors.

Snip…

HAD A MILLION YEARS PASSED or did it just feel that way?

Nikki checked her cell phone in the dim light of Brad’s basement. The digital clock display said it had been a minute since she’d called 911, so surely if the bomb was going to go off it would have already happened by now?

The thought made her ill. She should have stopped Brad from going into the house. She should have insisted they both run like hell down the street. Good God, how did he make such quick life-and-death decisions for a living? She would be a basketcase by lunch the first day on the job.

No wonder he had nightmares.

Beside her feet, the blue jay squawked in his cage, thoroughly furious at being dragged across the lawn and shoved into a dark basement. The kitten had leaped from her arms to explore a shelf of paint cans and Killer stood on the washing machine to stare out a high window with her, his nails clicking impatiently on the metal as he danced in place and waited for something to happen.

And waited.

When another minute ticked by on the clock in her phone, she knew the bomb must not have gone off. Brad had defused it, thank God. So where was he?

Whistling to Killer, she turned away from the washing machine while the dog jumped down. In the distance, she could hear sirens wailing, a speedy answer to her call for help. What could have happened to Brad?

Fear clogged her throat. She’d only just started breathing again after the shock of finding a bomb in the kitchen. Now this? She hurried up the steps and through Brad’s living room to the front door. Pushing out into the bright afternoon, she rushed toward Chloe’s farmhouse. Her house now.

The home Brad had saved.

Killer raced at her feet as the sound of the sirens grew louder. The dog jockeyed to stay ahead of her and nearly tripped her as they leaped up onto the patio of the farmhouse and practically fell through the screen door.

Inside the house, she couldn’t think through what she was seeing. Harold Ralston—Chloe’s stepbrother, the prominent city councilman—held a knife in his hand. For a split second, she’d glimpsed a view of the weapon pointed in Brad’s direction, but with the distraction of her arrival, Brad gripped the old man’s arm in a vise and snapped his wrist backward.

The butcher knife clattered to the floor.

Nikki screamed as the men continued to grapple. Behind her, cop cars flooded the driveway. Uniformed officers shouted to one another as they hurried toward the house and shoved past her.

In no time, the police had Harold and Brad surrounded, although even then they appeared hesitant about cuffing a local war hero. Nikki couldn’t point to the knife and the explosives fast enough, encouraging the officers to check the old man’s truck for tire prints that matched her torn-up yard.

While she vented about being terrorized by Chloe’s stepbrother, she noticed Brad explaining quietly to one of the senior officers that the IED and the knife would both be covered with Harold’s fingerprints.

Finally, the officers removed Harold Ralston from the farmhouse while the older man cursed them, Nikki and his “slut” of a stepsister the whole way. Clearly, there’d been no love lost between Harold and Chloe.

Indignant on her friend’s behalf, she followed the cop and his captive out the door.

“What did you hope to accomplish by blowing up the house?” Nikki guessed the answers must be in the diaries, but she wanted to know now.

Harold strained at the cuffs, surprisingly strong for his age and more than a little pissed off.

“I wasn’t going to blow up the house. I knew your boyfriend could defuse a bomb. I just wanted to scare you off so you didn’t find Chloe’s diaries.” His face contorted into a look of rage. “I told Chloe’s fiancé I’d kill him if he ever showed his face around my sister again. Who’d have thought the little prick would get his revenge after he died?” Harold snarled at her, a line of spittle hanging from one corner of his lip as on a rabid dog. The councilman’s comb-over stood high in the spring breeze.

An officer nearby scribbled notes on the exchange.

Nikki felt Brad’s presence behind her, listening, and longed to lean back against him and feel his solid warmth. She was just thankful he was alive. Brad had won the day, his smarts and quick reactions overriding any crap from his past after what happened in Iraq. He’d proven to himself he was healed. He would be cleared to return to duty, free to do the job he loved.

As much as she would miss him—miss them—she was glad for him.

“The pen is mightier than the sword,” she reminded no one in particular, understanding Eduardo’s revenge must somehow be part of those missing diaries.

But Harold wasn’t done. And the cop who held him seemed as interested in what he had to say as her, his feet glued to the flagstone path while the old man talked.

“Soon the whole world will know Chloe’s fiancé was the hero and not me,” Harold groused. “Did you know, back then, they didn’t give out as many medals to the mixed-breeds who fought in the war? So I made a lot more out of old Ekualo’s act of bravery than he would have if he’d tried to claim he saved all those half-drowned men. The infantry guys he pulled on the ship were too frozen and confused to know who saved them.”

Nikki tried to take in what he was saying.

“Ekualo?”

“Eduardo,” Harold clarified, rolling his eyes. “She called him that all the time, but her fiancé was just an ordinary Hawaiian-Philipino she met when she saw me off in California. We thought the guy looked like a Jap anyhow—”

“Enough.” Nikki shook her head, not wanting to hear even one more syllable of a racist rant about Chloe’s beloved Eduardo. Ekualo. No wonder the name hadn’t been on the ship’s registry. She hadn’t been looking for the Hawaiian version of Eduardo. Chloe’s fiancé had been the war hero all along and Harold Ralston had stolen the tale of his bravery, while he’d kept his sister far away with a man the family didn’t approve of. “You’re lucky you soaked up someone else’s glory for as long as you did.”

The police officer who held Harold’s arm nudged him forward as the councilman kept muttering.

“Never did understand why he didn’t take the credit for what he did that day,” he told the young officer. “Who the hell jumps into ten-foot swells to drag a whole infantry unit to safety and never tells anyone?”

Ekualo had, Nikki thought. He hadn’t needed glory or recognition for his heroism because he had Chloe to come home to. She’d bet anything there wasn’t one word about his heroic deeds in Chloe’s diaries—that’s why she and Brad hadn’t found anything in those hours of reading. Some men did their duty with honor, and the reward of a job well done—a life saved—was enough. Chloe hadn’t hidden the diaries because she was worried Harold would try to defend the proof he wasn’t a hero. Nikki suspected she’d hidden them because they revealed the truth about her relationship with Eduardo that her own family still didn’t know to this day.

She couldn’t wait to read the rest of the recovered journals to find out if her hunch could be right or if she was just weaving a romantic ending for a couple who were never able to be together.

But right now, more than anything, she wanted to thank Brad. To throw her arms around his neck, to listen to the steady beat of his heart and reassure herself he was still in one piece.

But the man she wanted to be with was already shaking off police questions and sauntering across the lawn toward his own house. Away from her.

“Brad, wait.” She called to him, assuring a police officer still in her yard that she would be available for questions after they’d “secured the scene.” Whatever that meant.

Slowing, Brad turned to face her midway between their houses where a few white birch trees grew in a semicircle around an old rock garden she hoped to restore. Killer scampered between them, still not knowing where he belonged. She could really relate.

“I’ll send your animals back,” he assured her, even though she hadn’t been about to ask about the blue jay or the cat. “I’m glad you’re all safe.”

“Thanks to you.” She slowed her jog when she’d almost reached him, not sure how to read his body language but fairly certain he wasn’t ready for her to fling her arms around him and cover him with kisses and gratitude. Not just because of their fight earlier, but because of what he’d been through with disarming the explosive. “I was so scared when you were in there.”

“That makes two of us,” he admitted, his gaze going back to the farmhouse as one car pulled away with Harold inside. Two other officers were posting crime-scene tape, cordoning off the screen door.

“Thank you for saving the house. And saving me.” She didn’t want to play it safe right now. She needed to tell him she wanted to be with him even if he wasn’t ready for more. At least she’d know she’d said the words. “Brad, I’m sorry for what I said before—about wanting you to leave. I was hurt and confused but I knew as soon as I walked in the house to get the diaries that it had been really stupid to push you away when I wanted to pull you closer.”

Her heart pounded so fast. She had the sense that if she didn’t say it all now, in a rush, didn’t put it all on the table, she might never get it out. He was leaving soon and each day was incredibly precious, something she realized now more than ever. She—they—didn’t have the luxury of time.

He stared at her. Waiting for a chance to tell her she was crazy? Cringing that she was making it all the more difficult for them to end this civilly? She didn’t know. But she knew she had to take this chance or she would always regret it. Chloe would want her to take this chance.

“I probably should have just been honest with you before—” he began.

A stabbing pain kicked through her and she didn’t want him to say anything yet. She covered his lips with her fingers, not caring if anyone else saw or if the officers next door had to wait five more minutes to speak to them. Heaven knew, they’d tried to talk to the police often enough when they hadn’t wanted to hear from them.

“Wait. Just—wait. I know this has been a crazy few days, but I’ll take however many of those days I can have with you. If a one-day-at-a-time approach works better for you after all you’ve been through, I’m willing to try that. If that means it ends tomorrow or next week or next year—well, I won’t like it, but I’d prefer any of that to ending it today.”

“You’re serious?” He stared at her with a steady gaze, his face inscrutable.

The moment rivaled finding the bomb in the kitchen for its level of scariness. She swallowed. Jumped in.

“Very serious.”

A fresh-faced officer lumbered across the yard toward them, a pen in hand.

“Folks, we’re ready to take your statements anytime,” he called from a few yards away.

Killer barked at him.

“Nikki’s been through a lot.” Brad nodded toward her and put a protective arm around her waist. “Can you give us a few minutes?”

Nikki resisted the urge to simply close her eyes and curl into the warmth of Brad’s chest. She wasn’t sure how much of the display of affection was for show to ward off the questions.

The cop nodded. “No problem. But the sooner we can talk to you, the sooner we’ll be out of your hair tonight.”

“Understood.” Brad steered them a few steps farther away from the scene, closer to his house.

He hadn’t let go of her yet. Could she take that as a good sign?

“Nikki, the whole reason I pulled back today was more for your benefit than mine.” He turned her to face him, lifting his hands to her shoulders.

The sun dipped behind them, the trees on fire with the burnished golden light. What a long, long day it had been.

“Why would that help me?”

“Because after the kind of childhood you had, I knew you wouldn’t want any part of my lifestyle. I’m all over the globe, all the time.”

Her heart stuttered a little. Did that mean he’d been thinking about a future, if only for a moment?

“It’s true I’ve been looking forward to having a real home.” She stared at Chloe’s house, crawling with police investigators and crime-scene photographers. “But I think it’s possible to have a home base and still travel. What’s important is that you’re with the one you care about when you can be. Chloe lived overseas for almost twenty years and still kept this house for when she returned home.”

Almost twenty years that the groundbreaking sensual novelist had chronicled in those diaries. Nearly two decades of passionate affairs, the inspiration for erotica that had made a whole generation hot and bothered. Had she really been inspired by lovers all over the globe? Or was it possible one special man—a man whose identity she’d taken great pains to protect—had simply appeared in her diaries under a whole host of exotic names?

It was exactly the kind of game Chloe would have loved.

“You would consider that?” He leaned closer. His grip on her shoulders tightened ever so subtly.

She thought about those same hands dismantling a bomb in her kitchen and tears sprang to her eyes. She was so lucky to have a man like this in her life. For however long she could.

“Definitely.” She had no reservations. “I still want to get the house in order. But after that—if necessary— I could pack my bags and teach my classes online anywhere.”

He was quiet so long she felt a wave of panic swell inside her. She guessed that methodical mind was at work putting the pieces in order, seeing if it could all add up.

He hauled her to him with a fierceness that stunned her. He pressed her hard against his body, his face buried in her neck.

“I knew it. I knew last night. You’re the one for me, Nicole Thornton.” He whispered the words into her ear, his cheek rubbing against her hair and sending shivery sensations down her spine.

She angled back, wanting to see his face since she hadn’t been expecting such an emphatic declaration from the guy who’d pushed her away with both hands earlier. That didn’t stop her heart from skipping a beat or ten.

“Really?” She cupped the hard line of his jaw, her thumb tracing the rough cheek he hadn’t been able to shave today after she’d awoken him at dawn. Her strong warrior. “You thought that just last night and yet you scared the living daylights out of me today, letting me think it was over?”

“I didn’t want to put too much pressure on you. Or me. Or—hell, I just didn’t want to jinx the whole thing. But I am so on board with this—you can’t imagine.” He wrapped her tight again, his hot, hard body communicating a desire to possess her right then and there.

She loved that.

And she was going to love him. She knew it deep in her soul. But she didn’t want to jinx it either. He’d find out soon enough.

“We’re going to write hot letters to each other while you’re away,” she insisted. “Just like Chloe and Eduardo, only better because there are no military censors to worry about now.”

“But unlike Eduardo, I have no intention of keeping you pure before I leave.” The look he gave her was so thoroughly wicked she felt a little breathless.

“I certainly hope not.” She peered back toward the farmhouse at the police tape outlining the patio. “Looks like I’m going to have to bunk at your place tonight anyhow, so you can get started robbing me of my purity as soon as possible.”

His feet started moving toward his house and then stalled.

“Too bad we have to talk to the cops first.” He lifted his head to look back toward Nikki’s place.

“Think of it as an opportunity to build anticipation,” she reminded him, trailing teasing fingers down his chest. “We’re going to be doing that a lot.”

His predatory growl rumbled through his chest and excited her to her toes.

“We’re going to talk fast.” He sifted his fingers through her hair and cradled the back of her head in his hands. “I’m having you in my bed in an hour, no excuses. And to give you something to think about until then…”

He plucked a fat purple iris bloom from a nearby stalk and tucked the flower behind her ear. One silken petal stroked over her temple in a touch as sensual as his whisper.

“…this will help remind you what I’m going to do to you later.”

The heat that smoked through her body was only a precursor to what was building in her heart. If it was this good now, what would it be like in a year? Ten?

Her toes curled inside her tennis shoes.

“It’s a date.”

Epilogue

Four months later

“DO YOU WANT MORE?”

Nikki hovered over him, her mostly naked body never quite close enough after being away from her for so long.

“Yes, ma’am. Much more.” He reached for her, but she danced backward with the frying pan full of chicken cacciatore in hand.

“I meant more chicken.” Laughing, she put the castiron skillet on the stove in the renovated farmhouse. “Finish your dinner first, then we’ll see about the rest.”

“Food can wait. I’ve only been home four days. If it was up to me, we’d still be horizontal.” He should have thought to hire a caterer for the first week since they’d never have to get out of bed then. “Your letters nearly killed me, woman.”

This time when he reached for her, she wrapped her arms around his neck and slid into his lap at the dinner table. He forked the last few bites into his mouth with her all over him and that was just how he liked it.

“I was only trying to build anticipation.” She grinned shamelessly, nipping his neck with her teeth. “I didn’t know I’d created a firestorm in such a short time.”

She’d sworn the time had passed quickly enough and that she’d looked forward to him coming home more than she’d worried about him. Maybe after waiting for a year at a time to see her absentee parents, eighteen weeks wasn’t a big deal to her.

“Short?” He, on the other hand, had missed her every minute. “It felt like forever to me. I’m thinking it won’t be long until I take that training position they’ve been mentioning. That way, I’d be here all the time.”

He ran his hands over her bare thigh, her pink negligee keeping her covered while effectively driving him crazy to see the rest of her. Touch the rest of her. Taste the rest of her.

“I’m with you either way,” she promised, tracing the outline of muscles in his biceps.

He knew they turned her on so he flexed big-time in the hope of getting her back into bed sooner rather than later. In fact, he knew a lot about Nikki Thornton after corresponding with her for the last four months. Oh, sure, they’d emailed and set up video chats so they could see each other. But his lady professor was big on old-fashioned letters, and he had to admit he felt like he knew her inside and out now.

And while he knew more than her turn-ons, he had to admit they’d come in really handy since he’d returned home from Mosul for good. He’d stay on base for a while and then they’d decide where to ship him next.

“I can’t believe all you accomplished in the house.” Looking around the big, old-fashioned country kitchen, he would have never guessed it was the same place he’d found books stuffed in the wine rack.

Now, the refinished hardwood floors gleamed in the candlelight from their late-night meal. A castiron candelabra hung over a repurposed butcher block counter that now served as the dining table. All over the property, windows closed properly, rooms were painted, flowers bloomed. The blue jay was gone, but there was a ferret to take its place. It hadn’t been injured, but according to Nikki it needed a home.

“Really?” She looked around the room. “You can thank Emily Ralston for a lot of it. She worked hard once I forgave her for scaring me with the gunshot. She has a much better boyfriend now. Oh, and did I tell you she took that kitten you rescued?”

“Yeah, you did.” He kissed her temple and decided they’d been out of bed long enough. The pink slip she was wearing was more than he could handle. “It sounds like you’ve been a good influence on her.”

Nikki was helping the girl with her college search, encouraging her to go out of state to expand her horizons outside the sphere of influence of her family. Angelica hadn’t fought the idea, perhaps recognizing the slippery ethics of some of her relatives wasn’t helping her daughter.

“I’m glad that she’s happy. It hasn’t been easy for the family since the truth came out about Harold.” She held on to him tighter as they turned sideways to pass through the door to the bedroom.

Unlike Emily, Harold Ralston hadn’t fared well while Brad had been overseas. He was in jail and had been forced to come clean about a few indiscretions over the years with city money in his position as city councilman. The town wasn’t quite as enamored with the Ralston name anymore.

“Harold’s loss is Ekualo’s gain.” Brad took care settling her on the bed they’d left rumpled and unmade. Her skin looked golden and warm against the crisp white sheets, her dark hair spilling over the pillow.

Too soon, she sat up, her eyes bright. “It sounds like Ekualo did pretty well for himself even without any medals.”

That caught his interest, as he’d identified with the guy right from the start.

“How so?” He watched as Nikki tugged a sheaf of papers out from under a book on the nightstand.

She handed it to him, pointing to the top sheet.

“A marriage certificate.” It was a photocopy from an Italian courthouse. Barely legible. Dated 1945. “Eduardo and Chloe were married? All that time she was writing about her wild affairs—”

“All of them were actually with Ekualo. She just used other men’s names to act out different kinds of scenarios and to tantalize her husband. It’s a good thing we didn’t print the diaries right away, because I actually found a foreword for the unexpurgated version that Chloe penned herself.” She pointed toward the next piece of paper, also a photocopy, of a letter in Chloe’s hand. “She apologizes to readers for the deception and explains how the diaries sprang from the sexy letters. The two of them continued to write about steamy en-counters after they were married and then they acted them out.”

“The erotic diaries were…a lie?” He wondered what the revelation would do to her fan base as he flipped through the other papers, one of which showed Eduardo’s death certificate from 1963—car accident. He’d died young, yes. But he’d had almost twenty years with the woman he loved. Twenty amazing years chronicled in literature that would live on long after all of them. “Her books helped spur the sexual revolution. How will readers feel about that when they find out?”

Nikki frowned. “I don’t think anyone is going to be disappointed with the idea that fantastic sex is possible with your husband.”

Brad grinned, his imagination lighting with a few ideas of his own he wouldn’t mind playing out—as long as each one was with Nikki. “I guess not.”

“You want to see if it’s possible after five times in a day?” Nikki lifted an eyebrow and hiked the hem of her slip suggestively.

“Are you kidding me?” He set the papers aside on the nightstand, leaving Eduardo and Chloe to the past and ready to take on a future with the most amazing woman imaginable. “How about we see if it’s possible after ten?”

“Shouldn’t we go for quality over quantity?” she teased.

“Woman, you’ve built enough anticipation for a few hundred times at least.” He pinned her arms over her head, liking the look of her all stretched out and at his disposal.

“Really?” She rubbed her thigh against his and his blood practically simmered on cue. “I guess you’d better get to work, Lieutenant. Consider yourself on special duty…”

ISBN: 978-1-4268-8902-8

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Copyright © 2011 by Joanne Rock

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