“Emily, I don’t know anything about you except that you have a strange habit of popping up when I least expect it. Plus I checked you out on the register.” Tyler backed up into a quiet, shadowy park, an oasis of green in the bustling neighborhood. “Emily Bond, huh?” He paused, circling an arm around a tall tree, and she could see the dubious gleam in his eye even in the dim light. “That’s convenient. What are you, James Bond’s cousin? Sister?”
Uh-oh, she’d forgotten about that. “Don’t be silly. Emily Bond is a perfectly normal name. There are a lot of people named Bond in this world besides James.”
“Maybe. But you’re not one of them. The Gap boy said he was looking for ‘Emily Ch—.’ Since when does Bond start with Ch?”
“Maybe he made a mistake. Maybe my middle name’s…Charity.” Emily skipped right past him, out into an open area of grass. Over the tops of the trees, she could see the twin spires of a nearby church, illuminated so that they seemed to float there, up in the sky. The glow they cast down into the park was both beautiful and eerie at the same time.
“Emily.” Unexpectedly, he was right behind her, and she spun around, almost losing her balance. But he caught her and pulled her up against him. He leaned in so close that his warm breath tickled her ear when he whispered, “I know.”
“W-what?” Closing her eyes, allowing herself to melt into him just a tiny bit, she tried her best not to be intimidated.
So what if it was dark and private and incredibly romantic here in the park? So what if they’d just had an amazing escape and she was light-headed from lack of food and too much adrenaline and the heady, unbelievable triumph of bashing a jerk over the head with a shoe?
Out of your league, her inner good girl told her sternly. Having the best time of your life, her inner bad girl countered.
“What do you think you know?” she asked him finally, staring up into those moody green eyes, letting her gaze wander over that tiny, swollen ridge on his lower lip.
Soft, insistent, husky, the sound of his voice spun down her spine, weakening her already thin resistance. “I know you’re lying to me,” he murmured, tipping up her chin. “I know you’re following me. I just don’t know why. But you’re going to tell me, aren’t you?”
So he thought he could seduce her into spilling her guts? She lifted one finger to trace the bruise on his lip. “Does it hurt, where he hit you?”
“Emily, stop trying to distract me.” But he was the one who opened his mouth slightly, just enough to touch the tip of his tongue to the side of her finger, making her tremble and catch her breath. “You do know you’re playing with fire, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Oh, yes. I’m counting on it.”
And he licked her finger again. She felt she had to hang on or she’d fall down, right there in the middle of the park. That tiny touch of his warm, wet tongue against her cool flesh was enough to send her tripping over the edge. Too much excitement, too many reckless emotions in a too-long day. And he was too good at this.
She wound her arms around his neck, lifted herself into his embrace and pressed her mouth into his with all the energy and passion she could muster.
His arms fastened tight and hard around her, pulling her up into him, fitting her curves to the hard angles of his long body. The sensual assault of his lips and tongue was hot, relentless, delicious. He tasted like danger and joy and sin and nothing she’d ever imagined in a man or in a kiss.
If this mind-numbing desire was what she thought she’d wanted, she must have been out of her mind. It was incredible. Addictive. And terrifying.
A hungry little moan escaped her lips, and she couldn’t believe that sound came from her. “I want you,” she murmured, breathless, trembling.
“And I want to know what this is all about.”
His harsh tone was like a splash of cold water. She pushed away. “That again?”
“What do you really want, Emily? What are you doing here?” When she made no reply, Tyler smiled. It was a very dark, crooked smile. “Did you really think I’d take this any further when I know you’re still lying to me?”
“I am not!” Emily was furious. Humiliated, dripping with desire, and furious. “Okay, my name is Emily Chaplin. I lied about Bond. Big deal. I sort of ran away from home for the weekend and I didn’t want my mother to find me.” A new thought occurred to her. “Shoot. I wasn’t supposed to use my credit cards, either. But I forgot when I did the Gap thing.”
“Which is why the delivery boy knew your real name.”
“I didn’t say I was good at this. Yet.” She sighed. “Okay, so I already told you I’m a lawyer. That’s true. You also know I’m from Chicago because I was on the same plane you were. What else do you need to know?”
“No, I didn’t know you were from Chicago,” he said tightly. “So you spotted me on the plane and decided to follow me off? You are a stalker.”
“No, I did not follow you off the plane!” Actually, she’d followed him on the plane, which was even worse. “I didn’t see you during the flight at all,” she said, sticking to a grain of truth. “Not until I went to get a cab, and there you were. You remember, the taxi driver grabbed my briefcase and asked if I wanted to share. I came to San Francisco on a whim, I admit that. But I’m not a stalker. And I didn’t have anywhere better to go, so when you said you were going to North Beach, I thought why not? And then the B and B was so wonderful, it just seemed like fate. Like kismet. It even has a Kismet room! So I stayed.”
That sounded plausible, didn’t it? And less bizarre than the real story.
“So that’s when you started following me, after you came to the B and B? You’re saying you just stumbled into this when that guy came through my window?”
She avoided the direct question. “My motives were really very good. I wanted to help you. I could tell you were in trouble and I wanted to help. That is the absolute truth,” she swore.
“Little Ms. Emily Chaplin, lawyer from Chicago.” He ran a careless hand through the dark strands of his hair. “And let me guess—you’ve never done anything like this before in your life, and you decided this was your big chance to attach yourself to a bad boy in a leather jacket and get a ride to the wrong side of the tracks, am I right?”
“No.” She hesitated. “Okay, well, kind of. I mean, yes, I’ve never done anything like this before. But no to the rest of it.”
“Listen to me, Emily,” he told her, putting even more distance between them, stabbing a finger in the air. “I am nobody’s walk on the wild side. Do you hear me?”
“I hear you. But you’re being ridiculous.” She rushed to catch up before he left her in the park all by herself. “I’m not asking for a walk on the wild side. I’m telling you, you need my help.”
He flashed her a very unpleasant look.
“You can deny it all you like,” she persisted, “but we’re a good team. Where would you have been tonight without me? Sliced and diced in Shanda Leer’s living room?”
“I was doing fine.”
“Oh, yeah, right. I saved your adorable butt, Tyler O’Toole, and you know it.” Oops. She was supposed to leave out the adorable part.
His lips curved with amusement.
“Well, it’s the truth,” Emily insisted. “And you owe me.”
He stopped without warning, and she crashed into him before she could put on the brakes. But his hands bracketed her shoulders, holding her steady. “What exactly do you think I owe you?”
The first thing that flashed into her mind was a roll on