“I need to know your name, so I know what to cry out next time.”

“And I need to know yours,” Nate replied, giving the beautiful woman beside him a light nip on the neck. “So I know who now owns me body and soul.”

She stretched out lethargically and kissed his jaw. Then, lifting a shoulder, she allowed the robe to fall completely off one arm. As he bent lower to taste that sweet, smooth skin, she whispered, “My name’s—”

Before she could finish, the door opened, and a light flashed on. “It’s J.T.,” Nate said. “Oh, boy.”

“Oh, boy is right,” the woman echoed, her horror undisguised.

Nate shifted slightly to the side, hiding her behind him, as J. T. Birmingham entered the room.

Taking stock of the situation—and not looking the least bit surprised—J. T. finally said, “Son, I think you’re wearing my robe.”

Nate groaned. He’d been caught by a millionaire, wearing the man’s robe during an important cocktail party at which he was the guest of honor. Caught fooling around with a gorgeous stranger on that man’s trampoline. “Can things get any worse?” he muttered.

“And,” J.T. continued, “you’re lying on top of my daughter….”

Dear Reader,

I love Broadway musicals. And I’ve always been fascinated by the thought of looking across a crowded room on “one enchanted evening” and finding a stranger who turns your world upside down. That’s exactly what happens to my heroine, columnist Lacey Clark, who falls instantly for a devastatingly attractive man during a crowded party. When she finds herself alone with him a few moments later—and they end up naked on top of a trampoline—she never imagines that she’s in the arms of her nemesis, Nate Logan.

Can two enemies-turned-lovers navigate the rocky road to romance in the sometimes outrageous world of magazine publishing? I sure had fun finding out while writing Into the Fire.

Those of you who read my first Temptation novel, Night Whispers, will recognize some characters in this book. I was so happy to find just the right story for Kelsey Logan’s older brother, and I got a kick out of writing more of those sexy radio show segments. For my readers who have written to me asking for a sequel…I hope this one lives up to your expectations.

I’d love to hear what you think. Please drop me a line at P.O. Box 410787, Melbourne, FL 32941–0787, or write to me through my Web site: www.lesliekelly.com.

Enjoy,

Leslie Kelly

Into the Fire
Leslie Kelly

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With love to the Smith kids:

Lynn, Donna, Karen, Cheri and Lee.

I can’t think of five other people I’d rather have

grown up with—telephone poles and all.

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Epilogue

1

ALONE in a throng of elegantly dressed people, in the lavishly appointed reception room of a tasteful Baltimore mansion, Lacey Clark began to sweat. Not a ladylike beading of perspiration on her upper lip. Not a moistness at her temple. No. Her tight black cocktail dress was growing downright damp as each additional person oozed into the already overcrowded party. A few more minutes and there would be circles under her armpits and her makeup would run off her skin in great bisque streaks.

“Get me out of here,” she murmured, wondering if she could make it through the sea of people to the exit. Surely no one would notice if she slipped away. After all, she looked like practically every other woman in the place. Ninety percent of the females at the party wore the typical city social uniform—a little black cocktail dress, sheer black stockings, shiny, never seamed. Ridiculously high heels, useless tiny bag barely big enough to carry a tube of lipstick. Not to mention the confident expression disguising boredom.

Boredom always made Lacey Clark sweat. As did low-cut, skintight dresses and heels so high she wondered if she was going to fall on her fanny and humiliate herself in front of Baltimore society. Not that she really cared about Baltimore society. This was definitely not her crowd. Lacey would much rather have been at her favorite bar with her best friends.

For the hundredth time, she wished she’d been able to find a way out of this evening’s event. As if it wasn’t bad enough that her dress was uncomfortably tight, her stockings scratchy and her makeup oozy, her entire life was about to change course. Lacey didn’t like feeling cornered nor having her personal affairs made very, very public. And tonight, in her boss’s home, at a cocktail party where she was about to be honored for her job, she was also about to be set up for some major intrusion into her personal life. Her family. Her history. Her nice, orderly world.

“Dammit,” she whispered, knowing things were completely beyond her control and not liking it one bit.

Nearby, two senior staff members from the magazine where she worked beckoned her closer. She smiled and pointed over her shoulder, implying she was waiting for someone. She didn’t want to engage in small talk. Lacey just wanted to escape.

It might be possible to slip away for a few minutes, but she couldn’t get away entirely, not when she was scheduled to receive a very public award for a job well done. Besides, even if she did disappear, J.T. Birmingham, millionaire publisher and owner of For Her Eyes Only, the magazine Lacey worked for, would make his second announcement anyway. The big one. The personal one. The one that would reveal beyond a doubt the intimate connection between them that she’d struggled to keep quiet.

Nothing she’d said in the past six weeks had dissuaded him. He was bursting at the seams, and he wanted the world in on his jubilation. Never mind that Lacey didn’t.

No, a dash for the door was out. But she could at least hide for a while. She tried to sidle toward the exit but hadn’t gone three steps when a voice stopped her.

“Did you see his new column?”

Lacey didn’t even have to turn around. She knew who was speaking—her good friend Raul Santos. She certainly knew who he was speaking about. Nate Logan. Yuck.

The open door still taunted her from across the room. She stared at it longingly, knowing it offered an avenue of escape, a minute of peace and quiet, a chance to find a hidden corner and wipe the sweat off her forehead with the back of her arm. Stopping meant frustration. No question about it.

She muttered a curse and turned. “I don’t read his column.” Lacey stepped closer to Raul, who had worked with her at For Her Eyes Only magazine until a few months before. “Besides, I can count on you to tell me what was in it, right?”

A wide white smile creased Raul’s darkly tanned face, enhancing his sharply attractive features. “Of course. You know, if I’d realized I was going to have this much fun being a double agent, reporting back and forth between the two of you, I would have taken the job at Men’s World for much less money!”

“No, you wouldn’t,” she retorted with a smirk. “You need the money to keep up with the women.”

“I would have forgone even that if I’d thought you really wanted me to stay.” Raul smiled again, a glitter in his dark brown eyes. “You look exceptionally beautiful tonight, Lacey.”

“Knock it off. We’re way past that,” she snarled.

No question, Raul was definitely hot, in a lean and lanky Latin lover way. But since they’d first met as lowly grunts at the magazine, they’d recognized they were destined to be friends, particularly since Raul was three years younger than Lacey. She looked at him like he was one of her little brothers, which he claimed wounded his male ego nearly beyond repair. Still, Raul couldn’t help flirting. It was his modus operandi.

“So, you didn’t see it?”

“No. Are you going to tell me?”

He paused as if debating it. A definite act since she knew he got a kick out of the fiery feud between Lacey and her nemesis, columnist Nate Logan who wrote for Men’s World. “Well, he does expect me to,” he finally said.

Lacey frowned. “Most double agents don’t go around bragging about playing from both sides of the deck.”

“Oh, I’m lousy at keeping secrets. Remind me to tell you what he said when I told him you called him a pimply prepubescent boy trapped in a man’s body.”

She groaned. “Raul…”

“Okay. In the column this month, he talks about a certain unnamed female magazine columnist who’s either a man-hating femi-Nazi or a frigid virgin.”

“What?” she shrieked, drawing the attention of those nearby. She immediately lowered her voice. “That son of a…”

“Well, Lacey, you did take a serious shot in your last column. Come on, saying all men who go to nightclubs are cheats looking to score?”

“Aren’t they?”

“They’re not all cheats.”

“But they’re all looking to score!”

“Then you went on to mention certain men who enjoy being photographed in such clubs surrounded by brainless bimbos.”

“I didn’t mention him by name.”

“You didn’t have to, darling, the whole country, let alone the city of Baltimore, knows the two of you have a private war going on.”

She couldn’t deny that. It was entirely true. Somehow, she, Lacey Clark, had gotten caught up in a battle of the sexes with a man she’d never met, never even laid eyes on, except for one grainy photo in a social rag. Even then she hadn’t been able to see much of him since he’d been photographed wearing a Panama hat, dark glasses and holding a big, ugly cigar between his teeth.

Besides, she hadn’t been able to look too closely at the photo considering all the breasts. The man had been photographed framed on all sides by women’s breasts. Proudly. He’d been sitting in a chair while buxom beauties all around him showed just why they’d been finalists in the bar’s wet T-shirt contest, which he’d judged. Sexist pig.

She shook her head, forcing thoughts of Nate Logan out of her mind. Tonight, as strange as it seemed considering he had been driving her nuts for months, he was the absolute least of her problems. If it meant keeping J.T. from revealing the truth about Lacey to the entire world, heck, she’d get up on stage and dance the tango with the man! It wouldn’t, though. J.T. was determined. So she got to deal with the two biggest anxieties in her life on the very same night. J.T. And Nate Logan.

Resigned, she asked, “Is Logan here yet?”

Raul grinned, obviously knowing she couldn’t restrain her curiosity. It was hell never having seen your publicly sworn enemy! “Holding court outside, last time I checked,” Raul said.

“Great. Maybe we’ll get lucky and one of his bimbos will drag him off to a frat party.”

“Probably be more fun than here.”

Lacey grinned reluctantly. “Yeah, you’re probably right. Ah, for the simple days. Games of quarters until you passed out, staggering into class for an exam after an all-nighter.”

Raul raised a brow. “Lacey Clark, Miss In-Control, playing quarters at a frat house? People’d pay money to see that.”

She shrugged, then sighed. No, most people wouldn’t be able to grasp that mental image. Not with the Lacey they knew now. The Lacey most people knew now.

Raul obviously noticed the smile fade from her lips. “My car’s out back. Wanna run away and find the nearest bar?”

“You know I can’t.”

“I know,” he admitted. “J.T.’s still going to do it?”

Lacey nodded.

“Okay, then, we’re stuck. But I know you’re bored outta your skull. If we have to stay, we can at least stir up some trouble. You know you’re just dying inside to go up to Norm Spencer’s wife and tell her everyone in the room can see the line of her girdle because her dress is too small.”

“She either needs a better girdle or a dress two sizes bigger,” Lacey admitted.

“That’s my girl.”

Lacey shook her head. “You’re so bad.”

“Maybe that’s why we get along so well.” Raul’s eyes glittered. “Birds of a feather…”

“Get shot down together? No, I have to behave myself.”

Raul gave her a gentle squeeze on one shoulder. “That’s the problem, doll face. You keep trying so hard to be good, one day you’re gonna just explode.”

Before Lacey could toss off a reply—feeling the need to assure him that being good was more effort than instinct—her attention was drawn to the bar where one man in a sea of black tuxedos stood out. Around her, conversations continued to drone on, but the voices and high-pitched laughter faded to an indistinguishable buzz. Lacey suddenly found herself tense and aware for the first time this evening.

“Who’s he?” she wondered aloud, not really directing the question at Raul, though he stood beside her.

“Who?”

Lacey didn’t reply, still studying the man. She didn’t stare because he was gorgeous, though he was. He didn’t catch her eye because he filled out his tux better than any other man in the room, though he did. No, it was his obvious boredom that caught her attention. His looks merely kept it.

He was taller than average, long and lean. His dark blond hair was thick and wavy, and she imagined his wife or girlfriend would be unable to keep her fingers out of it. The way he held his body screamed self-confidence.

She wasn’t the only one who noticed him. Lacey watched a curvy redhead approach the bar, try to strike up a conversation, then walk away in a pique. The man shrugged and kept talking to the bartender. His boredom radiated toward her from across the room. He barely looked at the crowd surrounding him, instead giving all his attention to the guy making drinks.

The lean, strong line of his jaw made her wonder, suddenly, what color his eyes were. And whether his mouth was really as impossibly gorgeous as it appeared to be from over here. When he laughed in response to something the bartender said, Lacey sucked in a breath. Yes, the man had one heck of a mouth.

“The guy at the bar?” Raul asked, narrowing his eyes as he noticed her interest. “Not your type, Lace.”

“So, you do know him?”

“In passing. And I’m afraid he wouldn’t do for you.”

“Why not? What’s wrong with him?”

“He’s a bonehead, Lacey. A jock with a Jaguar. Not a brain in his head. Got where he is on his looks.”

“Oh, great.” She sighed. “A Nate Logan type, you mean?”

Raul snorted a laugh. “Well, he’s maybe not that bad. But definitely not someone you’d be interested in.”

Too bad. It had been a long time since Lacey had looked at a man and felt such a sudden, overwhelming attraction. When she thought about it, she didn’t think she’d ever gone breathless and jittery just from spying a stranger across a room.

Of course, she was a woman and she could appreciate a good-looking man. This one had looks to spare. But as her eyes kept returning to him, she knew it was more than looks. There was such power in his masculinity, such magnetism in his self-confidence. It was damned unfair for a creature so breathtakingly male not to have the brains to go with the rest of the package. “What a shame,” she murmured as she forced herself to look away.

“True,” Raul replied.

Raul chuckled again, and Lacey wondered if he was up to something. She didn’t quite trust the humor in his eyes. “What?”

“I’m thinking how fortunate it is,” he said with a Raulish smirk, “that beauty isn’t always wasted on the stupid.” He pointed to himself.

Lacey laughed. Despite the arrogance and oozy charm, Raul was loyal, smart and a real friend. “Thanks for the tip, Raul.”

“Logan’s response to the prepubescent boy remark was…”

“I don’t want to know,” she said as she turned to leave. Hearing Raul’s chuckle behind her, she knew he’d get around to telling her sooner or later.

As she walked toward the door, she did pause once to glance over her shoulder toward the bar. Though she told herself she was merely looking over the crowd, she still felt a pang of disappointment that the gorgeous blond hunk was no longer standing there. She looked around the room, but didn’t spot him anywhere. “Just as well,” she said with a sigh.

Lacey managed to fend off conversational gambits from several people as she eased across the room toward the exit. Some didn’t try to talk to her, obviously seeing by the glint in her eye she was in no mood to chat. “Frigid virgin, indeed,” she muttered, remembering what Raul had told her before she’d been so thoroughly distracted by the blond man.

She shouldn’t have been surprised by the latest insult. Ever since the first shot in this war had been fired, nearly a year ago, she and that brainless, oversexed Animal House reject Nate Logan had traded barely veiled insults on the pages of For Her Eyes Only and Men’s World every single month.

As the featured love-and-relationships columnists for their respective magazines, they should have had a lot in common, particularly since both magazines were owned by the same publisher, J.T. Birmingham. But they obviously had about as much in common as dirt and ice cream.

Nate Logan touted flirtation, sexual freedom, openness and exploration. He also liked to blame women for everything wrong with the male-female relationship. Lacey, on the other hand, knew darn right well it was usually the man who screwed things up on the romance front.

She also favored true love, soul mates and sexual responsibility. Hadn’t her childhood, her entire life, been a never-ending lesson in that regard? With her mother’s past and her stepfather’s attitudes, Lacey had learned at a very young age that sexual mistakes could shatter lives. Heaven knew her stepfather had never let any of her family forget that lesson. She’d also decided—more out of a need for it to be true than anything else—that true love had to exist and was worth waiting for. She would settle for nothing else.

“Having a nice time, Lacey?” someone asked as she finally made it to the foyer of the mansion.

Seeing a colleague from work, Lacey forced a smile. “Yes. My favorite way to spend an evening.” Second only to having my bikini line waxed or my nails ripped out with hot pincers.

“I hear you’re going to receive some kind of award tonight,” the woman continued.

Ah, yes, the award. The reason everyone thought they were at this party. If that were the only reason for tonight’s gathering, Lacey would probably be able to relax and at least make a small effort to enjoy herself.

“And Nate Logan is, too,” the woman continued, a note of maliciousness obvious in her tight smile.

“So I hear,” Lacey muttered. She moved away, as if going to the powder room down the hall. If one more person stopped her and mentioned Nate Logan’s name, she might have to throw up.

Lacey couldn’t recall how her war with the other journalist had started. Who had lobbed the first insult? All she knew was last year she’d heard J.T. had hired a new columnist to spice up Men’s World. Within three months, the magazine’s formerly health-conscious, “strong mind, strong body” image had changed. It now appealed to the man who would rather be reading Playboy but had to mollify his wife or girlfriend by picking up a health magazine. So the centerfolds were somewhat clothed and usually reclining on exercise equipment or the hoods of automobiles.

She had to assume Nate’s column, which had gained instant popularity, was part of the reason circulation had skyrocketed.

Seeing no one waiting outside the powder room, Lacey walked right past it, down a long corridor. When she heard voices in a nearby room, she ducked behind a piece of pricey statuary. Hearing the voices recede, she dashed by the doorway, trying to stay on her toes to avoid letting her heels click on the floor.

“Hide and seek,” she whispered, knowing she was probably being juvenile and not really caring.

It wasn’t just the aura of sex appeal on every page of Men’s World that bothered her. She also didn’t like Nate Logan’s smart-ass tone, his flirtatious, irreverent writing style. She certainly didn’t like his advice. But his readers obviously adored him. He’d even been given an unprecedented second column, “Nate’s Notes on the Nice and the Naughty.”

“Notes from Nate the Nitwit,” she muttered sourly.

She had to admit that she’d been somewhat amused by his observations. But when he’d started getting a little too obnoxious, she’d reacted. She was only human, after all. Since he seemed to delight in targeting her sex, well, what else could a fair-minded woman do but defend herself?

Once, he wrote a column about the way women couldn’t keep secrets. His theory was that a woman didn’t make a single decision regarding career, life, love or sex without consulting her gaggle of girlfriends. He went on to use as an example the way women went to the ladies’ room together at restaurants. His assertion? They were flipping a coin to see which one would sleep with her date and which would come down with a headache.

That, probably, was the first time Lacey had responded on the pages of For Her Eyes Only. She’d fired a mild shot about the way men felt it necessary to touch each others’ butts during athletic events.

The battle had gone on from there. He’d claimed women’s so-called emotional loyalty to each other disappeared whenever three females were together, since as soon as one left the other two dissed her awful shoes, tight dress or bad hairdo. Lacey retorted that the buddy syndrome was the way men got close to other men’s girlfriends in order to hit on them.

He said women sent mixed signals, demanding equality yet having a fit and refusing sex if a man didn’t always pick up the check for dinner. She said women wanted to be treated with respect, courtesy and graciousness, not like walking sex toys.

He said women drove men out with their demands. She said men walked out wide-eyed when a good set of legs happened along. He said women were untrustworthy. She said men were dogs.

He said. She said.

On and on the Ferris wheel turned in their undeclared war between the sexes. Their readers followed along in amusement, driving up circulation, ad revenues and publicity.

Lacey and Nate Logan had been invited to appear together on a nationally televised morning show. Lacey had refused, as always being careful to guard her privacy. She wouldn’t have gone anyway. Sharing a magazine rack with Nate Logan was bad enough. Sharing a TV stage would be impossible.

If Lacey hadn’t been too excited about her sudden notoriety, J.T. and the other higher-ups had been absolutely thrilled. So here they were, about to be toasted, together, by the publisher of both magazines they worked for.

“Unfair,” she muttered as she made a few turns, passing J.T.’s private office and his wife’s art studio. Lacey wasn’t ready for this evening.

She could admit that it wasn’t really the Nate Logan situation. The main problem tonight was the personal issue. The issue of Lacey Clark—who she really was, where she’d really come from. She’d pleaded with J.T. not to go ahead with the announcement he planned to make at the party. Not unexpectedly, he’d ignored her, caring only about the circulation numbers, not about personal feelings. Not even hers.

Lacey’s high heels clicked loudly on the polished floor as she walked toward her destination. There was one spot where she knew she could be alone. She couldn’t escape the inevitable forever. But she could at least take some time to prepare for the evening she faced.

Thirty minutes. She deserved thirty minutes of peace before J.T. changed her secure, comfortable, low-key world forever.

“NOTE TO SELF. Next time you attend a rich man’s cocktail party, bring your Game Boy.”

Nate Logan clicked off his microcassette recorder and tucked it into the pocket of his black tux. Since everyone he worked with knew he always carried the thing around with him, making observations for use in columns, no one would have been surprised to see him talking to himself. Not that it mattered, anyway, since he was alone. Completely, blissfully alone.

He’d finally cut out of J.T. Birmingham’s party after enduring about twenty-five minutes of insipid conversation with colleagues who’d love to see him fall flat on his face. Grabbing a few bottles of beer from the bar, he’d slipped out a patio door and made his way around the lawn, searching for a place to sit down and drain a cold one.

Nate’s exploration of the well-manicured grounds led him to a secluded pool area. The pool ran right up to the edge of the house, and he imagined there was another section inside for bad-weather swimming. Curious to see what it looked like, he tested the handle of a nearby door and found himself inside a recreation room, complete with gym and spa. A light in a far corner illuminated some pricey workout equipment, including weight-training centers, stair steppers, treadmills, even a trampoline. The enclosed pool took up the other half of the massive chamber.

“The magazine business must be doing very well, indeed,” he mused as he moved a lounge chair right up to the edge of the pool. He took a seat, then leaned over the armrest to test the water with his fingers, liking the coolness against his skin. Damn, it was a miserably hot night, particularly for early June. The crowded party had made it that much more so.

He twisted off the cap of a bottle, took a long pull of cold beer and settled back in the chair. He would have loosened the stupid bow tie at his neck but knew there was no way he’d be able to tie it again without a mirror, so he left it alone.

All in all, the evening was proving to be a total waste. Hobnobbing with the rich and famous of Baltimore was not exactly Nate’s thing. Most of the women he’d met tonight either stared icicles or came at him with enough heat to melt iron, each thinking she might be the one to transform the sexist bad boy she knew from the pages of Men’s World.

As if that Nate Logan really existed.

Well, okay, maybe he existed to some extent. Yes, Nate’s writing style reflected his personality—a little smart-alecky, a lot tongue in cheek. But the rest didn’t. As much as readers—and female columnists—might argue it, Nate was not a sexist jerk. He didn’t dislike women. Far from it! So he didn’t particularly care to be exposed to a bunch of female readers who wanted to either smack him or seduce him.

It wasn’t as if he bashed women. He wrote a column for men in a men’s magazine. When he wrote, he pictured himself just talking to a bunch of guys. All guys—single or married, committed or on the make, young and eager or old and reminiscent—talked about women. What women did. What women said. What women wore. What women wanted. Particularly what women wanted. Mainly how the hell a man was supposed to figure out what women wanted!

He viewed his writing as a just-between-us-men, talking-after-a-workout kind of thing. Unfortunately, some women had started eavesdropping on the conversation and weren’t too happy about it. As if he, Nate Logan, had invented the concept of men griping about the opposite sex. Ridiculous, unless one also subscribed to the theory that women never indulged in man bashing. Which was, of course, complete bullshit.

This was where his startlingly sudden success in the publishing world had gotten him. A great job, a terrific salary, the freedom to express the views of the average man on the street. Oh, and a big, fat, pig-shaped target on his head.

He didn’t like his sudden notoriety. Sure, he’d had fun with it the first few months, until he realized not everyone was in on the joke. Some people didn’t see the real Nate Logan at all anymore. He found himself on guard with each person he met, judged by other people’s preconceptions. He’d begun to miss the anonymity he’d enjoyed working as a staff writer for a weekend magazine in D.C. or doing his freelance work. He’d rather be covering another corruption scandal in the nation’s capital than be stuck here, at a highbrow party, surrounded by men who agreed with every word he said—except when their girlfriends were around. Not to mention those girlfriends, who wanted him either in their crosshairs or in their beds.

To ice the three-layer cake of this particular bash, he was going to come face to face with that frigid prig Lacey Clark. Of all the people in the world with whom he didn’t want to spend an evening, including Barry Manilow and the guy who’d thought up those stupid Chihuahua commercials, she was number one on his list. After all, it was partially her fault half the world’s population—the female half—was out for his blood. She was the one who had given him the reputation of being a male chauvinist without even having to mention his name.

Earlier at the party, he’d seen one pinched-looking, severely dressed woman who might qualify as the schoolmarm he suspected Lacey Clark to be. She was tall and skinny, wearing a mannish black suit, with graying hair pulled into a severe bun. He’d asked Raul, a casual friend and co-worker, to confirm she was his nemesis.

Raul had grinned and slapped Nathan on the back. “How on earth do you do it? I mean, how can you come into a room, look at someone and immediately know who she is?”

“You mean I’m right?” Nate had asked, somewhat deflated to think this woman was indeed the one he was going to share the spotlight with later in the evening.

Raul had shrugged and lifted his hands in defeat. “What can I say? You really are a master of deductive reasoning. I think I’ll go on over and say hello to Lacey now. Don’t worry, I won’t let on to her that you picked her out so easily.”

Then the junior editor from Men’s World had sauntered away, leaving Nate to speculate about the sour-faced crone who’d made his life a living hell for months. He hadn’t been able to remain in the same room with her for ten more minutes before he’d made good his escape. He’d meet her soon enough, when the two of them were lucky enough to be congratulated for helping to invigorate the magazines they worked for.

“Here’s to you, Lacey Clark,” he muttered as he sat in the lounge chair by the pool. “Maybe you’ll get lucky tonight, meet some poor SOB with bad eyesight, get laid and get the hell off my back.” If anyone sorely needed to get laid, it was Lacey Clark.

As he lifted the bottle of beer to his mouth, Nate noticed the door at the far end of the gym opening in the semidarkness. Hoping he wasn’t about to be discovered, he slid lower in his lounge chair, willing the intruder to leave.

No such luck. The person—he could see from here it was a she—slipped into the gym and pushed the door shut behind her. She leaned against it, her body almost sagging. He imagined her sighing in relief, probably glad to have escaped the party. That was at least one thing they had in common. Then she stepped away from the door, into the light cast by an overhead fixture near the rowing machine.

“Man, oh man,” he whispered.

She was blond perfection. A teenage boy’s breathing, moving erotic dream. From the sleek golden hair falling in a wave past her shoulders to the pale throat, the soft shoulders revealed by the tight black dress and on down the centerfold curves, she was one-hundred-percent pure female temptation.

Nate suddenly found it difficult to pull another chlorine-tinged breath into his lungs. Any words he might have uttered got trapped on his tongue as he watched her toss her small handbag to the floor and bend over to tug her high-heeled shoes off her feet. Well, she couldn’t exactly bend in her tight dress, she could only lean. When she did, the shimmery fabric pulled taut across her hips and the curve of her rear. Nate shifted in his chair. As she lifted one leg and placed her foot on a weight bench to unfasten the shoe, her dress slid higher, displaying an endless length of black-stocking-clad thigh.

“I think I musta fallen into the pool and drowned, and now I’m in heaven,” he managed to whisper.

When she walked to the trampoline, then pulled herself up onto it, he knew damn well that’s exactly what had happened.

LACEY COULD HAVE walked down and sat in one of the lounge chairs by the dark waters of the pool, she supposed. But for some reason, the big round trampoline beckoned her. She’d figured no one would be in the gymnasium. If any curious or amorous guests were wandering around J.T.’s mansion, they’d more likely take refuge in one of the richly appointed bedrooms. She had this big, quiet space to herself. All she wanted was to take a moment, to strategize, to figure out how she was going to go back into the office Monday and face her co-workers knowing they’d all feel betrayed after J.T. made his big announcement tonight.

Of course, they were the absolute least of her worries. “I’m sorry, Mom,” she whispered. “I’m so sorry. We’ll figure out how to handle this.”

She wondered what J.T. would think if he could see her now, but couldn’t muster up the energy to care. Bracing her palms on the padded mat covering the springs, she pulled herself up and twisted her body around to sit on the metal edge of the trampoline. Careful not to snag her dress, which had set her back a week’s salary, she slid backward onto the bouncy surface.

She giggled softly, liking the sense of freedom. Lowering herself, she stretched out until she lay completely on her back. She stared at the ceiling, again grinning at the fit J.T. would likely have if he walked into the room and caught her, in her fancy cocktail dress, lying on the trampoline.

If his latest wife, Deirdre, were with him, she’d probably faint. It already galled the woman no end that Lacey was one of the guests of honor tonight. In Deirdre’s social circle, one simply didn’t flaunt one’s mistakes in public.

On that point, she and Lacey were in complete agreement. But she still would have paid money to see the woman’s face if she happened to wander by.

The thought made her snicker, and she sat up. Carefully tugging her tight dress higher, she rose to her feet and tested the trampoline with one little bounce. She’d done gymnastics as a kid, and she itched to see if she could still do some of the tricks she’d perfected.

“Not in this dress,” she mused. Still, she tugged it higher, knowing no one could see the black ribbon covering the elastic of her thigh-high stockings. No one was around to note the lace of her panties or be shocked that they were the thong type, which left no lines in tight clothes.

Now she was really getting into Deirdre-dropping-over-in-a-dead-faint territory. Thigh highs and a thong? On sensible Lacey, she who preached true love before marriage and emotional commitments before physical ones?

Okay, she had a thing for sexy lingerie. “Sue me,” she muttered. So naughty underwear gave her a dangerous thrill. Big deal. She was the only one who ever saw what she wore under her suits and dresses. At the rate she was going in the romance department, that didn’t seem likely to change anytime soon!

Lacey suddenly remembered the blond man at the bar and wondered who he was. He’d affected her, distracted her on what was proving to be a pretty lousy night. It had been a long time since Lacey had looked at a man and felt…hot. Needy. And very curious. The wickedly provocative picture that flashed into her mind really would have given those who knew her a shock.

Rebelliously, she tugged her dress higher. Not that she lifted it all the way over her hips or anything. But as her feet moved and she bounced up and down, the dress slid up inch by inch until she could feel the cool air of the gym wisping against the lower curve of her buttocks.

It felt naughty, wicked, free and outrageous. And Lacey Clark loved every uninhibited bounce.

Her dress was certainly too tight to try any flips or maneuvers. So she jumped higher, and higher, spinning and twirling in the air, not caring when her hair tumbled riotously around her face and the sweat she’d worried about during the party dripped down her chin. Who cared? It felt good to be bad. And oh, thankfully, she was no longer bored, though she was completely alone.

Or so she thought, until she heard the yell, followed by the splash.

2

IT WAS the thong panties that sent Nate’s chair tipping over into the pool. He was no voyeur, but, damn, a gorgeous blonde jumping on a trampoline flashing him a sweet glimpse of her curvy backside with every bounce? What red-blooded American man would be able to resist that? He sure hadn’t. So he’d leaned just a little too far and gone for an unexpected swim.

The chilly water shocked him. If it hadn’t been for the chair hitting him in the head, he would likely have leaped right back out. But the plastic arm of the lounger caught him in the temple, and for a moment or two, he experienced severe disorientation. All he knew was he was in the pool, and a chair and a padded cushion, growing heavier by the second as it soaked up water, were blocking him from the air above.

Before he could move to save himself, someone was yanking him by the arm, pulling him from under the obstacle. When he broke through the surface, Nate sucked in a deep, greedy breath. His rescuer threw an arm across his shoulders and towed him, on his back, to the side of the pool.

When they reached the side, he flung his arm over the pool’s edge, as did she. She finally stopped panting long enough to look him in the face.

The blonde. The gorgeous blonde with the peekaboo panties was treading water opposite him. She’d leaped into the pool to save him, not even stopping to consider her dress, which clung to her skin like shiny black Saran wrap. She was an absolute mess. Her sopping hair drooped against her head, sending rivulets of water running down her temples. Her smeared makeup had left black streaks under her eyes. She looked like a wet raccoon. A gorgeous wet raccoon.

Finally noticing his stare, her eyes widened, flashing with something. Confusion? Recognition? He didn’t know, couldn’t place it, but he saw something change in her expression. She looked out of sorts, confused, perhaps even a little excited. Not surprising given what had just happened. But Nate had a feeling there was more to it than that.

Finally she asked, “Are you okay?”

In spite of the pounding in his head, Nate responded flirtatiously. “I think I might need mouth to mouth.”

She frowned. “You’re talking. I suspect you’re breathing.”

He puffed out his cheeks, holding his breath.

She rolled her eyes. “Lame.”

“Okay. I give up. I’m fine, thanks to you. I was getting disoriented under the water.”

He glanced over his shoulder at the chair, which still floated nearby. As he watched, the cloth-covered cushion sank, disappearing beneath the surface, probably due to the weight of the water. It descended until it rested on the bottom of the pool—right where he might have ended up, had the blow to his head been much harder.

Good grief, he could have drowned! The thought sobered him, sending any flirtatious thoughts out of his mind. “You really might have saved my life. Thank you very much.”

He stared into her eyes, which were a fine pale blue that picked up the light reflected on the shimmering surface of the water. Her lips were parted, her breath coming in audible gasps, much like his as they both recovered from the adrenaline rush of his accident.

Close up, she was every bit as enticing, though perhaps in a different way, than she’d been from a distance. Her features were softer, sweeter than he’d expected, given her killer figure. Her heart-shaped face was creamy smooth, and beneath the smeared makeup he could see the tiniest freckles dotting her nose. She looked younger than he’d thought. Definitely not as put together, calm and cool as she’d appeared when she entered the room. Yet the innocent blue eyes and freckles definitely suited the sprite who’d climbed onto the trampoline.

She stared back, looking as though she recognized him. Nate nearly muttered a curse. He waited, wondering if she’d prove to be fan or foe, if she’d coo that she’d read all his articles or tell him to grow up and get a real job.

She did neither. Instead, she sighed, again seeming to be disappointed for some reason, and said, “I didn’t see you struggling under the water so I thought you were unconscious.”

“The chair hit me in the head.”

When she immediately lifted a hand to check his brow, he said, “I’m fine. It just took me a minute to get my bearings.”

She pushed his hair back, and the touch of her hand made most logical thought disappear from his brain. Her gesture was gentle, concerned, but the feel of her skin on his felt loaded with additional sensation.

“A minute’s a long time to figure out you’re underwater.” She drew her hand away, looking at her fingers in confusion, as if she, too, had felt something unusual where flesh had met flesh.

“You’re right. Maybe it wasn’t a full minute,” he replied softly.

“It was more like twenty seconds.”

“Okay. But twenty seconds too long. I was starting to see my life flash before my eyes.”

She raised a skeptical brow. “Really?”

“Well, no, not really, but I did have the sudden thought that I need to call my mother.”

“Your mother?”

“To thank her for putting me in swimming lessons, and to wish her a happy birthday.”

“You didn’t swim,” she told him.

“I would have. Ten more seconds, tops. Maybe fifteen. Probably. But I still owe you my life. Thanks again.”

She started chuckling. “Do you always talk so fast?”

“Always. In my family, if you don’t talk fast, you never get a word in edgewise.”

“Is it really your mom’s birthday today?”

“No. It’s Monday. But while I was under there, I realized if I drowned three days before her birthday, that’d probably ruin the occasion and she’d never forgive me.”

This time she laughed out loud. “You do realize this isn’t exactly a typical conversation to be having while treading water, fully dressed, in someone else’s swimming pool,” she said, her eyes alight with amusement.

“Better than the party.”

“Yes, I saw you there earlier,” she admitted, staring at him intently. “Why on earth did you come here?”

“To hide out,” he said, greatly relieved that when she’d recognized him a few minutes ago, it had been from the party and not from his work at Men’s World. If she didn’t know him, didn’t know his name, maybe she would talk to him like the man he really was, not the man he appeared to be in print.

She hadn’t said anything, so he continued. “I couldn’t take another minute of jovial conversation with people who’d stab me in the back in a second to climb up one more rung of the publishing ladder.”

She nodded slowly, obviously understanding, possibly even agreeing. “Okay, I can buy that one. So you were just sitting here by the pool and you accidentally tipped your chair in?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, great, you were watching me, right? That’s what happened. You were playing Mr. Peeping Tom and you tipped yourself right into the pool where you could have drowned. All to get a glimpse of a woman’s underwear.”

“Well, come on, you gotta admit, that is some pretty fine underwear.”

Her eyes narrowed. “I suppose you’re an underwear expert?”

“No, not really.” He grinned. “Frankly, I prefer boxers to thongs. I’ve always thought thongs would be terribly uncomfortable. But you look like you do okay in yours, so maybe I’ll try them sometime.”

Nate almost regretted baiting her, but she had certainly provided the opening. Now, would she haul herself out of the pool and stalk away in a huff? Or did she have a real sense of humor to go with the killer curves?

Then he saw it. A heartbreakingly gorgeous grin curled her lips, her eyes sparkled, and she chuckled. He heard his own sigh of relief.

Beautiful. Sense of humor. And she’d saved his life. Could things get any better?

LACEY DIDN’T LIKE flirtatious men. Okay, well, that wasn’t quite true. She liked Raul, and heaven knew he loved to flirt. But Raul was different. As strange as it seemed, given his reputation with women, she considered him safe. Because he was her brother’s age…and her best friend.

This man, however, was far from safe. Gorgeous, sexy strangers with dimpled smiles who flirted and made her heart leap and her thighs quiver were definitely not safe.

She’d been shocked when she realized he was the man who’d caught her attention at the party. Within a few minutes she’d realized Raul had been messing with her—this guy was no bonehead. He was sexy, charming and gorgeous. She should have run for cover as soon as he made the mouth-to-mouth comment. Because that had put all kinds of interesting images in her mind!

Instead she continued to hold onto the side of the pool, wearing her sodden dress, which would probably never be free of the scent of chlorine, grinning at the mental picture of him in a thong. “I know of a site online that sells men’s thongs.”

“And you would know this because…”

“Because I bought a pair for a friend as a gag gift last year.”

He raised an eyebrow. “A friend?”

“A female friend who was getting married. She tells me if it hadn’t been for the yellow duck on the front, she might have been able to talk her husband into wearing them during their honeymoon.”

“I’m with him on that one.”

“I suppose you’d prefer your basic black.”

“It works so well for you. I’ll follow your example.”

Lacey should have felt like sinking beneath the water at the realization that this man really had been sitting here watching her on the trampoline. But she laughed again instead. “So do you make a habit out of sneaking peeks at strange women’s underwear?”

“You don’t seem strange. At least no stranger than anyone else at tonight’s gala,” he said earnestly. “Do you make a habit out of breaking into other people’s gyms during parties?”

“I was hiding out, like you,” she admitted. “I hate cocktail parties.”

“Me, too. Smiles on the lips, never in the eyes. Superficial conversations. Everybody on the make trying to find someone to hook up with who they won’t have to bump into at work the next week.”

He sounded sincere, which surprised Lacey. “That’s exactly how I feel.”

“I’d much rather be treading water in a soaking tuxedo.”

“Which is hopefully not rented.”

“It is.”

“I don’t think you’re going to get your deposit back.”

“Maybe I’ll buy it. This might prove to be my lucky suit.” Though his tone remained flirtatious, his eyes held a note of serious intensity.

He had beautiful eyes. Green with circles of gold at the center that Lacey somehow felt she could get lost in. They were rimmed by thick black lashes that were unfairly long for a man. And his mouth—that gorgeous, smiling mouth she’d fantasized about after seeing him across the room at the party—was every bit as intriguing close up.

Lacey almost wished she were a different type of person. The type of person who could lean forward and kiss a sexy stranger, because if she didn’t find out what his lips tasted like soon, she was going to lose her mind.

She wasn’t that type of person, however. She was responsible and conservative, restrained and professional. Any lapses with trampolines, thong panties or to-die-for strangers with amazing lips were genetic flukes, not the real her.

Were they?

“I guess we ought to get out and dry off,” she said, hearing a note of regret in her voice. “I imagine I’ve already been missed. I don’t exactly know how I’m going to get out of this one.”

“Can’t you just slip out, go home without saying anything?” He pulled himself out of the pool, then turned to lend her a hand, easily hoisting her up to stand in front of him on the pool deck.

Before she could reply, she watched as he dropped his gaze to her bare shoulders, no longer covered by the straps of her dress, which had loosened and fallen down her arms. She breathed deeply. His eyes followed the movement of her skin, studying her throat, then moved down to the curves of her breasts. Her heart picked up its pace, beating wildly inside her as this man touched every inch of her body with nothing but his heavy-lidded stare.

She knew she looked a hideous mess. She also knew he wanted her. Not having had much experience with men, Lacey couldn’t really say how she could be so certain. Perhaps it was the furrow in his brow, the way his chest moved as his breaths deepened. The way his tightly coiled body radiated heat and energy so powerful she almost felt it snapping across the scant inches separating them.

But he never touched her.

Finally, Lacey pulled her thoughts together, ordered her pulse to stop racing and took a quick step away from him. He shook his head, as if trying to clear his mind, and she knew he’d been as affected as she by the charged moment.

“No, I can’t just leave,” she said, finally answering his question. “It’s complicated.” She didn’t want complicated right now. For the past several minutes, since she’d leaped into the pool after a stranger, she’d felt uncomplicated pleasure. Sharing laughter and heated glances with a gorgeous man was much better than worrying about J.T.’s plans for the evening.

His plans certainly weren’t going to go over very well if she showed up wearing a soaking wet cocktail dress. How could he officially introduce her to Baltimore society and the magazine executives when she looked like a drowned rat?

“I think I’m going to need to call a friend for help.”

“I should do the same thing. Do you happen to have a cell phone? Mine’s a little wet.” He reached into his pocket, pulling out a phone and a small tape recorder, both of which dripped water.

“There’s a phone over there by the door,” she said. “There’s also a bathroom on the other side of the trampoline. You call first. I’m going to try to do something about the way I look.”

“You’re beyond beautiful,” he said with a wistful smile. “Thanks again for saving my life.” He accompanied the comment with a tender brush of his fingers against her brow as he tucked her hair behind her ear. Nothing else. Just a gentle touch, and she thought her legs were going to shake apart, sending her back into the water.

“You’re welcome.” She finally managed to whisper the words on a slowly exhaled breath.

When he turned away and walked toward the phone, she took a few seconds to collect herself. What was it about the man that so intrigued her? His looks were divine, of course, but there was more than that. Perhaps at the party it had been the self-assurance, the appearance of a man totally comfortable in his own skin, that had attracted her attention. A man who could fit in anywhere, knew where he belonged in his world. Unlike Lacey, who was never quite sure where she was supposed to be in life. But now, after their strange meeting in the pool, it was more than fascination. She found herself wanting to talk to him, to hear his deep voice, to see those lips curl up into a smile meant only for her.

Somehow, Lacey found the strength to get her legs moving again, and she headed straight for the bathroom, leaving him to use the phone in privacy. She definitely needed a minute alone to regain her composure.

When she shut the bathroom door behind her, flipped on the light and saw herself in the mirror, she let out a yelp of dismay. Her wet hair stuck to her scalp like a swim cap. Her makeup was mostly gone, and what was left had shifted around so her mascara was on her cheeks and her lipstick on her chin. One of her pretty gold earrings was missing, and if she wasn’t mistaken, that was a streak of black dye from her dress staining one shoulder.

Beyond beautiful, he’d called her. Beyond repair was more like it.

AFTER his stunning rescuer disappeared into the bathroom, Nate spent about thirty seconds wishing he’d gone ahead and kissed her the way he’d been dying to as they stood by the pool. If there had been only attraction between them, he might have done it. But there had been more than attraction.

He was seriously interested in her. Interested and intrigued, charmed and amused, and he didn’t even know her name! He intended to remedy that, but not right away. He still wasn’t ready for the introduction stage. If she was at a party at J.T.’s house, then she probably knew the name Nate Logan. He didn’t want any preconceptions to interfere with what might prove to be the start of something special.

Ridiculous, really, to think in those terms about a woman he didn’t know. But there had been something magical about her from the moment she’d entered the room. It wasn’t just her underwear, though that, of course, had been very special, too. He couldn’t put his finger on what so intrigued him about her. The pale blue eyes shining with an innate sense of humor? The light dusting of freckles on her nose, which probably drove her crazy but made him want to lean over to kiss every single one? He didn’t know yet, but he planned to find out.

He reached for the phone, then dialed Raul’s cell phone number. When the other man answered, Nate could hear the voices and tinkling glasses in the background, meaning Raul was still at the party. He gave him a slightly abridged version of what had happened, not mentioning his blond rescuer. Or the trampoline. And especially not the black thong panties.

“You mean, you tripped and fell into the pool and now you’re hiding out in the gym in a soaking wet tuxedo?”

Nate tried not to take offense at the laughter in the other man’s voice. “Would you please spread the word that I was called away on an emergency and I’ll try to get back in an hour? I should have enough time to get out of here, race home, change and come back. Okay?”

After Raul agreed, Nate hung up and waited for the woman to come out of the bathroom. He tugged off the hated bow tie, which was nearly choking him now that it was tight and wet, and dropped it and his jacket on the floor. Then he kicked off his ruined shoes and socks. When she still hadn’t emerged, he muttered, “To hell with it,” and started to yank off his white dress shirt. She chose to come out just as he’d pulled the shirt off his shoulders.

The look in her eyes made him glad he worked out.

She froze in the open doorway, her mouth opening slowly but no sound coming out. Her hand rose to her neck, her index finger resting on the sexy spot right in the hollow of her throat. The same spot he’d fantasized about kissing minutes earlier by the pool.

She wore a white terry-cloth bathrobe, and her face was clean, washed free of makeup. The damp golden hair was combed in a sleek wave to brush her shoulders. He couldn’t resist looking down the rest of her, at the slim legs and delicate bare feet revealed by the robe. She’d been gorgeous in the black dress. Now, wearing absolutely nothing but the robe—he somehow imagined she’d shed the minuscule underclothes, which had to have been soaking wet—she was deadly.

When he finally lifted his gaze to her face, he noticed her attention still fixed somewhere around his collarbone. She couldn’t seem to tear her eyes off his chest, at least until he dropped the shirt entirely. Then she moved her stare to his shoulders. She did absolutely nothing but look, and he reacted as if they’d shared a passionate embrace. The woman’s covetous eyes had brought about a strong reaction below his waist. Very strong. Very pressing.

And probably very damn obvious.

“Uh, you can have…” she stuttered.

A hot amazing night with you?

“That is,” she continued awkwardly, “feel free to take…”

You home with me?

“The bathroom. It’s all yours,” she finally said as she stepped into the gym and turned her back to him.

“Sure,” he muttered. “And I’m finished with the phone.”

He somehow refrained from touching her as he walked past her into the bathroom. He shut the door behind him and leaned against it, wondering how the sight of her, a woman he’d known for less than an hour, could reduce him to one large walking case of need. Those eyes, that smile, those pretty feet and delicately boned ankles—she had aroused him more than any other woman had in his lifetime.

When he’d regained control of himself, he stripped off the rest of his wet clothes and toweled off. The towel he’d grabbed from a rack was damp, and as he used it, he caught a scent of something sweet and flowery, like the smell of his mother’s roses that grew on a trellis along the back porch of his parents’ home in West Virginia.

Her perfume. Her scent filled his head, and he lifted the towel to his face to breathe it in. Suddenly realizing what he was doing, he dropped the towel and glanced into the mirror. Had the blow to his head made him utterly delusional? When he saw the trickle of blood dripping from his hairline, he thought maybe it had.

Hanging in a bathroom closet were several of those white terry-cloth robes, like the one she wore. He grabbed one and threw it on to cover his naked body, then opened the door. “Uh, do you think there’s a medicine cabinet or something around here?”

She stood right outside the door, obviously finished with her phone call. “Yes, there is, in the linen closet. Why?”

“I think I need to bandage this.”

When she saw the blood dripping down his face, she gasped and ordered him into the bathroom. “Sit!” she said, pushing him toward a vanity stool.

“I can take care of it, if you could help me find the bandages.”

“Good grief, why didn’t you tell me? Looks like the chair hit you right above the temple and broke the skin.”

“I didn’t realize it was bleeding.”

She stepped closer, leaning down to push his hair back and look at his scalp. He closed his eyes as she nudged his legs apart with her own and moved to stand between them. When she leaned closer, so close he could see a tiny freckle on the top curve of one creamy breast, he couldn’t contain a groan.

“Am I hurting you?”

You’re killing me!

“Not a bit.”

“Can I touch it? I promise to be gentle.”

Touch it? Lady, just shoot me and put me out of my misery.

“I trust you.” He bit the words out.

She took a wet facecloth and brushed it over his cut.

“Ow,” he said with a wince.

“Baby,” she teased. “It’s tiny.”

“It hurts.”

“Big tough man.” She looked down, obviously to make sure he was kidding and she hadn’t really hurt him.

Nate couldn’t resist. “I think a kiss would make it better.”

“Sorry, I’m not kissing your bloody head.”

“I’ll settle for a kiss somewhere else,” he said with a chuckle.

“Somewhere else? Okay. Constitution Hall,” she said dryly. “Five years from Sunday.”

“It’s a date.”

Nate waited patiently while she carefully cleaned his cut, then covered it with some ointment. Every brush of her fingers heightened his awareness. Every time she moved, his senses roared to life. Her scent filled his brain. He memorized the shape of her neck, the curve of her collarbone.

While she helped him, they talked about the party, about the publishing industry, about silly things like thong underwear and swimming with clothes on. He adored the sound of her laughter and used every bit of willpower he had to resist pulling her onto his lap to thoroughly kiss her smiling lips.

At one point, she leaned over and grabbed a small pair of scissors out of the medicine chest on the counter, not noticing, perhaps, that her robe slipped off one shoulder. Nate’s heart rate kicked up. He took a deep breath, wanting to reach out and touch her skin with the tip of his index finger. Only that. Just to see if she felt as soft as she looked.

When she turned her attention to him, she obviously saw his interest. She flushed, her face turning a charming pink. Then she casually tugged the robe up and cinched the belt tighter.

“So, you never told me why you felt the need to hide out from J.T.’s party,” Nate said, trying to break the heavy, charged silence in the bathroom.

She shrugged. “I guess I felt the same way you did. Superficial people. All ambitious. All on the prowl.”

She fell silent, and Nate noticed her hand shaking as she bandaged his cut with some gauze and medical tape. “You okay?”

“I’m wondering how long I can be gone without attracting attention. My friend is going to go to my apartment to get me something else to wear. I can’t just disappear.”

“Right. It’s complicated,” he said, remembering her earlier comment.

“Exactly.”

“Complicated for you? Or for someone else?”

She stepped away from him, from between his legs, and busied herself putting away the medical supplies. “Several someone elses, as a matter of fact,” she admitted.

Nate heard a quiver in her voice and noticed her eyes were shiny and bright. “Hey, are you okay? I didn’t mean to upset you.”

“You didn’t. It’s not you. It’s tonight, this party.” She paused. “J.T.”

Nate snorted. “You know the old reprobate personally, do you?”

She paused, her eyes widening with surprise. “You know him too?”

Nate shrugged. “As much as I want to. Has he been bothering you? Is that what’s going on?”

A rueful smile spread across her face. “He’s bothered me. Not in the way you think.” Then she shook her head and turned to put away the medicine kit. She took her time about it, peering intently at something on the shelf of the linen closet with her back to him. Nate saw her take something off the shelf and slip it into the oversize pocket of her robe before she closed the closet door.

When she turned, her eyes were bright and sparkling. She bit the corner of her lip, suddenly looking both mischievous and nervous. Nate considered asking her if she’d just stolen something from J.T. Birmingham’s bathroom, wondering if the superrich used some exotic type of toothpaste, but she distracted him by pointing to his robe.

“So is someone bringing you some clothes?”

“No,” Nate admitted as he stood and followed her out of the bathroom. Some of the forced intimacy caused by their close proximity in the bathroom evaporated in the cavernous gym area. “I planned to run home to my apartment to change. Unfortunately, while I was undressing I realized my keys are no longer in the pocket of my wet pants. I imagine they’re somewhere at the bottom of the pool, meaning I take another swim or I come up with another way to get some clothes.”

“Could you get someone to go by your place and pick something up for you?”

“Yeah, I probably could. My neighbor keeps a spare key for me, so I could call and ask him to let someone in,” he replied. “In the meantime, I guess we both hide out here.” He walked to the trampoline and leaned against its edge. “So have you got all the jumping out of your system?”

“I think so.”

“It looked like fun,” he said, trying to tempt her.

“Help yourself,” she said. “I promise not to peek at your underwear.”

He contemplated telling her he wasn’t wearing any, but didn’t think it wise.

“So, why do you dislike J.T.?” she asked as she walked over and sat on the bench of a weight-lifting machine.

Since there was nowhere else to sit unless they moved to the pool area, Nate went ahead and hopped onto the edge of the trampoline, sitting on the padded springs. “I don’t dislike him. He’s a heck of a businessman. But I see him for what he is.”

“That being?”

“I don’t know. What do you call a man in his sixties whose new fourth wife is less than half his age? Plus he still manages to hit on any attractive single woman he meets.” Nate sighed in disgust. “My sister came in to the office to visit last month. She was holding her one-year-old baby, and J.T. still flirted with her nonstop.”

“Some women find him charming.”

He snorted. “Maybe his bank account. Believe me, if I had his money, there are plenty of things I’d do with it other than invest it in future alimony payments.”

“Like?”

“I dunno. Feed the hungry? Help inner-city moms pay for day care?”

“How politically correct,” she said, her dry tone displaying her skepticism.

He took no offense. She didn’t know him, after all. Why should she believe he had any interest in social issues? “Okay, then I guess I’d buy a private island.”

She grinned, stood and walked over to stand beside the trampoline. “Can I join you?”

“On my island?” He gave her a playful smile and gestured to the black fabric surface. “Please do.”

He held out a hand to help her climb up. Forcing himself to look away, he deliberately tried not to notice when her robe gapped open again, displaying several long inches of pale, smooth thigh.

“And what would you do on this island?” she asked.

He slid back, pulling her with him until they both sat on the surface of the trampoline. Stretching out to lie on his back, he put his hands behind his head and looked at the ceiling. “I’d ban cocktail parties.”

“Good start,” she conceded as she stretched out to lie beside him. “What else would you ban in your kingdom?”

“Bow ties. Tuxedos.”

“I think tuxedos are very sexy,” she murmured.

Nate glanced over to find her staring innocently at the ceiling, as if she hadn’t just said something blatantly flirtatious. Or perhaps she hadn’t. Maybe he’d misread her.

He hoped not.

“Can you ban control-top panty hose, too? And size-one cover models who make the rest of us look fat?”

“You got it. And self-help books. No Mars and Venus crap allowed in the libraries on my island.”

“You don’t care for relationship books?”

He turned to look at her, waiting until she met his eye to answer. “The right couple involved in the right relationship has no need for books. When it’s there, when it’s real, you know it. And if it isn’t, no book is going to make it work.”

She held his stare, her eyes wide, glittering in the low lighting of the room. “Is it there for you? Have you found your perfect partner?”

Nate was unable to resist the slow smile that curled across his lips. He reached over, tucking a nearly dry blond curl behind her ear. “Ask me tomorrow,” he whispered.

Her eyes widened as she caught his meaning.

He knew it was crazy, given their brief relationship, but something was happening between them. They were in sync. They spoke with the same rhythm, laughed with the same sense of natural joy…looked at each other with the same sense of intrigue.

It was more than physical, more than titillating or exciting, more than a delightful interlude.

“Something’s happening here, isn’t it? Something amazing.” He didn’t move toward her, letting his words and his voice be the only indicators of the depth of his interest in her. The next move was hers.

She made it. When her eyes narrowed slightly, zoning in on his mouth, he knew she wanted to kiss him. She leaned closer, tentatively, and he didn’t move, knowing somehow that she had to do this, had to be the initiator.

Then, with a soft sigh, she brushed her lips against his. Focusing all his thoughts on the sensation, he remained still, letting himself be kissed by this woman whose name he didn’t yet know. Letting her move closer, move over him, cup one side of his face with her soft, cool palm.

She tilted her head, parted her lips slightly. When her tongue slid out tentatively to taste him, Nate’s restraint began to skid away. He groaned and finally moved his arms to pull her on top of him.

The kiss deepened. Emboldened by his response, she increased the tempo, driving him crazy with each caress, each stroke of her sweet, wet tongue. He met her every move, anticipated and joined her when she turned her head for deeper access. Somehow, some way, she slid off him, falling to her back on the bouncy surface of the trampoline, pulling him over her. Or perhaps he pushed her. He didn’t know. Thought was gone, replaced entirely by sensation.

Nate waited for the voice in his head to tell him to stop, to insist it was insane to be making out with a woman he’d known an hour. But he couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on anything but the way she tasted—like sweet, intoxicating wine. The way she smelled—of roses and springtime. The way she made him feel—on fire and nearly out of control.

The gentle give-and-take of their bodies moving together on the springy surface filled his mind with images of making love to her. Right here. Right now. While a party continued in another part of the house, while his boss looked for him and his tuxedo lay wet on the bathroom floor. All he wanted was to toss away their robes and roll over her, onto her, into her, on this little fabric island. To see if this sense of rightness between them extended to the physical as well as the emotional.

It would. He knew it would. Knew it the way he knew the roads leading to his family home, the way he knew the right words to use in a story, the way he knew his own nature.

This beautiful blond stranger with the laughing eyes and the smiling lips could be the person he’d waited for all his life. He knew.

“Can something like this really happen?” she asked when he moved his mouth from hers to press kiss after kiss on her jaw, her earlobe, the long column of her throat. Her voice held longing. Desire. Wonder.

“It can,” he whispered as he moved lower to kiss her shoulder. “It is.”

Then he couldn’t think, couldn’t focus on anything except the feel of her body, smooth, pale and ripe beneath the terry-cloth robe. He inhaled her sweet flowery scent, knowing it had imprinted itself on his brain and he’d never be able to sit in a rose garden without thinking of her for as long as he lived.

A little hitch of a moan emerged from the back of her throat when he slipped his hand under the robe to find the curve of her breast. She arched into him, offering herself, crying out her pleasure as he teased her pebbled flesh with his fingers.

Somehow their robes slipped open until they hung from their shoulders. Not shrugged off, but covering nothing. Skin met skin. The hair on his chest rubbed her pert nipples, seducing him further. Unable to resist, he bent over to nibble gently on the curve of her flesh before taking the taut tip into his mouth. She cried out, buried her hands in his hair and leaned toward him.

Her thighs parted slightly, and Nate groaned as he became aware of a deeper scent, an earthier essence of their combined arousal. His body responded, instinctively driving toward her, pressing against her, silently asking her in an age-old dance of desire, Will you?

Her eyes opened lazily, her breath growing choppy as she slid her legs apart, welcoming him, giving him her answer. Yes.

It made no sense. They were strangers. They were in someone else’s house. But Nate knew if he didn’t take this miraculously sensuous gift he would wonder what if for the rest of his life.

As if sensing his thoughts, she said, “I know. We’ll wonder later how this happened. Not now. Now I want your hands on me.”

Nate was happy to oblige. He ran the flat of his palm down her body from her throat, over the full curves of her breast, down her soft, flat belly. Lower. When he slipped his fingers between her legs he found her slick and wet. She shivered and let out a moan, which Nate echoed. “You’re sure?” he asked huskily, giving her one more out, though it nearly killed him to think of not finishing what they’d started.

Instead of answering, she reached into her robe, which lay open beneath her. When she retrieved something from the pocket and held it up to show him, Nate smiled.

“I don’t know why I took this when I saw the box in J.T.’s linen closet.” She tentatively bit the corner of her lip as the two of them stared at the small packet in her hand. “Is it wicked? Have I shocked you?”

Nate laughed softly, then reached out and plucked the condom from between her fingers. “Not wicked. Delightful.”

He lowered his mouth to hers for another long, wet, languorous kiss. When her hands moved down his body in an appreciative, lingering caress, he almost shook with his need to be inside her. Then she moved her hand lower, taking his erection in her hand. Her head fell back and her eyes closed as she explored him with her fingers until Nate had to physically pull away to avoid ending this interlude a hell of a lot sooner than he wanted.

“I want you inside me now, please,” she whispered, her eyes still closed, a sultry smile curving her pink lips.

Needing no further invitation, Nate sheathed himself with the condom, then moved between her thighs, taking another moment to taste the warm, moist skin of her neck.

She whimpered and slid one incredibly soft leg around his hips, urging him closer until he was poised at the hot, wet entrance of her body. He’d barely begun to move into her when she thrust her hips up, engulfing him, taking what he’d intended to offer her slowly and gently.

“Yes,” she cried, her voice echoing in the huge room as she took him all the way inside her.

Nate had to stop, to suck in a breath. Had to get accustomed to the most intensely pleasurable sensation he’d ever experienced. It went beyond sex, beyond physical. He felt like it was his first time. He’d never imagined that physical sensations could so quickly be enhanced by emotional ones.

“I can’t believe…” she began, then paused to gasp as he slowly withdrew from her body, only to plunge again. Deep. Fast. His every movement was enhanced by the bounce of the trampoline, setting a wonderful, unique rhythm to which they both began to dance in earnest.

“I’ve never…that is, I think I’m going to…” When her cries grew louder and he saw the telltale flush rising in her body, Nate knew she was close to climaxing.

“Yes, do,” he whispered against her lips as he changed his movements, rocking against her until she hissed her delight. She caught his motion, using his lower body to apply pressure to her most sensitive spot. Nate slowed his movements, allowing her to take what she needed, watching her face as she finally reached that peak of pleasure. And only after he saw that moment, heard a fulfilled cry that bordered on a scream, did he follow her to his own soul-shattering release.

Afterward, Nate watched her beautiful face, watched her breaths slow, her color return to normal. Finally, when she opened her eyes and gave him a pleased, languorous smile, he gently pulled out of her and pressed a soft kiss to her lips.

“I need to know your name,” she said dreamily. “So I know what to cry out the next time.”

“And I need to know yours,” he finally said when their lips broke apart again. “So I can know who now owns me body and soul.”

She stretched lethargically and kissed his jaw. Lifting a shoulder, she allowed the robe to fall completely off one arm. As he bent lower to taste that sweet, smooth skin, she whispered, “My name’s…”

Before she could finish, the door opened and an overhead light flashed on. Nate didn’t want to believe it. He wanted to believe it even less when he looked toward the open doorway and saw who stood there.

“J.T.” he said. “Oh, boy.”

“Oh, boy is right,” the woman in his arms echoed, her horror undisguised.

J.T. Birmingham entered the room with Raul directly behind him. Nate couldn’t meet his friend’s eyes, which had grown as round as saucers as he spied Nate and the gorgeous blonde tangled together—arms, legs and bathrobes. Wanting to protect her, Nate shifted slightly so they could see only his terry-cloth-covered back. She took the moment when she was shielded from their stares to pull her robe together over her naked, trembling body.

“Son, you’re wearing my robe,” J.T. finally said, his voice calm and steady, betraying no hint of his mood.

Yeah, he was caught by a millionaire, wearing the man’s robe during the middle of an important cocktail party at which he was a guest of honor. Caught having sex with a gorgeous stranger on that man’s trampoline.

“Can things get any worse?” he muttered.

“And,” J.T. finally continued, “you’re lying on top of my daughter.”

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