Книга - The Librarian’s Passionate Knight

The Librarian's Passionate Knight
Cindy Gerard


When she saw the man who rescued her from a stalker ex-boyfriend, librarian Phoebe Richards couldn't believe her eyes.Only in books - and in her fantasies - had she seen a sexy-as-sin man like Daniel Barone. He was everything a hero should be - brave, gorgeous, wealthy…and totally out of her league. Daniel Barone, international thrill seeker, thought he'd seen it all. But nothing had prepared him for the rush of Phoebe's guileless smile.Nothing shocked him more than the unfamiliar desire to stay with her. For the first time, Daniel felt real fear: Would he survive an affair with the innocent, bespectacled librarian?







August’s menu

BARONESSA GELATERIA

in Boston’s North End

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



Vanilla pudding with melted caramel


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



Handmade pastries


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



Boston cream pie with imported Italian chocolate


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

Buon appetito!


Dear Reader,

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

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

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

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






Melissa Jeglinski

Senior Editor

Silhouette Desire




The Librarian’s Passionate Knight

Cindy Gerard








This book is dedicated to romantics everywhere.

Enjoy and believe!

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




CINDY GERARD


Two RITA


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

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










Meet the Barones of Boston—

an elite clan caught in a web of danger,

deceit…and desire!

Who’s Who in

THE LIBRARIAN’S PASSIONATE KNIGHT

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

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

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










Contents


Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven




One


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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Like sweet, rich ice cream.

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

Like the unaffected smile of a pretty, satisfied woman.

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

Her head resting on his pillow…

Her body soft and warm and pliant beneath his…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He glared at her through an ugly smile.

How had she ever thought his smile was beautiful?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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




Two


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

Daniel caught up with her at a fast jog.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A beefy hand clamped on his shoulder and stopped him.

So much for what he’d thought.

“I said who the hell are you?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Problem here, folks?”

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

Jason glowered but finally shook his head.

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

She hesitated then shook her head. “No.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I…um…”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I’m not most people.”

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

“So, what happens now?”

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

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

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

“Normally?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yes, yes, yes.

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

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

Infectious. His smile was positively infectious.

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

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

Like his lips. Supple, sensual.

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

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

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

She blinked, speechless again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

That was when it hit her.

She knew who he was.

Her eyes widened.

How could she not have recognized him?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, no. No, it’s just—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yet here she was.

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

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

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

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

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

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




Three


Phoebe’s euphoria didn’t last past the first intersection. The adrenaline rush that had kicked into full stride during the ugly scene with Jason wore off quickly. Plus, she was far too grounded to let herself drift on this little dream cloud for long. Grounded or not, though, without the adrenaline to shore her up she was a wreck by the time Daniel had deftly followed her directions and pulled onto her street.

Daniel Barone. She still couldn’t quite grasp it. And he, well, if he found her neighborhood lacking compared to the pricey Beacon Hill residence where he’d grown up and the circle of wealth in which he ran, he was too polite or too polished to let it show.

He was also the picture of the perfect gentleman. Except that he drove too fast. She hadn’t needed to read the Boston Globe article about him to know that it was part of his MO. The speed. The thrills. The daring to do what most mortals feared. His exploits were legend. She supposed it should be exciting, racing through the night in this shining bullet of a car, but her slight case of the shakes was prompted more by apprehension than any spirit of adventure.

She was hopeless. And he was so wrong about her name. Mouse suited her perfectly. She had the backbone of a snail. In fact, she was pretty sure she’d been the victim of one of those hit and run urban legends—like the one where some unsuspecting soul fell asleep in a motel room and woke up in a bathtub full of ice and missing their kidneys. Only in her case, it was her spine that had been surgically removed.

She sighed heavily. She didn’t belong in this silver Porsche. She didn’t belong in either dream or reality with this man, no matter how hard he tried to put her at ease. And bless him he did try. To her utter mortification, however, their conversation on the half-hour drive to her house consisted mostly of her stuttering apologies for putting him out and his teasing her about her white-knuckled grip on the console.

Out of her league.

She should have felt relief when he finally swung the car into her driveway and cut the engine. Instead, an unsettling mix of remorse and regret swamped her.

She smoothed her hand lovingly along the melting soft leather seat, heaved another resigned sigh and reached for the door handle.

And so ended her romance with romance.

“Wait,” he said. “I’ll get that.”

Because she wasn’t as resigned to the end as she’d thought, she waited while he got out of the car, walked around the hood and opened the door for her with all the gallantry of a medieval knight.

The castle, Daniel noted, turned out to be a modest ranch, white trimmed in black, circa 1960. It was set in the middle of the block in a quiet and fairly well-kept neighborhood of Boston proper. Lamplight glowed from inside the house where a huge, fat tabby lounged in the bay window and regarded them through the glass with golden eyes and a superior attitude as they approached.

He was a detail man and noticed that the parched grass was mowed and twin rows of sunburned flowers struggled to brighten the sidewalk leading to the front porch. The porch was actually little more than a concrete stoop covered by a shingled overhang that boasted a hanging basket of deep-purple petunias and peeling posts.

He wasn’t sure what affected him more: the fact that she was a woman who planted flowers, that she probably mowed her own lawn, or the peeling paint that said she was either pressed for money or time.

In the end it was none of those things. It was the sight of an ugly, fist-size plaster frog squatting on the stoop. He didn’t have a clue why it got to him.

“Well,” she said as he watched her avoid his eyes by tucking her chin and staring at the center of his chest. She tugged on her hair, something she seemed to do a lot when she was nervous—which she obviously was around him. “Thank you. Again. Really. And you didn’t have to walk me to the door.”

As she’d been doing since about midway through the drive across town, he could see her gearing up for another apology for putting him out.

“Don’t you dare say it,” he warned her before she wound up for a good start. “We reached an agreement, remember? You aren’t going to apologize anymore.”

“You’re right. I’m s—” she caught herself and smiled sheepishly. “I’m so not going to apologize again.”

Looking pink and flustered and adorable, she bent to pick up the ugly frog.

Daniel stood there in suspended silence…absorbing the pleasant scent of vanilla ice cream and summer that surrounded her…studying the endearing little cowlick that parted her hair with a swirl at her crown…considering touching the silky soft strands that looked baby fine and so touchable he had to shove his hands in his pockets to keep from reaching out and sifting it through his fingers.

He didn’t get it. He didn’t get why he was so fascinated by her. She was as far from a siren as Dame Edith and yet she called to him. He should feel relief now that he’d done his duty. He’d delivered her safely to her door. He was free to go. So he sure as hell didn’t know why, when she turned that stupid frog upside down and slipped a key out of the compartment hidden in its belly, he felt a surge of tenderness that sent warning bells ringing in every rational part of his brain.

Aside from general concern, it shouldn’t matter so much that the woman was being hounded by an ex-boyfriend with a whole lot of mean on his mind. It shouldn’t matter so much that she hid her house key in a frog and probably regarded it as a security measure.

It shouldn’t matter so much that at first glance, he’d thought of her as ordinary.

And yet it did.

She was as far from ordinary as a dive along the outer reefs of a Micronesian atoll. As far from ordinary as the rare Lapp Orchid he’d had the pleasure of seeing in the wild in the mountains of Abisko in northern Lapland.

Far from ordinary.

Also, far from sophisticated. She wasn’t glamorous, wasn’t worldly. In fact, she quite possibly needed a keeper.

He should leave before he did something really stupid and volunteered for the job.

Instead of a quick goodbye, though, he shook his head and heaved out a sigh. Then he pried the key from her rigid fingers, inserted it into the lock and swung open her front door. Cool air gushed out of the house and into the heated night in welcome waves.

She was in the process of stammering out an, “Oh, um, well, thank you again,” when he propped his hand above her head on the doorjamb and looked down into a face that made him think of a very cute, very sweet, very vulnerable baby owl about two wing-fluffs away from taking flight.

“Exactly how nervous do I make you, Phoebe?” he asked with a twitch of his lips that was fast threatening to turn into another grin.

The breath that escaped her was less sigh than surrender. “On a scale of one to ten?” She glanced up at him, then away, then back again before admitting, “About a fifty-five.”

A dark thought had him narrowing his eyes in concern. “Because of that Jason guy? Because you think I might turn out to be like him?”

“No. Oh no. You could never be anything like Jason Collins,” she said so adamantly that he smiled. “It’s not that at all.”

“Because you don’t know me, then?”

She tried to stall a small sound that could have been a groan or a squeak. “Just the opposite. Because I do know you. At least I know who you are.” Slender fingers rose toward her hair again.

He snagged her hand midair, held it captive in his. Her hand was soft, graceful and trembling ever so slightly. He felt that tug again and, taking pity, let go with much more reluctance than was warranted.

“I realize it’s not very sophisticated to admit it,” she said, clearly flustered by the contact, “but I don’t know quite how to act around a man like you. I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do…with my eyes…with my hands.” She stopped and lifted a hand in entreaty, her gaze landing everywhere but on him.

Most women knew how to act, he thought cynically. At least most of the women who approached him did. Maybe that was why he found this woman so intriguing. She was a refreshing change from the women he generally tried to avoid when he returned to Boston. The Beacon Hill Beemer set generally wanted him because he had money or because they had money and he filled the bill as their equal. Some wanted to “snag” him. Some wanted to “tame” him. He recalled the ridiculous statements in the Boston Globe article with a grimace. Some, he knew for a fact, simply wanted to be seen with him. And others, for some sick reason, wanted to be used by him. He, evidently, represented their personal brush with adventure.

It was all the more unsettling to realize that he appeared to be Phoebe’s personal brush with intimidation—unintentional on his part, but there anyway. The longer he stood here the less he liked knowing how he affected her. He could think of other ways—many other ways—he’d like to affect her. All of them involved something much more up close and personal than holding her hand.

“When I was a little kid,” he said, “I got my foot caught in the toilet bowl.”

Behind her glasses, her eyes, the color of apple cider, blinked, then opened wide and disbelieving. “Get out,” she said.

He grinned at her reaction. “It’s true. I’d been running from my brother, teasing him with the last cookie, I think. I ran into the bathroom and jumped up on the stool to hold it out of his reach. Because he wanted it, that automatically meant I wasn’t going to let him have it. Long story short, he reached, I dodged. I slipped and fell in.”

She lifted her hand to cover her mouth but not before he caught the grin twitching at its corners.

“It was very serious. And I had some anxious moments, I’ve got to tell you.”

“Oh, I would think so, yes,” she said, her tongue planted deeply in her cheek.

“Yep. It was quite the ordeal. They had to dismantle the whole shebang, but once they got the toilet free from the floor, I was still stuck tighter than a wet suit on a diver.

“So there I stood,” he went on, warmed by the sparkle of mirth in her eyes, “three paramedics, four firemen and a plumber all scratching their heads and trying to figure out how to get me out of the bowl. My dad was so angry at me that he threatened to make a harness and just let me carry the damn thing around on my foot for the rest of my life.”

“You’re making this up,” she accused as she leaned back against the door frame, her hands behind her back now, cushioning her hips from the molding as she visibly dropped her guard and grinned up at him.

“Scout’s honor.” He made an X over his heart with his finger. “I was ten years old and until they finally got me loose, I’d pretty much decided I’d be pitching Little League with fifty pounds of porcelain on my foot. The part I couldn’t figure out was how I was going to run the bases.”

Her lips twitched again and her shoulders relaxed even more.

“I’ll tell you another secret.” He leaned in, lowering his voice as if concerned someone else might hear his whispered confession. “I used to sleep with a night-light.”

That earned him a full-fledged and gorgeous grin along with a skeptical, “Is that a fact?”

“Yeah, but it’s been, oh, I don’t know, weeks now since I’ve felt the need to turn it on.”

She laughed finally, all gentle, bubbling pleasure and silky sounds that warmed him in places a Bora-Bora sun never had. The smile that lingered was relaxed. And amused. And quite wonderful. So was the sparkle in her eyes. Suddenly the words turned on took a leap to another forum entirely.

“I think, Mr. Barone, that you tell a very good story.”

“Daniel. And I was just putting things into perspective. We’re not so different, you and me—well, except for the male/female thing,” he clarified with another grin. “And you’re looking much more comfortable now, by the way.”

“I am. Thank you.”

Okay. Mission accomplished. He could go now. A smart man would.

He, evidently, was not a smart man.

Had he really done that? Daniel asked himself later. Had he really said: “How about thanking me with something cool to drink before I hit the road?”

Evidently he had, because the next thing he knew, her cheeks were pink again.

“Oh, of course. I’m sor—” she started, then caught herself. “I should have offered,” she amended. “I have tea or— Let me think. Tea,” she finally decided, dimpling beguilingly.

“Iced?”

She nodded.

“Works for me.”

And it did, he realized when she’d invited him in with a sweep of her hand and flicked on another light. It worked just fine, although he still didn’t have a scrap of insight as to why.

This wasn’t his thing. She wasn’t his type. Yet here he stood, shutting the door behind them while she disappeared into what he suspected was her kitchen. For several moments, he stood in cool silence and the pale glow of lamplight, one of which she’d evidently left on for the cat.

Daniel walked over to the window seat. Golden eyes set in a placid, furry face tracked his every move.

“Nice kitty?”

The cat set its tail in motion in quick, impatient snaps and gathered itself on the balls of its feet.

“Maybe not,” Daniel concluded having seen that same tail flick on a cheetah just before it attacked.

He decided to leave well enough alone and check out his little owl’s nest instead.

His little owl?

He shook off the absurd notion and looked around him. Her living room was small but carefully decorated in sea greens and silver grays and a sort of pinkish color he thought he’d heard his sister refer to as mauve. The fabrics were— Hell, he didn’t know. Something soft and shiny. Chintz, maybe. Definitely not brocade. He shrugged, out of his element, although he recognized brocade when he saw it because every piece of furniture in his mother’s sitting room at the brownstone was upholstered in it. He’d been warned from the time he’d been old enough to reach it that he was not to put his sticky fingers on the brocade.

The walls were painted a rich, frothy cream; the floor was polished hard wood partially covered by a plush area rug with roses or cabbages or something that mirrored the colors in the furniture and the drapes that she’d tied back from the windows.

From the glass-globed lamps to the white tapers and delicate pieces of pottery set in artful clusters around the room, the effect was all very feminine, and yet, the room felt very comfortable. A little fussy for his tastes, but still warm and inviting. It surprised him to realize that he sort of liked it.

It was also very romantic. Like her? he wondered. Did Phoebe Richards hide a romantic side behind her utilitarian clothes and no-nonsense haircut? It would explain the dreamy look he’d seen on her face as the streetlights flashed across her features on the drive across town.

To the castle.

Her words had made him grin. They made sense now. Made more sense when he crossed the room to inspect the contents of her overflowing bookcase. He lifted a book out of a stack and smiled again.

Definitely a romance if the covers were to be believed. This one appeared to be a sweeping saga of a manly man and a virginal woman, with a royal crest and towering turrets in the background. He put the book back and discovered more of the same, along with a large collection of contemporary romantic suspense and several classics. Wuthering Heights. Camelot. Romeo and Juliet.

He felt another tug of tenderness for the woman who ate plain vanilla ice cream by herself on a Friday night, a traditional date night in Boston culture. At least it had been before he’d thrown a few things in his duffel and set out to see the world almost eight years ago.

A swift surge of anger boiled up when he thought of Jason Collins. The man was a predator. He was also slime. He was having a problem piecing together any scenario in which Phoebe Richards would be linked to him, and yet they had a history.

Daniel worked his scowl into a smile when Phoebe appeared in the doorway, a tall glass of iced tea in each hand.

“Hey, thanks.” He drained half the glass. “That hits the spot. And this is nice.” He lifted his glass to encompass the room. “Very nice.”

She attempted to hide her pleasure and pride over his statement behind a dismissive smile. “Only twenty-five more years of monthly payments and it’s mine, all mine—corroded pipes, peeling paint and all.”

He realized then what it was about her that captivated him so, besides the fact that she was pretty and refreshing and as tempting as the promise of the ice cream that was responsible for their chance meeting. Phoebe Richards was a real person. She didn’t have it in her to be anything else. Her earlier admissions of nervousness and now her smiles were as honest as her heart. It was a rarity in his world, where most women either jockeyed for a favorable position or wanted something from him. Phoebe hadn’t even wanted a ride home.

She crossed the room to the bay window where the cat waited with watchful eyes. She greeted him with a gentle scratch to the top of his head then stroked a slender hand lovingly down the length of his back. When the cat arched into her touch, Daniel damn near groaned, picturing himself the benefactor of that silky caress that was not only adoring but unconsciously sensual.

Well, there was a new wrinkle. He was jealous of a damn cat. Jealous. Of a cat. If he thought about it, it was probably as degrading as hell. He decided not to think about it.

“Guard cat?” he asked, shaking himself away from the concept and the picture of her hand stroking the tabby.

“Keeper of the kingdom,” she said with a small smile.

The smiles were coming easier for her now, and kind of like potato chips, he was afraid that he wasn’t going to be satisfied with just one.

“He’s also ruler of the roost. Arthur has made the rules and I’ve played by them since the day I brought him home from the pound three years ago.”

“Lucky cat,” he said, then looked up to find her watching him watch her hand continue to pet the purring feline.

He cleared his throat.

She dropped her hand self-consciously, her cheeks pinking prettily.

“Um, please, sit down,” she offered and perched tentatively on the edge of a side chair. “I’m not usually so lax in the manners department.”

And he wasn’t usually so easily distracted by beguiling eyes and a pretty face that got prettier by the moment. It was time to exercise the better part of wisdom.

“Actually, I need to take off,” he said, then immediately felt like a skunk when her face fell in disappointment.

Phoebe, Phoebe, Phoebe, he thought, helpless against another swell of tenderness. You are too open, too vulnerable. No wonder she made such an easy target for a creep like Jason Collins.

“Do something for me, would you?” he asked after hiding his unsettling reaction by finishing his tea in a long swallow. “Find someplace other than a frog to hide your house key. And get some decent locks on your doors, okay? You need a dead bolt,” he added and with grim determination walked to the front door. “Better yet, get a professional to come in here and set you up with a complete security system.”





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