Nicole couldn’t get enough of him…

Desperately she pulled at Alex’s tie, shoved his coat down over his arms, then dived for his belt buckle. She heard her dress rip and realized Alex was trying to gain access to her breasts. Obviously he needed this as much as she did.

Wriggling her hips to get the room she needed, she finally freed his erection. Impressive. Very impressive. “A condom,” she said breathlessly. “Give me a condom.”

Alex froze. Just froze. His mouth still rested against her breast, his erection still pulsed against her too-hot flesh. But he wasn’t moving anymore. And she didn’t want to know the reason.

Nicole turned away from him, feeling the incredible, confusing urge to cry as sexual frustration pressed from the inside out. She wanted to scream in disappointment. Until she felt something cold encircle her left wrist.

Handcuffs.

Nicole turned and watched as Alex fastened the other side of the handcuffs to his right wrist. Not to the bedpost on the big four-poster bed dominating the small room. Damn.

She collapsed on the mattress and sighed. “You don’t have a condom, but you have handcuffs,” she said absently. “You really need to reevaluate your priorities, man.”

Dear Reader,

The edge. That’s where we like to take our stories and our characters. But in our contribution to THE BAD GIRLS CLUB miniseries, we were given the opportunity to really cut loose and go farther than we ever had before. Only, not even we could have imagined the sexy game of cat and mouse our characters Nicole Bennett (the thief in Private Investigations) and Alex Cassavetis had in mind….

In Red-Hot & Reckless, sexy expert thief Nicole Bennett has always managed to stay one step ahead of the law, mostly because she targets other thieves, the last people who will call in the authorities. But she hasn’t counted on seductive insurance investigator Alex Cassavetis stealing something from her. Namely her heart…

We hope you enjoy Nic and Alex’s sizzling journey to the edge and beyond. We’d love to hear what you think. Write to us at P.O. Box 12271, Toledo, OH 43612, or visit us on the Web at www.toricarrington.com and www.temptationauthors.com.

Here’s wishing you love, romance and hot reading.

Lori & Tony Karayianni

aka Tori Carrington

Red-Hot & Reckless
Tori Carrington

www.millsandboon.co.uk

This one’s for fellow Temptresses

Leslie Kelly and Julie Elizabeth Leto,

as well as our editor, Brenda Chin.

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

Epilogue

Prologue

NICOLE BENNETT had two weaknesses: Tiffany jewelry and men. And both were about to get her into a whole heap of trouble. The jewelry, because it wasn’t actually hers. And the man, because he’d called the cops on her five minutes ago.

Nicole rushed around the shabby one-bedroom apartment that belonged to Sebastian Pollock, the bit Broadway actor she’d been dating and basically living with over the past week. She alternately wiped prints from the surfaces that weren’t already covered in dust and stared out the window for the police to arrive at the hovel in the south Bronx. After hurrying her black cat named Cat into his carrier, she slung the strap over her left shoulder, and her black leather backpack over her right shoulder. Then she grabbed a 9 x 12 padded mailing envelope and tucked inside the carefully wrapped sterling silver jewelry. All along she cursed herself for ever having accused Sebastian of being a one-minute man that morning.

Using a red handkerchief, she wiped the doorknob clean, then opened it so she could step out into the hall. She gasped when she found Sebastian leaning against the wall right outside, his arms crossed over his impressive chest.

“Going somewhere?” he asked, his right brow arched high on his handsome forehead.

“Fasten your seatbelts. It’s going to be a bumpy night,” Nicole recited the famous Bette Davis quote, one of her favorites and definitely befitting her current circumstances.

Then again, the quote could pretty much apply to her entire life.

She made a face. What was it with her and tall, good-looking men who were about as deep as a mud puddle? Okay, so the type rarely asked questions—which was important given her line of work as a thief. But they also tended to get upset when they were offered a bit of objective criticism. In Sebastian’s case, it was that the idea of sex with him was a far sight better than the real thing. Mostly because the idea lasted a whole lot longer.

Oh, well. Just another mistake in a long list of others.

Nicole thrust the heel of her hand into his solar plexus, watched as he doubled over and gasped for air, then checked his pockets for the missing piece of jewelry. There. In his right front jeans pocket. She took out the bracelet and looked at it. She grimaced at the irony of the words stamped on the smooth tag, then smiled at Sebastian as she added the piece to the contents of the mailer.

“Thanks for the memories,” she said to him, quoting the sentiment on the tag.

She walked down the hall toward the back fire escape, not about to take the chance that by the time she climbed the four flights of stairs the police would be waiting for her outside. She thought about where she should go from there.

Baltimore. Definitely Baltimore.

Cat meowed and she looked down at him. “Looks like it’s another visit with Auntie Danika for you, buddy,” she said and picked up the pace.

1

SOMEONE WAS FOLLOWING HER.

Three days after the Sebastian episode, Nicole Bennett sat in a Baltimore, Maryland, bar called Flanagan’s Pub. Not her original destination, but a spontaneous detour designed to flush out her tail.

She was pretty sure someone was watching her. Maybe had been since she’d arrived in the city the same day she’d left New York. And she was convinced that the sensation was more than residual uneasiness left over from what had happened three days ago. Still, it wasn’t that she had actually spotted the person tailing her. Rather, it was more of a hunch that someone, somewhere was shadowing her moves. She could tell by the way her skin itched. How the tiny hairs on her arms stood on end. How the beer- and smoke-soaked air of the bar seemed to hum with a strange expectancy.

Her tail wasn’t in the establishment. She was sure of that. It had taken her all of two seconds to catalog everything and everyone in the place. Two businessmen occupied a corner booth. When they weren’t hitting on the ballsy barmaid well equipped to handle anything that came her way, they were deep in conversation, too doughy and pale to be members of any branch of law enforcement she had to be afraid of. Well, the IRS aside. But she had nothing to fear from the IRS. They wouldn’t collect a percentage of what they couldn’t prove she had. An elderly woman and her two middle-aged daughters bearing shopping bags occupied another booth—again, no threat, as they laughed over pints of dark Irish beer, then pulled comical faces when they tasted the bitter concoction.

Nicole looked back at the barmaid. Of course, she had initially presented a bit of concern. Her take-charge efficiency and razor-sharp wit made her the perfect candidate for either side of the legal fence. But the bar had been an unplanned stop and in Nicole’s experience no branch of law enforcement was that organized.

She looked at the woman in question. She seemed distracted. More than likely a man, Nicole thought. Only a man could put a grimace like that on a woman’s face. Just seeing it made her want to join in the grimacing.

“Probably moved on to the next willing female before my plane left the ground,” the barmaid muttered as she wiped down the sticky surface of the bar.

Bingo.

But Nicole found very little comfort in the confirmation. Truth was, it stank to look at someone who felt pretty much the way you did.

The door opened and a well-turned-out redhead came in, her clothes and jewelry the real thing. No threat, even if Nicole suspected the woman hadn’t been born to her current wealthy position. She’d been around both old money and the nouveau riche enough to tell. She automatically priced the pieces the woman wore, then dismissed them. Not because of their worth, but rather because the only jewelry Nicole targeted was Tiffany, and the only jewels she lifted were unset and most of the time uncut, easily fenced.

“Cool shirt.”

Nicole glanced to see that the newcomer was talking to the barmaid, not her. Her own slick black leather pants and low-cut leather vest were world’s apart from the playful T-shirt sporting a cartoon of Jessica Rabbit the barmaid had on.

“You don’t look like the T-shirt type,” the bartender told the newcomer.

The woman’s warm laugh drew the attention of the two businessmen, as she’d almost certainly intended, probably more due to nature than design.

“Believe me, sister, I don’t dress this way every day. And I certainly don’t do it for myself.”

The woman continued speaking, still talking about the barmaid’s shirt and Jessica Rabbit. “I’d like to think I have a lot in common with her. Not bad, just drawn that way.”

The barmaid nodded. “My motto.” She poured a shot of the good stuff and slid it over to the latest arrival. “My name’s Venus. Venus Messina.”

The woman extended her hand. “Sydney. Sydney Colburn.”

Nicole’s attention turned from the door to the two women.

The barmaid named Venus was staring curiously at the other woman. “Sydney Colburn…no kidding? The writer?”

After Sydney tasted the whiskey, she nodded. “One and the same.”

Only then did the name ring a bell with Nicole. Oh, yeah, she was familiar with the author. She’d picked up a few of Colburn’s novels at airport kiosks while en route. Initially she’d done so to discourage conversation during flights. But from the first sizzling word she’d read she’d become hooked.

Venus was telling Sydney how much she liked the heroes in Sydney’s novels, saying it was too bad more men couldn’t live up to that standard, then added, “And my favorite part. No wimpy heroines!”

“Men who meet my standard do exist,” the author said softly. “The trouble is finding them.”

Nicole made a face. She was so right there.

“Finding men has never been a problem for me,” Venus offered up. “Keeping them? That’s another story.”

“The good ones or the so-so ones?”

Venus sighed. “Good or even so-so wouldn’t be bad. Unfortunately, the only ones I seem to manage to hang onto are the creeps who cost you jobs or empty your bank accounts. Not the green-eyed dreamboats with chestnut hair and the kind of wicked, sexy grin that oughta be illegal.”

Nicole got the definite impression that the “dream-boat” the barmaid referred to wasn’t a work of fiction, but rather a reality. And she also guessed that he wasn’t a part of the picture anymore.

Sydney made a knowing sound.

“What?”

“You got it bad, sister.”

Nicole smiled. You can say that again.

Venus scowled. “Speak for yourself.”

After Sydney admitted she was speaking for herself, Venus poured her another drink.

“We bad girls have it tough, you know?” Venus said. “Those Goody Two-shoes have saying ‘no’ down to an art form, blaming morals or past hurts. We say yes, because of those same morals or past hurts! We just can’t give up on the idea that the next handsome stud who comes along might erase what the last one did.”

“Handsome studs are a dime a dozen.”

Nicole sat up slightly as the barmaid named Venus approached. “Hey, girl, I almost forgot you were here. Come join us. Bad girls need to stick together.”

Nicole squinted at both women, then pursed her lips. It wasn’t so much Venus’s straightforwardness that surprised her, but that she’d so correctly nailed her. Was it an innate gift, the ability to pick out those similar to you? Of course, in her case it wasn’t all that difficult to tell which side of the good girl/bad girl equation she stood on, what with her tendency toward all black clothing—especially leather, all black clothing. Straight down to her thong.

But clothing or no, Nicole felt sure that despite their physical differences, she shared much in common with the other two women when it came to men and life in general. As for careers…well, no one said she had to tell them she was a professional thief and that she knew the worth of Sydney’s gems right down to the carat weight.

She smiled wryly. “Bad girls. Are we forming a club here?”

Venus snorted. “Last club I belonged to was the Girl Scouts. I got kicked out when I was eleven.” As Sydney raised a questioning brow, Venus explained. “Summer camp. I got caught sneaking into the boys’ cabin to play Seven Minutes in Heaven. The troop leader came in just as I was heading into the closet with Tommy Callahan.” She shook her head and sighed. “He had the cutest dimples. And cool braces.”

Sydney nodded, wearing a similar look of reminiscence.

Nicole’s amused smile widened into a grin. “I never made it past Brownies. I kept altering the uniform in a way that, well, didn’t exactly meet with the troop leader’s approval. But the boys liked it.” She winked. “Besides, brown isn’t my color.” Of course, they didn’t need to know that she’d also made off with the troop’s petty cash box on the first day.

“Hell,” Sydney proclaimed, “my mother never let me forget I got tossed outta preschool for showing the boys my underwear.”

Venus snickered. “Hey, why was she complaining?”

“Yeah,” Nicole said with a knowing look at Venus. They finished the thought in unison. “At least you were wearing ’em.”

The three of them, strangers until ten minutes before, but sisters just the same, shared a moment of soft laughter. It had been a long time since Nicole had felt so connected to other women, and she enjoyed it. If only for a moment.

Venus said, “I guess we’ve been members of the bad girls’ club since birth, huh?”

Sydney silently lifted her glass in salute, and Nicole followed suit. Venus popped the cap off a beer and joined them.

The door opened again, reminding Nicole what she was doing there. Two young women wearing business suits barely spared her and her new friends a glance as they joined the men in the booth.

“Oh, no, a good girl’s in sight, reign in the lust,” Venus whispered.

Nicole picked up her drink and moved next to Sydney, then introduced herself. They chatted for several more minutes, until the ring of Sydney’s cell phone interrupted.

Venus moved away to wait on the two newcomers, then returned just as Sydney was finishing her call. The woman drained her glass and dropped a bill on the counter. Nicole noted the crisp one hundred dollar bill.

Venus picked it up. “I’ll get your change.”

Sydney told her to keep it and get Nicole good and drunk. Then, with a cheery wave, she walked toward the door. But before she could reach for the handle, the door opened and Nicole watched a man come in. She narrowed her eyes, taking in the big brown-haired man who had the solid build of a cop.

Number one weakness at ten o’clock. Her sexual radar homed in on him. Cop or no, he was a man. And a striking one at that.

She watched as he skirted around a departing Sydney, then approached the bar, his gaze on one woman and one woman only: Venus.

Nicole let out a long, mental sigh. It was just as well. After her last encounter with the opposite sex, she’d do well to fly solo for a while. Still, it could have been…interesting if the fine male specimen was the one shadowing her.

She eyed Venus, who looked a breath away from either blindsiding the latest arrival or pulling him across the bar and laying a wet one on him.

“Hi, Venus.”

“What are you doing here?”

“I’m thirsty,” he said as he slid onto a bar stool and tapped his fingers on the pitted wood surface of the bar. “What do you recommend? A Screaming Orgasm? Sex on the Beach?”

Venus smirked. “Screaming Orgasm Up Against the Wall is always a good choice.”

“How about Screaming Orgasm Up Against the Bathroom Counter? Or in the Pool?” The man’s grin was even dirtier than his words implied.

Nicole let out a low whistle, not having to question whether or not this was the man Venus had referred to earlier. “Yep. Definitely oughta be illegal.” Just being within five feet of the couple reminded her why she could never swear off men, no matter how much trouble they caused. She smiled at Venus, then made her way out of the bar.

The door slowly closed behind her as she tucked her chin into her chest and scanned the street from beneath her lashes. Nothing. Not a single suspicious person in sight. Just an ordinary, perfect early summer day and the foot traffic it encouraged.

She shifted her backpack to her other shoulder as she started one way, then changed her mind and walked in the opposite direction, the sensation of being followed mysteriously gone.

Could she have been wrong? She took a deep breath, then released it, wondering if paranoia was something that went along with age. Of course, it didn’t help that out of the three members of her family, she was the only active thief left. Her brother Jeremy had hung up the title a year ago when he’d met and married Joanna. Her father…

Nicole swallowed hard. Maybe that was why she was so hypersensitive about everything lately. What had happened to her father…well, she was going to make damn sure it didn’t happen to her.

She slid a glance over her shoulder. A shadow retreated into a doorway.

She twisted her lips. Maybe she hadn’t been imagining things, after all….

ALEX CASSAVETES melded into the doorway of the pub the wily and alluring Nicole Bennett had exited moments earlier. He absently rubbed his chin. She’d spotted him. He knew she had. What did that say about him as a one-time detective in the N.Y.P.D. robbery division and current insurance investigator?

Apparently not a whole hell of a lot.

Alex pushed up his jacket sleeve and glanced at his watch. He’d be a moron to try to tail her now. He suspected she’d caught onto him before she’d even entered the pub. It’s the reason he hadn’t followed her in. He still couldn’t believe that the instant he’d stepped out from the coffee shop where he’d been waiting across the street she’d looked back and made eye contact even though a good hundred feet separated them.

Damn.

Stepping from the doorway, he made his way in the opposite direction, not even looking at where Nicole had been moments before. To have come so far and to have blown it so close to meeting his objective was incompetent at best, stupid at worst.

The heels of his shoes thudded against the sidewalk, echoing against the building-crowded Baltimore street. Nicole Bennett, thief of thieves, had flown from New York to Baltimore a little more than three days ago. And he’d been right there with her every step. Following her into lingerie shops. Eating lunch a few tables away from hers. Even securing the room across from hers in the glorified flophouse that advertised hourly rates on the faded brick exterior.

But nothing in his thirty-two-year existence had prepared him for meeting her gaze head-on.

“The eyes of a witch,” Panayiota, his Greek grandmother would have said. Black, fathomless eyes that could either repel you or pull you in. He could only imagine what impact those almond-shaped eyes would have on him at close range. Photographs, no matter how vividly real, didn’t come close to depicting the genuine article. He’d just learned that the hard way.

“You’re losing it, Cassavetes,” he muttered to himself, turning a corner and suppressing the urge to duck to the side and see if she was watching him.

No. His best bet now would be to return to the boardinghouse and hope she would come back so he could pick up her trail again.

Even as he thought it, Alex knew she wouldn’t return. She was the type that, once she sensed danger, would disappear back into the woodwork from which she’d emerged. A search of her room yesterday and this morning had revealed absolutely nothing of the woman who inhabited it. Nothing that would require her to return to the room. His guess was that she either kept her personal items in her generously sized leather tote, or that her occasional visits to various bus and airport lockers explained the lack of anything left behind.

Which is exactly why she’d been so difficult to catch.

And precisely the reason he intended to catch her.

Alex Cassavetes always nabbed his man. Or in this case, his woman. A very clever, seductive and endlessly fascinating woman who slipped through his fingers like quicksilver and for the first time made him question his abilities as an insurance investigator.

He caught himself fingering an item in his pants pocket, then slid it out and stared at it. No, you wouldn’t find Nicole Bennett’s likeness on any Wanted posters. Or even any alerts circulating to local and federal law enforcement agencies. Nicole Bennett—if that was even her name—was smarter than that. For the most part, she targeted other thieves. Marks that would have to be the ultimate in obtuse to report the thefts. She was more of a ghost that sensed when a large score was about to go down and then would swoop in and make off with the booty with nary a soul the wiser.

Except for Alex.

He stepped into the lobby of the rundown hotel where he’d hung his hat for the past two days, eyed where an aging hooker and a john were haggling with the desk manager, then took the steps to the second floor two at a time.

He couldn’t exactly pinpoint the moment when he’d put two-and-two together and come away with Nicole Bennett. He’d been in the middle of the third month of tracking down the diamonds that Christine Bowman and her dangerous band of thieves had made away with. Christine had been arrested and charged, and later convicted, of the theft and the death of two security guards, but the diamonds had never been recovered. The insurance company he worked for had been out a great deal of money. But something had been bothering him about the whole case, something hovering just beyond his reach. So he’d pulled an all-nighter going over everything related to the case when something in his brain finally clicked. He’d methodically thumbed through the security shots taken from a St. Louis bus station and found the image of the woman standing half in shadow in the far corner while Christine Bowman was arrested on the other side of the station. The mystery woman had gone unnoticed, despite her black leather trench coat and striking features. Then he’d rifled through photos taken from similar thefts, incidents where the thieves were caught but the spoils were curiously missing. And he’d come across two more partial photographs of the shadowy woman in black standing on the fringes of the goings-on. An interview with St. Louis P.I. Ripley Logan had yielded him a name: Nicole Bennett.

The same name on the hotel register for the room across from his.

He turned the corner of the second-floor hall. His room was halfway down the vomit-green corridor with its narrow wood doors and tarnished knob and lock plates. Room 107. He slid his key into the lock, then paused, the fine hairs on the back of his neck standing on end. He slid a glance over his shoulder at the peephole to Room 108. Nicole?

He pushed his door open and paused. Before he could question the wisdom of his actions, he walked across the hall and knocked on the door to Room 108, his gaze steadily on the peephole.

Silence.

Alex cocked a half grin. He knew she was there. Sensed it with every molecule.

He raised his hand to knock again, then heard the lock mechanism turn. And instantly found out exactly what it was like to encounter those coal-black eyes up close and personal.

Nicole Bennett swung the door open all the way, then leaned against the jamb and crossed her arms.

Alex felt like someone had just given him a sucker punch to the gut. There emanated such a sizzling current about her that he was distantly surprised he wasn’t suffering electrocution.

“You wanted something?” she asked, looking at him as intently as he was looking at her.

Alex’s grin grew. Oh, but she was slick. Very slick. You wouldn’t suspect that she was aware he was tailing her. But he knew. Knew by the way he hadn’t heard her step to the door—she must have been standing on the other side of it watching for him. And since he knew she’d already seen him on the street, well, he had plenty of evidence that proved she wasn’t that dumb.

He allowed his gaze to drop to the deep vee of her black leather vest. She had a knockout figure. Not that you could tell by the loose leather coat she’d worn up until a few weeks ago when the warm weather had forbidden it. He appreciated the subtle muscle tone of her arms, and the way her breasts pressed together, offering up a virtual buffet of sweet flesh that made his mouth water.

“Yes,” he said, raising his gaze back to her face to find her cheeks touched with the slightest color.

“Hi, I’m Alex.” He waited for her to offer an introduction of herself, but wasn’t surprised when she didn’t. “I’m across the hall.” He tried looking into her room, as if he hadn’t been in it two minutes after she had left that morning. “Did housekeeping bring you towels? Because I—”

She stepped from the door to the tiny bathroom to her right and grabbed a dingy gray, threadbare towel. She handed it to him.

“Thanks.”

“Don’t mention it.” She closed the door, then slid the lock home.

Alex stood for long moments grinning at his feet. There hadn’t been the sound of her moving away from the door, which meant that she was probably looking at him again from the peephole. He decided it wouldn’t be a good idea to give a little salute as he crossed back to the other side of the hall.

Interesting. He let himself into his room. She had not only come back to the hotel, but didn’t seem fazed in the least by the knowledge that he was tailing her. Or she wasn’t entirely certain and was trying to force his hand. Either way, he gave her a lot of credit. Never in his career had he met a woman so sure of herself.

And so totally hot.

Maybe this wasn’t over yet.

2

ALEX.

Mmm…

Nicole stood on the fringes of the party, her short, sleek socialite blond wig in place—nothing too flashy or too trendy—her black dress clingy yet elegant. Her second favorite quote after Bette Davis’s memorable words were “Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself,” written by author Rita Mae Brown. And if Alex was anything, he was one hundred percent pure temptation. And like it or not, she was definitely leading herself into it…and to him.

She twisted her lips and scanned the gathering of a hundred and fifty people looking for anyone that might appear out of place. A little voice told her that the instant she’d made her tail, she should have been in a taxi straight to the airport. Forget the boardinghouse. Forget the job. Forget everything but losing Alex. She accepted a champagne flute from a passing waiter with a small, close-lipped smile, then watched him move on, unwittingly comparing him to the man who was occupying far too much of her thoughts.

Alex.

At over six feet, he was tall enough to put him squarely in the danger category when it came to her and her attraction to tall men. His hair was nearly as dark as hers, brown and silky and enticingly touchable. His eyes were an opaque green and seemed to crackle with a knowing, a sexual energy that made her mouth water just looking at him. But it was his lips—full and captivating—that made her nipples tighten and her thighs vibrate.

Okay, so he was attractive. To the point of distraction. Which was exactly the reason she should never have gone back to the hotel. Especially since his very essence seemed to scream “cop.” Hadn’t she had enough problems in her love life lately without adding a sex god of a cop to the mix?

She wrinkled her nose and lifted her glass to toast an elderly gentleman eyeing her favorably from across the room. A good six hours had passed since she’d first spotted Alex, then watched him unlock the door across the hall. Of course, she’d had no idea he would turn and look right at her through the peephole, then be even bolder yet by knocking on her door and asking about housekeeping when he hadn’t even walked fully into his room first. But at least her suspicions had been confirmed.

She pretended to sip the sparkling wine. Definitely Dom Perignon. The Theismans of the Baltimore Theismans, the multimillion-dollar hosts of tonight’s little soiree, knew how to throw a party. Nothing but the best, especially for the first-year wedding anniversary of the mismatched couple standing near the fireplace mantel. Nicole slightly craned her neck, judging Mrs. Theisman to be closer to twenty than she was thirty, and Mr. Theisman, head of Theisman Telecommunications, pushing closer to seventy. She idly wondered what place number this particular trophy wife held. Two? No. More than likely three. Or possibly even four.

Nicole politely nodded at a woman who came to stand near her.

“Lovely couple, aren’t they?” the guest commented.

Nicole hiked a brow. “Lovely” wasn’t a word she’d use to describe the twosome. Revolting hit closer to home. “Aren’t they just?” she said before discreetly moving away.

She shifted her weight from one expensive pump to the other. Who was she to criticize? If she judged the men she dated more on character than looks, maybe she wouldn’t run into the problems she did. Perhaps if she expanded her criteria beyond tall, gorgeous and built like a linebacker, she wouldn’t have to worry about waking up one morning and finding the guy had come across her stolen Tiffany jewelry and called the cops on her.

A waitress drifted by her from the opposite direction. Nicole squinted at her neck where the top of a black tattoo peeked from her starched white shirt. If her calculations were correct, the thieves were going to strike tonight, taking full advantage of the hubbub created by the party, when the house’s security system would be on low alert and it would be easy for the thieves to move among the guests. They would also probably fall back on the tried and true method of posing as temporary catering staff in order to do it. Not difficult considering the young Mrs. Theisman had chosen a new caterer with a transient, unbonded staff instead of going with the long-established company her peers used. No doubt attempting to make her mark as a stylish hostess. Instead she’d set herself up as an easy target.

Nicole’s gaze went to the sweeping staircase to her left. She’d gotten wind of the heist the day before Sebastian had elected himself her latest ex. She didn’t know the details, or who was in on it, but once word started circulating in her circles about easily fenced merchandise, the theft was as good as done. Since then, she’d had three days to do her homework. She knew there were three safes in the eight-bedroom Theisman mansion. One in the downstairs study. One in the master bathroom. And another cleverly hidden beneath the oriental carpet under a double bed in the third guest room.

She guessed that would be the hiding place of the over two hundred thousand in insured uncut rubies Mr. Theisman had bought as an anniversary gift for his trophy wife.

The question was whether the thieves had hit the safe yet.

She glanced at her slender faux-diamond watch, then accidentally spilled a bit of champagne on the front of her dress. Excusing herself from the small group of guests that conversed around her, she headed for the back of the house and the kitchen, rather than seeking out the bathroom just off the foyer. Within minutes she had her shoes in her hand and was slinking up the back stairwell, easily navigating the frenzied catering staff in the kitchen, and surmising that at least one of the original servers was missing. Her observation was immediately confirmed by the woman sweating over an oven when she asked if anyone had seen a man named Mike.

Nicole reached the second floor, thankful for vain wealthy homeowners who didn’t like to see the help unless they had to. She had access to every room upstairs without the risk of being seen. Dim, recessed lighting illuminated the long, curving hall bearing gold-framed prints of Baltimore. Worlds away from the water-stained dingy corridors of the Commodore Hotel. But somehow Nicole always felt safer in those dingy places. More…real, somehow. Less exposed. Although she’d long ago learned to blend in with any crowd, it took less effort to disappear into the background of the less privileged. The people who knew what it meant to struggle. They weren’t struggling to make a towering mortgage or work a sauna into their monthly budget. No, they were struggling for survival. And rarely looked beyond the few inches in front of them because they hoped somewhere there lay their salvation, the answer to all their problems.

Alex intruded on her thoughts again. He’d find it difficult to blend in anywhere. Aside from his considerable height and striking good looks, there was something…different about him, something Nicole couldn’t put her finger on. Something that bothered her on a fundamental level and had nothing to do with his likely being a cop. Something that made her want to return to the hotel that night instead of getting on the twelve o’clock train back to New York.

With the rubies, she thought, forcefully reminding herself of the reason she was there.

She ducked into the guest room across the hall from the one that held the third safe and pushed the door closed until it was just slightly ajar.

How long had it been since her mind had been on anything but the task at hand? If she had been considering which law enforcement agency Alex worked for, that would be one thing. Wondering what it would be like to run her tongue along the fine, freshly shaven line of his strong jaw was quite another.

A shadow.

Nicole reached for her purse with her left hand and took out the small-caliber pistol there. The only time that the saying “size doesn’t matter” applied was in the world of guns. As long as the wielder knew what she was doing, a peashooter was more than enough firepower to stop a stampede of bison. She thumbed the safety and watched a figure in a waiter’s uniform exit the master bedroom at the end of the hall, then move in her direction. She made a face. Either he was greedy and had gone after what trinkets the main safe held, or he hadn’t figured out that the rubies were most likely in the third safe. Which made him either wet behind the ears or a moron. Or a dangerous combination of both. While she could easily explain away her presence in the guest room—that very notably didn’t hold a safe—by saying she’d felt light-headed and needed to lie down for a moment, a man wearing a waiter’s uniform sneaking into the guest bedroom that did hold a safe was another matter altogether.

“And, lucky contestant, would you like to see the prize you’ll be playing for?” she murmured to herself. “Roddy, show him what he could win tonight….”

And that prize was what she fully planned to take away from him the instant he had the little beauties in hand and had successfully made his escape.

The thief glanced in her direction. Nicole moved back a couple of inches to keep from being seen.

And found her backside flush against something very hard, very warm and very definitely male.

“Oh!” She gasped, feeling every panic alarm go off all at once.

“MMM. THE CONTESTANT’S very lucky, indeed,” Alex murmured against Nicole’s ear.

The scent of cinnamon candy, subtle yet distinctive, teased his nose, while certain strategic areas teased other parts of his anatomy.

Damn, but she smelled good. Clean, spicy and overwhelmingly sexy. Alex couldn’t resist resting his chin against the hair curving against the side of Nicole’s neck as he steadied her with his hands on her hips.

“Seems we keep bumping into each other,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper. The touch of nerves humming just below the surface made it sound like a purr. He idly wondered if she might be part cat. Such feline characteristics would be an advantage in her chosen profession. One had to be light on her feet to be successful in this business. And, of course, it didn’t hurt to have an extra life or two in case you lost one along the way.

He skimmed his fingers down her bare arm, feeling her shiver against him as he eased the small, customized pistol she held from her warm fingers. He looked at it. “Cute.”

He heard her swallow. “Effective.”

He chuckled quietly, keeping in mind that the other thief they were watching thought he was alone on the second floor. “Only if you draw a bead on your opponent before he draws one on you.”

“Mmm. Yes, that does help.”

Was it possible she’d sensed his identity straight off? Or was it the sound of his voice that had given him away? Either way, he was pretty sure she knew who he was.

He also noticed that she was regaining her composure with each second that passed. He slid the palm-size gun into his tux jacket. She wriggled to free herself from the grasp of his other hand.

“Shh.” He tightened his hold on her hip, then pressed his mouth against her ear. “Hold still or we’ll miss the show.”

Alex watched over her shoulder as the thief entered the third guest bedroom and closed the door after himself.

For long moments he stood still, listening to Nicole’s uneven breathing, taking in her unique scent, and wondering where in the hell she’d gotten the blond wig. It had taken him a full minute to realize that it was her after her transformation. She’d disappeared into a restaurant bathroom then emerged a short time later looking like she did now, her usual attire presumably tucked into her black tote. A tote she’d cleverly hidden in the bushes of a neighboring house before joining the Theisman party.

“The show appears to be over,” she murmured.

Alex slowly blinked, realizing he had yet to release her. And that she had yet to make another move to free herself. “Depends on which show you’re referring to.”

He glanced down at the pale expanse of shoulder left bare by her black dress. The moonlight streaming in through the window kissed her skin, making it glow dimly while the rest was cloaked in shadow.

“How long do you give him?” he asked, drawing the back of his index finger up her arm. She didn’t shiver this time, but she did shift, moving until her hot little bottom pressed more insistently against the front of his slacks. He sensed the move was far from accidental.

“If he’s good, five minutes.”

“And if he’s not?”

“Enough time to hang himself.”

Alex grinned. “Of course it helps when the lady of the manor gives you the combination to the safe.”

Nicole stepped away then faced him, staring at him in the dark.

“Ah, didn’t figure that one out, huh?” Alex tried to ignore the way his body missed her heat. “I caught our friend having a little chat with the very young Mrs. Theisman out back.”

“Maybe she was complaining about the paté.”

He dropped his gaze to the vee of her bodice, then down farther to where the hem hugged her legs. With those gorgeous gams he wondered why she always hid them under all that black leather. “If she was, then she was giving him a mouth-to-mouth taste of it.”

“Hmm. Interesting.”

“No. Predictable.”

“I didn’t see it.”

“Now that is interesting,” he commented.

Nicole seemed to consider the shoes she still held in one hand.

“So when were you planning on snatching the loot?”

He caught a glimmer of humor in her eyes. “Snatch the loot?”

“Grab the goods. Steal the stash. Rob the robber?”

She tucked a strand of the platinum-blond wig behind her ear. “New York. Queens. Robbery/homicide.”

He grimaced as she stepped a short way away.

“Excuse me?” he asked.

She held his gaze. “That’s where you’re from, right? Queens?”

Oh, she was good. Almost too good. And downright dangerous. As well as provocatively sexy, which made her even more dangerous. He’d do well to remember that.

She twisted her lips. “What I can’t get is what you’re doing here.”

Alex crossed his arms, as much to keep from touching her as in a defensive maneuver. “Astoria. Insurance investigator.”

“Mmm. Maybe now. But you used to be a cop, right?”

“Detective.”

“That’s what I thought.” She turned back toward the door to look out the crack. “And Astoria is Queens.”

Alex’s gaze dropped to her pert bottom and the way it jutted out just slightly as she inclined to look into the hall. He stifled a groan. A stubbornly clever woman with a killer body. He felt the weight of the pistol in his pocket. She was also a felon that he should be arresting.

“Are you here to guard the Theismans’ insured property?” she asked in that husky whisper that felt like the caress of a woman’s fingers.

“No, I’m watching you.”

She turned from the door again to look at him.

He couldn’t resist a grin. “Surprised you.”

“Yes…you could say that.”

“I just did.”

He caught her smile before she reached down and began putting her shoes back on one by one.

“Where are you going?”

“Leaving.”

“Going to position yourself to ambush the thief?”

She gently shook her head. “No, I think I’ll call this one a bust and go home.”

“Not because of me, I hope.”

She smiled.

“And here I thought you’d stick around at least long enough to find out what I’m really doing here.”

A creak of a door.

They both swung to watch the thief exit the guest room across the hall. He clutched a black velvet bag in his hand. But rather than making a run for it, his attention was on another door. Namely the one Alex and Nicole stood behind.

Alex eyed the woman standing in front of him. He hadn’t known how much he had been hoping for just such an opportunity until he hauled one very wily, supremely sexy Nicole Bennett into his arms. She stared up at him in naked shock. Then he slowly lowered his mouth to hers and kissed her, absently thinking that she tasted like cinnamon candy, too.

3

SO…TALL. SO…HARD. SO…HOT.

And far too slow.

Nicole kept her eyelids cracked open, watching Alex’s finely honed features as he launched a mock attack on her mouth. Only there was nothing mock about her instant reaction to it. She heard the door creak farther open behind her, but immediately forgot about it as Alex moved his hand up the outside of her leg then slid his fingertips under the hem of her skirt. She dipped her tongue into his mouth just as he found out that she had absolutely nothing on underneath the classy shift. She drank in his expression of first shock, then pure wicked pleasure. Ah. Just her type. The kind of guy capable of compensating for any surprise thrown his way. That assessment was quickly confirmed when he traced the line of her clean-shaven pubis.

Nicole’s knees buckled at the rush of instant and overpowering heat caused by his intimate touch. All the while, his mouth continued to slowly explore hers.

Too slowly.

Deciding to ratchet things up a notch, she tunneled her fingers wildly through his hair then pushed her mouth almost painfully against his, swirling her tongue against his teeth like a starving woman. She was rewarded with a small groan…and the feel of his hand circling around to her bare bottom where he clutched her roughly to his growing hardness.

Mmm. The long, thick ridge she felt under his trousers felt…promising. She wiggled her hips to get a better sense, then smiled as she recklessly kissed him. Very promising, indeed.

Things escalated very quickly. One moment Nicole was trying to speed things up, the next she was dizzy from the quick pace. She forgot about the house, the jewels, the thief that could still be watching them. She tunneled her fingers into the front of Alex’s slacks, desperately needing to touch the silken length of him. The only thing she knew was the accumulating need to go as far as she dared with this man—a man with the power to put her behind bars, yet who set her on fire with a simple, well-placed touch.

Alex caught her fingers just as she touched his hard heat, then broke free from their spiraling kiss.

“I…think he’s gone,” he said raggedly, his breathing irregular, his hair gorgeously tousled from where she’d restlessly played with and tugged on it.

“Who?” she whispered, blinking as her gaze traveled from his hair to his eyes then his decidedly decadent mouth.

“Who, indeed,” he said, his eyes darkening.

Nicole gasped when he shoved her against the opposite wall, then followed, sandwiching her between the wall and his heat. A picture frame tipped back and forth and a chair toppled over as Alex kicked it out of the way, then sweet heaven descended as he picked her up and wrapped her legs around his hips, pressing his hard arousal against her soft, exposed flesh.

Nicole had always gotten a rush out of stealing. And she couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t love sex. But when the two of them crashed together, it nearly sent her plummeting right over the edge. She couldn’t seem to get enough of Alex fast enough. She pulled at his tie, shoved his suit coat down over his arms, then dove for his belt buckle and the zipper beyond. She heard the ripping of material. Namely that of the strap of her dress where Alex was trying to gain access to her breasts. She smiled at him through their kiss.

“Sorry,” he rasped.

Nicole ripped open his shirt, sending buttons ricocheting around the room. “Not a problem.”

She took in the wide, hard planes of his chest. No donut-induced middle about this ex-cop. He was a pure, undiluted hottie with a chest that could make a grown woman cry. She pressed her palms flat against his nipples, then dragged her fingers down over his taut, rippled flesh. Damn. She hadn’t seen a guy this hot since she’d dated the captain of the football team back in high school. Maybe she’d been going after the wrong guys. Maybe the jocks were where it was at.

She gave a soft laugh at the twisted thought even as she wriggled her hips to get the room she needed to free his erection. She finally held his long, hard length in her fingers. Impressive. Very impressive, indeed. She’d heard of extralarge condoms being available, but had never actually had the cause to buy one.

Speaking of condoms…

Alex fastened his mouth over her right breast, chasing the air from her lungs and causing her to throw her head back against the wall and groan. God, but he had a great mouth. Tiny tendrils of fire licked along her nerve endings, ending in a throbbing pool of molten electricity right between her thighs.

“Rubber,” she said breathlessly. “Give me a rubber.”

Alex froze.

Just froze.

His mouth still rested against her breast.

His erection still pulsed against her too hot flesh.

But he wasn’t moving anymore.

And Nicole didn’t want to know the reason why.

He finally pulled back enough to look into her face. She didn’t have to ask. The answer was right there in his tortured expression.

Nicole felt the tremendous urge to hit him.

“You’ve got to be shitting me,” she whispered, uncrossing her ankles behind his back and sliding her feet down to stand on her own. “You don’t have a rubber?”

“The tux is a rental.”

“Your wallet?”

“Contains my ID and cash.”

“No condom.”

He shook his head, looking as frustrated as she felt. “No condom.”

Nicole sagged against the wall, feeling the incredible, confusing urge to cry as sexual frustration pressed from the inside out. She wanted release. But for her there was only one way that would really do it for her. And that was feeling Alex deep inside her. Oral sex wouldn’t do. Petting, no matter how heavy, could never lessen the need.

She swallowed hard, just then realizing that Alex was staring as hardly at her as she was at him.

“Wait a minute,” she whispered, looking toward the large bed they had purposely avoided.

She brushed by Alex, the tips of her breasts rubbing against his wide chest as she made her way to the nightstand to the right of the bed. She opened and closed the three drawers there, then rounded the bed and checked the drawers on the other side.

No condoms.

What kind of hosts were the Theismans, anyway?

She felt Alex’s heat against her back where she stood staring at the nightstand. She wanted to scream with the frustration of it all. Until she felt something cold encircle her left wrist, then heard the unmistakable sound of metal teeth ratcheting against each other.

“Sorry,” Alex said into her ear. “But once I say what I have to, I think you’ll understand.”

Handcuffs.

Nicole turned and watched as he fastened the other side of the handcuffs to his right wrist. Not to the bedpost.

Not that it made a difference. Without a condom, sex was out of the question. She loved sex, and seriously wanted to indulge in some major mind-blowing sex with Alex, but she wasn’t stupid. Intimacy without a rubber was like playing Russian roulette with half the chambers filled.

She collapsed to sit on the mattress and sighed. “You don’t have a condom, but you have handcuffs,” she said absently, considering the heavy metal weighing down her wrist.

She blinked up at him. “You seriously need to reevaluate your priorities, man.”

He chuckled softly then took out his cell phone and called a taxi.

“Where are you taking me?” Nicole was afraid he was going to say the nearest police station. Although she knew that he had nothing on her, and she certainly didn’t have any stolen goods on her person, that didn’t mean he didn’t intend to have her arrested. After all, he still had to tell her what he was doing watching her.

He slid the phone back into his inside jacket pocket. “Home.”

FIVE HOURS and a plane trip later, Alex cursed his decision not to stop at the nearest drug store to stock up on, um, certain supplies before taking Nicole to his recently and very roughly renovated loft in lower Manhattan. Just seeing Nicole handcuffed to the headboard of his old iron bed made him hard as a rock, despite the majorly annoyed expression on her face as she tried to cross her arms over her chest but could only cross one. A loud thwap sounded when she slapped her free hand against the mattress. “This really stinks, you know.”

Didn’t it just.

Never had been the time that Alex had regretted who he was. But in that one moment, he’d have given his pension not to be an insurance investigator. Instead he wished he was a regular guy free to do what he would with the walking sexpot looking at him with barely contained rage.

Then again, if he were a regular guy with no professional interest in Nicole, he wouldn’t be standing where he was, either, essentially having kidnapped Nicole Bennett. If anyone knew the repercussions of his actions, he did, no matter how desperate he was for her help. Although he sensed Nicole would be the last one to press charges.

He hated catch-22s. The problem was that lately life had turned into one huge catch-22 for him.

Standing at the end of the bed, he dragged toward him Nicole’s ever-present black leather backpack, which he’d retrieved from the Theisman’s neighbor’s shrubs before leaving the wealthy Baltimore subdivision in a taxi.

Nicole sighed and rolled her eyes to stare at the ceiling.

Alex ignored the stretch of elegant neck she presented him with, and the way one side of her dress dipped dangerously low from where he’d torn the strap. He looked down at where he was pulling items out of the pack. A small bag of toiletries. Black leather pants, vest, coat and boots and…God was that a leather thong? He let the scrap of material hang from his index finger and decided that it must be. He looked at her. She glared back.

“Interesting.”

“Yeah, well, I’m sure I could find an interesting item of clothing or two if I went through your stuff, too.”

He checked the empty bag. “No pajamas?”

She hiked a brow. “You’re holding them.”

Alex let the thong drop to the bed.

His gaze slid up to where she had her long, long legs crossed at the ankles on the bed, lingering around the hemline and the bare area in question just beyond.

Oh, boy. This wasn’t going exactly the way he planned.

He stuffed her things back into her bag then tossed it to a nearby chair. Moments later, he threw a pair of lightweight summer pajamas to her from his top drawer.

Nicole picked them up. “Are these for me or you?”

“Both,” he muttered under his breath, thinking he should have cuffed her to the dormant radiator. “You.”

“They still have the tags on them.”

That was because his mother had bought them for him and, like Nicole, he wasn’t much of a pajama man.

“They’re new,” he told her. “Put them on.”

She tossed them to lay on top of her bag across the room. He had to give her credit for her aim. “I’m not doing anything until you tell me what’s going on.”

Alex grinned. There it was. The demand he’d been waiting for since he’d snapped the cuffs on her in Maryland.

Throughout the two taxi rides and a plane flight back to New York, he had waited for Nicole to ask the question. She hadn’t, of course. Instead she’d sat like a she-cat, alternately glaring at him then licking her lips in a way that made him forget his own name, much less what his objective was.

And his objective was very simple.

He crossed his arms over his chest and stared at her across the foot of the bed. “I need you to help me catch Dark Man.”

She squinted at him with those unsettling eyes, then snapped her mouth shut, trying again to cross her arms over her chest, causing the cuffs to rattle.

He didn’t have to explain who Dark Man was. Most thieves, once they reached a certain level of success and notoriety, were known by nicknames. He absently rubbed his chin. He’d taken to calling Nicole Black Cat. Some other names included Pablo, for the English thief who stole strictly Picassos, and there was even a Mr. Ed, who concentrated his extracurricular activities on rustling highly insured thoroughbred racehorses.

Bestowing the nickname Dark Man, however, hadn’t been done in a light or amusing way. Dark Man was named as such because he was utterly and totally dark. When he was involved in a theft, people usually ended up hurt. Or dead.

And no one seemed to know who he was.

Alex went on. “Two months ago he was involved in the Norton Museum job in Omaha. Two security guards and an assistant curator—who was father to twin two-year-old boys—were shot dead at point-blank range.”

Nicole stared at where she was running her palm along the length of her skirt then back again. Stress lines bracketed the sides of her naughty mouth, but otherwise he couldn’t tell how she was taking what he was saying.

“Three months before that, there was the gallery job in San Francisco. Four injured, one paralyzed for life.”

He rounded the bed and sat down next to her on the mattress. “I want this guy, Nicole. I want him so bad I can’t think straight.”

She blinked to stare at him, her dark eyes questioning. “I thought you weren’t a cop anymore.”

“I’m not,” he said, but didn’t offer anything more. She didn’t have to know that Dark Man had haunted him throughout his career. Or that the thief was responsible for twenty-five percent of the policy payouts issued by his company last year.

“And I should help you…why?” she asked.

Because it’s the right thing to do, he wanted to say.

But he didn’t. Because if there was one thing he’d learned during his career in the N.Y.P.D., it was that right and wrong were twisted in the criminal underworld. Black became white and the gray area stretched to a point where even the black and white were essentially obliterated.

“Because if you don’t, then I turn you over to the authorities investigating the Bowman diamond heist last summer.”

He had to give her credit—she didn’t even blink. “I wasn’t involved with it.”

He gave her a half smile. “After I get done explaining everything to the authorities, do you really think it will matter?”

He watched her slender throat work around a swallow. Alex decided he liked the blond wig. It was short and sassy and showed her neck and shoulders off in a sexily elegant way.

Nicole said, “I can’t help you.”

“Why?”

She slanted a gaze in his direction as if addressing a particularly slow child. “The code.”

“Ah,” he said, narrowing his eyes. “You mean honor among thieves and all that.”

She smiled at him, but there was little or no amusement in the action. “Something like that.”

“And what do you think your fellow thieves would think of you targeting them for theft, then leaving them alone to take the fall?”

Color flushed her cheeks as she cursed under her breath. “You wouldn’t dare.”

At this point, Alex would.

Dark Man had plagued him throughout his eight-year career with the N.Y.P.D. He even suspected that the thief’s first known job at a small folk art museum in SoHo had coincided with Alex’s first day on the job in robbery/homicide.

But it wasn’t just that Dark Man was a thorn in his side, or that Alex wanted to settle a score like you see in those macho “B” movies or dime-store novels.

No. He needed to get him because he was no longer a harmless thief. He was a serial killer who seemed to enjoy taking people’s lives more than the loot.

And no one, nowhere, had a clue as to his real identity.

Oh, sure, the police had worked up a psychological profile on him. Mid-thirties. Loner. Classic passive-aggressive with sociopathic tendencies. But Alex could have told you that just reading the crime reports. The thief taunted his victims before killing them. Goaded them into risking their lives for material objects, then appeared to take great joy in making them pay for such a shallow move.

But the police profiler had also said that Dark Man would be a good-looking man. Popular with the ladies. Perhaps even a man well known in the public sector.

Did Nicole know him?

Alex discovered that during his thought processes he’d placed his hand on her bare knee and was lightly tracing circles on her pale skin with his thumb. If she did know who Dark Man was, he knew straight-out asking her wouldn’t get the intended results.

But forcing her to work with him…well, that was an altogether different tack that he hoped would yield him the man he’d been searching for so long. His determination had little to do with the fact that the insurance company had paid out a great deal of money to cover the items he’d stolen. It had everything to do with his belief that the only room the guy was entitled to inhabit was an eight-by-eight prison cell for the rest of his unnatural life.

Alex raised his eyes to look into Nicole’s, only she was watching his thumb make those lazy circles.

He removed his hand.

She moved her leg out of the way, then reached up to draw the blond wig from her head. Alex watched, fascinated, as she removed one, then two pins and her silky dark hair swept down to frame her pale face, in one blink taking her from icy cold temptress to dangerously sexy seductress.

“How do you think I can help you?”

Risky question, that, he thought as his gaze dropped to where her dark hair teased her nipples through the thin black fabric of her dress. His mouth watered just remembering the tangy taste of her skin. Her instant, uninhibited response.

Had he ever been with a woman so spontaneous? A woman who knew straight off what she wanted, no game-playing, no wondering if it was too soon or if she would look too bad if she revealed she wanted him as badly as he wanted her?

Oh, and Alex definitely wanted Nicole. Just like a sinner who couldn’t help but sin.

He got up from the bed and held out his hand. She instantly dropped the two hairpins into his palm.

“You have the uncanny ability to know when something’s going to happen before it does,” he told her.

The cuffs clanked against the iron headboard as she propped the wig on one of the two iron posts. “How long, exactly, have you been watching me?”

Alex pocketed the pins, then picked up the pajamas and refolded them, thinking of the countless photographs of her that covered the corkboard in his office at work. “Long enough.”

“Mmm.” He watched her recross her legs in a slow, languid way designed to drive any man mad. “And did it make you…hot? You know, watching me when I didn’t know you were?”

Alex couldn’t seem to take his gaze away from her slender thighs, still hearing the sound of skin sliding against skin.

“You know, watching me, but not being able to touch me?”

Alex forced his gaze up to her face. “My surveillance was of a strictly professional nature.”

She considered him for a long moment, then held up the hand bearing the metal shackles. “And I take it this is a new addition to the insurance investigator’s handbook?”

Alex cracked a grin.

She shook her head, appearing to fight her own smile. “You’re a naughty, naughty boy, Alex…”

“Cassavetes,” he offered.

Her eyes narrowed slightly, then she relaxed. “Cassavetes. I should have guessed when you told me Astoria. Greek, right?”

He ran his hand through his hair then sighed. “You couldn’t be more Greek unless you lived in Greece.”

He wasn’t exactly sure why he’d offered up that little bit of information as he placed the folded pajamas next to her again.

His family, immediate and extended, seemed to exist in a sort of isolated cultural vacuum. His parents had moved to New York from the Peloponnese right after he was born, bringing his father’s widowed mother with them. Then five years later, his mother’s two brothers and a female cousin had come over, as well. His grandmother, right up until she had died a couple years ago, had never learned to communicate in English. And almost all of his uncle’s shoe repair business was conducted in Greek.

Of course, he and his younger sister, Athena, were the only ones in the family to dare venture beyond the borough boundaries, Alex to work in a precinct in lower Manhattan, Athena to work in a restaurant in Little Italy, committing the worst of all crimes by not only rejecting her own heritage, but seeming to adopt that of another country.

What went unsaid was that they were already living under the flag of yet another country.

Strangely, though, his family was proud of their Greek-American heritage and dedicatedly displayed both flags outside both their house and at their corner supermarket in Astoria.

Nicole cleared her throat. “You know, I’ve always wondered…how do you say ‘sex’ in Greek?”

He bet she’d always wondered. More likely, she was looking for a way to throw him off track. And it was working. “Sex.”

She laughed. “No. Seriously.”

“I am serious.”

She considered him for a long moment. “Okay, then. Although it’s not much a part of my vocabulary…what about ‘love’?”

“Agapee,” he said automatically.

He reached for the throw at the foot of the bed and moved it so she could get it if she wanted without risking injury.

“I thought we’d get some sleep first,” he said, glancing at his watch to find it after 2:00 a.m. “Then we can get a fresh start in the morning.”

“I haven’t agreed to anything yet.”

He gestured toward the cuffs. “You will.”

“Confident. I like that in a man.”

Sexy. He liked that in a woman.

Nicole watched him move around the large open area of the loft, taking an extra top sheet from a set of drawers, and a pillow from the other side of the bed, then heading for the couch a good twenty feet away but still with a clear sight of the bed.

The cuffs clanked again. “You, um, wouldn’t have any condoms in those drawers over there, would you?” she asked quietly.

Alex grinned as he made up the couch, then stretched out to lay across it in his newly rented tux slacks and shirt. “Nope.”

Her long-suffering sigh filled the high-ceilinged area. “Some sex life you must have.”

“Who says I don’t go through a case of them a month and that I just ran out last night?” he asked.

He waited for her response, thinking she looked all too tempting there, handcuffed to his bed.

There was a twenty-four-hour convenience store on the corner….

“I say,” she whispered, then scooted down and rolled to her side.

Unfortunately, she was right.

Alex lay staring at the ceiling some twenty-five feet above him, thinking not for the first time that he should paint the black beams white or beige or something. Open the place up a bit.

But the diversionary tactic didn’t work. Because all he could think about was how long the night was going to be without sleep. And the reason he wasn’t going to be able to sleep was that there was a red-hot sexy woman lying in his bed and not only did she appear to want him in it with her, but he wanted more than anything to be in it with her.

Oh, he definitely had not thought this plan through. Because if he had, he would have not only bought a box of condoms, he would have invested in the damn company that made them.

4

ALEX GROANED and tried to snag the sexy, ghostly image haunting his dream. Nicole Bennett. He had not only apprehended her, but had finally put into action his plan to entice her to help him. But she had this strange blond wig on…and was wearing his pajamas. Well, “wearing” wasn’t quite accurate. Partially wearing them was closer. She’d only buttoned the top button, letting the flaps fall on either side of her toned abdomen, and she’d rolled the tops of the pants down dangerously low so that pale, taut skin taunted and teased and her navel ring winked at him as she moved. With a smoldering, provocative look, she kept tempting him closer. He moved the top flap of the pajama shirt aside and laved her large nipples with his tongue, and then tunneled his fingers into the back of the pants and molded her sweet bottom with his fingers…only to have her move away and waggle her finger at him teasingly, reminding him that he couldn’t have her.

Alex awakened with a start, surprised to find his breathing ragged, his member rock hard and his heart hammering.

Good God, what had that been about?

He ran his hands through his hair again and again, trying to get a grip on his runaway thoughts.

Condoms, he realized. The damn dream had been about the lack of available condoms.

He jackknifed upright on the sofa, then planted his bare feet firmly on the pitted wood planks of his floor, waiting for his vision to clear. Slowly he registered that sunlight was streaming through the tall multipane windows that ran the length of the wall to his left…and that his apartment was strangely silent.

He jerked his head up to stare at the bed across the room, then catapulted from the sofa.

Empty.

The covers were pushed aside, the handcuffs left hanging open on the iron bar where he’d fastened one cuff.

Of course last night the other cuff had been firmly attached to Nicole Bennett’s wrist.

“Damn,” he muttered, striding across the room. Her bag was gone along with her. He picked up the blanket. Also gone were his pajamas.

What did she want with his pajamas?

And just how in the hell had she gotten out of the cuffs?

He checked his pocket for the hairpins. No, she hadn’t managed to get them out somehow. There they still were. But obviously she hadn’t needed them to free herself. That explained why she’d given them up so readily.

He smacked the pins against the night table then stalked to the bathroom. He saw to his morning ritual of brushing his teeth, washing his face and applying deodorant by rote, then changed out of the tux and into a pair of jeans and black T-shirt. He stared at the T-shirt in the mirror, then yanked it off, replacing it with a red one. Black reminded him too much of the damn woman who had slipped through his fingers yet again.

Only this time she knew not only who he was and what he wanted, but where he lived.

Damn, damn, damn.

The telephone rang.

Alex stepped toward the kitchen—little more than a stretch of counters with a sink flanked by a refrigerator and stove against the far wall—and snatched up the cordless receiver.

“Hey,” he said gruffly. Coffee. He needed coffee, he thought, staring at the ancient coffeepot a few feet away.

“Kalimera,” his mother said—“good morning” in Greek. “Is that any way to answer your phone?”

Not Nicole.

Alex’s shoulders slumped as he looked at his watch. It was after nine. Since he’d finally dropped off to sleep at somewhere around five, that meant Nicole could be virtually anywhere east of the Mississippi, on her way to anywhere beyond that point. And he was completely clueless as to where to look for her first. Now that she knew he’d been following her, finding her at any of her regular hangouts was a no go.

The thought that she could virtually disappear from the face of the earth made his throat tighten.

He hadn’t realized he’d let rip a series of curse words in Greek until his mother asked, “What is it, agapemou, my love?”

“Nothing,” he muttered. “Look, Ma, can I call you back?”

Like sometime next week when he had his shit back together?

“Actually, this is more than a courtesy call, Alexanthros,” she said. “Your sister…she’s gone.”

Again? he thought but didn’t say.

He really couldn’t deal with this right now. Not when someone else was noticeably missing.

“Your father and I are worried sick. She went to work and we haven’t seen her since.”

“Maybe she spent the night at a friend’s place.”

“Two nights ago,” her mother said. “We haven’t seen her for two nights. Do you think I would call if it was only one? She’s never stayed away two nights in a row before.”

And there was a time when she hadn’t stayed out one, but lately it had been a regular occurrence. One night had certainly been nothing to write home about, and definitely nothing to warrant calling her ex-cop brother to look for her.

But two nights…

Alex stretched his neck and walked to the bed, pressing his hand against the imprint of where Nicole’s body had been. Still warm from her body heat.

“Ma, I’m sure she’s fine.”

“But—”

“I’ll check around for you if it will make you and Dad feel better.”

“Oh, thank you, agapemou, thank you.”

Alex punched the disconnect button then tossed the phone across the empty bed.

Athena was twenty-eight, no longer a child, and the only reason she still lived at home was because their parents wanted it that way. It was traditional in Greek culture that children lived at home until they married. And since Alex hadn’t taken that route, it made Athena’s situation doubly difficult. But while her mailing address might still be the Tudor-style house in Astoria, more and more often she stayed with one of her girlfriends in Manhattan, nearer to where she worked in Little Italy. The way he figured it, his parents should be happy she came home at all, considering the way they rode her. It was easy for him to avoid the “when are you getting married?”, “when are you going to settle down?”, “when are you going to get a real job?”, “when are you going to continue the family name?” questions. He didn’t have to see his parents nearly every day. Athena, on the other hand, described nightly dinner at the Cassavetes house as hell on earth.

So she up and disappeared for a day or two. The way he saw it, she was entitled. More than likely it was a survival technique. Much needed escape to keep herself from killing their overly protective, old-world parents.

He glared at the empty coffeepot, then pulled on his shoes and reached for his coat. Despite what he’d told his mother and despite his need for caffeine, the first challenge on his list was to find Nicole Bennett.

He turned toward the door, and nearly plowed right into her.

Alex stopped dead in his tracks. There she was, smelling of morning air and looking good enough to drink. He hadn’t heard her come in, although the old door held no fewer than six locks. And he couldn’t be sure how long she’d been there, given the way she leaned against a support post, a carrying case next to her feet. It could have been a minute; it could have been ten. Hell, she could have watched him since he was startled awake by his dream.

All he knew was that he’d never been more relieved to see anyone. And he feared that his objective to catch the thief wasn’t the only motivation behind his reaction.

The sides of Nicole’s mouth turned up in a naughty, knowing smile as she lifted an extralarge cup of coffee designed to satisfy anyone’s caffeine cravings. “Thought you could use this.”

Alex squinted at her. She was wearing a long, clingy black dress; what looked like combat boots that stretched to cover her knees, laced up the front, and had clunky heels; a shear black shirt that she had tied at the waist; and dozens of silver bracelets that clinked when she moved. He shook his head, wondering where she’d gotten the clothes but afraid to ask.

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