Dangerous Liaisons

“Fine.” She needed oxygen. She wasn’t into self-deception. Just like another man in her past, Jake Ford’s looks, his demeanor…his touch were tempting. Too tempting. Already, her hormones were surging in a direction where the fine edge of reason began to blur.

Now that she’d felt the heat of his flesh against hers, she wanted his touch to continue. Deepen.

Not going to happen, she told herself, putting mental skids on her thoughts. She would never again approach a relationship with her emotions calling the shots. She’d been down that road with her ex, and found it was full of potholes. Now she was smarter. Wiser. And she had learned how to face a problem head-on. The thing to do in this instance was to take control and go on the defensive.

She would feel a whole lot better—safer—if Jake Ford were off-limits. And she was the perfect person to make that happen.

“I have a client who might be perfect for you,” she said as she began tucking the card into the breast pocket of his suit coat. “She’s a doctor. A medical doctor, intelligent and gorgeous. Let me know if you change your—”

Her words slid back down her throat when he snagged her wrist. His hand was steady, his fingers unyielding as steel.

His dark eyes narrowed. “Not interested. And I won’t change my mind.”

The image of those firm, controlled hands exploring every inch of her body clicked into her brain, sending heat surging into her cheeks.

A shadow flickered across his eyes, then disappeared. He released her wrist. “No offense.”

“None taken.” Pursing her lips, Nicole dropped the rejected card back in her purse while regarding him. “Has anyone ever mentioned that your biorhythms might be in the negative range?”

He missed a step, picked the beat back up again. “My what?”

“Biorhythms. You strike me as being overly tense, so yours might be in a negative cycle. Sebastian says if a person’s biorhythms are negative, it’s hard to do well in certain areas.”

“Who the hell is Sebastian?”

“Sebastian Peck, my personal trainer at Sebastian’s.”

Jake’s mouth curved into a sardonic arch. “The prissy gym on the northwest side of town,” he commented.

“Actually, it’s a health club.”

“Bet it’s got piped-in music and a juice bar.”

“That’s right.”

“Not my kind of place. I work out at the police gym.”

Nicole’s left hand slid down to settle on his biceps. The well-formed muscle evidenced a strenuous workout regime.

“Sebastian isn’t taking new clients now, but he owes me a favor,” she said, undaunted. “I can set up an appointment to get your biorhythms charted. It doesn’t take long.” By then, she might have figured out how to convince Jake to agree to a date with the gorgeous doctor.

“My biorhythms are fine.”

“Just think about it. I’m in the book—call me if you change your mind.”

His eyes narrowed at the same instant the music faded. From the opposite side of the dance floor, an uncle of the bride’s announced that the wedding couple was getting ready to leave the reception.

“We should wish them well,” Nicole said.

“You give Whit and Bill my best,” Jake stated evenly. “I’ve stayed too long as it is.” His hand was a light presence on her elbow as they walked to the edge of the dance floor.

Squaring her shoulders, Nicole turned to face him, offered her hand. “It was nice to meet you, Jake. Give me a call if you decide you want to try out my services.”

He hesitated for a brief instant, then cupped her hand in his while he flashed a careless grin. “Your services?”

Her throat tightened. Even as her brain told her that retreat would be wise, she allowed her hand to remain in his. Only one other time in her life had a man had such an immediate, stunning effect on her. Then, she’d gone with emotion, listened to her heart instead of her head, and she’d wound up betrayed and hurt. Desperately hurt.

Now all of her senses screamed at her to do an about-face and run for the hills. For some incomprehensible reason, she stayed put.

“My company’s services, of course,” she amended, keeping her voice light. “You might wake up some morning and decide you want to meet the doctor after all.”

He kept his eyes locked with hers while his thumb stroked the inside of her wrist. Her pulse stuttered, then her stomach dropped to her toes.

“I won’t.”

Even as he turned and walked away she took a step backward. Then another.

Feeling the aftershock of his touch in every pore, she curled her fingers over her palms. She remained unmoving, her gaze tracking his progress toward the door while she waited for her pulse to settle. It didn’t.

Hours later, her nerves still thrumming, Nicole lay in her bed, thinking about Jake Ford. About his dark eyes and ruthless good looks. About the way the attraction she’d felt for him had hit her like a freight train and hadn’t abated.

Even for a woman who knew he wasn’t the type of man she wanted, those thoughts made him dangerous.

Too dangerous.

Stifling a groan, she dragged a pillow over her head and breathed deeply of the soft scent of vanilla that drifted from the linen pillowcase. At least Jake wasn’t part of her brother’s new family, she reasoned. He was Whitney’s partner; there was no reason she and the cop with the whiskey-colored eyes would ever cross paths again.

And that, all of her instincts told her, was a very good thing.

Chapter 2

He shouldn’t have danced with her. Shouldn’t have touched her, shouldn’t have stroked his thumb across her wrist.

Jake scrubbed a hand across his face. Over a week had dragged by since Bill and Whitney’s wedding. Over a week. He had lost track of how many times he’d berated himself on the subject of Nicole Taylor. Even now, his mind kept wandering out of the parked detective cruiser in which he sat and back to the hotel’s glittering ballroom. To the heady feel of her in his arms. To her tempting scent.

To her.

“Dammit!” Setting his jaw, he pushed away the maddening thoughts and focused his mind. He stared out the windshield at the decrepit brick apartment building that looked like a hulking mammoth on the dark, weed-infested lawn. A bare bulb glowed above the building’s crumbling cement porch, sending weak rays into the moonless night. His most reliable snitch had sworn that the girlfriend of Ramon Cárdenas, primary suspect in the drive-by homicide of seven-year-old Enrique Quintero, planned to show up at the apartment building sometime tonight.

Jake had been on the stakeout since sundown. So far, no girlfriend.

He had the cruiser’s windows open; the heat of late September hung heavy in the still night air. In the distance, traffic rumbled along the interstate that cut a swath through downtown. Several houses away, a dog broke into a flurry of barks, ending when a gruff male shout splintered the air. The police radio in the cruiser’s dash crackled softly, the dispatcher sounding as if he were speaking a foreign language.

As if on automatic pilot, Jake’s brain processed the garbled information, which included a female patrol officer notifying dispatch of a Signal 7 at Stonebridge, a swanky gated housing community in the far northwest part of the city. A Signal 7 meant a dead body. One of the Holy Grails of police work was that an unexplained death got treated as a murder right from the start. If his name had headed Homicide’s list to take the next call, Jake would have responded. He glanced at the luminous dial of his watch, knowing that the team of detectives pulling night shift this month would head to the scene in a matter of minutes.

Settling down in his seat, he swallowed the last dregs of his convenience-store coffee, then tossed the foam cup over his shoulder. He gave an unconcerned glance at the back seat, littered with the wadded sacks and empty cups from that week’s take-out meals. He had a few days before Whitney got back from her honeymoon—he would shovel out the cruiser before then.

With the bitter taste of coffee still on his tongue, his hand automatically went to the pocket of his chambray shirt, found it empty. He scowled. Dammit, he hadn’t smoked in two months, five days and seven hours. When the hell was he going to stop reaching for the pack of cigarettes that wasn’t there?