The first time I had met Nathan Callis, I had been at a café, sharing an outdoor table with my friends. As I tried to cross my legs, I had ended up kicking someone, and by the sound of the person’s grunt, it was as if I had almost chopped his balls off with my stilettos.

Oops, I thought.

Looking up, an embarrassed apology ready to slip past my lips, I forgot what I had to say when beautiful gray eyes collided with mine. The victim of my unintentional crime was the most impossibly ethereal-looking man, and something about him seemed so damn familiar.

An actor perhaps, I wondered.

The man’s lips suddenly twitched. “It’s a good thing your eyes are quite eloquent.” His voice possessed the slightest accent, but I had heard it often enough to recognize it instantly.

Greek!

The realization made my hackles rise, and I thought, Hell, no.

“Apology accepted,” the man said courteously.

I bared my teeth in a sweet smile. “Who said I was thinking of saying sorry?” Well, okay, I had meant to, but I had since changed my mind. He was Greek, ergo a man I needed to hate.

As I turned away, I heard him chuckle, and my teeth gnashed. So he wasn’t just Greek, but he was arrogant, too. That made him doubly hateful in my book---

The hairs at the back of my neck stood up. I could feel him bending down towards me, so damn slowly it was like he was taunting me to look back at him.

My fingers clenched.

He wasn’t going to intimidate me---

But then I felt it, his breath caressing my skin, and I jerked.

“My name is Nathan Callis.” His mouth was so tantalizingly near my ear, I knew I’d be in trouble if I leaned just a millimeter closer to him. “It’s nice to meet you, Alyx.”

My eyes flew wide open. Ooooooh! How did he know my name?

I felt him straightening away in the same tauntingly slow pace, and it was all I could do to keep my back to him. How could he make me feel so…so…

A word slithered into my mind, but I refused to let it take shape.

Whatever I was feeling---

It didn’t matter.

He had no business making me feel in any way when I was still in love with another man.

Right?

When the man finally walked away, I became conscious of Fredericka and Anneke’s fascinated stares. “So, what were we talking about again?” I smiled very, very brightly, hoping they got the picture.

I didn’t want to talk about that too-beautiful guy, whoever he was.

My cousin cleared her throat. “Don’t get mad, okay?”

My gaze narrowed. “Freddie?” I knew that tone of hers, and it always meant bad news. You see, Freddie was one of the nicest and most hardworking girls that I had ever known. She always did the right thing, but when she messed up---

Freddie’s cringing expression made me feel even more suspicious. “The reason I also asked for us to meet here was because…” Fredericka gulped. “I set you up on a blind date – well, it’s not blind anymore---”

“FREDDIE,” I growled. She was barely making sense, but if I had to make a guess---

“…with that guy?”

It was exactly what I feared!

“Oh my God, Freddie!”

“I just thought you guys would click,” Fredericka protested. “He’s so calm, Alyx. He’s the opposite of you, and have you heard about how opposites attract---”

Anneke had an absent-minded expression on her face. “Is that the same Nathan Callis who used to be a supermodel?”

I gagged. “A supermodel?” As a journalist, I covered a lot of events all over the city, but one thing I had been adamantly against was fashion events. Glaring at my cousin, I demanded, “Really, Freddie? You think I’m the kind who’d date a supermodel?” I gagged again.

“Stop being so judgmental,” Freddie reproached me. Turning to Anneke, she said, “Yes, it’s that same Nathan Callis.”

“Oh.” Anneke cleared her throat. “Then that means he’s about three years younger than Alyx?”

I couldn’t help moaning in horror. “He’s not just a supermodel, but a younger one, too?” What the hell was Freddie thinking? Just because I happened to have an unrequited love didn’t mean I was desperate!

“You can be sued for discrimination with that attitude of yours,” Freddie lectured.

I scowled. “I don’t care. I’m never going to date a supermodel, and certainly not someone who’s younger.”

* * *

Who knew humble pie could taste this bad? The thought was uppermost on my mind as my last famous words came back to bite me in the ass.

“Sign here please, ma’am,” the police officer instructed.

I did as asked, all the while doing my best to pretend I didn’t notice Nathan Callis smirking at me. He was still the embodiment of all things I still didn’t want in a man: supermodel, Greek, and too rich, gorgeous, and arrogant for his own good.

And as the icing on top of the cake, he was younger, too!

Ah, how the mighty have fallen.

The sound of the signed documents being filed drew my thoughts back to reality. “You’re free to go, ma’am.” Sergeant Morris looked at Nathan, his smile extra jovial. “If there’s anything else I can do, just let me know.”

Boot licker, I thought snidely, but I knew better than to say the thought out loud, seeing how everyone at the police station seemed ready to burn me at the stake if I even glanced at the ex-model the wrong way.

“Alyx?” Nathan offered his hand. “Shall we go?”

I scowled. “Do I have to?”

“Yes.” And this time, he didn’t let me argue, his hand reaching for mine. As our fingers twined with each other, he said wickedly, “Whether you like it or not, you still need me.”

There was no chance to rebut his words, with his bodyguards throwing the double doors of the station open at Nathan’s nod.

A throng of reporters immediately greeted us, their yelled-out questions punctuated by the loud clicks and flashes of their cameras.

This was normal, something I was used to.

But then a larger crowd swelled, fighting through the ranks of the paparazzi, and along with it came shrieks of Nathan’s name and words that totally confused me. Protect? Endangered species? I actually found myself looking around, trying to see if we happened to have walked past some kind of strange animal that had escaped from the zoo.

“Naaaaaaaathan, you can’t---” One woman actually tried to throw herself at the ex-model, and I stiffened in shock, thinking she would really fall on us.

Nathan pulled me closer to him. “Just look down, sweetheart.” He forced me to keep moving even as his bodyguards stepped in to obstruct the woman’s descent. Walking away, I heard the woman wailing in seeming despair, and my confusion grew.

Don’t go!

Stay single!

More impassioned pleas of the like dogged us, and Nathan’s fingers tightened its grip. “Hang in there,” he said under his breath.

After what seemed like an eternity, we finally made it to his limousine. The door slammed shut, ensconcing us in silence, a stark contrast to the chaos we had just escaped from. I looked outside the window. As the limousine started to move, I glanced back at Nathan, wondering what had changed between now and the last time I saw him. Since I worked for a newspaper for several years, the sight of paparazzi stalking their favorite subjects was nothing new. But what happened outside the station?

“That was just mad.”

“I know,” Nathan acknowledged with a grimace, “and I can only apologize for it. There was this…thing…that came out recently, and it’s stirred up a ridiculous frenzy.”

His words ignited a spark of curiosity inside of me, and I reached for my bag, intent on Googling it. When he saw me taking my phone out, Nathan winced. “Don’t bother looking it up. It’s garbage.”

His words only made me even more interested, and I hurriedly typed his name on the search tab. The top hits came up a second later, and I knew immediately what he was talking about.

Halfway to skimming through the article, and I could no longer keep myself from laughing.

“Oh my God, you’re the endangered species?” I shook my head even as the words made me laugh harder. “How did that even happen? Are you being hunted to extinction?”

Nathan sighed. “May we please change the subject?”

“Nope. This is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while so if you don’t mind, I’m going to take my time enjoying it.” I went back to Google, and armed with the right keywords this time, more memes showed up---

I burst into a fit of giggles when I saw a meme where Nathan’s photo was crudely Photoshopped over the bodies of a tiger, rhinoceros, gorilla, and what seemed like a giant salamander.

“Have you seen this?”

Nathan barely spared the meme a glance. “Yes.” His tone was extra polite.

I pulled out another interesting snippet to show him. “What about this?” A group of enterprising women had come up with a genius fundraising campaign: for every dollar donated to their favorite charity, half of it will be spent making graphics that promote Nathan Callis and Christien di Luca’s status as endangered species.

“You’re really having fun with this,” Nathan murmured dryly.

“Yes, I am.” I looked up, about to tease him some more---

Oh.

The light in his gray eyes made my grin fade.

It was almost…tender.

Almost like he knew I badly needed a laugh, almost like he understood exactly what I needed.

I whipped my gaze away, muttering, “Stop looking at me like that. Your overprotective fans might think tonight’s rumors are real.”

“Isn’t it?”

My gaze whipped back to him. “Excuse me?”

Nathan smiled at me lazily. “You’re my girlfriend.”