Книга - Nobody’s Princess

Nobody's Princess
Jennifer Greene


MR. AUGUSTPrince of a guy: Alex Brennan. Honest, loyal… a fairy-tale hero. Damsel in distress: Regan Stuart. Jaded, cynical… detests fairy tales.ONCE UPON A TIME…there was a free spirit named Regan who believed in Prince Charming and happily-ever-afters. Then she kissed one frog too many. So instead of searching for knights in shining armor, she armed herself with hard-edged realism to ward off would-be Romeos… .Alex knew that love hurt, but he also knew Regan needed to be saved. And though he was nobody's hero, he wanted to prove to this stubborn beauty that she was his princess… .MAN OF THE MONTH: This guy proves chivalry isn't dead!







He’d Always Been A Romantic, (#u82958ddf-096e-58cb-aad3-90665ed9c923)Letter to Reader (#u08d0797f-406b-5072-852e-6cd5a4ee51d1)Title Page (#u6b6eea75-e9a6-58f9-9930-0da364761d89)About the Author (#u4e7161e9-9c91-51e6-88c4-a4c6bd585496)Chapter One (#uffccf6e7-c760-52cd-8872-e710d2d0ea7e)Chapter Two (#u315b7309-00ad-5555-ba94-98e52537769c)Chapter Three (#u57eab590-8fd6-5b65-8315-a62514408802)Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)


He’d Always Been A Romantic,

always liked every part of loving a woman, from the teasing to the wooing to the savoring power of pleasing a woman in passion. Until Gwen’s defection, he’d never had a reason to doubt his ability to satisfy a woman. But with Regan, those needle pricks of doubt were full-scale daggers. He had to be nuts to think of falling in love with her. She was a sensuous woman, right down to her fingertips. He wouldn’t have a clue how to please her.

And the thought of failing her rammed a tight feeling in his chest. She was vulnerable. She’d been hurt by men before. And, dammit, he wasn’t going to be another in her long list of so-called heroes who’d turned out to have feet of clay....


Dear Reader,

This month we have some special treats in store for you, beginning with Nobody’s Princess, another terrific MAN OF THE MONTH from award-winning writer Jennifer Greene. Our heroine believes she’s just another run-of the-mill kind of gal...but naturally our hero knows better. And he sets out to prove to her that he is her handsome prince...and she is his princess!

Joan Elliott Pickart’s irresistible Bishop brothers are back in Texas Glory, the next installment of her FAMILY MEN series. And Amy Fetzer brings us her first contemporary romance, a romantic romp concerning parenthood—with a twist—in Anybody’s Dad. Peggy Moreland’s heroes are always something special, as you’ll see in A Little Texas Two-Step, the latest in her TROUBLE IN TEXAS series.

And if you’re looking for fun and frolic—and a high dose of sensuality—don’t miss Patty Salier’s latest, The Honeymoon House. If emotional and dramatic is more your cup of tea, then you’ll love Kelly Jamison’s Unexpected Father.

As always, there is something for everyone here at Silhouette Desire, where you’ll find the very best contemporary romance.

Enjoy!






Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: PO. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3


Jennifer Greene

Nobody’s Princess










www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)


JENNIFER GREENE

lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and two children Before writing full-time, she worked as a teacher and a personnel manager. Michigan State University honored her as an “outstanding woman graduate” for her work with women on campus.

Ms. Greene has written more than fifty category romances, for which she has won numerous awards, including two RIT As from the Romance Writers of America in the Best Short Contemporary Books category, and a Career Achievement award from Romantic Times magazine.


One

Alex Brennan had never considered himself a hero, but he believed that a good man lived his life by certain unshakable rules. The strong had a responsibility to protect the weak. A decent man never backed down from a principle. A guy without honor was lower than pond scum.

That code of values was so ingrained that Alex rarely even thought about it. Until recently.

Two weeks ago—specifically the day his bride stood him up at the altar—Alex had accidentally started noticing that a bunch of heroes throughout history had a common problem.

Good guys had notoriously bad luck with their girls—and it was never more obvious than in the movies. Bogart, for instance, was left standing alone at the end of Casablanca. Gable never did get Scarlett. Costner went through all that bodyguarding nonsense with Whitney and ended up with a song instead of the girl.

Late-afternoon sunshine speckled light and shadow on the dusty bookshelves of the public library. A winsome, whispery breeze redolent with magnolias drifted through the long, tall windows. The library was as lively as a morgue—which suited Alex’s mood to a T. No place on the planet beat Silvertree, North Carolina, on the first of May—every sane person in town had succumbed to the irresistible “spring fever” day and was out playing hookey. The deserted library offered him an ideal place to brood. He thumped a pencil end-to-end on the old, scarred oak table, as he further considered the problem.

Those old tales seemed...well, telling. Heroes might conquer dragons, build a couple of empires, save mankind from some horrendous evil. But being good guys didn’t seem to guarantee success with their best girls. Maybe honor wasn’t sexy. Good guys just didn’t seem to stir a woman’s heart the way the bad boys did. A taste of wicked not only seemed to appeal to the delicate female gender...but they seemed to find good guys downright boring.

A loud kerthump made Alex’s head shoot up. Someone had dropped a book in one of the nearby aisles. The thump was followed by a colorful expletive in a throaty female alto. Except for the librarians at the front desk, Alex had thought he had the place to himself. But beyond being temporarily startled by the noise, he paid no attention.

Research tomes were precisely stacked in an impenetrable blockade all around him. Technically he’d popped into-the library to prepare for tomorrow’s class. High school kids today hated learning history as much as he had—which was why he’d broken with all Brennan tradition and done a damn fool crazy thing. He’d become a teacher.

Alex never really felt he had a choice. Someone had to make history exciting to the kids. Someone had to convince them that history was more than dry dates, but a record of drama and courage and the power of the human spirit. Unless the kids understood how the human race screwed up, the next generation was just going to repeat the same mistakes. Teaching history was about making heroes come alive and serving them up to kids in the way of role models.

Of course, a teacher had to keep the bubble gum generation awake to instill any of that. It was challenging to keep a dog awake on the semester covering medieval history, but Alex theorized that he could spice it up with some King Arthur lore—hence the weighty research tomes piled on the table around him. The ideals in the Arthurian legend were the stuff that lifted mankind from the Dark Ages—honor, loyalty, justice, chivalry. Camelot was meant to be a land where fairness and truth were nurtured, where beauty thrived, where love was an ideal.

But Alex had barely opened the first text before the dark, broody mood kidnapped his attention. The problem was the legendary King Arthur. He was another blasted hero who’d lost his best girl. Another good guy who hadn’t done one thing wrong. But because honor couldn’t compete with a younger, sexier stud named Lancelot, Arthur had lost everything.

Alex wasn’t inclined to take the comparison too far. He was no King Arthur. Still, he knew that precise feeling of loss. Painfully, intimately well.

Another kerthump sounded from the next book aisle over. Then another. Followed by a trail of extremely loud and colorful curses from the same throaty female alto.

Alex shot an exasperated scowl in the general direction of Ms. Klutz. No one, but no one, ever hung out in the myths and legends section but him. And especially on this to-die-for spring day, he should have been guaranteed a private refuge in this back corner of the library. Couldn’t a guy wallow in a deep, dark case of self-pity in peace and quiet?

Apparently not. He’d barely thrown down his pencil before the lady abruptly charged around the corner, juggling a good dozen hefty books and heading for him at a dead run.

For a second Alex froze like the iceberg in the Titanic’s path. Not that the woman was so big—the tonnage of books teetering in her arms looked bigger than she did. But she was obviously hustling to get them to the table and set them down before they all toppled and fell. The mission was doomed. Alex caught a fleeting impression of flashing scarlets and wild silky hair before disaster struck.

She made it to the oak table, but not before the volumes started shifting and spilling. Her river of books crashed into the sea of his. Several sailed to the floor; one ended on his lap.

Curses followed. Not his. Being out of breath didn’t seem to limit her vocabulary, and totally incomprehensibly—once she got rid of her armload—she started laughing.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry! You just can’t imagine the day I’ve had. It’s been one thing after another. ... Here, I’ll get that. You don’t have to help—”

Alex instinctively sprang to his feet. Helping a lady in trouble was second nature, an integral part of the Southern gentleman’s code he grew up with—but in this case, basic survival instincts were the far more powerful motivator. God knew how much more damage she could do if left to her own devices.

She was breathlessly huffing and puffing as she bounced down to pick up the fallen books. On one of her bounces back up, her elbow came mortifyingly close to a poke in his crotch. He opened his mouth, closed it faster than a fish and caught a noseful of some spicy, exotic perfume. By the time he’d rescued the last of the fallen books, she’d managed to knock over more of his meticulously neat research stack.

“I’ll get it, I’ll get it. Sheesh, I’m sorry—”

“Nothing to be sorry about. Accidents happen.”

“All I had to do was make two trips, but no, I was trying to save time and carry all the books at one time. It’s just that they were all so heavy—”

“I can see that.”

“I must have sounded like a bull in a china shop, but I never expected to find anyone else back here. I’ve come to think of this as my sacred spot because no one else is ever back here. My air conditioner at home went on the fritz, and I just needed to get in a couple hours’ work where it was cool—you don’t mind if I sit at the same table, do you?”

Mind? Alex craved peace. He needed quiet. The Silvertree Public Library had two stories of sprawling space for her to choose another table. And not that a gentleman would ever lift his territorial leg on a lady, but he was here first. Still, manners had been imprinted so deeply in the men in his family that his response was automatic.

“No problem,” he said, and then swiftly pulled a book in front of him and ducked his head.

Eventually she quit huffing and puffing. Eventually she sat down. Eventually she noisily rearranged her hodgepodge of books and clattered in her purse for a pen, and finally—there was a God—she settled down.

Alex couldn’t.

He vaguely recognized her. Typical of North Carolina small towns, Silvertree was a friendly place. Maybe they’d pulled into the same gas station, or he’d seen her in a grocery store or on the street. Alex couldn’t imagine a man younger than 105 who’d fail to notice her.

She was several inches shorter than his six feet, but her figure—delicately speaking—could inspire a guy to crash a car or two to get a closer look. Her hair was caramel brown, shoulder length, with silky scoops of curls all over the place. No order. No control. Which about summed up the rest of her as well, Alex mused.

A long sun-shaped earring dangled from one ear, a long moon earring from the other. Apparently they were a matched set. She was wearing a scallop-necked red T-shirt—snug enough to give a man a heart attack—and a long skirt that was a swirl of colors: fuchsias, oranges and reds all blurred together. Her sandals showed off red-painted toenails—about the same color as her strawberry lipstick. Bracelets dangling clanged every time she moved.

Alex wasn’t trying to sneak looks at her, but she moved a lot. And every time he glanced up, faster than bad news, he found her hazel eyes on him.

Her eyes were huge. Deep set and as lushly dramatic as the rest of her. She wasn’t precisely pretty, but her oval face had a complexion as pale and soft as vanilla, with high broad cheekbones and a full sensual mouth. Her face was unignorably striking, and her figure was downright dangerous. The skirt concealed her legs, but she didn’t appear to be carrying any spare pounds—except upstairs. The stretchy T-shirt made no secret of the lush, voluptuous curves above her waist.

She was...Alex searched his mind for the right descriptive term. Sexy shot to his brain faster than a bullet, but was swiftly, uneasily rejected. Hell, he hadn’t thought of a sexist term like that since he was a teenager. Alarming was more like it.

In fact, alarming seemed to describe her perfectly. There was nothing wrong with her haunting hazel eyes, flashy style or mesmerizing red mouth. But Alex’s taste in women had always been more like...well, like Gwen.

His fiancée had been petite. A lady, inside and out. Gwen was soft-spoken and soft-mannered, prone to wearing fragile feminine pastels that suited her blond-and-blue-eyed fairness. She’d been everything Alex had ever dreamed of in a woman. Everything he’d waited a lifetime to find.

Until she’d left him at the altar, and run off with a ten-years-younger, good-looking rogue named Lance.

“You look really caught up in sad thoughts.”

Alex’s head shot up. “Beg your pardon?”

Those huge hazel eyes were all over his face again, studying him as intrusively as a cop could frisk a suspect. “I don’t mean to pry. You just had this look, as if you were carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Are you okay?”

No, he wasn’t okay. He wasn’t remotely okay. But he didn’t know the woman from Adam, couldn’t believe she would ask a total stranger such a nosy question. And for sure, he couldn’t imagine how to answer it.

His reticence seemed to fly right by her. The undauntable woman smiled...a slow, warm smile that crinkled those eyes into pinpoints of light. Impulsively she leaned over the table and extended a hand, offering him a view down the scooped neck of her T-shirt that turned his throat desert dry.

“I’m Regan. Regan Stuart. I know I’ve seen your face around town somewhere—do you teach at the college?”

“No. That is, I’m a teacher—but I teach high school history, nothing at the college level—”

“Well, I’m a teacher, too. I thought I might have seen you around the Whitaker College library before—I’m an assistant prof, teach women’s studies. And you’re—?”

“Alex Brennan.” He didn’t want to give up his name, any more than he wanted to shake her hand, but there seemed no way of avoiding either without being rude. Her palm clapped against his in an exuberant, pumping handshake, as forthright and blunt as she was. Her skin was soft, though, and warmer than sunlight.

She dropped her hand quickly enough, but his pulse was suddenly skidding down a slick, unfamiliar road At thirty-four, Alex was more than familiar with hormones, but it was one thing to recognize her attractiveness, and another to feel a kindling responsiveness to her. He loved Gwen. And Gwen had always inspired loving, sensual feelings in him, but not this strange, flash-fire kind of sexual awareness.

It made him feel guilty. And nervous. Quickly he stuffed his hands in his pockets and hoped she didn’t notice his sudden awkwardness.

She didn’t seem to. Nothing seemed to quell her gregarious friendliness. “Well, nice to meet you, Alex. It’s really rare I find anyone in the myths and legends section but me, and I couldn’t help but notice all your books. ... You’re preparing for a class?”

“Yes. And I’m afraid I really have a lot to do.” Thankfully, she took the hint. Her head ducked, then his head ducked. Pages turned. A spring-laden breeze whispered in the open windows. It was peaceful just like that.

For maybe two minutes.

“Do you like teaching?”

Hell. It was like trying to concentrate with a fire alarm going off next to him. He wasn’t sure why she kept ringing his personal fire alarm, but she was far too disturbing a woman to possibly ignore.

“Yeah, I love teaching,” he answered her, and heard the instinctive stubborn note in his voice. He got grief all the time—especially from his brother, Merle—on his choice of career. The Brennans were one of the old, landed families in Silvertree. Few in the community could fathom what the Sam Hill he was doing in a classroom. Alex didn’t care what anyone thought, but he was used to no one understanding.

“Me, too. I love working with young people. I even believe that corny line from the Whitney Houston song about ‘the children are our future.’ Can’t imagine doing anything else.” All animated, she leaned forward, giving him another throat-parching view. “You’ve really got me curious, though. I see all the books around you on Camelot and the Arthurian legend...but I thought you said you taught history?”

“I do. But we’re in the medieval stretch. The kids are in no big hustle to get excited about 1066 and the Battle of Hastings.”

“I’m with them.” Her eyes danced with teasing humor. “I can well imagine that King Arthur is an easier sell.”

“Anything’s an easier sell than the Dark Ages. And it’s not like I can’t teach them something from the Camelot legend. Half our political concepts about equality and democracy came from the ideals emerging in that time....” Alex suddenly frowned, startled to realize he was actually inviting more conversation with her.

She seemed at ease, as if they were old friends. “Yeah, I practically inhaled the Camelot story when I was a kid. I’m no believer in heroes, but Arthur seemed to be one of the true-blue good guys. It’s just a shame he was so brain smart and so life dumb.”

“Life dumb?”

“Uh-huh. All those brilliant ideas and ideals, but he didn’t seem to have a dog’s sense about people. I mean, look who he picked for his pals. He trusted Lancelot—who wooed away his wife right under his nose. And he fell for Guinevere—who had to be one of the shallowest nitwits of all times. All it took to impress her was a young guy in a pair of tights with a big sword. If she’d had a brain, she’d have recognized that Arthur was by far the better man.”

Temporarily, women taking off with other men was an extremely sore spot with Alex. So was the size of the other guy’s sword. He had no desire to pick that emotional scab around a stranger, but somehow he’d gotten embroiled in this conversation and he couldn’t just drop it now. “I think you may have misunderstood Arthur. There was nothing wrong with his judgment. He simply recognized that no one can help who they fall in love with. And he never blamed either Lancelot or Guinevere for being true to their feelings.”

“Sheesh. Don’t tell me you really believe all that poppycock?”

“Poppycock?”

He caught a dazzling sparkle of white teeth when she grinned again. Those dangerous hazel eyes of hers were still studying him. Alex couldn’t imagine why. Nothing in his mirror reflected anything unusual—he was an ordinary six feet, blue eyes, brown hair, and he wore a beard because he was too absentminded to remember to shave. Truth to tell, he tended to forget his looks altogether, but he really doubted there was anything in his appearance to attract a strikingly sensual woman like Regan.

At the moment Alex doubted his ability to attract a stone.

Yet she was leaning forward again, as if nothing on the planet interested her but talking with him. “Well, I’ve never taught King Arthur, but you’re not the only one teaching myths and legends. I’m teaching three courses this term on fairy tales.”

“Fairy tales,” he echoed.

“Fairy tales at the adult level. For women. In other words, all the poppycock lies we’ve sold ourselves through history...knights in shining armor, happily-ever-afters, heroes—all that humorous boloney.”

“You think heroes are boloney?”

“Did I, um, touch a nerve?”

Of course she didn’t. He didn’t even know her. He just felt compelled to tactfully correct the drastic misconception in her thinking. “You don’t believe in heroic behavior? That a critical part of the teaching job is to instill ideals and role models in young people?”

“Well, sure. But I also believe young women have been brought up for centuries, hoping to be dazzled by a knight in shining armor, and there is no such beast. Guinevere was a perfect example. Maybe Lancelot looked good in a pair of tights, but he betrayed his best friend and poached another guy’s woman besides. She suckered into a classic jerk parading as a hero. She’d have been better off understanding that there was no such animal...you’re looking much better.”

“Of all the one-sided, twisted interpretations of—um, excuse me?” Her last comment had seemed to come out of nowhere.

She cupped her chin in her palm, a thoughtful expression on her face. “You really are looking better,” she observed. “Color shooting up your neck. Life flashing in your eyes. You looked like you’d lost your best friend when I first sat down.”

“I did.”

“A love affair gone wrong?”

“As wrong as you can get. She didn’t show up at the altar, and I...” Alex’s voice died. Frustration clawed through him. She had everything so confused about the Arthurian legend that he’d gotten all riled up and just hadn’t been thinking. He couldn’t believe he’d mentioned anything about his ex-fiancée. A man took his blows on the chin. Until that instant, he’d cut off anyone who’d tried direct conversation or sympathy with him about Gwen. Something about Regan was mangling his mind.

And the terrifying woman suddenly reached her hand across the table to squeeze his. “Aw, hell, I was afraid it was something like that. What a painful thing to go through. I’m really sorry.”

A librarian wheeled a squeaky cart of books down a nearby aisle. A pair of teenagers jostled each other as they walked past. The magnolia-scented sunlight was still coming through the windows...nothing was new, nothing different. Except for his sudden disturbingly intimate awareness of Regan that made no sense at all.

She couldn’t possibly care about a man she didn’t know, yet he had the craziest feeling she understood. The warm empathy in her eyes radiated sincerity. He wasn’t expecting an emotional connection—not to her, not to anyone. And seeping through his nerves was the slow, alluring electric current flowing between her hand and his. For the second time he withdrew his hand and slammed the misbehaving appendage back in his pocket. “We were arguing,” he said awkwardly, swiftly.

Another one of those slow, mischievous smiles. “Yeah. I don’t believe in heroes. You clearly do. And I do love a good fight—especially on this subject—but I don’t usually pick an argument with total strangers. Even on Tuesdays.”

“Just the other six days of the week?”

She chuckled. “Only on days when I sense someone else likes a good, rousing debate. But besides that, you just looked like you could use a little distraction. Sometimes it helps to talk with an outsider, you know? It’s not like I know you. What’s the harm?”

That was the whole problem. There seemed no harm. She was unlike anyone in his life—or anyone who was likely to be—and she kept looking at him with those deep, soft eyes. And out it came. The whole corny story of a man who’d waited to marry, unwilling to settle for less than a soul mate, someone who seemed as compatible with him as two sides of the same coin. When he’d found her, his whole world seemed right. For the same reason, once she took off, his whole life seemed wrong. He couldn’t shake the feelings of loss. Nothing he’d ever believed in seemed sure anymore. He had never guessed she was unhappy. He couldn’t grasp how he’d failed her.

Regan listened. He didn’t know for how long. Every time he quit talking, she’d ask him another question in that whiskey-smooth alto of hers. Maybe her voice had him mesmerized. Hell, maybe she did. But she didn’t let up on those soft-voiced, nosy, prying questions until he was spent.

For a few moments after that, silence fell between them. Alex was suddenly aware the bright, afternoon sunshine had faded to the hushed stillness of twilight. He felt as if he was awakening from some fruitcake spell, where he’d been someone else for a few minutes—positively not himself, because Alex Brennan never spilled his private life in front of anyone.

Then, suddenly, it was over. Regan glanced at her bangle watch and yelped in surprise. She shot to her feet. “Good grief, I didn’t realize the time. I have to go!”

She grabbed her unwieldy purse and three books, then darted over to his side of the table, tilted her head and kissed him. If Alex could have guessed the kiss was coming, he might have flown for Tahiti. Or stopped her before it could happen. Or swung her into his lap and responded like a wild man who’d lost all his marbles.

He never had time to make any of those choices. The kiss was over almost before it began. He barely caught the sensation of her sun-warm mouth and the tease of a sweet, forbidden taste before she sprang upright again. She jogged back to the other side of the table, scooped up the rest of her research texts, dropped one, cursed, noisily scraped the chair...and then charged out of his life as fast as she’d charged in.

Alex sat immobile for several more minutes. His heart was slamming, his palms damp, his pulse skittery. The last time he remembered suffering the symptoms of shock, one of those female hurricanes had been terrorizing the North Carolina coast.

The hurricanes had been real. Alex wasn’t absolutely positive that Regan Stuart was.

There seemed some telling evidence that she was an illusion. He’d always been comfortable around women. Quiet women. Quiet, restful, peaceful women. Regan was as blunt, bold and sexy as a man’s definition of dynamite. No one he could conceivably have opened up to about his life. No one who could possibly have kissed him.

Spring fever addled men’s minds. Alex hadn’t slept well in weeks now. Losing Gwen had dominated his mind, the wound raw and unhealable, and he figured he wasn’t going to recover until he understood why she left him, jettisoned the self-pity and faced up to how he’d failed her.

Under those conditions, maybe any man could daydream up the magic of a witchy, wild Lorelei.

Alex shook his head and slowly started to neatly, efficiently gather up his research tomes. He could halfway buy the illusion thing. He wasn’t himself. He wasn’t thinking clearly. But Regan had definitely been real—and the proof of that was the one element in their encounter that nagged at Alex’s mind like a beesting. It had nothing to do with her intimidatingly earthy sensuality or her looks or anything like that. Alex couldn’t imagine a man alive who’d fail to notice those things—even if he were in love with another woman.

But Regan was a woman who didn’t believe in heroes.

From the time Gwen left him, Alex had felt as if he’d lost half his soul. Now, though, he couldn’t help but wonder how Regan had lost half of hers.

She hadn’t said one thing about herself...and as Alex exited the library and headed for home, he doubted that he’d ever find out the answer. In a town as small as Silvertree, it wasn’t that unlikely that he’d run into her. But a repeat of that strange, impossible, unsettling encounter couldn’t possibly happen again.


Two

Hot damn. Regan watched the ticker tape on CNBC roll past. Her Disney stock was up a quarter point. She hit the Off button on the remote control and sat back to bask.

Teaching was her life’s work, but Regan theorized that no woman could stay sane without some vices. She’d been wildly gambling in the stock market for six months now. Well...perhaps wildly was a slight exaggeration. Considering that her entire stock portfolio consisted of five shares of stock, Bill Gates didn’t need to worry about competition from her quite yet.

“But our time is coming, Scarlett. I’m getting into this business tycoon stuff. And at the rate we’re going, I figure we’ll be millionaires by the twenty-third century—maybe even a couple weeks sooner.” The black-and-white angora cat who’d just leapt onto her lap seemed unimpressed with this psychic forecast. She nuzzled insistently against Regan’s chin, shedding tufts of fur in every direction. “What? You want a cat treat? Don’t tell me your food dish is empty again. It just can’t be.”

At the mention of food, Scarlett O’Haira bolted off her lap and aimed in the direction of the kitchen. Regan followed, considering that the cat, like her namesake, was pretty but dumb. She invariably fell for the wrong men without ever considering the consequences.

Regan couldn’t scold. She’d once suffered the same problem.

Dusk was just falling, making the teal-and-cream kitchen shadowy and gloomy. Still, she refrained from turning on the light and carefully tiptoed across the room as soundlessly as Scarlett. The newest litter of kittens was snoozing in a pillow-lined box in the corner. None of them had a good-looking daddy—and for damn sure, they wouldn’t stay sleeping long.

“You’re getting fixed as soon as you wean these,” Regan whispered to Scarlett, who’d heard the warning before and was more interested in gourmet food and cat treats. Silent as a ghost, Regan crouched down and lifted the ten-pound sack of cat food to the counter.

One kitten stirred. The two adult females froze in unison. Both knew there would be no peace once the hellions woke up. And then the telephone jangled, obliterating all hope. The noise made four pairs of kitten eyes pop open—every one of them full of the devil and instantly looking for trouble. Regan grabbed the wall receiver before the second ring, but already knew it was too late. “Hello—”

“Regan? This is Alex Brennan.”

She dropped the cat food bag with a thump on the counter.

“Are you there?”

“Yes, I’m here—”

“Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, not at all...I’d just finished correcting papers and was relaxing for the evening.” So to speak. One orange fuzzball had already pounced on her bare foot with razor claws. Regan hiked up onto the counter and drew up her legs. Scarlett was simply going to have to take care of her wayward children on her own for a bit.

Three days had passed since she’d met Alex in the library. He’d been on her mind, but she’d positively never expected to hear his rich, dark baritone again.

“Maybe I shouldn’t have called. Don’t hesitate to say if it’s a problem. There’s no reason you should want to hear from me—”

“I enjoyed our conversation the other day. And I’m glad to hear from you. You just took me a little by surprise—Scartett, cut that out!”

“Scarlett?”

Regan scooped the cat off the counter, feeling more flustered by the minute. “I have a mama cat, who’s trying to hide behind me rather than tend to her offspring. I don’t suppose you need a kitten? Or a pair? Or, say, four of them in a package deal?”

“Uh, no.”

“Now, don’t rush into that no. We’re talking literary legends with fur—a range of choices from Casanova to Don Juan to Henry VIII to Cleopatra. Not that you couldn’t rename them, but their personalities seemed fairly obvious—two lovers, a glutton and a vamp. I’d throw in a year’s supply of cat food out of the goodness of my heart—”

He chuckled. “That’s quite an irresistible sales pitch—and I’m impressed with your choice of names.”

“Not enough to sucker you in, though, huh?”

“Afraid not. I live with an older brother.”

“He’s allergic to cats?”

“No, he’s just more trouble than ten pets now.”

She laughed. “I have older brothers, too. Believe me, I understand. They’re tougher to make behave than a pet any day.”

“You’re not kidding.”

For a few seconds there, Regan thought her chattering was working to make him relax. But then an awkward silence fell between them, and she just wasn’t sure how to fill it.

She rubbed a hand on the back of her neck, thinking of their meeting in the library—and that she never should have kissed him.

It wasn’t as if she normally went around kissing strange men. And at any other time, her red-alert buttons would have been flashing special warnings around Alex.

One look at him had aroused an instant carnal lust attack. Maybe Regan was a tad cynical about legendary heroes, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t mightily appreciate the look of one. Images of picture-book knights on white chargers flew into her mind and clung there like glue. Never mind his contemporary Dockers and sandals, Alex had that Sean Connery look—the striking dark hair, the searing blue eyes, the proud posture and lean build. The trimmed, silvery-black beard just added to the packaging. Alex just happened to have all the equipment that revved her personal hormone engines.

At thirty-three, though, Regan was old enough to thoroughly enjoy a lust attack—and then jettison those feelings faster than bad meat. She’d once sold herself all the fairy tales about happily-ever-afters, and none of the frogs she’d kissed had ever turned into a prince. She’d successfully broken her bad habit of falling for the wrong men the easiest way—by galloping at Olympic speeds away from any guy who aroused her irresponsible hormones.

She’d have run from Alex the same way. Except that she’d seen right off that he was down in the dumps, and once she realized a broken love affair was the cause, she’d felt safe. Alex wasn’t on the prowl. He seemed so hung up on his Gwen that Regan doubted he even noticed her in a personal way.

Kissing him had been a natural impulse. The story about his ex-fiancée had inevitably aroused her compassion. It was the dreadful Camelot tale all over again—a vulnerably idealistic man dumped by a damn fool numbskull of a woman who didn’t appreciate a good man when she had one. Regan did. Her previous experience with frogs made her outstandingly aware of how rare good men were, and Alex’s confidence had seemed so low, about life, about himself. Regan could well remember all the crippling self-doubts after she’d been shafted, and he’d just seemed to need a kiss. A gesture of compassion and support. Something.

Damned if she was going to regret the impulse. Possibly the texture of that warm, mobile mouth had haunted her mind, but that was like handling chicken pox. Regan was an old pro at enduring—and ignoring—her wayward fantasies. He was just a good man who’d temporarily needed someone to listen. And maybe he still did. So far she didn’t have a clue why he’d called.

Neither, apparently, did Alex. He was the one to break the sudden, awkward silence by gruffly clearing his throat. “I think I should be coming up with some brilliant reason why I called. The truth is, I don’t have one. I just kept remembering our conversation in the library, and I guess...well, I just wanted to thank you. I never meant to vent my problems on a stranger, and you were really kind, made me feel a lot better.”

“No problem on the venting. I think everyone needs that sometimes.” Regan hesitated. If that was all he’d wanted to say, she could easily end the call. But she recalled too well those aching weeks after Ty had split for another woman. She’d felt humiliated and undesirable and painfully alone. And suddenly she twisted the phone cord around her wrist. “Besides, I really enjoyed our conversation. And it just occurred to me that we never really finished our argument about heroes.”

“No, I guess we didn’t—”

It wasn’t the first time she’d given in to an impulse. Or even the hundredth. “Well, I’m not sure, but I think I’ve got a couple of steaks in the back of the freezer. You have dinner free tomorrow night? It’s okay to think before answering. I should warn you there’s a risk—I haven’t given anyone ptomaine in weeks now, but nothing comes out of this kitchen with a guarantee.”

He chuckled, but her offer had clearly startled him. “I honestly didn’t call expecting an invitation—”

“I know you didn’t. And I’d feel bad if you misunderstood—believe me, you made clear that your heart was still tied up with Gwen. And I’m positively not looking for anyone, Alex. I wasn’t thinking ‘date.’ Just someone to talk with over a casual dinner.”

“That sounds good, but I don’t want to put you to any trouble—”

She smiled. “Throwing a couple of steaks on a grill is no trouble. Say seven?” She gave him her address. “Maybe you’d better bring boxing gloves. I have a feeling we’ll be tempted to finish the fight we started the other day.”

He laughed, a sound that echoed in her mind long after Regan hung up the phone. He’d been so grave. Making him laugh and lighten up gave her a warm fuzzy from the inside out. She sat there a moment longer, her gaze wandering to the untouched mail, the dishwasher that needed emptying, then down to Scarlett, who was staring up at her with limpid eyes, surrounded by the whole brood of kittens.

“Did I actually just ask a man to dinner?” she asked Scarlett, and then shook her head and leapt down from the counter.

It would be okay. It wasn’t a date. It wasn’t like opening a door to some idiotic fool romance as she’d done too many times. It was just offering company to a man who seemed to need a friend. And Regan wasn’t short on friends, but her natural wariness kicked in around most men. Not Alex, though. Even if he weren’t still in love with his Gwen, he’d described his ex-fiancée as definitely demure and ladylike.

If his taste in women ran in that direction, she’d be safer with Alex than in a convent—because, heaven knew, she was neither.

Well, they’d either have fun, she thought, or the friendship would never develop beyond that casual dinner. Either way, she was risking nothing.

She was sure.

“You’re actually going to dinner with a woman? Who is she? How’d you meet her? Where are you going?”

“Yes, I’m going to dinner with a woman. And as you might expect, she was a hooker I picked up on a street corner, led me into this red velvet den of iniquity and forcibly seduced me. Naturally, when she called and offered to lead me astray again, I immediately succumbed to temptation—”

“Very funny.” Merle scowled at him from the doorway. Typically, his older brother was dressed in black jeans and bare feet and was squint-eyed from spending so many hours at the computer. “How come you didn’t mention this dinner before?”

“Well, if I’d known it was going to get your liver in this much of an uproar, I probably would have. My going out to a casual dinner didn’t really seem to be a world-shattering event worth mentioning.” Alex emerged from the closet, buttoning a blue oxford cloth shirt. No amount of teasing seemed to lighten his brother’s thundercloud frown.

“What does she look like?”

“She looks like a woman. Bumps where we don’t have bumps, no hair on her chin, that sort of thing...didn’t Dad give you the same lecture about the birds and the bees he gave me? Considering the extensive number of women you’ve paraded through here, somehow I thought you knew all this—”

Merle trailed him down the hall, as close as a bloodhound, taking the mahogany staircase two steps at a time to keep up. “You keep making jokes. But my experience with women is entirely different from yours. I suppose you think I’m coming across a little heavy-handed—”

“Try ‘as intrusive as a tick.’ I’ve never seen you pull this protective big brother routine before. To a point, it’s giving me a chuckle, but give yourself a whomp upside the head, would you? It’ll save me having to do it.”

“I can’t just say nothing—”

“Sure you can. Practice makes perfect. Give it a try.”

The subtle hint flew right over his brother’s head. “You’ve hardly been out of the house since Gwen left you, except for work. You think I don’t know how badly that damn woman hurt you? And the last thing you need is another woman to put you through the wringer right now.” Merle hounded him into the high-ceilinged white kitchen, where Alex picked up his wallet and car keys.

“As amazing as it may seem, I already know that. And she already knows I had a recent broken engagement. She isn’t looking for anyone, either.”

“They all say that,” Merle informed him. “I’m telling you, you can’t trust women. They’re all dangerous. You can never anticipate what they’re going to do. There isn’t a single one who thinks like a man.”

“Personally, I always thought that was the best part.” Alex glanced at his watch and opened the back door. “Relax, bro. I know you care, even if you are being a royal pain. But there’s nothing happening that you need to worry about. In fact, all I’ve done with the woman so far is fight with her.”

Merle’s dark eyes narrowed in alarm. “Fight with her? You never fight with a woman.”

Alex closed the door. Enough was enough. And there was no explaining to Merle that the “fight” factor was precisely why he felt both reassured and intrigued about this dinner with Regan. His brother was right. He’d never raised his voice with a lady, much less fought with one. But Regan was simply different. Her impossibly contrary views on heroes and life guaranteed they’d find something energizing to talk about. She was absolutely like no woman he’d ever been drawn to—and for damn sure, nothing like Gwen.

He pelted down the porch steps of the wide veranda. His ’47 Jaguar, gleaming black, was waiting for him in the curve of the circular drive. He had a practical enough Acura in the garage, but the antique Jag was his vice. The sports cars his brother loved had never been his style. The Jag’s design was low, sleek, powerful in a quiet way, a traditional symbol of quality that lasted—it pushed all his buttons, always had.

As he climbed in, a pale wind stirred the moss in the hundred-year-old oaks lining the long drive. From the century-old gardens to the sweeping lawns to the white-pillared Brennan plantation house, the whole property was a white elephant these days—and a monster for two men to rattle around in alone.

Alex loved the history, loved the whole style of a romantic era gone by. When his parents died in a car accident, he and Merle had been seventeen and nineteen respectively—damn young—but both too stubborn to give up their home and roots or see the place sold to strangers. Neither brother expected to turn into crotchety old bachelors, much less live there forever. They’d always agreed that the first one to get married had dibs and the other would move out.

Merle, though, was pushing thirty-seven this year... and getting more eccentric all the time. He was a night owl, inventing computer games by night and handling the Brennan family fortune by day—a good thing, since Alex hadn’t bothered to balance a checkbook in recent memory. God knew what women saw in him—Alex suspected he must have some appeal that eluded a brother’s comprehension—but Merle had sifted through the female population in three counties. They were always bright, always lookers. And a lot of them fell under Merle’s spell, but somehow the relationships didn’t last.

Merle didn’t believe in love—and for sure he didn’t believe in the wonder of a soul mate and a lifelong committed love the way Alex did.

Or the way he used to.

Thoughts of Gwen inevitably brought heartache. Chasing those dark thoughts away, Alex grabbed the directions to Regan’s from the front seat. He knew Silvertree like the back of his hand, but her house was on an unfamiliar street.

The drive led him through the Whitaker College campus, with its old brick buildings and manicured lawns. Sycamores shaded the walkways and bosomy roses climbed trellises in the traditional gardens. A few bodies were stretched out in the grass, but in the sultry heat before dusk, most students were out of sight and likely cuddled under air conditioners.

The meandering, winding campus roads were familiar, but like a surprise, Regan’s street led to a section of older homes, tall Victorian types all scrunched together. When Alex parked in front of her mailbox, he climbed out and shook his head.

Hers was a Victorian structure, too, but where her neighbors had gone for standard house colors—whites, reds, grays—Regan had gone for a freshly painted teal with a mustardy-hued trim. The roof sagged in one spot. The miniature front lawn was mowed, but a wild tangle of overgrown honeysuckle and myrtle clustered around the porch. A little red Mazda, old, with a battered fender, was parked cockeyed in the drive.

The neighborhood looked like start-out houses for young couples—kids screaming as they raced through sprinklers, roller skates racketing down the sidewalks, stereos blaring from open windows. It was like another world from the shadowy, formal rooms haunted with antiques and objets d’art that Alex called home. He could feel a grin kicking up the corners of his mouth. He loved his place. But for damn sure, this was a shock of something different, an alien universe away from the heartache of Gwen and his whole normal life.

Her screen door clapped open before he’d bounded up the first step. “So you made it! I was afraid you might have trouble finding the address—”

“No problem.”

She glanced past his shoulder. “That’s quite a jalopy you’ve got parked there. Now why am I not surprised you suckered into a car with a big history? But I’ll bet the upkeep costs you the sun and the moon.”

“Yeah, it does.” Somehow he could have guessed Regan wouldn’t be impressed by a car—or much of anything materially. His poor Jag was probably smarting at that “jalopy” crack, but she’d already moved on.

“Well, come in, come in...although I have to say, if you forgot your appetite, you need to go home and get it. These steaks turned out bigger than I first thought. And I hate to put you to work the instant you get here, but I’m having a heck of a time with my grill—”

“I’ll be damned. Don’t tell me you need a hero?”

He’d almost forgotten that whiskey-wicked chuckle. “Don’t you start with me, buster. Come on in, and let me at least get you a glass of iced tea before we start fighting about heroes and sexist nonsense...”

Coming in was easier said than done. Kittens attacked him the instant he walked in the door. There seemed to be a dozen—she claimed there were only four—but all of them were uglier than sin and old enough for trouble. Colors splashed at him. The kitchen was a reasonably subdued teal and cream, but then Regan hadn’t likely put in the counters and floor. Her personal stamp was everywhere else, the living room done in reds and clutter—red couch, red chairs, books stacked and heaped everywhere, light and heat streaming through the undraped windows.

She started talking and didn’t stop. She didn’t even try to save him from the cats. “I had a roommate until a month ago. Julie had the appalling bad judgment to fall in love and get married, and when she and Jim moved into another Victorian place, they took the curtains from this one. I’m looking for another roommate right now. And I keep meaning to put up some more drapes, but somehow I don’t seem to be getting it done. I don’t seem to be getting the air conditioner fixed too fast, either, but it’s cool enough on the back porch. You like your iced tea with lemon or mint?”

“Mint, if you’ve got it.” Right now he needed the ice more than the tea. Never mind the house, never mind the cats. He was around academic people all the time, but absolutely no one like Regan.

She looked him over as if she was mentally stripping the clothes right off him...and liked what she saw. Ladies didn’t look at men that way. Not in his world. And no woman, positively, had ever sent him charged messages that she found him sexually attractive and didn’t mind him knowing it.

All these years, he’d empathized with women who complained about being treated like sex objects. To hell with that. This was fun. Gwen’s abandoning him for a young stud scissored strips in his masculine confidence like nothing else ever had. Regan’s sloe eyes checking him over boosted his ego like nothing else possibly could.

And her. Her version of casual attire was criminally short cutoffs and a flapping-loose bright print shirt. The shirt covered everything. She just wore no bra, and the silky fabric swished and cupped her full breasts every time she moved. She was always moving. Her hair had been chestnut brown the other day. Today it had a streak of blond, the style worn swept up, off her long white neck, and clipped in a pell-mell cascade. Maybe she’d brushed it. Or maybe it just always looked as if she’d just climbed out of a man’s bed—after a long, sultry, acrobatic night.

There actually seemed no vanity to her. Regan just seemed totally comfortable with her body, how she looked, who she was. And that was good, Alex thought. Only his first thought—that the shock of something different was good for him—was superceded by another. His blood pressure was never going to be able to handle a whole evening. Every look at her mainlined a charge direct to his hormones. His nerves just wouldn’t survive it.

She handed him a dripping glass of iced tea, and led him out to work on her misbehaving barbeque. The coven of cats followed him. She kept talking—not incessantly—but enough so he was busy answering her.

He never meant to relax. He meant to come up with a tactfully polite escape line and take a powder, but he had to fix her grill. By that time she’d absconded with his iced tea and returned with a tall pitcher of mint juleps. Then the steaks had to be cooked, and since he’d stayed that long...well, hell.

The neighborhood had quieted down and the sky faded to a jeweled palette by the time she served dinner on a card table on the back porch. The steaks were ogre-sized, and the baked potatoes were buried under lushly dripping butter and sour cream. The key lime pie, she claimed, was her only culinary skill, so he was ordered to save room.

Two kittens climbed on her lap, two on his. Unidentified paws kept showing up on the table, prepared to swipe any scrap—or anything that moved—and the mama cat chaperoned from a windowsill. Regan seemed to consider the cat-dominated dinner status quo. She also slipped her shoes off, and insisted he slip off his.

“This is Scarlett O‘Haira’s second litter. I wanted to get her fixed after the last one, but she took off with another true-love Romeo before that litter was weaned. I didn’t know she could get pregs while she was still nursing, and then it was too late. I’ve lectured and lectured about those love ’em and leave ’em types, but when she’s in love, she just doesn’t listen. Have you ever seen uglier kittens?”

“Um...maybe they’ll grow into their looks,” Alex said tactfully.

“My God, you really are chivalrous...more key lime pie?”

“If you feed me any more, you’ll have to roll me home. How long have you lived here?”

“Almost two years now. My family’s from Michigan. I taught at the U of M before this. But when they started the women’s studies program at Whitaker...well, the job came up right at a time when I wanted a total break. I love the warmer climate. And I thought it’d be fun to be a rabble-rousing feminist from the North on a quiet, traditional campus like this.”

“And how’s the rabble-rousing part of that going?”

“Not too bad. I haven’t been threatened with suspension more than once a term so far.” She grinned. “The girls pack my classes. That whole part’s going great. But I’m allergic to those formal faculty teas. There isn’t a tweed or a little flowered dress in my whole closet. And I’ve been known to use ‘language’ on occasion.”

“Not that.”

“What can I tell you. I was raised with four brothers. All rascals. I had to find some way to hold my own or they’d have buried me.”

Maybe they were rascals, but her voice was wrapped with love when she mentioned her brothers. Alex wasn’t sure where her negative views about heroes came from, but it wasn’t because of them. When she lifted a plate, he automatically stood up. “I’ll help with the dishes.”

“Good. I hate ’em with a passion.”

She wasn’t kidding. She not only let him wash and dry, but she supervised him doing it. Alex teased her about laziness, although he had the sneaky feeling that she was deliberately giving him stuff to do to make him feel more like a friend than a guest. Probably surprising him far more than her, it was working.

In short order they’d finished the chores and aimed for the back porch again, this time settling in the rickety porch swing. All five cats climbed on laps. True darkness had fallen by then, bringing a cool breeze that sifted strands of her hair and ruffled her collar. Lights popped on in the neighborhood. Katydids called. She poured him another glass from the pitcher of mint juleps.

“Have you heard from your Gwen?”

“No.”

“Do you think you will?”

The first time he’d met Regan, he thought her outspoken prying damn near close to rude. Now, it just seemed part of her, not about rudeness at all but more a gutsy honesty that was intrinsically part of her nature. And he admired it—even if she had the slight, nasty tendency to put him on the spot. “Yeah. Eventually. Gwen always lived here, and so does her family. So sooner or later, regardless of what happens with the guy she took off with, she’s bound to show back up if only to see her family.”

Regan reached up to unclip the hairpin, and shook her hair loose to let the breeze play with it. “That’s one of the reasons I took the job here—to be able to escape having to see a guy. He taught in the same building.”

Hell. If she could put him on the spot with those dicey questions, so could he. “You were in love with him?”

“Oh, yeah. Head over heels.” Her eyes looked smoky by moonlight, her face soft-brushed in the silvery shadows. “His name was Ty. I could have sworn I was picking a prince. He was blond, blue-eyed, claimed to be madly in love with me right back. Until I was late one month. At which time he turned into a frog faster than a witch could wave a wand.”

Late. The last time a woman had mentioned her period around him was precisely never. But she was trying to find a way to tell him, he suspected, that she’d had a “male Gwen” in her life. “He left you in the lurch?”

“I wasn’t in the lurch. It turned out I wasn’t pregnant. And to be honest, I admit to being careless...it just didn’t seem that way at the time. We were so in love that I was positive we were headed for rings and orange blossoms and that whole shebang. I never meant to skip a pill, but when it happened I just wasn’t that worried about it. Our starting a family seemed in the cards.”

“It still hurts?” he asked quietly.

“Yes and no. It doesn’t hurt that he’s gone from my life. Once he picked up with a young female student, the handwriting on his character wall was damn obvious. But it hurts that I was so damned naive and stupid to be taken in. It’s not like I was seventeen. I was too damned old to still be believing in the ‘magic’ of love.”

He’d been keeping the swing swaying with a foot. Now he stopped. “You’re serious? You really don’t believe in love?”

“I believe that if two people work like dogs, they may—may—make a successful marriage. But I’m not sure that has anything to do with love. I think couples with stars in their eyes, looking for magic and romance, are selling themselves lies that can seriously hurt them.” She cocked her head. “You were just burned by someone yourself, Alex.”

“Yeah. But not because either of us lied. It just didn’t work out. I wasn’t the right man for her.”

She shook her head vehemently. “There is no right man. There are no heroes. Not for a man—or a woman.”

Alex didn’t shout at her. By the cut-and-dried code he lived by, a man never vented temper on a woman. His voice did sneak up another notch in volume, though, but that was necessary. Her whole cynical view...as if love weren’t the most powerful force in the universe, as if there were something inherently dishonest in the concept of romance...well, he simply had to tactfully address the errors in her thinking.

They were still fighting like cats and dogs when she startled them both with a yawn. A quick glance at his watch shocked him. The illuminated dial claimed it was 2:00 a.m. He shook the watch, just in case the battery had stopped, but no.

“For Pete’s sake, I’m really sorry. I know you have classes in the morning, and so do I. I just didn’t realize how late it was getting.”

He immediately stood up from the porch swing. So did Regan, with a chuckle. “I didn’t, either. In fact, it’s been a blue moon since I got so involved in a debate that I totally forgot the time. ... I’m glad you came for dinner, Alex.”

“Yeah, me, too. Thanks for the invitation.” It seemed natural to scoop up two of the kittens when she did and cart them back to their nesting box in the kitchen. Somehow she’d made him feel at home. Alex really didn’t understand iL He’d never had a problem finding a comfort level with a woman, but this was her. Regan. Who had his hormones in such an unfamiliar zinging uproar that he never imagined ever feeling relaxed around her.

Her house was tripping dark. Since neither of them had been inside all evening, no lights had been turned on. Just as he reached the front door, her hand reached out in the darkness to flip on the light switch in the hall. “I’ll put the outside porch light on, too,” she said with a chuckle. “I just still can’t believe how—”

Whatever she’d been planning to say faded into cyberspace. When her hand reached out, it connected with his chest. Alex had no doubt whatsoever that the contact was accidental. His body just happened to be between her and the light switch. She was just seeing him out. Nothing had happened through the whole evening to make him think anything else was conceivably on her mind. Or his.

But there was a sudden silence in the dark hall. And her soft, warm palm froze. As if it were glued in place against his heartbeat.


Three

He couldn’t be kissing her. Not Alex. Regan wasn’t prone to hallucinations, but she fully respected that everyone had a bonkers moment now and then. This simply had to be one of hers. All she’d done was walk him to the door. Reach out in the pitch-black hall to flip on a light switch. And, yeah, her hand had accidentally collided with his chest. But there had been a spare second when she felt his heart beating, beating against the nest of her palm.

It wasn’t as if a bomb had exploded. Or Congress had balanced the budget. Absolutely nothing monumental had happened to explain this sudden, strange break from reality she was suffering from.

So fast, so mystifyingly fast, his arms had swept around her. Regan could have handled an unwanted pass blindfolded in her sleep. But this was nothing like a pass. The accidental physical contact acted like tinder for a spark in a dry, dry forest.

His fingers sieved and then clenched in her hair. And suddenly his mouth was just there. Covering hers. Warm. Mobile. Evocatively and distinctly male.

She swayed against him because she would have lost her balance if she hadn’t. He wasn’t rough. She couldn’t even imagine Alex being rough. The texture of his mouth was as gentle as the disarming, winsome caress of a spring breeze...or it started out that way.

That first soft kiss deepened and darkened, scooping up momentum like the electric charge in a lightning storm. His lips sealed against hers with a pressure that made moonbeams dance under her closed eyes and the blood sluice through her veins in a giddy rush.

She wasn’t going to call it magic. She knew perfectly well that physical longing and a bunch of ragtag, amoral hormones could hoodwink a woman into believing silly, irresponsible things.

But this nonmagic thing he was doing was alluring and startling and terribly unsettling. One kiss whispered into another, chained into another and another. Alex was supposed to be a gentleman. Not an inspired kisser. She’d been so positive he was on the shy side, if not downright inhibited around women, but that illusion bit the dust, too. His tongue bribed hers into trying a taste. He tasted like mint juleps and need...a raw, urgent, honest need to touch and be touched, hold and be held. He treasured her mouth, exploring, tasting, sipping her responsiveness as if he’d never sampled this gold before, as if nothing were more important in the whole paltry universe but finding her.

Images of a strong, protective knight sweeping away his lady slinked into her mind. The fantasy images appalled her. The feeling scared her far worse. She was a feminist, for Pete’s sake. In her head she had no problem understanding that being swept away was unrealistic, irresponsible and outright stupid.

He loved his Gwen. She knew that, too. He was suffering from loss, and that urgent, explosive need wasn’t really about her. The loneliness and longing of heartache hurt like nothing else in life. He just needed someone at that moment.

Regan played all the appropriate warning songs in her mind.

She just couldn’t seem to stop her body from playing waltzes. Foolish, distracting waltzes. Her hands had somehow slipped around his waist. Her breasts crushed against his chest, her head pounding to the same wild rhythm as his, as if both of them already knew this music. His hips cradled hers, in harmony with every movement she made. He smelled like clean soap and man, pleasing, but neither scent explained this crazy feeling of drunk, dizzy intoxication.

Even as fear climbed through her system, she wanted more, not less. Even as rational thoughts tried to ground her, she didn’t want to be grounded. She wanted the sizzle. She wanted the wonder. She wanted to be touched by Alex, like she couldn’t remember ever wanting a man.

She could accept a moment of insanity. But something was wrong here. Really wrong. Her mind had already tabulated all the reasons why kissing him was bonkers and foolhardy, but there was something terrible going on besides that. As his tongue dove in her mouth again, as the rubbing pressure of his body speared desire through every nerve ending, she tasted risk. Threat. The power of something she was completely unfamiliar with. And it had his name.

“Regan...” She heard him groan against her mouth, saw something flash in his eyes in spite of the drowning darkness. But then he pulled back. Clenched his fingers around her shoulders as if to ensure that she was steady, and then abruptly dropped his hands and stepped away.

Regan scrabbled to recoup, not easy when she felt as shaky as a shipwreck. She could hear his breathing. And her own. Both of them were rasping as if they were mightily suffering from head colds.

Alex just stood there. He felt shock, she sensed. She understood—she’d never thought, even for a second, that he’d meant that embrace to happen. But he kept looking at her. His expression was blurred in the murky shadows, but she could see the black fire, the intensity, in his eyes.

She assumed he was suffering guilt, that all that pagan black fire must be about his Gwen. Not her. But silence stretched between them until the awkwardness was darn near paralyzing. She had to say something. “It’s all right,” was the best she could come up with.

“No. It isn’t.” Alex squeezed his eyes closed and took a long breath. She still wasn’t sure what he was thinking or feeling, but Alex being Alex, his gentleman side never disappeared for long. “Regan, I seriously apologize. I’m not sure I understand what just happened, but I swear I never meant to—”

“I know you didn’t. And we were having a good time, weren’t we? Just being friends. We just got sidetracked for a second there. Hey, you suffered a big loss. I don’t think it’s any great surprise you might have needed to hold on to someone for a minute.” If that was a pale interpretation of the embrace they just shared, Regan figured it was a lie they both wanted to swallow. “Don’t start feeling guilty over nothing.”

“It wasn’t ‘nothing’ to take advantage of you.” He clawed a hand through his hair. “I don’t know what got into me. And I wouldn’t blame you for not trusting me again—”

Regan had always been better at being blunt and bossy than owning up to any vulnerability. “You didn’t take advantage of me. Quit being so hard on yourself, you dimwit. We gave in to a little chemistry. It’s not a hanging offense, and nothing happened that either of us need to worry about. Now go home. Get some sleep. It’s two in the morning, for Pete’s sake.”

She kicked him out—but not before winning a startled grin out of him. Possibly no one had ever called Alex a dimwit before.

She quickly locked up and then headed for her bedroom, thinking that someone obviously should have. He’d been upset. Hell, so was she. But they’d made the mistake together, so there wasn’t a reason on the planet why he should hustle in to take all the responsibility. She’d never known a man with that kind of conscience, much less one who took honor and guilt so seriously.

Until him.

Trying to distract her mind in another direction—any other direction—she flipped off the overhead light in her bedroom and started peeling off clothes. No housekeeping genie had shown up to make the bed, she noticed. The sheets and blankets were rumpled; jewelry and makeup were liberally strewn on the dresser; and the blend of startling colors would likely make Laura Ashley cringe.

Regan had long accepted that she was never going to be a shy, ladylike Laura Ashley type. She liked color. Lots of it. Heaps of it. She’d done up the bedroom with rich emeralds and satin blues with a splash of sassy yellow. Everything but the sheets came from garage sales— no way she was sleeping on anyone else’s sheets—but everything else inspired her gypsy, bargaining spirit. She resented paying full price for anything. More to the point, her taste—or lack of it—didn’t have to suit anyone else. This was her haven.

Normally.

She dove for the pillows, knowing she was whipped and positive she would fall asleep instantly. Instead, she felt the cool, smooth sheet settling against her breasts and hips with an erotic awareness that had her scowling in the darkness.

Okay, so she’d been celibate for a long time. And long stretches of celibacy frustrated a woman no differently than they did a man. Intellectually, she accepted that living alone was her safest choice of life-style. Her hormones just didn’t share the same enthusiasm.

The thing was, she’d always had a figure that turned male heads. She’d never asked for the overabundance of curves, any more than she’d asked for the gregarious, flamboyant personality. She couldn’t help having boobs. She couldn’t change her blunt, open nature.

But Regan was well aware that she’d habitually scared away the gentle guys and attracted those who assumed she was a gutsy, confident, life-of-the-party type. They weren’t exactly wrong. She didn’t have a demure bone in her body. But underneath, she wasn’t at all carefree, and that underneath part never seemed to come out. Not with anyone, and especially not with a man.

Until tonight. Suddenly edgy with nerves, she gnawed on a thumbnail.

Nasty, terrifying feelings had sneaked up and seeped to the surface in Alex’s arms. She’d never been afraid of men. She’d never been afraid of sexual feelings. Her fears were about being used and taken for a ride, because she’d fallen for Prince Charmings with feet of clay before.

But Alex was a gentle man. Not a predator. And damnation, it was downright delicious to be undone and unraveled by a lust attack for a good man for a change. But that was precisely the problem. Alex’s integrity glowed as brightly as his vulnerability. He’d been completely honest with her about his feelings for Gwen. He needed a friend, Regan thought, and having been dumped and disillusioned herself, she even believed she could be a damn good friend to him. But to hurt a vulnerable, caring, good man stabbed her conscience with a sharp knife. Allowing hormones to enter the situation was simply out of the question.





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