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“Nah. I’ve just been there before,” he said. “I got divorced a few months back.” What was this, true confession?
“I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. Turned out we wanted different things.” He’d wanted a quiet life with her, she’d wanted an ambitious assistant to the mayor, a fact he’d learned when he found them in bed. His bed.
“Exactly,” she said, almost as if she’d read his mind. “Then you know how I feel.” She lifted her just-arrived martini to her lips. Their eyes met over it.
“All I can say is…his loss,” Nick said.
“That’s kind of you, but I don’t think he’ll even notice.” Then she studied his face. “Can I ask you a favor, Nick?”
Uh-oh. “Sure.”
“Keep me company while I get drunk? Make sure I don’t do anything really stupid?” Tears made her eyes shine.
“I’d be honored.” He held out his hand to shake on it. Hers was warm and slender. He felt a jolt.
She must have had a similar sensation because her eyes went wide, then smoky.
Heat began to pump through him as his body went on automatic pilot. How about sex? Would that be really stupid?
“Let’s sit over there and talk,” he said, motioning toward a back booth, away from Ben’s snorts and the curious eyes of Nick’s squad mates.
Talk? Him? The guy who lived for the quiet of a moonlit sail? The guy whose ex-wife had accused him of giving her the silent treatment? What was he thinking?
She nodded, then stood, wobbling a little, so he took her arm. He guided her to a booth, where she sat beside him—and too close—wiggling her bottom on the seat with such natural sensuality he felt it clear to his bones.
She turned toward him, resting her elbow on the table, her head on her fist in a way that made her breasts swell upward from her dipped neckline, and said, “So, tell me about yourself.”
With all the alcohol bubbling in her bloodstream, Nick knew that what he ought to do was send Miranda back to her pricey neighborhood in a cab, but instead he did what she wanted. He told her about himself.
It was that or kiss those lips she was aiming his way, and that would be stupid. Real stupid. He suddenly wished he’d heeded that car alarm and beat it out of there when he first saw her. Too late now.
“Well,” he said on a sigh, “I’m a cop.”
“A cop?” Her sharply tweezed brows shot up and she lifted her head from her fist. “How interesting.”
“I guess.” He watched her fit him to her image of a cop—a blue-collar guy who saw the world in terms of right or wrong, legal or illegal, with no shades of gray. Pretty close, except he had the urge to tell her he had a minor in art history. But what was the point? He’d never see her again.
“You do look dangerous,” she said. “Except for your eyes. Your eyes are kind.” Then she reached to cup his cheek. It was the merest touch—her fingers barely made contact before they withdrew—but it was electric. Nick felt welded in place—and insanely glad Miranda liked his eyes. It was nuts. He was like a sap in some movie with too many violins.
“So, what’s it like being a cop?”
“What’s it like?” He cleared his throat and told her. Just to distract himself from all that voluptuous woman close enough that he could inhale her exhale.
He talked about the adrenaline of a chase, the satisfaction of taking down the bad guys. He told her what got him up in the morning, what kept him awake at night, about cases he was proud of, and the ones that got him down.
He kept talking, telling her more than he’d ever told anyone. He didn’t know why. Maybe because her green eyes were steady and smart, really interested, not calculating like Debbie’s had been. He hadn’t caught on to that about Debbie at the time. He tended to miss important stuff when he got hooked on a woman. A lesson he’d vowed never to repeat.
While he talked, he kept Miranda from ordering another drink. She was tipsy but not hammered, which ought to be enough for this night.
“What about you?” he said. “Tell me about yourself. What do you do?” A woman like her didn’t need to do anything except be beautiful. Arm candy, wasn’t that what they called it? Except, she seemed different. There was purpose on her face, determination in her eyes.
“Me? There’s not much to tell, really.” She looked into his face. “I’d rather not talk—or think—about me, if that’s okay.” She dropped her gaze.
He knew she was thinking about the ass she’d just broken up with. “Listen to me,” Nick said, lifting her chin so he could look into her eyes. “Any man who would tell you you’re sexless is blind, crazy or made of stone.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.”
“Really?” Her tone was both miserable and hopeful.
“Really.”
“Well, thanks for saying so.”
Her fiancé obviously had shot her self-confidence full of holes. Nick could fix that. Easy. With the truth. “Look at me.”
Her gaze shot to his.
“I can hardly keep my hands off you.”
“Oh.” Her eyes went wide, her face pink. She whispered, “Thank God,” and surprised him by leaning over and kissing him. Everything in him rose to take her in—her lips, her smell, the sweet woman taste of her.
She wobbled a little against him, reminding him she’d had a substantial amount to drink. Did she know what she was doing? If he kissed her back, he wouldn’t want to stop. Even if she didn’t want to make up with her horse’s ass of a fiancé, she didn’t strike him as a one-night-stand kind of woman.
He broke off the kiss. “I think this might constitute real stupid,” he said hoarsely.
“Oh.” She blinked, then stared at him, her face flushing as red as her dress. “You’re right. Of course.” She pushed at her hair, glanced at her diamond watch. “Look at the time. I should be going.” She jumped up, bumping the table with her knee in her haste. “Thanks for the talk, Nick. It helped. A lot.” She fumbled in her purse, then slapped a bill on the table. A fifty. Excessive. Like the woman.
Except, before she escaped, he caught hurt on her face. She thought he didn’t want her. He couldn’t stand for her to think that. He also couldn’t stand the fact that she was walking out of his life. He didn’t even know her last name….
So he went after her. He found her walking un-steadily down the sidewalk, crying, and he knew what he had to do. “Miranda,” he said.
She turned to him. The streetlight gave her a bronze sheen like the statue of a goddess.
He cut the distance between them, yanked her into his arms and kissed her hard.
She made a little sound of relief and desire and kissed him back. Their teeth collided, their tongues connected, frantic to make up for lost time. He held her so tightly he could tell she could hardly draw breath. Heat burned between them.
Somewhere the car alarm started up its rhythmic honking, but he could barely hear it for the lust screaming through him like a train through a tunnel.
After a few minutes of frenzied kissing, Miranda panted in his ear. “Please take me somewhere. Now.”
Beep…beep…beep…The car alarm bleated.
Shut up, he mentally told it. Some things you couldn’t fight. Fire shot along his veins and collected in flames below his belt. “You sure?” he asked, locking his gaze with hers.
“Yes. Make love to me.” Her eyes were steady, glazed with lust, but sober enough. And absolutely determined.
Who was he to say no to a lady?
They headed for the Crowne Plaza just around the corner. In the elevator up to their room, he clutched her trembling body to him, sheltering her. She fit so perfectly he forgot for a second that she didn’t belong in his arms. He felt responsible for her, as if it were his job to watch over her like some kind of guardian angel. It was eerie, and she seemed to feel it, too, melting against him as though she craved his protection.
Then she raised eyes hot with desire, and he saw she wanted more from him than protection. Lust pumped through him in thick surges.
The night was incredible. Like a fever dream they both were having. He felt he’d known her body—and her—forever. Maybe it was because they’d shared the experience of being betrayed. Maybe it was just chemistry. Maybe it was alcohol. He wasn’t sure, but he had to know more.
In the pink light of dawn, sated and exhausted, he sent her home in a cab. She’d made him swear to phone her.
But when he did, she wouldn’t take his call.
1
One year later
“YOU LOOK LIKE a dork in that suit,” the kid said, squinting up at Nick, who held the door for him and his mother.
The kid was right. Nick felt like a circus gorilla in the too-small doorman’s uniform. The epaulets rode close to his neck, his arms hung below the gold-braided cuffs, and the hat sat like a kid-die sailor cap on his head.
“That’s not nice, Rickie,” the mother said, flushing. “How is Charlie?”
It was Charlie’s uniform Nick was wearing. “Better. He’s recovering fine.”
“That’s good. I was so sorry to hear about his appendix. Will he be back soon?”
“Three more days.” Not soon enough for Nick, who couldn’t wait to get out of this clown suit and back to his boat on the lake. Charlie, his friend and former squad mate, had asked him to fill in as security at the Palm View Apartments while he recovered from surgery, and Nick had been happy to help—Charlie had been his training officer when he’d entered the academy.
Besides, the job was simple—accept packages, valet-park cars, carry groceries, fetch the maintenance man when the elevator jammed, as it had earlier that morning, and generally keep an eye on things for the well-heeled seniors, impatient executives and handful of families who inhabited the building.
If it weren’t for the uniform Charlie had neglected to tell Nick he had to wear, it would be only mildly humiliating work for a guy who’d busted some dangerous drug dealers in his day.
Now this kid stared at him like an exhibit in a wax museum.
“Got any homework, son?” he asked, to give him something else to think about.
“Uh, well…” The kid glanced at his mother.
Gotcha.
The woman blinked at her son. “Actually, now that you mention it, you do have a report, don’t you, Rickie? On the Sudan? You had better get right on it. Before TV.”
“Aw, Mom,” Rickie groaned.
“Gotta do your schoolwork, son,” Nick said with a wink. “You don’t want to end up just a doorman like me, do you?”
Rickie rolled his eyes.
The woman turned to Nick and smiled. “Thanks, Mr.—?”
“Ryder. But call me Nick.”
“I’m Nadine Morris…Nick,” she said, letting her eyes drift over his body. She held on to his name, flirting with him. She was pretty, but she wore too much makeup. Why women had to slather on that goop was beyond him. No ring. Divorced, no doubt.
“I’m just filling in for Charlie. Doing what he’d do.”
“Well, you certainly fill out his uniform.”
“I do my best,” he said neutrally. Even if he was attracted to the woman, he couldn’t take her up on the offer in her eyes. She’d want more than a brief affair—she had a kid, after all—and he was leaving for the Coast as soon as he could.
She kept smiling at him until her son dragged her toward the elevator.
Nick stayed outside for a minute, delaying his encounter with the fumes from the ground-floor hair salon. Why the EPA didn’t set restrictions on hair spray like they did auto emissions, he’d never know.
He glanced up at the art deco facade of the Palm View Apartments—one of Phoenix’s few old-fashioned downtown apartment buildings. Most had been torn down and rebuilt as office buildings or gone condo. The sun seemed too hot for early March, and he felt sweat slide along his torso inside the wool jacket, making his bullet scars itch. He rolled his shoulder as best he could in the tight jacket. Almost a year and he still hadn’t gotten back full mobility.
Sunlight glinting off passing cars made Nick blink. The cloying sweetness of citrus in bloom came to him on the light breeze. Nice, but he preferred the subtle tang of desert plants. Even better, the crisp salt scent of the ocean. Soon.
Three more days and he’d be back on Lake Pleasant in his boat, his private heaven, listening to the slap of the water and the coo of mourning doves. Then, once he’d paid off his ex-wife’s IRS debt with some chef work and maybe some bigger-paying security jobs, he’d escape to the blue freedom of the Pacific.
He was about to head inside when a cab pulled into the curved driveway and jerked to a halt twenty feet from where he stood. The driver exited and came around to let out his passenger, but before he reached the door, it flew open as if spring-loaded and a woman practically leaped out.
She wore a tight black dress, a red hat with a brim as big as a platter, and jeweled sunglasses that practically covered her face. She rushed to the trunk, with remarkable speed considering the stiletto heels she wore. She pushed open the trunk, blocking Nick’s view of the action, but when the cabby got there, there was a brief tug-of-war, which the cabby seemed to win, because the woman stepped away from the trunk while he removed the rest of her bags.
Stubborn woman. Nick wanted to laugh. Then something familiar about the slow curves of her body stopped him dead. He looked more closely at her face. Heart-shaped mouth. Dark, wavy hair. And a body that could stop action anywhere there were men. Like the Backstreet. Nick watched her pay the cabby, strangely unable to breathe. It couldn’t be….
But it was. Unmistakably Miranda. His hands still held the memory of caressing that body, its give and resistance. He could still taste that sweet mouth, could still hear his name on her lips. That night she’d worn a dress the red of her bizarre hat.
She glanced up at him. His heart stopped. She wants me, he thought, then cleared his head. She wants the doorman, you dolt. He snorted, realizing he’d have to schlepp her bags like a pimple-faced bellhop. How the mighty are fallen. Suddenly he wished Charlie had gotten another pal to cover for him.
MIRANDA CHASE FROWNED as the cabdriver practically hip-checked her away from her bags. She had no choice but to let him take over. It was part of his job, but she hated people doing things for her she could do for herself. She’d add a huge tip to his fare for his trouble.
She watched as he unloaded the dry-ice totes that held the sample blossoms from the new breed of Taos chili—the secret ingredient she needed to perfect her rejuvenation cream—and a decoction of lily of the valley and lemongrass in jojoba oil that, combined with grapefruit-seed extract, would offer the natural preservative and emulsifier that she needed so Chase Beauty could mass-produce her revolutionary cosmetics.
That was why she’d come home early from her trip—not even her assistant Lilly knew she was back. She’d intended to go on some botanical-search hikes, but she was too eager to test the decoction her lab had created and finalize the formula for her last product.
She paid the disgruntled taxi driver, then glanced at Charlie, but decided she’d scoot inside without his assistance. There were plenty of elderly residents he should be helping, but he always insisted on carrying her bags all the way to her top-floor apartment.
She pushed the handle-release button on her large wheeled suitcase, but it didn’t open. She jiggled the handle and twisted the button, but nothing moved. She could feel Charlie heading her way. “I’ve got it,” she called to him, continuing to struggle.
But she didn’t have it, and soon a tall shadow blocked the sun and a man’s hand touched her bag. “Allow me,” said a voice too low and gruff to be Charlie’s.
A chill of recognition slid like an ice cube down Miranda’s back, and she looked up into a face she remembered from the hottest night of her life. Nick. In a doorman’s uniform, of all things. He didn’t look at her, just adjusted the handle so it clicked sharply into place.
What the heck was Nick doing here? She felt herself turn red. Her hat shaded her face and she wore sunglasses, so maybe he wouldn’t recognize her after all this time. She kept looking down to avoid his gaze.
“Hello, Miranda.” He recognized her, all right, and the huskiness of his voice told her he remembered all of that long, amazing night they’d spent together. Miranda cringed inside.
