“You don’t have to stop,” Sydney said, pouting

Adam wished he hadn’t. His fingers had been almost there, working their way up her thighs, getting closer and closer to home. Then a cupboard had slammed in the kitchen, striking Adam with instant awareness of where he was—and what he’d been about to do. Yanking his hands from Sydney’s legs, he rocked back on his heels, his body thrumming, every inch of his flesh aroused. “My sister’s in the other room.”

“Then let’s go somewhere private.”

Sydney didn’t seem the least bit embarrassed that they’d almost made love, with Adam’s sister only a few steps away. Her expression reflected only desire—the hot, unadulterated need to feel his hands on her body, no matter what.

“I don’t know you,” Adam said.

She learned forward, grabbed his hands and pressed them to her rib cage. Her breathing wasn’t quite as steady as she let on, and the moisture seeping through her paper-thin blouse testified to a heat more intense than the ninety-degree temperatures outside. She was burning up from the inside out…and she wanted him to know it.

“You do know me, Adam. Better than any man ever has. You just don’t remember right now, that’s all.” She ran her finger over his lips, her voice a throaty purr. “But you will….”

Dear Reader,

Let’s clear one thing up right here and now. I am not Sydney Colburn. Or rather, she’s not me. Yes, she’s a romance writer…like I am. Yes, she has a smart mouth…like I do. But that’s where the similarities end, I swear. That’s the beauty of being a writer—indulging all sorts of fantasies, like wearing designer clothes, driving a candy-apple red Corvette convertible and executing a seduction of a man who looks particularly yummy in blue jeans and a tool belt.

This series—and the book—have been a ball to work on. Not only did I get to revisit several characters from other books (Cassie Michaels from What’s Your Pleasure? and Jillian Hennessy from Just Watch Me…) but I had the chance to work with talented authors Leslie Kelly and Tori Carrington! Our BAD GIRLS CLUB is open to new members, so make sure to stop by my Web site, www.julieleto.com, and sign up!

Enjoy,

Julie Elizabeth Leto

P.S. I’ve written a BAD GIRLS CLUB novella for the ultimate bad girl, rock-and-roll diva D’Arcy Wilde! Check it out at this month’s “Red-Hot Read” at www.eHarlequin.com.

Brazen & Burning
Julie Elizabeth Leto

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For Leslie Kelly, good friend, and Bad Girls Club head honcho…thanks for inviting me to join this series.

Right up our alleys, huh? When we’re bad, we’re better.

For Lori & Tony Karayianni, aka Tori Carrington…working with you never feels like work. Come up and see me sometime.

For Renée Perkie and her generous Ladies Lunch Group…your support means the world to me. Here’s to more good books, good food and good fun…though on second thought, goodness has nothing to do with it.

Contents

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

1

TO STOP THE INFERNAL KNOCKING, Sydney Colburn swung her front door open. Bright light sent her stumbling backward, but she managed to catch the doorknob for balance. Unable to form a curse harsh enough to express her ire, she opted to growl.

The person who had driven her to this indignity had the audacity to sound amused. “Are you always this cheery at twelve noon or are you just really happy to see me?”

Sydney squinted, fighting the blinding light—the noon hour explained the glare—to find out who had the frickin’ nerve to show up at her door sounding so incredibly buoyant when Sydney had a raging hangover. Her anger deflated when she met Cassie Michaels’s eyes—sapphire-blue and wide with nineteen-year-old innocence.

Sydney knew Cassie’s innocent act wasn’t entirely fake. With a petite body and naturally dark hair plaited in youthful braids that reminded Sydney of Gilligan’s Mary Ann, Cassie played the ingenue card for all it was worth. But Sydney had known Cassie too long to completely buy her sweet young thing act. Still, she let her inside the condo anyway. Cassie was, after all, the niece of Sydney’s very best friend in the world. The very best friend who was indirectly responsible for her drinking binge the night before. And Syd was pretty sure that Cassie had been the one to make sure she got home safely last night.

“Shut the door before I show you how thrilled I really am,” Sydney threatened feebly, stumbling away from the threshold and cursing herself for mixing vodka and rum. Or was it tequila and gin? She didn’t remember. She didn’t need to remember. Whatever she’d drank the night before had been blended with something pink. Grenadine? Cranberry juice? When she opened her fridge searching for something to quench her thirst and caught sight of a jug of Ocean Spray, she gagged, thankful she had no breakfast in her stomach and, therefore, none on her floor.

Why hadn’t she eaten yet if it was noon? Oh, yeah. She’d just woken up. Why had she gotten out of bed again? Right. Loud knocking. Cassie.

The pint-size brunette strolled into her kitchen as if she’d been there a thousand times before. Which she probably had. “Have a good time last night?”

Sydney would have growled again, but she hated to be redundant. “Why are you here?” she asked instead.

“Aunt Devon wanted me to check on you.”

“Liar. Devon’s on her honeymoon.”

Cassie slid a chair out from under the kitchen table, filling Sydney’s head with a horrible screeching noise that obliterated the first couple of words of Cassie’s answer.

“…drank more than all the groomsmen put together. And I’m a little concerned that binge drinking may be your way of dealing with being the last single woman in your circle of friends.”

“Let me guess,” Sydney said, pulling out her own chair much more quietly, “the first class you’re taking at Tulane is Pop Psychology.” She had no intention of answering Cassie’s intrusive question. Besides, she didn’t have an answer. She didn’t want to accept that she’d drunk herself into oblivion last night all on account of a cliché.

Poor, unmarried me. No single friends left to hang with. No man in my life to make my world complete.

Blech.

“No, but I read Dr. Phil’s newest book on my plane ride home for the wedding,” Cassie answered. “Besides, I’m nineteen. That makes me a certifiable expert on everything, remember?”

Remember what? Nineteen? Sydney snorted. She couldn’t remember last night, much less something that had occurred over eleven years ago. Besides, she’d tried damned hard to suppress most memories from around ages ten to twenty. Those years were formative and filled with more mistakes, missteps and misery than she ever wanted to relive.

However, just around the time of her twenty-first birthday, Sydney had made a decision to buck the system of her New England upbringing and live without apologies. She did what she wanted, when she wanted. She spoke the truth, even when people didn’t want to listen. She played the stock market like a blackjack table—and won. She wrote widely popular, highly subversive historical romance novels where the women were strong and smart and could bring hulking knights and bloodthirsty warriors to their knees.

And whenever she could, she took lovers the way most men did—with emphasis on immediate physical payoff and avoiding commitment. For the past decade, Sydney’s carefree, unrepentant lifestyle had worked wonders. She’d graduated from college, made a successful career for herself as a novelist and collected a small but loyal group of friends who accepted her for who she really was. Not to mention that she had a love life that would make even the most sexually satisfied heroines in her books pea-green with envy.

And, yes, last night she’d become the last single woman in that loyal group of friends, excluding Cassie, who was too young to really count, though rumor had it her innocent young friend had recently met a college boy and was, officially, smitten. Who knew how long it would be before Sydney was throwing a wedding shower for a bride thirteen years her junior?

Oh, well. She’d throw one hell of a party. Sydney’d never planned to get married anyway. She hadn’t drank too much last night because she’d felt lonely or left out or any other weepy sentiment on the dark side of the emotional spectrum.

She’d drank too much last night because drinking too much was the only thing she could think to do since her life suddenly came to a stop. And not because of Devon’s wedding. She was genuinely happy for Devon. As Cassie’s legal guardian, Devon Michaels had spent most of her adult life caring for her niece at the expense of her own personal fulfillment. Sydney had toasted her friend and fellow writer with great gusto and premium poetic words. She liked to think she had a hand in the romance of her mystery novelist friend and Jake Tanner, the hunky former cop Devon had married. She’d encouraged their relationship from the start and had no regrets.

No, Sydney Colburn’s life had come to a stop at precisely five o’clock Wednesday afternoon—a full three days prior to the wedding—simply because she’d reached the pinnacle of her career. Her newest book, a hardcover historical set on the moors of Scotland, had debuted in the number one spot on the coveted New York Times bestseller list. She’d achieved her single most important dream, as evidenced by the newspaper Cassie had carried into the condo and was now spreading carefully over Sydney’s butcher-block tabletop.

“Congratulations. I hear you kicked some literary ass last week,” Cassie said, attempting to couch her understated tone with a wry grin.

“Apparently,” Sydney grumbled.

Sydney had dreamed about this day since she first learned there ever was such a thing as a bestseller list. These novels were in such demand by booksellers and readers across the country that the titles and authors’ names were printed in the country’s most prestigious newspaper.

“Aunt Dev said you’ve wanted this all your life.”

“Well, I don’t think I wanted it when I was four,” Sydney quipped. “My main ambition then would have been a Malibu Barbie with a cool Corvette convertible.”

“You drive a Corvette convertible,” Cassie pointed out. “There may be a connection.”

Sydney raised her eyebrows, wincing as the simple movement made her head throb all the more. “You think?”

Cassie sighed in the way only someone younger than twenty could. Sydney glanced at the refrigerator again, wondering if that “hair of the dog that bit you” saying was true. She owned at least one bottle of vodka or gin or rum or tequila. She vaguely remembered a fully stocked wet bar somewhere in the living room. She didn’t drink much, but when she did, she made it count. Only, she didn’t really want more alcohol. She wanted to get rid of the kid, so she could go back to wallowing in peace.

“When you set a goal, you set a goal,” Cassie continued, obviously intent on having this deep psychological conversation even if Sydney didn’t want to. Oh, well. Why fight it? She didn’t have anyone else to hash this out with.

Devon was on her honeymoon, and while the others in her circle were good for shopping excursions and beachside lunches, none of them were writers. They supported her career by buying her books and talking them up to anyone willing to listen to their pitch, but none of them would really understand the downside of her reaching her ultimate goal. Even though they knew her profession held little of the glamor the media hyped and they respected her hard work, they could see no negatives to her job. She made up stories for a living. She’d just reached a major accomplishment in popular fiction—her name above Clancy, Grisham and Roberts, for this week at least. So while she’d tried to talk to them about how lost she felt, they couldn’t get beyond excited congratulations.

She loved them for the support—she really did. But support or not, she still felt like a drifting boat on a wind-tossed sea.

She wasn’t even sure that Cassie, who’d grown up in Devon’s care and knew more about the publishing business than most literary agents, would truly understand. How could she when Sydney didn’t? She’d accomplished her dream years before she expected to, and still she wasn’t happy. Why wasn’t she flying off to New York to celebrate with her editor? Why wasn’t she searching out a ladder so she could shout her accomplishment from the top of her three-story condominium building?

God, her head hurt.

“I don’t want to talk about this, Cassie.”

“You sound like my mother.”

Sydney’s shoulders drooped. “Did you come here to help or to insult me?”

Cassie’s mother was the Grammy-award-winning rock ’n’ roll phenomenon, D’Arcy Wilde. Of all the sexy acts out there giving music lovers their MTV, only Darcy could make Madonna look like June Cleaver in a push-up bra. Madonna at least raised her own children. Darcy had pawned Cassie off on her sister Devon, and she continued to lead a wild life, trotting from one gig to the next, building a personal empire on a foundation of provocative videos and sold-out concert tours. Though Sydney and Darcy had been compared to each other many times because of their open attitudes toward sex and men, neither of them took the association as a compliment.

In short, they despised one another.

“You know, my mother likes you,” Cassie claimed.

“She also likes tearing strategic holes in her T-shirts and playing peek-a-boo with her nipples on stage. I should be flattered?”

Cassie laughed. “Darcy likes to shock people. So do you.”

“That’s where you’re wrong. In order to like shocking people, you actually have to care about what people think about you. I don’t give a damn.”

Clearing her throat, Cassie nodded. “But you gave a damn about making the Times list. So what’s next?”

“Sex on the beach,” Sydney concluded.

“Oh, yeah. Drinking more is the solution.”

“I wasn’t talking about the drink. I’m going to the beach to pick up some glistening hunk, and then I’m going to have sex.”

It had been a long time since Sydney had indulged in an anonymous affair. Too long. She searched her mind for a face—names were usually optional—and she couldn’t place one. Hmm. In fact, the first face that came to mind—rugged, handsome and highlighted by the most unusual almond-tinted eyes she’d ever seen—belonged to Adam Brody. God. Adam Brody. He’d literally disappeared out of her life over a year ago, though he still he managed to creep into her thoughts every so often. At weak moments.

“I shouldn’t be telling you about my love life,” Sydney said.

“You’re not ashamed of your free-love lifestyle, are you?” Cassie asked, her tone a tad too suspicious for Sydney’s liking.

“The fact that Sydney and shame start with the same letter is the only connection between me and that emotion,” she assured her. “On the other hand, I don’t want to corrupt you. My lifestyle is just that—my lifestyle. My choices aren’t for everyone.”

“Ain’t that the truth,” Cassie concluded. She scraped her chair back and headed toward the fridge, which Sydney noticed she’d left open.

As she watched Cassie rise on her tippy-toes to peer behind the carton of week-old skim milk, Sydney realized something.

The kid was wearing makeup.

In all the years she’d known her, from way back when Cassie’s main concern in life revolved around Beanie Babies, throughout childhood and her teen years, Cassie chose her clothes for comfort and brushed her hair only after her aunt threatened to withhold her allowance. She eschewed high school homecoming dances and proms in favor of opera night or a hockey game. So why did the levelheaded, giggle-free Cassie suddenly look like an ideal candidate for Temptation Island?

That rumor she’d heard about Cassie and a boyfriend must have been true. No wonder she was suddenly so concerned with the state of Sydney’s life. No one could be more meddling than a young woman in love.

Cassie retrieved a jug of orange juice and shut the door. “You can have your choices, Sydney. Thanks to you and my mother, I have lived a vicarious wild life I won’t ever need to experience for myself.”

Sydney raised an eyebrow, watching through bleary eyes as Cassie retrieved two glasses, filled them, and replaced the jug. She’d always known the kid was mature beyond her years and had had amazing insights since she was old enough to speak in sentences, but sometimes she still surprised Sydney. Mainly because Sydney constantly underestimated her young friend.

“You’re sure?” Sydney asked. “Most kids your age are just clamoring to live life on the edge.”

Cassie visibly shivered. “Most kids today aren’t raised on the edge.”

“Devon made sure your life was normal,” Syd reminded her.

“Thank God. But I eavesdropped on your little tête-à-têtes with my aunt during Tuesday-night poker. And I watched Entertainment Tonight at least once a week to find out which boy toy my mother had most recently dumped.”

Cassie placed one OJ in front of Sydney, then shook out two aspirin from the bottle she found in the cabinet over the sink. Sydney downed them greedily.

“It’s safe to say I’m immune from wanting to be like you or my mother,” Cassie concluded.

Sydney sighed in relief, pressing her hand to her throbbing brow. “I’m glad to hear it.”

Cassie slid back into the chair across from hers. “You look horrible—you know that, right?”

“Doesn’t come as a big surprise.”

“Picking up some nameless hunk might not be an easy feat.”

Sydney chuckled. “Maybe that wasn’t the best idea I’ve had.”

Cassie leaned back, then kicked her feet onto the chair beside hers. “Mom bought me a spa package over at Safety Harbor for graduation that I still haven’t used. I’d bet they’d fit us in on short notice—you being a New York Times bestselling author and all.”

“Oh, and the fact that your mother is D’Arcy Wilde would have nothing to do with it?”

“Couldn’t hurt…”

The idea sounded tempting, even to Sydney in her foggy condition. But after spending the day being salted, exfoliated, massaged and pampered, what then? She’d still have the same problem that she’d had for the past four days. She had no idea what she was going to do next with her life or career.

She’d made the New York Times list before, and had reaped the benefits. Her bulldog of an agent had manipulated her repeated appearances in the top fifteen of the bestseller list into a multimillion dollar contract—a contract Sydney had just fulfilled by turning in the last book. Making the list the first few times had been a rush—so much so that she had set debuting at number one as a goal to work toward for the rest of her career.

Who’d have known she’d succeed so quickly?

She felt like a fraud. A directionless, ungrateful fraud.

“I have no right to feel depressed, you know,” Sydney admitted.

“If the constitution had been written by the Founding Mothers rather than the Fathers, the right to be depressed in the face of good fortune would have been second on the list.”

Sydney grinned, even though the action made her cheeks ache. “I should be shouting from the rooftops! Please tell me I’m insane. I’d hate to think a sane person would feel so lost when they’d just achieved the one thing they wanted more than anything in the world.”

“Maybe if you had someone to share your victory with…”

“I’ve shared, sweetheart. With Devon—”

“—who was mostly too wrapped up in her wedding to really celebrate with you.”

“I called my mother.”

“And?”

“She called all her friends at the country club. They want me to speak to their ladies’ lunch group next month.”

“You haven’t spoken to them before?”

“They kept telling me I couldn’t mention sex.”

“Now you can?”

“I debuted at number one on the New York Times. I could talk about belching and farting in the fifteenth century and they’d think I was just charming. Oh, God. Please don’t tell me I just earned the right to be eccentric.”

“You’ve been eccentric since I met you. But when you’re under sixty-five, it’s called something else.”

“Don’t tell me what.”

“I wasn’t going to.”

“Value your life, do you?”

“As much as you value your Barbie Corvette.”

“Okay, so I shared with the people I care about most. So now what?”

“Pick a new goal?”

Sydney shook her head. What else was there? She already had the best job in the entire world. She spent long hours every day in her fantasy world, making up stories about hot sex and deep love, and someone paid her money to do it. Not that she needed the money. With her handy-dandy trust fund, she would have been set for life if she’d never typed a word. But when she’d received the first third of her legacy at eighteen, she’d started her foray into the world of stocks and investments. By the time she’d received the second third, not only was she earning a living as a writer, but she’d also doubled the investments she’d made the first time around. Sydney learned she had a head for three things—history, sex and money.

And as a successful historical romance novelist, she’d worked those strengths into a damned great career. She even enjoyed an ideal celebrity status, appearing at crowded book signings and on television and radio interviews, yet she could still go to the grocery store or the mall without being accosted.

To top it all, she served on the board of a foundation that provided literacy training in poor neighborhoods. Hell, she volunteered her time twice a month.

“What’s left, Cassie? God! I must be the most shallow woman on earth to have accomplished everything she wanted to do by the time she was thirty-two.”

Cassie shook her head. “Not shallow. Not really.”

Sydney cocked her eyebrow. She’d heard a “but” in there somewhere.

“What do you mean, ‘not really’?”

Anyone with more sense would have shrugged and begged off pointing out Sydney’s shortcomings, but Cassie, in her youthful confidence and ignorance, settled into her chair. “On the surface, you have an ideal life. Money, friends, a great career.”

“The foundation. Don’t forget the foundation.”

Cassie grinned. “Yes, you even do charitable work. You’ve been very careful and calculating, organizing your life with precision.”

“Hey, let’s not get insulting. I don’t organize. I fly by the seat of my pants.”

At this, Cassie frowned. “You like to think so.”

“Think so? I’m famous for my haphazardness. Ask your aunt. She rags me all the time for being such a mess.”

“That’s because Aunt Devon has elevated organization and planning to a religion. Compared to her, you are a mess. But compared to the normal population of the world, you’ve mapped out your entire life, ending with debuting your novel at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Am I right here?”

Sydney couldn’t argue, not only because of her pounding headache, but because the kid made sense.

“But you don’t have someone to love.”

With a groan, Sydney folded her arms on the table and laid her forehead down. Gently. This verified her earlier suspicion. Young Cassie was in love and wanted to share her joy.

Great. Just great.

“God, please save me from being the clichéd heroine of a romance novel!” Sydney wailed dramatically before skewering her inexperienced friend with a powerful glare. “You know, that line in Jerry Maguire was written by a man. I do not—I repeat—I do not need a man to complete me. If you really subscribe to such thinking, you’ve set feminism back to the days of Susan B. Anthony.”

Sydney managed to keep her head lifted long enough to watch Cassie laugh, but she didn’t see the humor. This wasn’t funny.

“Call it the new feminism. I’m not saying you need a man to complete you. But you could use a shot of something deeper, don’t you think? An emotional experience to challenge you and your status quo. Someone to challenge you and your status quo.”

Ah, so this mystery boy had shaken up Cassie’s life. Bully for her. Sydney was long past such a beginning-of-life discovery.

“No such man exists,” Sydney concluded.

“Have you looked?”

No.

“Of course I have.”

“And no guy ever rocked your world a little, shook you up so badly you had to walk away or risk losing your heart?”

Damned if Adam Brody’s rugged face didn’t pop right back into Sydney’s brain again, causing an electric charge to spark low in her belly and shoot to the tips of her breasts. The man had been an incredible lover. Selfish when it suited him, yet giving at the core. So incredible, in fact, that while with him, Sydney had broken so many of her self-imposed dating rules that she’d done more than risk her heart—she’d risked her very soul.

Yet, when he’d asked her to make their affair about commitment and love rather than just sex, she’d walked away. Actually, ran was more like it. Scared and out of her element, like a second grader enrolled in high school calculus. Sydney had mustered her cool enough to exit with style, but she still couldn’t get the man off her mind. Not on the eight-hour flight to London the day after she’d left him, not through the month-long tour through Scotland, or the seemingly endless three weeks in New England with her parents. When she’d finally returned and had decided to give in and take a chance on his offer, he’d disappeared off the face of the earth.

He’d sold his condo, deactivated his cell phone, closed his business. He’d once told her he was considering relocation to Baltimore to partner with his former mentor, so she’d assumed that’s what he’d done. And being a woman who never announced her regrets—rarely even to herself—she’d simply moved along, writing her books, playing poker with Devon on Tuesdays, traveling for autographings and research, and taking a handsome lover whenever her body needed release.

But maybe Cassie was on to something. Maybe she needed a male-female relationship less predictable than one based only on sex. Orgasms she could give to herself. She needed an affair equal to a cache of fireworks—haphazard, chancy—a true risk that might rock her world back into the tumble of chaos she so enjoyed.

And who better to fire her wick than sexy Adam Brody?

“Know any good private investigators?” she asked.

Cassie lurched forward, her young eyes alight with intrigue. “As a matter of fact…you remember Jake’s best man? Cade Lawrence? His wife, Jillian, is a P.I. A darned good one from what I hear.”

Sydney nodded, sat up straighter and downed her orange juice, finishing the entire tumbler. She tried to comb her fingers through her hair, but a mass of tangles stopped her progress. Oh, yeah. She looked like crap.

That, at least, she could fix.

“Get me her number, then make yourself comfortable. I’ll be down in twenty.”

“Dare I dream you’ve taken my advice to heart?”

Sydney grabbed a pad of paper from a drawer beneath her telephone, then tossed it and a pencil at her young friend. “After you write down Jillian’s number, call the spa and throw some weight around. I’m in desperate need of a facial.”

Cassie’s chuckle followed Sydney out of the kitchen and through the living room, toward the staircase to her bedroom. She wondered if Adam would be excited to see her, or was he still angry? He’d been fairly pissed the night she’d walked out of his condo, shamelessly sticking to her rule about not getting emotionally involved with any man. She’d insulted him to the core, just by telling him no. And she hadn’t explained. Why should she? She’d been up front with him from the moment they’d banged into each other while jogging around a corner of his building. One bang had led to another, and she’d been clear about the fact that she wanted nothing more than sex and maybe a few laughs from their affair.

Trouble was, they’d had more than that from the get-go. Adam had been intelligent, witty, charming—a fine match for her razor-sharp sarcasm. He was a driven businessman who lost himself in his blueprints and designs just as she went MIA during the best parts of her books. And from the dinner table conversation to the acrobatics in the bedroom, he had never failed to give as good as he got, which was probably why the affair had lasted six months longer than a one-night stand.

Then he’d made the ultimate mistake. The night before she was leaving for a book tour and research trip, he asked her to stay the night with him. It had seemed like such a small request, Sydney remembered, her gaze drawn to the bay window, the one that had once faced his across the courtyard. But his suggestion hadn’t been small at all. He’d asked her to break a major rule in her dating constitution…and she’d already bent more rules for him than she had for any other man. He’d even admitted he’d intended to entice her to spend the night as his first step in luring her to try settling down.

Sydney bristled, more out of habit than true discomfort over the idea of hearth and home. She wasn’t a fool—she understood and accepted the awesome power of a committed relationship. She wrote romance novels, for Pete’s sake. She usually even teared up when she penned the happy ending. But she also knew that true love relationships came at the price of compromise and change, perhaps even a complete overhaul of life choices and personal goals. The kind of overhaul she might be ready for now, but hadn’t been when Adam had asked.

So she’d walked. Just as she was walking now with the same purposeful, unapologetic stride, ending up in the same place, in the hall outside her bedroom—alone.

On the wall next to the thermostat hung her most cherished collectible—a framed movie poster from the classic 1933 film She Done Him Wrong, starring Mae West. Sydney had admired the woman since the first time she’d stayed home sick from her exclusive Boston private school and watched a marathon of the actress’s old movies on television. Irreverent, powerful, sexy Mae had inspired Sydney on varying levels throughout her life. By the time she was twenty, Sydney had turned a flash of cinematic curiosity into a full-fledged motion-picture obsession. The actress’s autograph graced the lower left corner of the yellowing cardboard, but it was the quote across the top that Sydney treasured most.

She read the snippet aloud, injecting herself with the confidence she’d need to not only find Adam Brody, but to entice him back into her bed—and into her life.

“Listen,” she read, not bothering to try to mimic Mae’s distinctive voice when she knew she couldn’t, “when women go wrong, men go right after them.”

Sydney raised her nightshirt over her head as she headed toward her shower, reveling in the cool blast of air tingling over her suddenly heated skin. “I hope you’re right, Mae. I sure as hell hope you’re right.”

2

ADAM BRODY STRETCHED his arms over his head, working the kinks out of the muscles in his shoulders. He twisted his neck side to side, comforted by the resounding snap, crackle and pop. Damn, it felt good to move like this. Even the tug of the long scar that stretched from his lower back to his skull didn’t stab like a razor anymore. Only mild discomfort. A small price to pay.

After one last glance at the raging noon sun sizzling his skin wherever the rays broke through the canopy of camphor trees and water oaks, Adam returned his attention to the plans laid out on his ramshackle workbench—an old back door balanced on wooden saw-horses. He grabbed a nail and his hammer, then squinted at the pencil drawings, concentrating on the next step in his creation. He did his best to ignore the anger that surged whenever he had to use the majority of his brain power do something so basic as mark the next step in building a child’s custom playhouse.

“Adam!”

His sister’s call from the back porch effectively destroyed his tenuous concentration. He looked up, fighting his annoyance for one reason only. If not for Renée, he wouldn’t be here, working in the sun, making himself useful. He’d probably still be in rehab, fighting his physical therapists and doctors, raging against the broken bones and ripped muscles that refused to obey his commands. He owed her so much.

So why did he still harbor resentment?

He had no idea, and his brain still hurt too much to work it out.

“Yeah?” he answered.

“Someone just came through the front gate. Do you see a car?” Renée lifted her hands, caked with something white. Could be either flour or paint, but whatever it was, she didn’t want any visitors seeing her in such a mess.

Adam grinned. Women.

He walked a few paces to the side of the old log cabin his father had built with his own hands forty years ago and had left to them both after his death. Before Adam’s accident, Renée had used the property during the weekdays, mainly for her business, while he had commandeered the place on weekends for fishing excursions with his buddies. After the accident, Renée had insisted they both live there full-time, certain the serene setting would aid his recovery. Off the beaten path in a still-undeveloped section of Florida’s Hernando County, Adam and Renée didn’t receive many unexpected visitors. The occasional developer came by, looking to purchase the thirty acres they owned on Lake Simpson, fed by the tributaries of Homosassa Springs. A fisherman might wander in, looking for a place to lower his johnboat into the water and catch some large-mouthed bass. A stray tourist occasionally got lost on the winding dirt roads that led to this untouched paradise.

But this visitor looked completely out of place. Developers knew to drive a truck or four-wheel-drive vehicle when maneuvering through the spongy terrain in this part of the wilderness. And while tourists might make an error in judgment by taking their minivans and station wagons off the paved roads, no fisherman he knew pulled a johnboat with a shiny, candy-apple-red Corvette convertible.

And no fisherman he knew had long flaming red hair that caught the sunlight and reflected back copper fire. When the driver, distinctly female, stopped in front of the cabin, a swirling cloud of dry Florida dirt shielded his view of her. Adam dropped his hammer on the workbench and grabbed the dark blue bandanna he’d shoved into his back pocket.

By the time he’d marched to the front of the house, the dust had settled. The driver checked her face in the vanity mirror, though why, Adam had no clue. Even from twenty feet, he could tell she was perfect. Creamy skin. Glossy red lips. Dangling gold earrings that, like her auburn hair, captured and reflected the light from the sun. This woman was beautiful—and totally out of her element in the Florida boonies.

When she spotted him, she grinned. Adam stopped. Did she know him? The smile was too small to tell. He immediately glanced down at his shirtless chest and low-slung jeans. The woman’s expression might have been subtle, but he recognized predatory when he saw it.

She got out of the car and walked around the front end wearing a slim pair of white-washed jeans, a tiny, ribbed tank top beneath a fluttery, sheer blouse and death-defying high-heeled sandals. No doubt the look of the hunter now darkened his face, as well.

Grrrr.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

“Well, that depends,” the woman said. She leaned against the hood of her car just over the right front wheel, her hips moving just enough to draw his attention to the gentle flare of her lower body, encased in denim, but begging for the exploration of his hands. Her eyes, green as the pine trees swaying in the gentle lake breeze, grabbed the fire from her hair and sparked her irises with intentions he couldn’t yet read. But he knew she was up to no good. This woman had bad girl written all over her. And by the tilt of her grin, she knew it.

He wiped the sweat off his palms. “You lost?”

A flash of confusion, clear from a quick downturn of her lips, dimmed her potent sensuality, but only momentarily. Whatever she thought she didn’t understand, she obviously decided to ignore it. “No, actually, I’m found. Well, you’re found. You aren’t an easy man to track down, you know.”

A string of curses shot through Adam’s brain, but he’d at least learned to keep the frustration contained. She knew him, likely from his former life in Tampa, but he didn’t know her. The situation happened less and less often now that he’d accepted that his old life didn’t fit him so well anymore.

Out here near Homosassa Springs, he had a few visitors from time to time, mainly friends and neighbors he’d known since childhood. They were people whose relationship with him had hardly been touched by the accident, who could hang out for an entire afternoon playing football without mentioning the tragedy one single time. People he trusted.

And even in the ninety-degree afternoon sun, this woman looked cool as ice. Sure, a little perspiration moistened her skin from her upper lip to the concave of flesh between her breasts, but everything else about her shouted “cool operator.”

Any minute now, he expected a protective barrier to rise around him, to provide quick immunity to the woman’s undeniable appeal. He waited, but no such wall emerged. Maybe he was done gating himself off from the unknown. Maybe he’d become more his old self than he had wanted to see before today.

She smiled.

He smiled back.

“I didn’t know anyone was looking for me,” he said.

She bounced off the hood and closed the distance between them in several long, purposeful strides. She wasn’t tall by any means—the top of her head barely reached his chin—but her slender build and go-get-’em attitude nearly made him take a step back.

Nearly, but not quite.

When she slid her fingertips over the ridge of his collarbone, he nearly bolted out of his skin.

Nearly, but not quite.

Holding still while she stroked his flesh proved tougher than some of the exercises he’d done in rehab. A new layer of perspiration coated his skin. And a certain part of his anatomy didn’t cooperate in his quest to remain unaffected by her bold, exploratory touch. He glanced down, hoping his loose jeans would keep that telltale sign of his attraction from her view.

When he looked up, he watched her brazenly retrace the path of his gaze. His hardness sparked a flare in her smile.

“Oh, so you are happy to see me. I shouldn’t have taken so long to track you down.”

He could tell she was trying to hide the regret in her voice with her loaded innuendo and her naughty glimpse of his crotch. She might have succeeded if it hadn’t been for the intense seriousness in her green eyes.

“This isn’t one of those ‘where have you been all my life?’ moments is it, lady? Because, luscious as you are, I have work to do.”

“Lady?” Her surprise rang clear. “Don’t play with me, Adam. I know I pissed you off last time I saw you, but what’s done is done. And I’ve come a long way to tell you I was wrong. Can’t you forgive and forget?”

She allowed her hand to lazily drop down his chest, her fingers burrowing a path through the layer of sweat and dirt on his skin, ending when she pulled her hand away at his navel.

“I already forgot, I’m afraid,” he answered. “Whether I wanted to or not.”

She bit her bottom lip, tugging the bright red flesh between straight white teeth. “Good. That’ll make everything easier.”

Adam opened his mouth to tell her otherwise when he heard the front door of the cabin swing open, then bang shut.

“Adam?”

He turned in time to see Renée take one step down off the rough steps. She twisted a towel around her hands, wiping clean whatever white paint or powder she’d been working with before. She’d run a brush through her straight blond hair, undoing the ponytail she wore each and every day. She’d tucked in her T-shirt. Put on shoes. All cleaned up, she looked more like the barely twenty-one-year-old coed she’d been before their parents’ deaths robbed her of most of her youthful exuberance. Before his accident swiped the rest.

Adam didn’t know why, but his sister’s sudden attention to her appearance in the presence of this stranger put him on edge.

“Everything all right?” she asked.

The woman from the convertible frowned deeply, then arched a brow. “Tell me she’s your sister.” More a command than a request, her voice remained low so that Renée couldn’t hear.

Adam obliged. “She is my sister.”

The stranger blew out a low whistle. “Thank God.”

She put on her best smile and sashayed across the yard, managing to look graceful and surefooted as her four-inch heels bit into the grass and mulch.

The woman had sass. He couldn’t be sure if this had been a trait he’d found attractive before, but he sure as hell found it hot now.

“You must be Adam’s sister. I wish I could say he told me a lot about you, but that wouldn’t be true.”

She extended her hand to Renée, but his sister responded by throwing a perplexed look his way. After a moment, the stranger turned and hit him with the same expression.

She mouthed the word Well?

He shrugged.

“No manners, huh?” the stranger said. “Men.”

She looked to Renée for some indication that she commiserated, but his sister looked far too uncomfortable to do more than stand there. Renée didn’t like situations she didn’t understand and, therefore, couldn’t control. He’d been told he’d once been the same way, but lately “live and let live” made for a much less frustrating lifestyle.

Suddenly, he realized what the stranger wanted—she wanted him to introduce her to his sister. Well, he couldn’t, could he? So he shrugged again, then strolled closer, positioning himself between the two of them, though he wasn’t exactly sure why. He hooked his thumbs in the leather of his tool belt and trusted his instincts. Lately, they were all he had.

The stranger rolled her eyes, then extended her hand to his sister again. “I’m Sydney Colburn.”

Renée glanced at him with a thousand questions she knew as well as he did that he couldn’t answer. Finally, she accepted the handshake. “Renée Brody. Wait. Sydney Colburn, the romance novelist?”

“You know my books?”

Surprisingly, the sexy stranger did humility very well.

“There’s not much to do out here after dark,” Renée answered, and Adam wasn’t sure if his sister had just extended the woman a compliment or not. He sighed. Sometimes, Renée was better off living in the woods—her interpersonal skills sucked. Then again, her blunt style had helped him get the best medical care her sharp tongue could buy. “I read quite a bit,” she continued, her tone quick, as if she meant to undo the damage. “You know my brother?”

Sydney eyed her narrowly. “Biblically.”

Adam coughed, stunned by the woman’s brazen statement, which she punctuated with an unabashed wink.

Renée obviously didn’t believe her. “I don’t see how that can be possible. Adam would have told—”

“Oh, I doubt Adam would have told you anything about me. It wasn’t the way we worked. Back then.”

When the mysterious, sexy Sydney Colburn slid her hand up his bare arm, Adam watched two things prickle—the hair on his forearm and his sister. If Renée had had hackles, they would have raised to full attention.

Uh-oh. He’d seen her go into protection mode before, and the results could be ugly.

“Adam tells me everything. We’re very close.”

Sydney seemed undaunted, oblivious to Renée’s darkening mood. Her mouth quirked up on one side as she took in her surroundings. “Close, huh? Are we talking close like backwoods kissin’ cousins or is my mind just dipping into the gutter again? I swear, I’ve been trying to fix that about myself but it’s a tough-won battle.”

Renée’s shock knocked all pretense of hospitality off her face. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

“I told you, I’m Sydney Colburn.”

She left it at that—as if the mere statement of her name should be sufficient to fill in all the blanks. Renée crossed her arms over her chest and squared her stance, as if preparing for battle.

And while Adam enjoyed a good catfight the same as any man, he had to step in. He had a strong suspicion that this Sydney Colburn, even in tight jeans and towering sandals, was the one woman who could give his scrappy sister a run for her money.

“Yes, you are Sydney Colburn, and this is Renée Brody. And I am, indeed, Adam Brody, who you apparently came a long way to find. Renée, do you think you could give us a minute?”

Renée’s blue eyes flashed and her lips rolled inward to form a grim line of indignation. “I don’t know if that’s a good idea,” she muttered.

Adam glanced down at Sydney, who had the sense to keep her mouth shut, though, for some reason, he suspected she had a razor-sharp quip dancing on the edge of her tongue.

“I’m really thirsty,” he insisted. “Could sure use some of your world-famous lemonade.”

He quirked his smile with a dash of charm, which softened his sister. Two months ago, he wouldn’t have been able to execute such a smooth maneuver. Little by little, he was remastering the art of female manipulation.

Without another word, Renée stomped back into the house. He noticed that while she’d pulled the screen door shut, she’d left the inner door open. His sister had never been known for her subtlety—something else she seemed to have in common with Sydney Colburn, who’d just latched on to his arm.

“I should have been nicer to your sister. But, man, I could sense her antagonism a mile away.” She shook her head, and Adam couldn’t resist taking a deep breath, inhaling the scent of lavender that floated around her. Soft and soothing, in direct contrast to the brazen woman who wore it—almost. She said what was on her mind, but she also took instant responsibility for her brassiness. “I go on the defensive sometimes before I can stop myself. What did you tell her about me?”

He took her hand, the one that had been making love to his forearm, and dragged her back toward her car. “I didn’t tell her a damned thing. I couldn’t.”

“Well, you could have. I mean, I know we had an agreement not to tell anyone about us, but that was a long time ago. You might have talked about me. Once.”

They reached the Corvette in time for Adam to figure out that she was miffed by his silence. If she only knew what was really going on…

“Listen, I don’t know what you’re thinking, but assuming that we once knew each other—”

“Assuming?”

Her eyebrows shot up. When she wrenched her hand free, he had no choice but to let go.

“Adam, I realize I was adamant about keeping our affair quiet and all about sex and nothing about our personal lives, but I got the distinct impression that when I left you, you didn’t want me to go.”

“You left me?”

Adam didn’t know why, but that fact didn’t sit well. Didn’t jive with what his sister had told him about his prior affairs and love interests. In Renée’s estimation, he’d broken a string of hearts the length of Interstate 75. He’d been so wrapped up in his career as a hotshot, innovative architect that he’d never married, never fallen in love. And though Renée claimed he didn’t keep his lovers around for more than a couple of months, she had memorized the complete list of the women he’d told her about.

And the list didn’t include anyone named Sydney Colburn, a woman who’d supposedly dumped him.

“You find that hard to believe?” she asked, apparently getting annoyed.

“Surprisingly…yes.”

“Sorry, sweetheart, but you broke the rule. You asked me to stay the night with you, and that was…against the rule,” she repeated hotly. The flush on her skin darkened from light pink to magenta and she stamped her foot.

God, she was sexy when she lost her temper. Actually, he figured this woman had written the original definition of sexy, from her long, wavy auburn hair to her peek-a-boo blouse and skintight jeans. Suddenly, imagining that they’d once been involved wasn’t so hard to believe.

“We had rules?”

“Don’t toy with me, Adam. Of course we had rules! We wouldn’t even have exchanged last names, except we lived in the same complex and read each other’s mailboxes every day. Why am I telling you this? You know. You know me. You know what I’m like…what I was like. Then. I’m different now. I want different things. That’s why I hired a private investigator to find your new address. That’s why I dressed myself all up and drove a good two hours away from the nearest Nordstrom’s in melt-your-makeup heat to find you.”

“Two hours from Nordstrom’s? You must be suffering horrible withdrawal,” he quipped.

She thrust her fists onto her hips.

“I distinctly remember you regarding the grand opening of Nordstrom’s as something akin to the Super Bowl, mister. We went together. You spent five thousand dollars on a suit in the first half hour alone.” Her tone was even, but sharp. “Don’t you dare condescend to me, Adam Brody.”

Adam clenched his lips together. Her claim did indeed match what his sister had told him about the past few years of his life, as well as the facts he had solid proof of—like a whole closetful of designer men’s wear languishing in the cabin’s guest bedroom.

He raised his hands in surrender.

“I’m sorry.”

Sydney sighed, then turned on a smile that just about outshone the sun.

“You’re forgiven.” She snaked her arms around his neck and pressed close, ignoring the sawdust and sweat clinging to his bare chest. Her breasts taunted him with soft pertness. Her scent enticed him. Her mouth, which she licked to an even glossier shine than her lipstick, begged for a kiss.

And who was he to make her beg?

He curled his hand around the small of her back and lifted her, pressing her lips to his. Immediately, her mouth opened, her hands reached up to grip the sides of his cheeks, her leg twisted around his thigh to bring the center of her sex in direct contact with his. Adam jolted with explosive need, dropping his other hand to her buttocks, crushing her closer until his body throbbed and his chest heaved. Wild sexual instincts overrode every ounce of sense he had. If not for Sydney pulling back, he might have stripped her naked right there.

“Whoa, sweetheart.” She made short work of straightening her hair and clothes, tugging her tank top down so that her erect nipples drew his eye. “I remember we used to love the thrill of getting it on in the great outdoors, but don’t you think we should find somewhere a little more private? I don’t guess your sister would appreciate us screwing in her driveway.”

Adam laughed. He’d never known a woman who spoke about sex so freely. Or at least if he did, he didn’t remember her. Just like he didn’t remember Sydney.

“We used to do it outside?”

Sydney rolled her eyes. “We were a hair away from being certified exhibitionists. Don’t tell me you’ve already forgotten about our tryst on the roof of your building?”

“Unfortunately…yes.”

“Excuse me?” She stepped back, clearly not believing him.

No time like the present to tell her the whole truth. “Much as I hate to tell you this…I don’t remember us. In fact, I don’t remember you at all.”

3

“YOU’RE JOKING, RIGHT?”

Sydney searched Adam’s face for any sign of facetiousness, but the sharp planes of his stubble-roughened cheekbones and the kiss-swollen curve of his mouth didn’t show anything but dead seriousness. Even his irises, a unique light brown that reminded her of the fawn-beige paint on her father’s first Rolls Royce, reflected nothing but honesty. They didn’t twinkle with his notoriously wicked sense of humor. They didn’t dart to the side when she persisted in staring.

“Tell me you’re joking,” she pleaded.

He glanced appreciatively down the length of her body. “I wish I was. You seem like someone who’d be hard to forget.”

“Hard to forget? I’m impossible to forget!”

Sydney stepped back, teetering on her high heels, her toes straining against the razor-thin straps. Furious, she cursed and tore off the sandals. Her first instinct was to throw them long and hard across the lawn, but her second instinct—to throw them at his head—stopped her from throwing them at all. Ordinarily, she wasn’t a violent woman. Instead of inflicting physical harm she decided to hold tight to the potential lethal weapons until she figured out how the hell Adam Brody, the man who’d almost made her break the dating mantra she’d lived by, could have forgotten their brief, but awesome affair.

“You’re yanking my chain, aren’t you?” She shook the shoes at him, hoping one more chance would convince him to change his story. How could he forget her? Her? “This is payback for my dumping your sorry ass.”

Adam chuckled, and though the sound trickled through her like neat bourbon with a twist of lime, something sounded foreign to her. Un-Adam-like.

Her insides froze. She noticed a scar nestled in his thick eyebrows. She swallowed hard, her mind working furiously.

“What happened to you?”

“Accident, or so I’m told.”

She dropped her sandals on the ground. Moisture deserted her mouth and she struggled to swallow, wishing she had that bourbon he’d reminded her of a second ago. With a tentative step, she closed the distance between them and brushed a lock of chestnut hair away from his forehead.

“Oh, God…”

“That’s nothing.”

He turned around and gave her a full, unhampered view of the still-red-and-puckered scar slashing down his back.

She gasped. “Does it hurt?”

“Sometimes. When it rains.”

Tentatively, she reached out, but stopped with her fingers only centimeters away.

“You can touch it,” he said. “It doesn’t bother me.”

Maybe not, but it sure as hell bothered her. Not because his once-perfect body had been marred by a deep, permanent mark, but because he’d been seriously hurt and she’d known absolutely nothing about it.

“When?” she asked.

“March twelfth, last year.”

Sydney sucked in a breath. March twelfth? She’d left him on the twelfth, then jetted off to Scotland on the thirteenth. She remembered because it had taken quite a bit of coaxing from her publicist and agent to get her on a plane on such an unlucky day. Superstition hadn’t been bred into Sydney, the daughter of pragmatic New England parents. But she’d somehow acquired the habit, most likely because she’d read mostly horror and paranormal fantasy books as a kid.

“That’s the day I left. I mean, that night—I left you that night. It must have happened after…”

He turned, stretching his shoulders and neck. Then, tilting his head toward the side of the house, he directed her to the tire swing and a snatch of shade. He dug his hands into his pockets, but she didn’t miss the way his arms tightened, as if he’d clenched his fists beyond her view.

“Renée thinks I went jogging, got hit from behind. I was wearing running clothes and shoes, though only one Nike Air was found at the scene.” He got quiet, pointing Sydney toward the swing. Yes, her legs felt weak as they walked, but having never had something so basic as a tire to dangle from as a kid—her parents preferred a custom-built playset with Naugahyde fabric seats—she didn’t feel compelled to indulge in that childhood pastime. Instead, she wrapped her hands around the chain and leaned for support.

“What time? I mean, I left pretty late.”

Adam’s eyes met hers and, for an instant, she recognized an expression of the man she used to know. His lids narrowed, slightly crinkling the taut skin at his temple. If she didn’t know that men like him kept their brains well oiled, she imagined she could hear the gears working overtime.

“Sometime before midnight, because that’s when the cops had a call about a body on the side of the road.”

A body? Jogging? Sydney searched her memory, trying to pinpoint what time she’d left Adam’s condominium, trying to figure out how the accident could have happened without her hearing about it, but she’d started shaking so hard, she could hardly breathe.

A body? Adam? God, he could have died. He could have been killed that night and buried and she never would have known. Something in her chest tore, and a hot wave of regret flooded her body. She glanced around, looking for a place to sit. The tire swing still looked gooey and black and forbidding, so she simply dropped down on the grass, knees first.

She’d barely settled onto her heels on the prickly lawn when Adam knelt beside her, wincing at the sudden downward movement.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“Me?” She swallowed the lump of disbelief blocking her airway. He’d nearly died on the side of the road. That was why she couldn’t find him when she’d returned from her trip. That was why he didn’t remember her. “What happened to you?”

He looked down, causing a thick lock of hair to fall haphazardly over his eyes. He combed his fingers through the chestnut strands and Sydney’s heart pounded faster. Such a simple, sexy act. Such a simple, sexy man. And he’d almost died.

“Not sure. The police report and doctors concurred that I was hit from behind. I didn’t wake up from the coma for over a month, and when I did, I’d lost all memory of that night, as well as everything for about five years before.”

She forced a grin, managing to quirk only half her mouth. “So I shouldn’t take it personally that you don’t know who I am.”

He reached up and touched her cheek. The gesture might have cracked Sydney’s heart another inch wider, but she realized he was only swiping away a bug.

“It took a few days before I even remembered Renée.”

“But you remember her now,” Sydney asked hopefully.

He shrugged again. “She’s my sister. She’s been around longer than five years.”

Or six months.

“She’s really protective of you,” Sydney said, not wanting to dwell on the fact that despite his injury, it still hurt that he didn’t remember her.

“She’s the only person who thought I’d survive.”

“I would have thought so! I would have…if I’d known.”

Adam’s mouth curved into a frown. “Why didn’t you know? Why didn’t Renée know about you? What were these rules you talked about?”

Sydney smirked. She supposed she should feel embarrassed or remorseful at this point—and she did. But not about the rules they’d—rather, she’d—laid out at the start of their affair. Her dictates had kept things neat, clean and had allowed her the illusion of organization in her dating chaos. The only thing that truly cued her normally inactive mechanism for regret was that her rules had kept her from finding out about Adam’s accident. She’d created the rules to protect her heart from the distraction and inherent selflessness of love. She hadn’t meant them to cut her off from providing help or solace to a friend.

“We had an agreement to keep things between us. Only between us,” she answered.

“Why? Are you married?”

Sydney snorted.

His gaze widened. “Was I married?”

She rolled her eyes and smiled, amazed at his ability to kid about something so damned serious. While Sydney embraced a wide-open attitude toward casual sex, she drew the line at boinking another woman’s husband. Best he knew that right up front. “The Adam Brody I knew was one-hundred-percent bachelor.”

He shook his head. “Renée checked with my friends, all my employees in my office. No one mentioned you. Not even a hint that I had a lover.”

Sydney stood up and swiped dry blades of brown grass off her knees. “When we agreed to keep things private, we did. It wasn’t so hard since we lived in the same condo complex.”

“You didn’t see my sister sell the place? Move my stuff?”

“I left the next morning for Scotland and New England. I was gone two months. When I got back, your condo had been sold, your business was gone…oh, God, your business! That’s why we’d gotten together that night! To celebrate some big deal. Jeez, what happened to the blueprints? The building?”

She watched his Adam’s apple bob. At first, his lips tightened, then relaxed into a devil-may-care smile that didn’t reach his eyes. Sydney tamped down a curse, her mind flying back to the night she’d left him—the night he couldn’t remember. He’d been nearly giddy. Psyched. Like the quarterback of a football team who’d just thrown the winning pass and was simply waiting for his receiver to snatch the pigskin out of the air. No blockers. An open end zone. If Adam had been the dancing type, they might have waltzed all over his condominium to the sweet music of success.

Instead, they’d made love on the living-room carpet.

Hot moisture prickled between her legs as the memory rushed back. The minute the door had closed behind the courier who’d picked up the plans that would make Adam a multimillionaire, he’d ripped off her clothes and licked her skin from top to bottom. She’d laughed and screamed in shocked delight, allowing him his fun and her the pleasure, giving him complete control over the sex that night—never guessing their tryst would be the last.

He’d kissed every inch of her body, not slowly and teasingly like he normally did, but with hot, desperate need. The memory of his mouth on her made her nipples pucker, her skin flush. Her thighs clenched, recalling the way he’d thrust inside her and made her come.

“Maybe we should go inside,” Adam suggested, snapping Sydney’s eyes to his. “You suddenly look like you could use some of Renée’s lemonade.”

Sydney glanced down, wondering exactly how she looked. Thirsty? Horny? Hot? Maybe a finely mixed combination of all three. “Will she spike it with vodka?”

“If you ask nicely.”

Most likely she’d spike the drink with Drano. But Sydney decided to keep her mouth shut and take whatever his sister offered. She had so much to process. And she couldn’t think clearly while her libido overrode her brain.

With an almost inaudible grunt, Adam stood, helping Sydney with a hand on her elbow. She followed quietly, her shoes still dangling from her fingers, her mind swimming with questions and recriminations and sexual memories she hadn’t realized she missed until she’d confronted the man who’d created them. He’d been unconscious for a month? Why did she feel she should have been there beside him, holding his hand? Whispering words of encouragement instead of traipsing all over the highlands with the private tour guide she’d seduced on her last night on the moors?

Why was a damned good question. Sex buddies didn’t do the bedside thing. Sex buddies sent flowers, maybe a naughty card. And she and Adam had only been sex buddies—adult lovers with no other commitment to each beyond sexual exploration and pleasure. Yeah, he’d suggested they take their relationship to a deeper level, but she’d bolted, so certain that allowing herself to lose her heart would somehow destroy the life she’d worked so hard to build.

Then she’d finally realized, with the recent nudge from Cassie, that her life, ideal in some ways, sorely lacked in others. She’d initiated her search for Adam to try this relationship again. To give a good thing a real chance. Now she was a stranger to him. In fact, when she really thought about it, she’d been little more than a stranger for the six months they’d been lovers. And she only had herself to blame.

“Careful of that bottom step,” Adam warned. “I need to refinish the wood.”

Mindlessly, Sydney avoided the step he indicated, then promptly yelped as a sliver protruding from the next step slid into the ball of her foot. “Ow! Ow!”

“Aw, hell.” Adam scooped her into his arms before she could protest and kicked on the screen door with his boot. “Renée, open up!”

His sister came running, her face a pale mask. “What? Adam, put her down! You shouldn’t be carrying anyone so heavy!”

Amid the pain, Sydney grimaced at the insinuation. “I’m not exactly Shamu the whale, sister.”

“Adam shouldn’t be lifting anything heavier than live bait,” Renée chastised, then turned her glare on Sydney. “You don’t look like bait.”

“Should have seen me when I was sixteen,” Sydney shot back, trying to rationalize that though the pain throbbing in her foot made it feel as though she had a two-by-four shoved in the tender arch of her foot, it was likely only a good-size sliver. Besides, there was no way Adam could carry both her, slim though she was, and a plank of wood.

“Back off, Renée. Stop being a bitch. Sydney is hurt. Go get the tweezers and the first-aid kit.”

He deposited Sydney on a comfortable—although worn—striped couch and knelt down beside her to take a better look at her injury.

Sydney swallowed a scream when Adam brushed his finger over the protruding splinter, sending a renewed wave of pain up her leg. She wasn’t good with pain. She was a certifiable wimp, with a pathetically low threshold for discomfort.

Sydney protested when Adam brushed his fingernail over the splinter again. “Ow! Ow! Ow! Stop doing that! It hurts!”

“I’ll bet it does. But I know pain. I think you’ll survive once I take the splinter out and get some ointment on. Think you can suck it up long enough for that?”

Sydney couldn’t contain a wisecrack, despite the ache in her foot. “If you remembered me, you wouldn’t ask,” she teased.

He met her stare, breaking into one of his heart-stopping smiles when she winked. Yes, she wanted him to catch the double entendre she’d made with the word “suck.” Too bad Renée returned before he could respond.

“Here.” Renée handed her brother the tweezers, then popped open the first-aid kit and slid it onto the couch beside Sydney. She remained quiet, but Sydney sensed a slump in her shoulders, as if Adam’s chastisement had hit home.

“Can I get you a lemonade?” Renée asked, her tone surprisingly close to sincere.

Sydney smiled. Apparently, she wasn’t the only woman in the room who had some sucking up to do. “That would be awesome, thanks.”

Renée nodded and hurried out of the room.

“Was that a truce?” Sydney asked as Adam twisted her foot gently to the side so he could see what he was doing.

“Seems like. Renée doesn’t like being called a bitch, particularly when she’s acting like one.”

“Bitch isn’t always a put-down, you know. There’s a whole movement that considers the word an acronym for Babe In Total Control of Herself.”

Adam grinned as he tried to wrangle the tiny silver tweezers with his big male fingers. This was why men didn’t pluck their eyebrows.

“I don’t suppose you’ve been elected the spokes-model for that movement, have you?” Adam asked, his tone wry.

Sydney’s spine straightened at the surge in her blood pressure. “Are you calling me a bitch?”

“See—no one likes it.”

Just at that moment, he tugged the splinter free, giving Sydney two justifiable reasons to yelp.

He held up the tweezers, still holding tight to a half-inch sliver of wood. “Yeowch. I really need to refinish all those steps.”

Sydney winced. The two-by-four had been removed, but her foot still stung like hell. She reached over and grabbed the ointment out of the first-aid kit.

“Here, let me.”

Sydney considered protesting, then realized his hands felt good. Had Adam ever given her a foot massage? She couldn’t remember, so she figured he must not have. There was nothing more noteworthy in a man’s pampering repertoire than the ability to give a good foot massage.

He cleaned the wound with a cotton ball doused with hydrogen peroxide, then dried her skin with a square of clean gauze. His movements were gentle, but sure. His hands strong and hot. His fingers nimble. Long. As his touch trickled over her increasingly sensitive skin, she found herself staring in fascination at his clipped nails, bruised knuckles and sunbaked skin.

Images of him sliding his hands up her bare thighs flashed in her mind. He no longer had the smooth hands of an artist, with only small calluses from pencils and pens. His hands were stronger now, rougher. And so much more interesting.

“You seem to remember your first aid,” she said, wondering if she should break the current of intimacy crackling between them. Or was the electricity all in her mind? All in her memory? All in her irrepressible libido?

Adam dabbed antibiotic ointment and then covered the wound with an adhesive bandage. He rubbed the ends in place, then continued to caress her with hard, intense strokes that lulled her muscles to instant relaxation.

She moaned.

“You have great feet.”

He continued to soothe the balls of her foot with circular motions that destroyed her ability to sit up straight. She sank back into the couch cushions and allowed his touch to ignite and kindle all the sexual wants she’d planned to have sated today, before she found out he didn’t remember her. Before she discovered that he’d nearly died.

“You have great hands,” she murmured.

“How great?”

She forced her eyes open enough to see the irreverent, wicked gleam in those almond eyes of his—the same gleam she’d seen a hundred times before. Like the night they’d made love on the terrace of her condo while a party went on in the courtyard below. Or the time he slipped a toe beneath her dress in a booth at a restaurant, and, finding her pantyless, had brought her to climax just as the waiter delivered another round of drinks. They’d been risk-taking lovers, hedonistic and selfish and adventurous.

Was any of that irreverence left?

He moved one hand to her arch, the other her ankle. He smoothed and rubbed until hot shards of fire sizzled upward, making the center seam of her jeans too tight against throbbing, intimate flesh.

“How great are my hands, Sydney?”

His calluses bit at her soft, pedicured flesh and she snagged her bottom lip with her teeth to staunch her moan. Even when he smoothed his fingers over her calves, encased in jeans, she experienced a potent reaction to his intense massage.

“Your hands are awesome. Still too low, in my opinion, but awesome.”

He shifted, kneeling flush against the couch so he could knead her thighs. He wedged his hips between her knees, bringing her eye-level with a bare chest still glistening from the heat. She took a deep breath and lost herself in the spicy male musk sizzling off his skin.

“How’s this?”

Sydney watched his gaze drop, watched the fascination intensify in his eyes, watched his mouth set in total concentration as he massaged her legs, his thumbs dipping lower and lower as his fingers worked their way higher and higher along her thighs—closer and closer to home. Every ounce of his attention was focused on his task, lulling her to complete relaxation.

He had one thing on his mind. And if that one thing was what Sydney suspected, she and Adam were about to have a very interesting afternoon.

4

A CUPBOARD SLAMMED in the kitchen, striking Adam with instant awareness of where he was—and of what he’d been about to do. He yanked his hands from Sydney’s legs and rocked back on his heels, his body thrumming, every inch of his muscle and flesh intrigued and aroused.

“You don’t have to stop,” she told him, her voice throaty, deep. When her lashes fluttered open, only a thin, green circle remained around pupils black with need.

“My sister’s in the other room.”

“Then let’s go somewhere private.”

She didn’t show a single sign of embarrassment that he’d almost committed a full sensual assault on her with his sister only a few steps away. Sydney’s expression reflected only desire—the hot, unadulterated need to feel his hands on her body, no matter who might walk in on them.

“I don’t know you,” Adam said, certain the fact didn’t bother him in the least, but he wasn’t brain-damaged enough to think it might not make a difference to her. No matter how much of a bad girl she pretended to be—or truly was—he intended to play on the up-and-up.

She leaned forward, grabbed his hands and pressed them to her rib cage. Her breathing wasn’t quite as steady as she let on, and the moisture seeping through her paper-thin blouse testified to a heat more intense than the ninety-degree temperatures outside. She was burning up from the inside out, and she wanted him to know.

“You do know me, Adam. Better than any man ever has. You just don’t remember right now.”

A tinge of desperation clung to her tone, slapping Adam with a heavy hand of reality. He could only give her part of what she wanted—the part that had to do with his hands on her flesh. Yeah, he could give her sexual pleasure. He could give her a damned good time. But she’d already admitted that she’d come looking for him because she wanted what they’d once almost had—a real relationship. And that was outside his power.

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