In Bed With The Wild One: In Bed With The Wild One / In Bed With The Pirate. Colleen Collins

ahead of her. “I doubt ol’ Mack or anybody else will think to look for us in a restaurant. At the very least it’ll waste a few hours, and then maybe it will be safe to go back to Beau’s.” He regarded her with a speculative look. “And we can talk, you and I. How about we make a deal? For every question you answer about yourself and what you’re doing here, I’ll take a question, too. What do you say?”

      “Deal,” she answered without a moment’s hesitation, positive she had the best of that bargain. The life of boring Emily Chaplin was an open book.

      The life of mysterious Tyler O’Toole was better than any spy novel.

      TYLER REFILLED her wineglass, congratulating himself on an excellent strategy. After the kiss-and-tell in Washington Square had backfired, he’d switched to Plan B—ply her with pasta, a nice, smooth Chianti, a little more Chianti, and eventually she’d tell him anything he wanted to know.

      He now had her entire résumé and then some, including a blow-by-blow account of her trip to The Flesh Pit. Meanwhile, he’d relied on dodging, obfuscation and evasion, and she hadn’t learned one thing about him. Nice girls were so easy it wasn’t even a fair fight.

      “What do you do for a living?” she’d asked.

      “Nothing at the moment.”

      There was a pause. “And what did you do when you still did something?”

      He’d shrugged. “This and that.”

      Her eyes had narrowed. “What did whatever you did have to do with hookers and strippers?”

      That took him by surprise. “Who told you I had anything to do with hookers or strippers?”

      “Kate.”

      He’d made a mental note to have a talk with Kate. To Emily, he’d offered another shrug. “Let’s just say I have a weakness for underdogs. I offered help when they needed it.”

      “Like me!” she’d said happily. “Like me with you.”

      And as neatly as that, they were successfully off the subject of him and back to her.

      Of course, that still didn’t explain why she had decided that she needed to attach herself to him. She wasn’t terribly coherent on that part. Could she be more deceptive than he thought? Nah, she was a terrible liar. So the bit about concluding that he was in trouble and needed her help must be true. Because she’d liked his looks in the back seat of a cab, or because she’d been captivated by Beau’s B and B, or because her curiosity had been aroused when the thug came through the window. Insane, but true.

      “How exactly did you think you could help me?” he inquired, trying not to notice how erotic it was when she sucked the marinara sauce off her spaghetti like that.

      “Legal help,” she said immediately. “Clearly you’re in a jam.”

      “You always operate on so little information?” He shook his head, latching onto a hunk of bread to keep his hands busy. Otherwise he’d be tempted to reach across the table and brush that little smudge of sauce off her chin. “Or did you just have a burning need to work on a merit badge?”

      “Oh, I get it.” She gave him this cornball smile, all cutie-pie Midwestern girl, and he started to melt in spite of himself. “Merit badge. ’Cause you think I’m a real Girl Scout. Pretty funny.”

      “Yeah. Pretty funny.”

      Actually, not funny at all. Could she really be as genuine and sincere as she seemed? Or was she snowing him down to his shoes?

      Tyler took a big swallow of wine, watching her, weighing her, mentally taking her apart and putting her back together.

      The bottom line was there was just something about Emily. Something about the sparkle in those round, trusting hazel eyes, about the perfect Little Dutch Girl hairdo that seemed to frame her face and make her eyes even bigger, about the bright, uncomplicated radiance of her smile. About the way she attacked her clams with the same gusto she’d kissed him with in Washington Square.

      That was something, all right.

      And if he didn’t watch himself, he would be falling for her crazy, mixed-up charms. Big-time.

      “Great time for that,” he muttered under his breath. “You are on the verge of losing your office, your practice and your kneecaps. Sure, great time to fall for Susie Sorority.”

      “What did you say?” she asked politely.

      “Nothing.”

      “I thought you said something about Sukie Sommersby. Now that would be a coincidence.” Emily laughed, shaking her not-quite-golden brown hair.

      Tyler found himself distracted by the way the candlelight played across the fall of her shiny hair.

      “Sukie and I go way back.”

      “Sorry. Don’t know anybody named Sukie.”

      But Emily was off and running, doing this riff on the adventures of her old college chum, who seemed to have lived quite the roller-coaster life. Waving her hands for emphasis, giggling, trying on and discarding goofy accents to sketch the various personages who drifted through Sukie’s madcap escapades, Emily was irresistible.

      Her performance also gave him a pretty good idea of why she thought it was acceptable to jump on a plane to San Francisco and then run off on a wild-goose chase once she got there. Because it was what Sukie would do. Damn Sukie. And what kind of name was Sukie, anyway?

      Oh, well, at least the collected stories of the life and times of Sukie Sommersby gave him a chance to watch Emily lick the cream out of a cannoli.

      There were few pleasures in life to top that.

      TYLER FELT ABOUT TEN YEARS older by the time he took her back to Beau’s B and B. Given how giggly and clingy Emily was getting, he probably shouldn’t have poured quite so much wine down her. Or had the last few glasses himself.

      Good thing he’d found her credit card when the bill came. Not only did he verify that her name really was Emily Chaplin, but he didn’t have to wash dishes to get them out of Caffe Fiori. By himself, he couldn’t afford the first bottle of Chianti, let alone a second one.