August’s menu

BARONESSA GELATERIA

in Boston’s North End

In addition to our regular flavors of gelato, this month we are featuring:

 Vanilla pudding with melted caramel

All it took was one deep look into Phoebe’s warm amber eyes and a brief taste of her vanilla-flavored lips to rock Daniel Barone’s world. Women usually wanted to catch him, snag him, tame him. Not Phoebe. And suddenly Daniel knew he was in trouble. Big trouble…

 Handmade pastries

With his poster-perfect face and sculpted body, Daniel Barone was handmade by the gods. From the first moment she saw him, Phoebe couldn’t help but stare. He made her blush, made her nervous—made her feel like a woman….

 Boston cream pie with imported Italian chocolate

Phoebe and Daniel were as opposite as two people could be. But they shared a powerful, passionate attraction that wouldn’t be denied, no matter how they tried. Indulging was never an option; they had to have each other—if only for one short, steaming-hot Boston summer. But what a summer!

Buon appetito!

Dear Reader,

When it comes to passion, Silhouette Desire has exactly what you need. This month’s offerings include Cindy Gerard’s The Librarian’s Passionate Knight, the next installment of DYNASTIES: THE BARONES. A naive librarian gets swept off her feet by a dashing Barone sibling—who could ask for anything more? But more we do have, with another story about attractive and wealthy men, from Anne Marie Winston. Billionaire Bachelors: Gray is a deeply compelling story about a man who gets a second chance at life—and maybe the love of a lifetime.

Sheri WhiteFeather is back this month with the final story in our LONE STAR COUNTRY CLUB trilogy. The Heart of a Stranger will leave you breathless when a man with a sordid past gets a chance for ultimate redemption. Launching a new series this month is Kathie DeNosky with Lonetree Ranchers: Brant. When a handsome rancher helps a damsel in distress, all his defenses come crashing down and the fun begins.

Silhouette Desire is pleased to welcome two brand-new authors. Nalini Singh’s Desert Warrior is an intense, emotional read with an alpha hero to die for. And Anna DePalo’s Having the Tycoon’s Baby, part of our ongoing series THE BABY BANK, is a sexy romp about one woman’s need for a child and the sexy man who grants her wish—but at a surprising price.

There’s plenty of passion rising up here in Silhouette Desire this month. So dive right in and enjoy.

Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor

Silhouette Desire

The Librarian’s Passionate Knight
Cindy Gerard

MILLS & BOON

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This book is dedicated to romantics everywhere.

Enjoy and believe!

And to potter extraordinaire, Val Neuman, for her patience, her expertise and her brilliant work. From the clay comes the vessel; from the vessel pour my admiration and thanks.

CINDY GERARD

Two RITA® Award nominations and a National Reader’s Choice Award are among the many highlights of this #1 bestselling writer’s career. As one reviewer put it, “Cindy Gerard provides everything romance readers want in a love story—passion, gut-wrenching emotion, intriguing characters and a captivating plot. This storyteller extraordinaire delivers all of this and more!”

Cindy and her husband, Tom, live in the Midwest on a minifarm with quarter horses, cats and two very spoiled dogs. When she’s not writing, she enjoys reading, traveling and spending time at their cabin in northern Minnesota unwinding with family and friends. Cindy loves to hear from her readers and invites you to visit her Web site at www.cindygerard.com.

Meet the Barones of Boston—

an elite clan caught in a web of danger,

deceit…and desire!

Who’s Who in

THE LIBRARIAN’S PASSIONATE KNIGHT

Daniel Barone–All around the world, he dared to do what most mortals feared, and his exploits were the stuff of legends. But what Daniel did best was leave. No matter the place, no matter the thrill, he always left. Why, then, did one irresistible librarian make him want to stay?

Phoebe Richards—Having lived in Boston all her life with her cat, friends and books, she’s a maiden—not old maid—librarian. But she’s happy, comfortable. Why, then, did one footloose jet-setter—albeit a gorgeous, sexy footloose jet-setter—make her want so much more?

Karen Rawlins—She has just discovered that she’s a long-lost cousin to the Barones. But where will this loner fit in to the overwhelming first family of Boston?

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

One

Daniel Barone wasn’t sure why the woman had captured his attention. In the overall scheme of things, she was little more than a small speck of beige, lost in the vibrant colors of Faneuil Hall Marketplace in the center of downtown Boston.

On this steamy August night, the open-air market was alive with colors and scents and sounds. She, quite literally, was not. Still, she’d drawn his undivided attention as he stood directly behind her at a pushcart outside the buildings of Quincy Market.

Like a dozen or so others, they were both waiting in line for ice cream. Unlike the others, who edged forward as placidly as milling cattle, she bounced with impatience. Like a child—which she absolutely wasn’t—she rose to the balls of her feet and…bounced. There wasn’t another word for it. She just sort of danced in place, as if she found irrepressible delight in the simple anticipation of getting her hands on an ice cream cone.

For some reason it made Daniel smile. Her guileless exuberance charmed him, he supposed. And it made him take time for a longer look.

She was average height, maybe a little on the short side. Her hair wasn’t quite blond, wasn’t quite brown, and there was nothing remotely sexy about the short, pixieish cut. Her drab tan shorts and top showed off a modest length of arm and leg and more than adequately covered what could possibly be a nice, tidy little body. Who could tell? Other than the wicked red polish splashed on her toenails, there truly wasn’t a bright spot on the woman—until she turned around with her much-awaited prize.

Behind owlish, black-rimmed glasses, a pair of honey-brown eyes danced with anticipation, intelligence and innate good humor. And when she took that first long, indulgent lick, a smile of pure, decadent delight lit her ordinary face and transitioned un-remarkable to breathtaking in a heartbeat. The wattage of that smile damn near blinded him.

“It was worth the wait,” she murmured on a blissful sigh before she shouldered out of line and went on about her business.

“And then some,” Daniel agreed and, with a side-long grin, watched the pleasant sway of her hips as she walked away.

Wondering why a woman possessed of so much vibrant and natural beauty would choose to hide it behind professorial glasses, an unimaginative haircut and brown-paper-bag-plain clothes, he tracked her progress as she moved through the crowd. He was still watching when the kid wielding the ice cream scoop nudged him back to the business at hand.

“Hey, bud. You want ice cream or what?”

Daniel slowly returned his attention to the counter. “Yeah. Sorry.” He dug into his hip pocket for his wallet and, still grinning, hitched his chin in the general direction she’d taken. “I’ll have what she had. Double dip.”

It wasn’t Baronessa gelato, he conceded after the first bite, but it was ice cream and he’d been craving it for almost a month now. He was pretty sure, though, that he wasn’t enjoying his half as much as a certain champagne-blonde was enjoying hers.

He glanced around, searched for her briefly. Not that he expected to spot her in this crush of people, not that he knew what he’d do if he did. Didn’t matter anyway. She was long gone, swallowed up by the milling crowd.

Telling himself that it was just as well, he headed in the general direction of his car. He needed sleep anyway, not a distraction. The thought of a real bed with clean sheets and a soft mattress made him groan. So did the memory of his apartment with its light-darkening shades, the cool hum of an air conditioner set on seventy degrees and about twelve solid hours of shut-eye.

Simple pleasures. Foreign pleasures, of late. A month deep in the red sands of the Kalahari could whet a man’s appetite for many simple pleasures.

Like sweet, rich ice cream.

Like a bed that you didn’t have to check for spiders and snakes and was softer than a patch of sun-parched earth.

Like the unaffected smile of a pretty, satisfied woman.

He grinned again—this time in self-reproach—when he couldn’t stop an image from forming.

Her head resting on his pillow…

Her body soft and warm and pliant beneath his…

Her incredible smile not only satisfied, but stunned, sated and spent…

Phoebe Richards wandered the marketplace among the throng of tourists and Bostonians who were out enjoying the hot August evening. She ate her plain vanilla ice cream—her reward for six days of ice cream abstinence and one lost pound—and refused to think about the calories. She window-shopped at the trendy boutiques that she couldn’t afford, applauded the lively antics of the street performers whose free acts she could afford. And she spared a thought—okay, maybe two—for the handsome stranger with the incredible blue eyes and interested smile.

She didn’t get many of either in her life—handsome strangers or interested smiles—and that was fine. It was fun, though, to entertain the fantasy that something might have happened between them if she’d invited it. But that would require an adventurous spirit that she could never in a million years claim. Besides, that kind of electrifying occurrence only happened in the romance novels she devoured to the tune of two to three a week. Her life to date was as far from romance-novel material as a life could get. In fact, lately, it had leaned a little closer to horror.

Determined not to think about the ugly situation with her ex-boyfriend, she walked on, opting, instead, to dwell on a lesser evil: the fact that she was too much of a coward to even encourage the spark of interest that had danced in those amazing blue eyes.

“Like anything would have actually happened, anyway,” she muttered as a statuesque blonde in designer clothes and flawless makeup accidentally bumped her shoulder.

“Sorry,” Phoebe murmured, even though she’d been the bumpee, not the bumper. Her reaction was automatic and had little to do with being polite. It was knee-jerk conciliation and it was an old habit she was supposed to be trying to break, just as she was supposed to be trying to learn to hold her ground on any number of issues.

As if on cue, a stockbroker type in pricey Italian shoes and a dark scowl barreled toward her.

“Excuse me,” she murmured and stepped aside before she could stop herself.

“Why do you always do that?” her friend Carol had asked her the last time they’d gone to lunch together and she’d apologized to the waiter because her soup was stone cold and the lettuce in her salad was as rusty as a junk car. “You do not owe the general population an apology for its screwups. You have rights, too.”

Yes. She had rights. She had the right to remain timid. She couldn’t help it. She was innately apologetic. Or pathetic. Or something equally as hopeless. It was simply easier to bend than to buck. Easier to yield than to stand. She’d learned that life lesson early on.

“Look,” she’d told Carol once in an uncharacteristic revelation about her childhood. “When you’re an ugly duckling twelve-year-old, twenty pounds overweight and constantly belittled by an alcoholic mother to whom you are an eternal disappointment, you learn to bend with the best of them.

“And I also learned to fade into the background until I got so good at it that no one hardly ever noticed me. Life was just easier that way.”

Life was still easier that way, she thought defensively. And old habits were hard to break. At the ripe old age of thirty-three she wasn’t really hopeful of changing them at this late date.

“Besides,” she’d further explained to Carol, sorry she’d opened her mouth when her friend’s expression had changed from disgusted to sympathetic. “Confrontation gives me heartburn. And sweaty palms. And a sinking sensation in the pit of my stomach that rarely makes it worth the effort.”

Suddenly aware of a trickle of perspiration trailing down her temple, she dabbed it with a tissue. The lingering heat from the one-hundred-degree day rose from the sidewalk in arid waves and burned right through the bottom of her sandals.

“August,” she said aloud as she bit into the last of her ice cream. “Gotta love it.”

It was close to eleven o’clock and the city was still as steamy as a jungle. Since she had to get up and cover another shift at the library tomorrow, she decided it was past time to get home and go to bed. Alone. As usual.

“Just another exciting Friday night on the town for Phoebe Richards,” she murmured on a wistful sigh and made room for a pair of lovers to pass her on the sidewalk.

They were so engrossed in each other, so cute, and so in love, it made her smile. It also made her ache. The longing to fill that empty place in her chest seemed to have grown larger and more hollow as the years passed…as the world turned…as all around her, love bloomed and flourished.

She pushed out a snort that passed for a self-effacing laugh. “You are a pathetic lump,” she assured herself in disgust. “And you’re no poet, either.”

After checking the traffic, she jaywalked across the street to walk the three blocks to her car, shoring herself up along the way. One bad relationship did not make her a failure at love. Two might, though, she conceded, gnawing thoughtfully on her lower lip. Three or four took it past failure to disaster.

All right. Her love life was a disaster, or as Carol frequently said with a sad shake of her head, “Girl, you sure know how to pick ’em.”

Yeah, she thought with a resigned sigh as Jason Collins came to mind, she sure did. On the upside—and despite the lack of love and romance in her life, she was always determined to find an upside—she did know how to find parking spots.

“Maybe you ought to play on that talent if you ever get another date,” she told herself with a sarcastic little smile as the scene played out before her.

“Well, you’re not exactly calendar material, are you, Ms. Richards?” the man of her dreams stated bluntly as he squinted at the clipboard containing his detailed list of marriage requirements. “So what, exactly, would you consider your most stellar attribute? And don’t say intelligence, because frankly, I find that’s a real turnoff.”

“Well, I have an uncanny knack for finding fantastic parking spots,” she replied, dimpling hopefully.

His eyes widened. And then he smiled. Sunlight glinted off his perfect white teeth. Tossing his clipboard over his shoulder, he opened his arms as violins played in the background. “Darling, that’s perfect. Let’s get married.”

“That proves it. You’re definitely warped,” she muttered with a shake of her head. “But darn, girl, you do know how to find a parking spot.”

The one she’d found tonight was only three blocks from the marketplace. Closer to a streetlight would have been nice though, she thought on a sudden shift of mood. A sense of unease sent a quick and clammy shiver eddying along her nape and dampened her good humor.

“Okay, Pheebs,” she admonished herself and started rummaging around in her purse for her car keys. “Time to switch genres. You’ve been reading too much romantic suspense lately.”

She was not afraid to be out at night on her own. Well, not too afraid, she conceded, pulling out her keys. She’d lived in Boston all her life and was cautious, that was all. Generally though, she didn’t jump at shadows or look for bogeymen under her bed unless Carol and the gang roped her into going to a spooky movie. At least she hadn’t jumped at shadows until she’d broken up with Jason two months ago and he’d started calling her in the middle of the night and hassling her at work.

Just thinking of him sent another shiver slithering down her spine. Fighting what she knew was a false but growing sense of urgency, she told herself to let it go. Jason had been a mistake. She’d corrected it—or thought she had until she heard his voice.

“Out trying to scare up a little action, are ya, Mouse?”

She jumped and spun around so fast that she fumbled with her keys and dropped them.

“Jason.” His name rushed out on a high, thready breath as her coward’s heart threatened to beat its way out of her chest through her throat.

“‘Jason,’” he mimicked with a nasty smirk before he bent to snag her keys from the curb where they’d landed with a loud clatter. “That’s it? ‘Jason.’ You could at least pretend you’re glad to see me. After all, I spent half the night trying to catch up with you.”

Phoebe forced herself to look into his bloodshot brown eyes and hated it when she couldn’t hold his gaze. Hated it more when she realized she was shaking.

He needed a haircut; his shirt was dirty. He was also drunk—mean drunk. The alcohol stench of his breath fanned her face as he moved in on her, turning her stomach, triggering a hundred childhood moments and one very recent one of the first and only time he’d hit her. Her ears had rung for a day afterward. The bruise on her cheek had taken much longer to fade. The memory never would, even though she’d written him out of her life at that exact moment.

He glared at her through an ugly smile.

How had she ever thought his smile was beautiful?

More important, how was she going to get out of this?

“Give me my keys, Jason,” she said, shooting for reasonable and hoping he’d comply. Unfortunately, her demand sounded more like a plea.

He gave a pitying shake of his head and held them out of her reach. “You know, your problem always was that you didn’t know how to show a man proper respect. You should be thanking me, not giving me orders.”

She closed her eyes, swallowed. “Thank you…for picking up my keys,” she said meekly as he crowded her backward until she bumped into the driver’s-side door of her car. “Could…could I have them, please?”

Triumph turned his mouth into a sneer. “Better. Not good enough, though. Just like I was never good enough for you, was I? Was I?”

She willed herself not to panic as he pressed his face close to hers.

“How’s that happen? I wonder,” he demanded with the angry slur of a big man about to teach a small woman a lesson. “How’s it happen that a mousy, old-maid librarian thinks she’s better than me? Where do you get off dumping me? Huh?”

He wiped spittle from the side of his mouth with the back of his hand. “You think you’re some prize?” He snorted out an ugly laugh. “News flash! You’re not. What you are is leftovers. Leftovers!” He dug his fingers painfully into her upper arm, making her wince. “I was good to you. I was great to you! What’s your problem, anyway?”

Like an animal could sense a coming earthquake even before sensitive scientific equipment could pick it up, Phoebe anticipated the coming blow. With a hard jerk, she pulled free and whirled away before it landed.

His fist slammed into her car door with a loud crack. His vicious curse sliced through the night as she half walked, half ran, praying that he’d curl up to nurse his pain and forget about her.

The sound of heavy footsteps pounding the sidewalk behind her told her that wasn’t going to happen.

Her heart sank. Nausea rolled through her stomach as she stepped up her pace and, not for the first time in her life, wished she had the backbone and the skill to strike back.

The crowd had thinned to a handful of people when Daniel spotted his ice cream lady about a half a block ahead. Pleasure, unexpected and uncontested, had him forgetting about sleep and unnecessary distractions and heading in her direction.

He was within a few yards of her when he realized she wasn’t alone—whether by choice or by accident, he couldn’t tell. A big man, over six feet and roughly two hundred ten, two hundred twenty pounds, was dogging her like a jet trail.

Daniel sized him up with a practiced eye. He didn’t like what he saw. Bully came immediately to mind. A real bruiser with a nasty attitude. He could only hear snippets of their conversation as they stopped by an older-model gray compact car. He heard enough to grasp that the guy was obnoxious and ugly, though, and about as welcome as a wad of gum on the bottom of her shoe. He picked up on something else, too. She was afraid of him.

Daniel’s stomach bunched into tight knots when the creep grabbed her arm and squeezed hard enough to make her wince. That was as far as he was willing to let this go.

Two

Daniel picked up his pace, then momentarily lost track of her when he got tangled up in a group of rowdy, laughing teenage girls. When he finally broke free of them and spotted her again, she was heading away at a fast walk. The guy was hot on her heels.

Daniel caught up with her at a fast jog.

“Hey, babe.” Moving in close beside her, he physically cut off the other man with his body. “Slow down, would you? I lost you for a while there,” he added, slinging an arm over her shoulders with the easy familiarity of a man claiming his woman.

She stopped so fast he had to steady her to keep her from toppling over. When she looked up at him, the eyes behind her glasses were huge and round and scared. It took a moment but eventually she recognized him from the concession line.

He smiled and reassured her with his eyes. Play along. I’ll get you out of this.

“How was your ice cream?” he asked and nudged her back into a walk.

“F-fine,” she finally managed to say, cueing in to his intentions and falling into a faltering step beside him.

“Who the hell are you?” an angry voice demanded from behind them.

“Just keep walking,” he said, lowering his mouth to her ear. For her sake, he didn’t want to make a scene, and he figured the best shot at avoiding one was to walk away.

A beefy hand clamped on his shoulder and stopped him.

So much for what he’d thought.

“I said who the hell are you?”

Daniel turned, a deceptively neutral smile in place. “I’m the guy who’s taking the lady home. Now, if you’ll excuse us—”

“You threw me over for him?” The stench of alcohol explained the slurred words. “For this pretty boy? I knew it! I knew you were screwin’ around on me!”

“Jason.” Her voice was thin and tight. Embarrassment flooded her chalk-white cheeks with color. “We are over. We’ve been over for two months now. What can I say to make you understand that?”

“Yeah, Jason,” Daniel echoed with false congeniality. “What can she say to make you understand?”

“Stay out of this,” Jason snarled and started in on her again. “We are not over, Mouse. Not till I say so.”

Red ringed the eyes that narrowed into angry slits. Hands the size of small anvils clenched into tight fists at his sides. He wanted to hit something. With a sickening twist in his gut, Daniel realized what—or in this case who—it was.

“Don’t even think about it.” He shoved her behind him and stepped into the line of fire. “And then do yourself a favor. Walk away. Just walk the hell away.”

Jason, who easily outweighed him by twenty or thirty pounds, snorted. “You think you wanna piece of me, pretty boy?”

“Oh, I’d love a piece of you, Clyde.” Daniel smiled pleasantly. “But you’re just not worth my time. Now back off and leave the lady alone or this is gonna come down to you and me and the nice policeman walking toward us. You want to go down for attempted assault with a little drunk and disorderly tacked on for good measure? Make a move and you’ve got it.”

“Problem here, folks?”

“I’m not sure.” Daniel glared at Jason as the uniformed officer approached them. “Is there a problem?”

Jason glowered but finally shook his head.

“Is there a problem?” Daniel repeated, turning his attention to a pair of doe-brown eyes, relaying with his tone that all she had to do was say the word and this bozo was history.

She hesitated then shook her head. “No.”

Daniel watched her face for the length of a deep breath, not knowing what to make of that. What he did know was that it wasn’t his call. It was hers, and since he’d come in at the middle of this particular movie, he wasn’t going to make any snap judgments.

“Guess there’s no problem.” He flashed the officer a tight smile. “Thanks anyway.”

Daniel shot Jason a warning glare. Then he waited to make sure the other man got the hint to move on. When he stalked off, Daniel wrapped his arm around her shoulders again. “Come on. Let’s get out of here.”

She tried for a smile—of relief or gratitude, he couldn’t tell which. Regardless, it didn’t matter, because she didn’t pull it off anyway. She was shaking so hard that he expected her to vibrate right out from under his arm. She surprised him, though, because when he started walking she let out a pent-up breath that seemed to drain her of her tension and fell into step beside him.

He looked down at the top of her head, comfortable with the easy way she fit against him, not so comfortable with the intensity of the protectiveness he felt for her.

True, it wasn’t the first time he’d been ready to take a fall for a woman. As a rule, though, he generally liked to know a whole helluva lot more about her before he got his lights punched out. For starters, he thought with a cheeky grin, he at least tried to make it a point to know her name.

Phoebe figured she was in shock. She couldn’t think of another reason why she was letting a total stranger wrap his arm around her and walk her farther and farther away from her car. She supposed there was the very real likelihood that Jason had scared her witless. And then, there was the fact that the man steering her down the sidewalk was quite possibly the most beautiful man she’d ever seen.

“You okay?” she heard him ask. The way he said it made her realize it wasn’t the first time he’d asked. His voice, as smooth and low as deep water, was filled with concern.

When she couldn’t find it in her to reply, he stopped and turned to her. Cupping her shoulders in his hands, he searched her face. As she, in turn, searched his, she forgave herself for lapsing into speechlessness.

Sweet Lord, he was gorgeous. He wasn’t particularly tall—just under six feet—but at five-four she still had to lift her chin to look up at him. He wasn’t exceptionally muscular either, not like a bodybuilder. Instead, he was sleekly muscled, like a runner or a swimmer, a study in athletic fitness that combined conditioning and finesse to a honed perfection that overshadowed brawn any day. His black T-shirt and black shorts showed off tan arms and legs and lean, sinewy strength.

She knew what it felt like to be tucked into the warmth and power emanating from his body. She’d felt sheltered and protected while visions of a different kind of embrace—intimate, needy—further scattered her already fractured thoughts.

He wasn’t a workingman either, she decided, forcefully dragging her mind back to the moment. Nothing specifically told her that. It was more of a generalization of his overall presence that quietly spoke of money. That he either came from it or was made from it was as obvious as the blue of his eyes. From the artful style of his sun-streaked brown hair that he wore longer than respectable yet looked exactly right on him, to the cut of his formfitting black T-shirt, he wore wealth. It wasn’t overt. It was, instead, effortless. He was as comfortable with it as he was with his utter maleness, at ease with everything that he was.

The blue eyes that searched her face were thick-lashed and kind of dreamy, strategically set for maximum impact in that stunning, poster-perfect face. His cheeks were deeply tan and slightly stubbled, his jaw molded with love by a benevolent master.

His classic male beauty, however, had enough rough edges thrown in to save him from being pretty. A tiny crescent-shaped scar marred the corner of his full upper lip, and a nick split the arch of his dark eyebrow. Still, his face was so symmetrically sculpted it was almost painful to look at it, yet impossible to look away.

He was everything—everything—that a hero was supposed to be. Brave, gorgeous, wealthy.

Her heart sank on a reality check. A worthy heroine she was not.

The realization of who she was, what she was and what she wasn’t, melted over her like spent wax, starting at the top of her head and working its way to her fingertips.

“Are you still with me in there?” he asked with a lazy, amused grin that infiltrated her thoughts like a spelunker breaching a turn in an underground cavern.

“I…um…”

He chuckled, held his hand in front of her face and asked, deadpan, “How many fingers?”

She blinked, focused, and remarkably, the magic of speech returned. “Four and a thumb. At least that was standard issue last I knew.”

On second thought, magic may have been too strong a word when paired up with the words she’d just uttered. Obviously, her reply had spilled out before she thought, because if she’d thought, she wouldn’t be firing wisecracks. Shock, prompted by reality, made her forget to measure her words, police her reactions.

She reined herself in and clarified. “He didn’t hit me.”

He smiled again, gently this time, sort of a slow, concerned unfurling that dug deep grooves in his lean cheeks and crinkled the corners of his eyes. “But he wanted to. And that in itself is a violation.”

He had the most sensual mouth. His lips were generous and seemed to be perpetually tipped up in some semblance of a grin.

Too aware that she was staring again, she lifted her gaze to quite possibly the most expressive eyes she’d ever seen. In that moment, she read his pity through them and was ashamed.

“Oh. Oh, no. It’s…it’s not what you’re thinking. I’m not one of those poor women caught up in an abuse cycle.” Though he was a total stranger, she didn’t want him thinking that about her. “I ended our relationship months ago. He’s just not— Well, he’s not getting the picture.”

“And he’s not likely to anytime soon unless he has a reason to consider the consequences.”

Consequences. So far, she, not Jason, had been the one suffering the consequences of his unwarranted obsession.

It all caught up with her then. The fear of the past few moments. The utter sense of vulnerability and violation. The embarrassment of a public scene. And her dependence on this stranger to come to her rescue.

Jason had blindsided her. She hated him for that. She hated violence more. She’d felt as helpless against it tonight as she had as a child. And like a child, she’d frozen in the face of it.

She knew what that made her. Leslie Griffin, her sixty-years-young friend and co-worker, could argue all she wanted that Phoebe was heroic for overcoming her abusive childhood, for putting herself through school, for enduring and establishing herself as a solid, independent citizen. The truth, however, was that at heart she was a coward. For that failure alone, she hated herself almost as much as she hated Jason for putting her in this position.

“Well.” She squared her shoulders and rallied what pride she had left. “It’s my problem. I’ll figure out how to deal with it.”

“Think in terms of a two-by-four. Right between his eyes,” he said darkly.

“Do you all run on pure testosterone?” She blurted out the words before she could marshal them. Again.

She closed her eyes, pressed her fingertips to her temple. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.

She didn’t know how to act around this man. If she wasn’t gaping in stupefied silence over his glaring good looks, she was bumbling out the most inappropriate things.

“I’m sorry. You saved me from a really bad ending here and I’m coming down on you for wanting to…” She paused, lifted a hand in the air.

“To add more violence to an already violent situation?” he suggested, an apology in his voice. “Unfortunately, sometimes that’s the only option.”

For the first time, something other than gentle amusement hardened his mouth. She saw and heard his anger but understood that it was directed at Jason. She also understood that he hadn’t judged her as harshly as she’d judged herself.

When she realized he was watching her with an absorbed intensity that relayed both concern and the same gentleness as his smiles, she drew in a deep breath and let it out.

“Well,” she said, feeling compelled to assure him, “I’ll be okay. He’ll give up sooner or later. In the meantime, I really don’t know how to thank you. Most people wouldn’t have stopped, and, you know, gotten in the middle of someone else’s mess.”

“I’m not most people.”

That much she’d already figured out. He certainly wasn’t like most of the people she knew at any rate. And he wasn’t anything like her. She was strictly struggling to be middle-class mundane. And he— Well, he wasn’t.

“So, what happens now?”

She let out a breath through puffed cheeks. “What does happen now?” she mused aloud before her brain synapses clicked into place. “Well, now I guess I walk back to my car and drive home.”

It seemed simple enough, except that on the heels of her statement, she realized it wasn’t going to be simple at all. She would have laughed if she could have mustered the strength.

“Well, normally I’d walk back to my car and drive home.”

“Normally?”

She worried her lower lip between her teeth then lifted a shoulder. “He got away with my car keys.”

He quirked a beautifully arched eyebrow—the one with the nick in it. “Oops. That’s a problem.”

Phoebe tugged on the tips of her hair where it tickled her nape and tried not to fidget as he continued to watch her with that half-amused, half-interested, all-male grin.

“So it would appear that you’re stranded.”

Yep. She was in a tight spot. So why was she suddenly grinning back at him?

It was ludicrous. Someone who had once meant something to her, someone she had trusted and had actually considered building a life with, had just tried to physically assault her. In addition, he’d made off with her car keys. Yet the pain of the first and the anger over the second just sort of drifted off in the comfort of this man’s dazzling smile.

“I’ll, um, just hail a cab,” she said, sobering resolutely. “I’ve got an extra set of keys at home. I can come back for my car tomorrow.”

“Or,” he said, shoving his hands into the pockets of his shorts, “I could take you.”

Yes, yes, yes.

She pulled back from that idea with a steadying breath. “No, oh no. I couldn’t ask you to do that. You’ve done enough. And you don’t even know me. For that matter, I don’t know you.”

“That is an issue,” he agreed with another one of those knee-melting smiles that didn’t make fun but teased just the same. “Here’s a thought. You could tell me your name, and I could tell you mine.” He paused, his grin playful and expectant. “You see where this is leading, right?”

Infectious. His smile was positively infectious.

“And then we can say we know each other,” he finished, looking very pleased with himself and his silliness. “Works out pretty well to my way of thinking.”

She liked his way of thinking. She was baffled that a man who looked like him would even bother with a woman who looked like her, but she liked it. In fact, she was quickly discovering that she liked everything about him.

Like his lips. Supple, sensual.

“So, what do you say?” he prompted. “How about you go first?”

“Phoebe,” she murmured, dragging her gaze away from his mouth. “Phoebe Richards.”

“Phoebe,” he repeated, mulling it over then looking immeasurably pleased. “I like it. It suits you much better than Mouse.” His expression was as sober as it was sincere.

She blinked, speechless again.

“I’m Daniel.” He extended his hand. “Daniel Barone.”

This time when he smiled it was full out, no-holes-barred and devastating.

She drew a deep breath and tried to shore herself up as every bone in her body sort of liquefied to the consistency of pudding.

And then she smiled like a goon again because he just made it so darn easy.

Slowly, she took the hand he offered. It was a strong hand. Her own hand felt small and protected tucked inside his. Before she could stop the image from forming, she imagined the coarse, warm strength of it caressing…well, something much more intimate than her hand.

She was thankful it was shadowy and dark on the street. Maybe he couldn’t see the flush spreading across her cheeks. With luck, he wouldn’t notice the slight tremble of her hand either when she finally managed to extricate it from his and lift it to her nape to tug self-consciously at her hair again.

“Let me take you home, Phoebe Richards,” he said, his voice and his eyes gentle. “Now just wait a sec before you say no. Think of how bad I’d feel if after all this you ended up getting mugged or something. I’d have put my life on the line for nothing.”

His easy self-assurance only reminded her of all the confidence she lacked. It reaffirmed that she had no business accepting his offer because in the overall scheme of things, it meant very little to him if he took her home and way too much to her.

Daniel Barone, she’d decided, couldn’t help but play the hero. She, conversely, never had and never would fit the role of a heroine. Especially not his heroine, although she couldn’t help herself from wanting to cast herself in the part.

That was when it hit her.

She knew who he was.

Her eyes widened.

How could she not have recognized him?

Maybe she was wrong, she thought, stalling panic as her gaze raced across his face. Maybe she hadn’t just made a fool of herself in front of a man who, a few months ago, the Boston Globe Magazine had billed as “Boston’s Own Sexy-as-Sin Daredevil Millionaire.”

Yeah, and maybe the light sheen of perspiration that had broken out on her forehead made her look delicate instead of desperate.

“Daniel Barone?” she squeaked, like the mouse she truly was. “The Daniel Barone?”

When he merely crossed his arms over his chest and grinned, she pressed the flat of her palm to her forehead.

“The Boston Globe’s Daniel Barone? The Baronessa Gelati Barone?”

Unless you lived under a rock, you knew about the Boston Barones. The colorful Italian family’s ice cream dynasty was legend, not just on the East Coast but worldwide. The original gelateria still flourished in the North End of Boston, and the delicious gelato had made Baronessa a household word and made multimillionaires out of anyone bearing the Barone name.

He shrugged, looking a little sheepish, which only added to his appeal. “I’m getting the impression that you may not consider this a good thing.”

“Oh, no. No, it’s just—”

“It’s just a name,” he preempted to make his point. “And I’m just a guy who wants to make sure you get home okay. Okay?”

In spite of it all, she was helpless not to return his smile. She’d given up resisting it. Just as she’d given up on the idea of doing the smart thing and begging off on his offer of a ride.

When he extended his hand, she hesitated for only a moment before taking it.

Just a name. Just a hand. And he’s just being polite, she told herself. Yet she felt as if she was walking in a dream as she let him lead her to his car.

Wasn’t she entitled, just this once, to have a fantasy fulfilled? One real-life fantasy involving one of the richest, sexiest men alive?

When he opened the door for her she went with it. She sank into the plush, supple leather of the bucket seat and pretended that she belonged there. She let the classical music flowing from the stereo system wrap around her, and entered another world. His world.

Phoebe Richards, welcome to the world of the rich and famous. All she needed to complete the scene was Robin Leach with his phony accent prattling away in the background.

She sighed and regained enough of her wits to remind herself that she really didn’t belong in that world. Just like she didn’t belong with a man like him.

Yet here she was.

She was in a car, in the dark of night, with the man of her dreams—hers and any other woman with a beating heart.

Daniel Barone was a true-life knight in shining armor who had literally saved her. Surely the shiny silver Porsche qualified as armor. Surely he was as much of a knight as Guinevere’s Lancelot.

And in the name of fair play, surely, just once in her life, Phoebe Richards was entitled to a fairy-tale ending, even if, like Cinderella’s coach, she’d turn into a pumpkin at the stroke of midnight.

Okay. So she was mixing her fairy tales and her metaphors. She didn’t care. For this brief moment in time she indulged. She let herself forget about pumpkins and different worlds when he turned to her.

His blue eyes were thoughtful and interested as they met hers over the tanned arm that gripped the gearshift. The streetlight cast stunning shadows and shading across his incredible face. He smiled that devastating smile. “All set?”

“To the castle,” she murmured and settled back as his soft, warm chuckle enveloped her.

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