Saturday, July 24. 8:07 a.m. Lower Hutt, greater Wellington area, New Zealand.

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The rope, once protected by the couch cushions, slipped off and shifted across to the next window ledge, snagging against a lethal-looking shard of glass. Daniel clung with one hand to the rope, the other wedged into a zigzagging crack between bricks. The toes of his boots were jammed into other cracks, and his upper body flexed and swayed as he fought the aftershock, trying to keep his body pressed flat into the wall.

The quake ended as suddenly as it started. Ana clamped her hands over her mouth, stifling a sob. God, if she distracted him—she could see it took all his attention to hold on. Daniel could fall—could die—right in front of her and she couldn’t let that happen. Looking around, frantic for something, anything to help him, she didn’t hear him call her name at first.

“Ana? Hey, Ana?”

She scrambled over broken bricks and odd pieces of debris swept into the parking lot by the tsunami. The sound of her name eventually pierced the black bubble of panic surrounding her.

“What can I do?” she yelled.

Ana hated to be a hysterical female, one who would flap her hands and wait for a big, strong man to fix everything. But who was she kidding? She felt hysterical. Give her a mind-numbing stack of paperwork or an irate client and her composure remained unruffled. But a life and death situation that involved physical peril? Someone else volunteer for the job, thanks.

“Don’t panic,” Daniel said. “I’m okay, but I can’t look straight down. You need to be my eyes and tell me where I can put my hands and feet.”

Ana retied the flyaway strands of hair that had escaped her ponytail and focused on taking three calming breaths.

“Soon would be good,” he added, deadpan.

“Yeah. Right. Sorry.” She studied the random cracks and lumps of the bricks, trying to formulate a way for Daniel to descend. She had no clue how to instruct him and swallowed thickly before speaking. “About a metre below you is a narrow ledge.”

“How narrow?”

“About the width of your foot.”

“Any cracks or bricks sticking out between the ledge and my feet? I can see where to put my hands, but not my feet.”

“There’s a wide crack just below your left foot, and another directly below the center of your body.”

“Thanks.” Daniel tilted his head up. “Maggie, can you hear me? I’m going to let go of the rope. Pull it back and keep it out of my way. Ready?”

Maggie, ever efficient, pulled the rope out of the way mere seconds after Daniel released it. Daniel didn’t try to catch it again.

“What are you doing? Grab the rope.” Ana’s heart jolted into an erratic stutter.

What she knew of rock climbing, or climbing of any sort, wouldn’t fill a Post-it note. What she did know from observing other climbers at Theo’s birthday party was this: people climbed up a wall but they used a rope to come down.

“I can’t rely on the rope, it could be compromised.” Daniel found a handhold above his hips with his right hand and lowered his left foot into the gap Ana described. “I’ll be fine.”

His movements were deliberate and strangely eloquent. She couldn’t drag her gaze away.

When she hesitated, he called encouragement. “Come on, you’re my eyes.”

Ana gulped past the lump embedded in her throat each time his foot slipped off a chunk of brick or his fingers scrabbled for purchase inside a crack.

“I trust you, Ana. You can do this.”

Once on the second floor ledge, Daniel followed her directions to descend another story, where he dropped the last six feet to land catlike on the ground. He brushed a smattering of dust from his shoulder and stalked toward her, a tawny panther of a man.

It was a moment that slashed a line in the sand. On one side was Nadia’s brother and the perfect guy to have around in an emergency. On the other side of the line, the one she’d inadvertently stepped over, was simply Daniel. Ana could no longer deny her awareness of him, how he made her blood thrum and heat wash through her body.

He stopped close enough that she could count each individual flake of brick that dotted his shirt. Heat blistered off him, carrying his unique scent and the raw sting of fresh male sweat. Her mouth went dry, as if the warmth of his body sucked out all the moisture.

“Could’ve done it blindfolded, huh?” The tip of her tongue swept out to dampen lips that trembled under his fierce contemplation. “You might’ve been killed.”

Daniel didn’t reply. Instead, he slid a hand along the curve of her jaw. She shivered as his long fingers cradled the back of her head and used them as gentle leverage to pull her off balance. Her hands splayed against his chest, her palms soaking up the heat released from taut muscle.

“I didn’t need to see. I had you.”

“Daniel, I don’t think we, I mean I—” Her voice contained a huskiness she didn’t recognize. It was like eavesdropping on a stranger. A stranger who wasted her breath by protesting the inevitable.

He tugged her up on her toes and dipped his head, the only way to negate the height difference. “You lawyers never run out of arguments, do you?”

His lips plunged down to bridge the distance. It was as if the touch of his warm mouth shot a stream of pure carbon dioxide through her veins. Her blood fizzed and bubbled. No arguments from her now; she couldn’t even assemble a coherent thought. The rasp of stubble scraped her upper lip and she instinctively opened her mouth wider, a soft moan in her throat as his tongue danced in delicate flirtation. Releasing a fistful of his shirt, her fingers slid upward to cling to his shoulders.

His breath caught when she leaned into him, surrendered something of her will to meld her body to his hard contours. The feel of him lit a fuse that sparked and travelled south, a bright flare that threatened to combust into wildfire. It shocked her enough that it threw a bucket of cold reason into her brain.

She dragged her mouth away, gasping his name. His eyes opened and locked with hers, the pupils wide and dark with need. No one had looked at her that way for a long, long time. No one had looked at her that way, period.

Daniel brushed his thumb along her cheek and removed his other hand from her hip. Then he stepped back, his gaze still on her face.

Ana tugged the baggy top self-consciously down her hips. A piercing wolf whistle split the air and she nearly leapt a foot off the ground. She and Daniel looked up at the same time. Both Joel and Maggie leaned out the window high above, gigantic grins plastered over their faces.

A rush of blood exploded into her cheeks. She kinda wished another aftershock would open a chasm under her feet, dispersing her to the center of the earth. Anything would be better than Joel’s merciless teasing from now until eternity.

“Hey, Daniel—you finally figured out how to shut her up, eh? Impressive, my man. Don’t think I’ve ever seen Ana speechless, or at least, not kissed speechless.”

A belly laugh rolled out of the man beside her. Before she could think of a scathing comeback, Joel disappeared. Humiliating though it was to confess, she hadn’t been kissed speechless before—a humiliation she didn’t intend to share with Daniel Calder. He wasn’t going to find out how much one kiss had affected her.

“There goes my reputation.” Ana injected a small amount of drollness into her tone. With any luck, Daniel would think she was cavalier about the whole kissing thing. Kissing thing? What was she, an awkward teenager?

“Perhaps.” Daniel brushed more grit from his shirt. “But that was a hell of a reward for making it out alive.”

With a quiet huff, she pivoted away from him and stomped over to untie the backpack that Maggie had lowered. Boots scraped behind her, and she turned. Daniel leaned against the wall with crossed ankles. A smile, suspicious enough to be labelled a smirk, spread over his face, and those irritatingly cute dimples winked.

“What are you grinning about?” Ana untied the last knot and yanked the backpack on, firing a warning glare in his direction when it appeared he might step in to help.

“Oh, I dunno.” Daniel rubbed his fingers across his lips with insolent slowness. “Just thinking a lot more guys would join parkour groups if they got kissed like that at the end of a run.”

“You kissed me, Farm Boy.”

He shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his jeans. Dimples creased his cheeks deeper than before. “You kissed me back, Counselor.”

Ana folded her arms and opened her mouth to object. She snapped it shut again at the questioning arch of his eyebrow.

He had her there. Damned if she would admit it, though.

She spun and stalked toward the parking lot entrance, ignoring the soft sounds of his laughter.