Only she hadn’t told him exactly what he was supposed to be stopping me from doing. Thank God.

Lilly really was a friend, after all. Not that I’d ever doubted it. Well, very much.

“So are you going to tell me why Lilly felt my presence was so urgently needed here tonight, anyway?” Michael wanted to know, as he wrapped an arm around my waist.

“You know,” I said quickly. “I think it’s because she knew I always wanted to spend my senior prom with you.”

Michael just laughed. Sort of sarcastically.

“Lars,” he called over the top of my head, to my bodyguard. “Tell me the truth. Do I need to go back over there and turn J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy the Fourth into cream of wheat?”

Lars, to my total mortification, nodded, and said, “In my opinion, most definitely.”

“Lars!” I cried, starting to panic. “No. No! Michael, it’s over. J.P. and I just broke up. You don’t have to hit anybody.”

“Well, I think maybe I do,” Michael said. He wasn’t teasing, either. There was no smile on his face as he said, “I think maybe the earth would be a better place if somebody had turned J.P. Reynolds-Abernathy the Fourth into cream of wheat a long time ago. Lars? Do you agree with me?”

Lars looked at his watch and said, “It’s midnight. I don’t hit anyone after midnight. Bodyguard-union regulations.”

“Fine,” Michael said. “You hold him down, and I’ll hit him.”

This was terrible!

“I have a better idea,” I said, taking Michael by the arm again. “Lars, why don’t you take the rest of the night off? And Michael, why don’t we go back to your place?”

Just as I’d hoped, this completely distracted Michael from his Kill J.P. Death Mission. He stared down at me in shock for nearly five seconds.

Then he said, “That sounds like a completely excellent idea.”

Lars shrugged. What else could he do? I’m eighteen and a legal adult now.

“I am fine with this idea, too,” he said.

And that’s how I ended up in this limo, speeding downtown to SoHo, and to Michael’s loft.

And now Michael has suggested that I stop writing in my journal, and pay attention to him for a little while.

You know what? This sounds like a completely excellent idea to me, too.

An excerpt from Ransom My Heart by Daphne Delacroix

“Finnula,” he said, again, and this time she recognized the need in his voice. It matched the need she felt in her own heart, in the thrum of her own pulsing veins. “I know I gave you my word I wouldn’t touch you, but—”

Finnula wasn’t at all certain how what happened next transpired. It seemed as if one minute she was standing looking up at him, wondering if he’d ever stop talking and just do it, for heaven’s sake…

And the next, she was in his arms. She didn’t know if he’d moved or she had.

But suddenly, her arms were around his neck, drawing his head down toward hers, her fingers tangled in his soft hair, her lips already parted to receive his.

Those strong golden arms, the ones she’d longed to have round her, imprisoned her, clasping her so close to his broad chest that she could hardly breathe. Not that she could catch her breath anyway, since he was kissing her so deeply, so urgently, as if she might at any moment be torn away from him. He seemed to fear that they’d be interrupted again. Only Finnula realized, with a satisfaction that surely would have shocked her brother, had he known of it, that they had all night long. Accordingly, she lengthened the kiss, conducting a leisurely exploration of those arms she’d so admired. Why, they really were every bit as perfect as she’d imagined.

Abruptly, Hugo lifted his head, and looked down at her with eyes that had gone an even deeper green than the emerald around Finnula’s neck. She was panting from lack of breath, her chest rising and falling quickly, color bright over her high cheekbones. She saw the question in his glance, and understood it all too well. He didn’t know that she had already made her decision, that it had been irrevocably made for her the second she’d seen him without that beard, and her heart—or something very like her heart, anyway—had been lost for good.

Well, maybe her decision had been made the second that bolt had slid into place. What did it matter? They were strangers in a strange—well, strange enough—place. No one would ever know of it. Now was no time for his oddly misplaced sense of chivalry.

“Not now,” she growled, knowing full well why he’d stopped kissing her, and what his questioning look implied. “God’s teeth, man, it’s too late—” Whatever Hugo had been planning to say, her impatient cry silenced him upon the subject forever. Tilting her body back in his arms, Hugo rained kisses upon her cheeks and the soft skin beneath her ears, his mouth tracing a fiery path down the column of her throat to the neckline of her gown. Finnula, still anxious for the taste of his lips on hers, drew his head toward hers again, then gasped as his fingers closed over first one firm breast, and then the other.

The sensation of his mouth devouring hers, his hands on her straining breasts, was threatening to overwhelm Finnula. It was everything she’d suspected it would be…only so much more. The room seemed to sway around her, as if she’d drunk too much ale, and Hugo remained the only stationary, solid mass within her line of vision. She clung to him, wanting something…she was only just beginning to understand what that something was.