The Proposition. Cara Summers

sister’s idea. She glanced down at her drink. The glass was still half-full, so she couldn’t blame the martini. Her gaze shifted to the letter and her father’s words.

      When you see what you want, trust in your talents. Risk anything it takes…

      Natalie ran her finger over her father’s signature again. She wanted Chance, and if she took Sierra’s suggestion, she could go after him with a clean slate. She wouldn’t be Natalie, the woman he hadn’t called for three months.

      “Think about it,” Sierra said.

      If she did decide to follow Sierra’s advice, she knew two things for sure. Chance Mitchell wouldn’t recognize her. And he wouldn’t know what hit him.

      CHANCE STOOD outside on the flagstone patio at the back of Sophie Wainwright’s antique and collectibles shop and scanned the crowd through the window. From what he could see, the event was a success. Three musicians were tucked away in a corner playing Mozart, and a white-jacketed waiter offering flutes of champagne was threading his way through the crush of guests.

      In between the potted trees and terra-cotta urns bursting with pansies and geraniums, Chance spotted a prominent senator, a congresswoman and several well-heeled collectors who’d been frequent clients at the gallery down the street where he’d worked undercover.

      The person he hadn’t spotted yet was Natalie Gibbs. He’d told himself that he came through the back alleyway because of the line of guests waiting to get in the front door of the shop, but the truth was he was stalling. He still wasn’t sure how he was going to handle Natalie when he ran into her.

      Damn if his hands weren’t damp. With a frown, he rubbed them on his pants. A woman hadn’t made him nervous since junior high school. He’d spent two days thinking of ways to convince her to go with him on the Florida caper. The best scenario he’d come up with was to play it by ear. Not that he was worried about that part. He wasn’t a planner by nature, and he’d gotten himself out of plenty of scrapes by improvising. He wasn’t worried about the job—she’d come with him to Florida, all right. It was on the personal level that he wasn’t quite sure how to handle Natalie Gibbs.

      Later, he couldn’t have said what it was that drew his gaze to the small balcony on the second story of Sophie’s shop. But the moment he saw the woman, he felt his mind go blank and then fill with her. Her hair was blond, parted in the middle, and it fell in a straight, smooth curve almost to her shoulders. The tiny black dress revealed curves in all the right places and left more bare than it covered. The summer sky was finally beginning to darken overhead, but even in the less than perfect light her skin had the pale perfection of an old-fashioned cameo. Chance let out a breath he hadn’t known he was holding.

      She was the kind of woman who would get a second glance from any man, but Chance couldn’t seem to get past the first one. The quick tightening in his gut was unexpectedly raw and hot, but what surprised him most was the flicker of familiarity, recognition almost, that pushed at the edges of his mind. He could have sworn he’d never laid eyes on her before. If he had, he certainly would have remembered.

      And then her eyes met his, and for the second time in as many moments, Chance felt his mind empty. The primitive streak of desire that moved through him had him scanning the iron railing, looking for a staircase, a ladder—or tree branch that extended far enough to…He hadn’t realized that he’d moved closer to the balcony until he bumped smack into a waiter. The man’s tray tilted, two champagne flutes began a downward slide. Chance barely managed to catch them.

      “Sorry,” he murmured as he settled them on the tray.

      “No problem, sir.”

      “I’ll take one of those, if you don’t mind.” He took a long swallow of the icy wine before he raised his gaze to the balcony again.

      She was gone.

      Disappointment warred with astonishment. Had he really been thinking of doing the Romeo thing and scaling a balcony? What in hell was the matter with him? Shakespeare’s star-crossed hero had been all of about sixteen. Chance was twice that age. Hormone-driven foolishness was a thing of his adolescent past. Or it should be.

      Still there was some similarity between Romeo and himself, he thought as his lips curved in amusement. In a way, he was crashing a party. He hadn’t gotten an engraved invitation from Sophie, merely a verbal, secondhand one from his friend Tracker. But that’s where the parallel would end. He hadn’t come here to meet some woman he was going to lust after at first sight and then fall madly and tragically in love with.

      He was here to make an offer to Natalie Gibbs that she would not be able to refuse. Taking another sip from his glass, Chance made his way to the French doors that opened into the shop. But it took more effort than he liked not to glance back up at the balcony.