Using a pair of plastic gloves to keep from damaging any potential evidence, Huck carefully inspected the letter which lay on the foyer table, where the afternoon mail had been deposited. Stravos wasn’t there, but had been informed of the letter’s presence and had given instructions to turn it over to Huck.

After comparing it to the other two letters, he decided this was definitely from the same person. Same style. Local postmark. One simple sentence--Sapphira’s in harm’s way!--and cut with the pinking sheers. An interesting choice, but readily available at any local sewing center or craft store. He’d need to check it for prints, but instinctively knew he wouldn’t find any. He went over the envelope once more, then shook it out to make sure that he hadn’t missed anything.

Beside him, Sapphira swore. “I wish to hell I understood this,” she said, pushing her hair away from her face. It was the first time she’d shown any real emotion regarding the threat and he had a sneaking suspicion that if she hadn’t been so rattled over their recent kiss, she wouldn’t have slipped-up. As it was, now he only wondered why she’d been hiding her concern to start with. Had she finally realized that this was more than an inconvenience? Or was it something different?

“Does it mean anything to you?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said, expelling an exasperated breath. Her green eyes snapped with irritation. “It means that I’m stuck here--“ The with you was implied but unspoken. “--for the foreseeable future, unable to go about my normal business. Dammit, I have things to do.” Her back was ramrod straight and her lush body--the one he’d been holding only moments ago--literally vibrated with impotent rage, pent-up anger and frustration.

That was an awful lot of emotion for thwarted shopping, Huck thought, studying her thoughtfully. He paused, a little alarm bell going off. Something didn’t add up here. Granted he’d only spent a little over twenty-four hours with her, but between her seemingly relieved-to-be-at-home morning--despite what she’d said, he didn’t buy it--and this sudden outburst of emotion right now, he knew her better than that.

How did he know? Years of training, keen observation and an overall ability to judge character. For reasons he couldn’t begin to fathom, she was determined to make him--and everyone else at Ranger Security--think that the only thing bothering her about these letters was the cramp it put in her style. Maybe so...but what style exactly?

Because he sure as hell no longer believed it was all about the shopping.

Nobody her age got that torn up over the missed pedicure or trip to the mall.

Seemingly aware that she’d shown too much, Sapphira made a visible effort to appear less concerned. “So...what now?”

Huck shrugged. “More of the same, I’m afraid. I’ll send the letter over to Ranger Security and let them take a look at it, see if maybe they find something on here that I’m missing.”

Her rigid shoulders sagged with a weary sigh. “This could go on indefinitely, couldn’t it?”

“It could,” he conceded, inclining his head. “But I don’t think it will. The odds are whoever is doing this will slip up and when they do, we’ll catch them. Until then, the only thing that we can do--and will do,” he added pointedly, “is keep you safe.”

She adjusted a single bloom from the arrangement on the table. “Here’s the thing,” she said. She looked up and those green eyes tangled with his. “I don’t feel like I’m in danger. I should be afraid and, call me stupid, but...I’m not.”

That was probably the most honest thing the woman had said to him since he’d met her, Huck thought, glad that they seemed to be making a bit of headway. “Why aren’t you afraid?”

“Because these letters aren’t really threatening.” She gestured to the photocopies. “They don’t imply bodily injury or death or anything else for that matter. They’re more like warnings. The only thing that makes them a threat is what they don’t say. It’s what’s left unsaid--the vagueness of them--that can’t be ignored.” Her lips twisted. “That’s why my father hired you. Because ignoring them would have implied that he didn’t care about me.”

From the resignedly bitter tone of her voice, it was obvious that she thought her father didn’t care about her, and frankly, after meeting the man, he wasn’t altogether certain that he didn’t agree. Was that why she’d resisted her security detail? Huck wondered. Because her father had only hired them to avoid the implication that he didn’t care about her? Out of obligation instead of genuine concern? It was possible, he supposed, but it still didn’t precisely fit.

His gaze slid over her once more, lingering over that lush mouth. In fact, at the moment, the only thing he could say that truly fit in this entire situation was her body against his.

Kissing her had been a monumental lapse in judgment, but he sure as hell wasn’t going to say that he regretted it, because he didn’t. He probably should, knowing that he wasn’t going to be able to keep his hands off of her, but...

Last night when he’d heard her softly moaning his name, the low hums of pleasure, the quickened breath and, ultimately the keening cry of release, it had taken every ounce of strength he possessed not to walk into her room and slide into bed with her. Instead, he’d stood outside her door, his body locked in an eternal hell of sexual misery, his dick hard and aching, loins ablaze, and had waited until he knew she was enjoying a dream-free sleep before going back into his own room.

At which point, he’d promptly taken matters into his own hands, so to speak. A poor substitute for sure, but all that had been at his disposable at the time.

In retrospect, humiliating her by telling her that he’d heard her during the dream probably hadn’t been the best choice, but the woman was so damned provoking he hadn’t been able to resist. Frankly, he didn’t think he’d ever met a female who had the power to annoy him quite the way Sapphira did. Drizzling sarcasm from that acid tongue, barbed comments designed to prick his irritation. She was a pro, he had to admit.

But she also wanted him.

And having her revert to the old routine after he’d rocked her dreams to the point of orgasm was just too much to take. He’d snapped, said damn the consequences, knowing full well that he’d just flushed his new career down the toilet. But he hadn’t been able to control himself. If she’d have kept that infernal mouth shut, he wouldn’t have had to take her down a peg with the I-heard-you comment, then he wouldn’t have felt like an ass when she’d become so wretchedly embarrassed, and then he wouldn’t have had to kiss her to make it all better.

In short, it was all her fault.

She’d brought his kiss upon herself and by God, if he ultimately snapped and seduced her, she’d have no one to blame but the person she saw in the mirror every morning.

Ridiculous logic, he knew, and yet accepting blame for any of it was out of the question because he simply couldn’t believe or admit that he’d done something so unforgivably stupid. First assignment for Ranger Security--his new job, the one that was going to help rebuild his busted life--and he’d flubbed it already by crossing the sexual line?

Had he lost his friggin’ mind?

Evidently so, because looking at her now, the taste of her still fresh on his lips, the feel of her lush womanly body melding against his, Huck could honestly say he’d do it again in a heartbeat.

Because he’d never had a kiss literally rattle him to the soles of his feet.

Huck had stolen his first kiss in second grade, had made his first sexual conquest with an older girl in eighth and had never had a problem attracting the opposite sex. By high school he’d honed his skills and had charmed the pants off any girl he wanted--time permitting, of course, because by that point he’d been working full time--and had pretty much kept to that formula. If he wanted milk, he went to the grocery store. A steak? The local butcher. Sex? The nearest bar. It had always been that easy.

Because he’d been raised in a house with women who’d drilled respect into his marrow, Huck never took advantage, never made any promises and never walked away leaving a woman feeling used. That wasn’t his style.

In short, he wasn’t inexperienced and yet nothing could have prepared him for the utter circuit-blowing meltdown he’d encountered when his mouth had touched Sapphira’s. It was almost as if his chemical make-up had undergone a change, an over-ride of some sort.

She was soft and womanly, had tasted like peach preserves and hot tea, and something else. Something indefinable and exclusively hers that had made him want to devour her, feed at her mouth until he got his fill--and instinctively knew he’d never get it--and then come back for more.

Until his cell had vibrated, the world had simply fallen away, existing only in that moment. Every sense had been heightened. The feel of her hair sliding over the back of his hands, the smooth and delicate feel of her neck beneath his hands, her plump breasts against his chest, her small hands sliding over his jaw.

Something about the sincerity in that gesture had made his throat tight and, because he’d mastered the art of self-preservation, he knew better than to wonder why.

Huck would like to think that he would have had the wherewithal to stop things from progressing beyond a kiss, but if it hadn’t been for the interruption he feared the two of them would be tangled up in her bed right now.

If they’d even made it to the bed, which seemed doubtful.

The mere idea made his dick stir in his jeans, instinctive straining toward her.

In a moment they would go back to her cottage--just the two of them--and thanks to his “house arrest” mandate, they’d be stuck there together--alone--for the rest of the evening and, because of this newest threat, for the immediate future.

Funny, Huck thought as the Irony Fairy sprinkled her Ha-Ha! dust all over him. He’d put Sapphira in lock down to preserve his own sanity and now he feared that very remedy would end up being what drove him insane.

 

*   *   *

 

“You’ve got to come over here,” Sapphira hissed into the phone, peering around the corner to make sure Huck was still in the living room. “Bring an overnight bag and plan on staying. Indefinitely.”

Cindy chuckled knowingly. “That bad, eh? What’s happened? Ooo! Has he kissed you?”

Sapphira gaped at the phone. What? Was she psychic? “Can you just come over here please?” she asked, purposely avoiding the questions--all of them.

“Sorry, can’t,” Cindy trilled cheerfully. “I’ve already got plans.”

“Record Dancing With the Stars, dammit. This is important.”

“So you’ve kissed him,” Cindy said, pleased. Sapphira could just imagine her friend’s sly smile. “And from the plaintive desperation I hear in your voice, it was good. So good that you need a buffer, in the form of me?” She heard her hand smack against the table. “Oh, this just gets better and better.”

“I don’t need a buffer,” Sapphira said, cowering from an imaginary bolt of lightening. “I need a friend. You’re my friend, dammit. You’re supposed to be here in my hour of need.”

She chuckled softly. “Oh, I expect Major Finn could take care of you in your hour of need.”

“Cindy.”

“Call Ella,” her friend suggested. “She’ll come over.”

“Ella’s at her book club meeting tonight.” Besides, she couldn’t ask her. Granted she’d always been able to tell the older woman most anything, but somehow asking Ella to give up the comfort of her own bed and spend the night to keep her from sleeping with Huck was a little too much. A trifle over the edge.

Meanwhile, dinner was over and there was nothing else to do. She’d tried reading a book. After going over the same passage a dozen times without retaining a single word, she’d given up. Watching TV? Ordinarily she enjoyed parking herself in front of the television with a plate of cookies and a cold diet drink--because, you know, having a regular soda would just be overkill and, despite evidence to the contrary, she didn’t completely lack will power--but she suspected that Huck’s TV tastes and hers wouldn’t mesh.

Besides, how could she think about anything but that kiss--and the resulting heat it had wrought in her body--with him in the room?

She couldn’t.

Which was why she’d called Cindy and asked for her help. Sorry friend, Sapphira thought. “I can’t believe you’re doing this to me,” she said. “The next time you have a crisis you’re on your own.”

Cindy’s laugh came over the line. “Now, see, there’s the difference between me and you. If I had a hot guy in my house and he’d kissed me, I wouldn’t think it was a crisis, and, I hate to break it to you, sweetheart, but you’d be the last person I’d call.”

Too true, Sapphira knew, smothering her own chuckle. Still, what Cindy would do wasn’t helping her. Cindy wasn’t a prisoner in her own house. Cindy wasn’t the one being threatened. Cindy wasn’t the one stuck here with a gorgeous man who made her thighs quake and her nipples tingle. Cindy wasn’t the one who had to keep from embarrassing herself and she certainly wasn’t the one who had to resist him.

No, that lucky person was her. And it bit.

Big time.

“Sapphira?” Huck called.

“Dammit,” she whispered. “I’ve got to go. He’s bellowing.”

“You make him sound like a caveman,” Cindy said, laughing softly.

“He is,” Sapphira said grimly. And it was no small part of the reason she found him so incredibly sexy. Who would have thought “caveman” would trip her trigger?

Struggling to pull the shredded threads of her composure around her, Sapphira disconnected the call and walked back into the living room. “Did you want something?”

Huck frowned at her. “What were you doing?”

“I was on the phone.”

“With who? You’re flushed.”

Perversely, more blood rushed up her neck into her face. “My boyfriend,” she said, seizing upon the fabricated excuse. “He makes me hot,” she added, just to needle him.

Huck’s deep chuckle rumbled up his throat and those silvery eyes crinkled at the corners. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”

She felt her brows knit. “How would you know?”

“Because it’s not in the file.”

“The file?” she asked, alarmed. “You have a file on me?”

“Sure.”

“Let me see it,” she said, opening her palm in a hand-it-over gesture he completely ignored.

“Sorry, that’s privileged information.”

Sapphira felt her mouth sag open. “Privileged information?” she parroted, stunned. Her hand dropped back to her side. “It’s about me, but I can’t see it?”

He winced regretfully, though she could tell he was enjoying himself, the wretch. “That’s what makes it privileged.” He said the word as though she were a halfwit, which made her want to smash things and scream.

“I know what privileged means, you arrogant jackass,” she snapped. “What I want to know is why is it privileged from me?”

“Arrogant jackass.” Seemingly proud of the insult, he smiled at her and the soles of her feet tingled. “That’s a new one.”

“I have more. The file?” she prodded.

Huck sighed. “There is no file. I made it up.”

“What?”

“I made it up.”

“Why on earth would you do that?” she asked, her voice climbing. God, the man infuriated her. She didn’t know when any man had ever managed to get under her skin quite the way that Huck did.

He lifted one muscled shoulder into a semblance of a shrug and smiled unrepentantly. “I was bored. Pissing you off entertains me.”

Pissing her off entertained him? Entertained him? She’d been a bundle of sexually miserable nerves for the past two days--magnified to near torture as a result of that brain-frying bone-melting near-orgasmic kiss--and he was bored? Needed entertaining? She mentally added a few more choice names to ones she’d called him--some of them anatomically impossible--and concentrated on not springing across the room like a spider monkey on crack and pummeling the hell out of him.

“If you didn’t have a file, then how did you know that I didn’t have a boyfriend?” she asked instead. What? Was she wearing a sign? No significant other here, last date two months ago? Doomed to remain single?

Huck studied her thoughtfully before responding and that intense scrutiny left her feeling raw and exposed. “I can just tell.”

“Because I haven’t had a date? Because no one has called? How do you know my boyfriend isn’t out of town, or even out of the country for that matter?”

He sighed heavily. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”

“But you can’t know that,” she insisted. She didn’t know why this was so important, but it was.

He paused and quirked a brow. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

“No, but that’s beside the point.”

Those silvery eyes widened and a bark of laughter erupted from his throat. He straightened in his chair and passed a hand over his face, evidently trying to erase a smile. “There’s a point to all of this?”

“The point is that I could have a boyfriend if I wanted one,” she said through gritted teeth. “And you can’t know if I have one or not.”

“But I was right. So I did know.”

“No, you suspected, but you didn’t know. There’s a difference.” She smiled sweetly at him. “It’s subtle, so you probably missed it.”

Huck stood, unfolding all six and half feet of him from her recliner, and sidled toward her. She got a mental image of a hawk circling above her and a giddy thrill tripped down her spine. But there was nothing subtle about the way his gaze traveled up her legs, lingered over her breasts and mouth, and then ultimately slammed into hers. The breath thinned in her lungs, her heart pounded so hard she could hear it thundering in her ears to the point that she was almost deaf. Though everything in her screamed “Retreat!” and “Run, fool, run!” Sapphira said goodbye to self-preservation and stood her ground. She tilted her chin, refusing to give up an inch of space.

“Let me tell you what I didn’t miss,” he said, his voice low and gravelly and just a bit dangerous. “I didn’t miss the way you kissed me a little while ago. I didn’t miss the little moans of pleasure I ate from your mouth and I sure as hell didn’t miss the way that you want me.” He inched closer, seemingly daring her to argue. “I know you don’t have a boyfriend because if you did, you wouldn’t have kissed me, or even wanted to for that matter.” A little smile played over his increasingly closer mouth. “Despite evidence to the contrary, you aren’t nearly as shallow as you’ve been pretending to be.”

“I haven’t been--“

 He interrupted her lie. “Why have you been pretending? Who knows? It’s a mystery for another time. But if I had my guess, you were on the phone with a friend just now--probably Cindy--trying to arrange an interruption because you know as well as I do that if something doesn’t give soon, we’ll be in bed faster than you can say ‘charge it.’”

Sapphira blinked, equally impressed and terrified that he’d pegged her so damned thoroughly.

“Shut up, Huck,” she whispered, looping her arms around his neck as the inevitability of this moment crashed around her, bringing anticipation, joy, fear and breathlessness. “Nobody likes a know-it-all.”