Jinxed!

This office was much larger than hers, and contained a huge front room, designed to display various valuable and exotic antiques from around the world, which were sold at private and invitation-only auctions.

She didn’t know the Adams’s well. Steve and Al were both private, quiet guys who kept to themselves. They paid her on time and that’s pretty much all that mattered.

They’d just had a large auction before they left so the place was empty. Anything they hadn’t sold was locked safely away in storage somewhere.

Beyond the reception area was a conference room, where the auctions were held, and then two private offices, and also a large storage/cleaning/research room.

Chloe stood in that inky blackness, which was relieved only by her own small beam of light. Nothing looked out of the ordinary, and now, thankfully, she didn’t hear a thing-

Thud.

Damn. She considered pretending she hadn’t heard it. The sound had come from the offices in the back, and with a sigh, she headed in that direction. “Dear batteries, please don’t die…”

Holding her breath, she turned to the first door, the auction room. It was empty, and very, very silent. So was Steve’s office. But Al’s…locked.

She looked down at the key in her hand, shrugged, and tried it. It worked, and she slowly turned the handle, the hair on the back of her neck rising when she heard a soft scuttle and then nothing.

Silence.

“Okay, bird,” she said out loud to make herself feel better. “Or squirrel.”

Nothing except that disconcerting sweat-inducing silence. Because she was suddenly claustrophobic, she moved around the desk to the window and looked out. She could see down to the courtyard and realized the other two wings of the building had not lost power. “Nice move, karma.” With a sigh, she faced the dark room. “Hey, you know what, birdy? You just go ahead and stay. I’m fine with that.”

And now she was talking to herself. Perfect. She headed to the door, then nearly killed herself when she fell over two ajar drawers. From her new position on the floor, she kicked the first one closed, but the second was jammed so she stood up and then pushed it.

Nothing.

Fine. She pulled it open to fix it. It was caught on files, filled with…bank statements?

Odd. She did the Adams’s banking, and this couldn’t be right. She hadn’t seen these statements. Pulling out a file, she flicked her light over it, and her stomach began to sink as she realized these were recordings for banking accounts she knew nothing about, all fat with money.

“Damn,” she said to the still unseen bird. “I hate it when they turn out to be crooked-” She broke off at a sound. And not just any sound, but a footstep.

A heavy footstep.

Nothing, nothing at all, like a bird or squirrel.

Oh, boy. Yeah, definitely she’d overstayed her welcome, but before she could hightail it to the door, she was yanked back against a strong, hard chest.

A squeak escaped her. That was all she got out as a big, warm hand came down over mouth and a muscled arm encircled her belly, rendering her immobile.

Her flashlight hit the floor, and she was hauled up against a large man. Panic gripped her. With his hand over her mouth, she was unable to move, unable to scream, and she could only think of one thing. Madame Karma really had cursed her.

She wouldn’t take this with just a whimper. No way. She’d read Self-Defense For Dummies- she knew what to do. One kick to the nads and this sucker would drop like a stone.

Please drop like a stone.

She twisted to the side and thrust up her knee as hard as she could. An oomph escaped him, and then a concise, single-worded oath that singed her hair back and struck terror to her heart.

Because she’d missed and caught him in the thigh. Not enough to incapacitate him or loosen his hold on her. But when he sagged back against the desk, she used their momentum to shove hard. They both crashed to the floor. Gasping for breath, she scrambled to crawl away, thinking door.

Get.

To.

The.

Door-

He grabbed her ankle and tugged hard, and she flew back against him.

“Hold still,” he grated out.

Hell if she would do that, and she kicked him as hard as she could.

“Ow, goddammit!”

The next thing she felt was the slap of cold metal on her wrist, and the sound of something clicking into place. She tugged her hand but she couldn’t move it.

Oh, God, he’d handcuffed her to him!

Then she was hauled to her feet, whipped around and pressed to a wall, held there by that hard body.

Then there was a narrow beam of light in her face.

“You,” said that voice, the voice that was unbearably familiar because it belonged to the man who claimed not to be her first lover, the guy who’d vanished on her tonight after a near miss with an erotic slow dance…the tough, sexy, edgy Ian McCall.

And either he was extremely happy to see her, or he had a gun in his pants.

4

IAN MCCALL HELD Chloe Cooper against that wall and sighed to himself in the dark office. Hell. How had he managed to get himself in this predicament?

Simple. He’d gotten sloppy.

Well, not sloppy, never sloppy. Overcome. As in overcome with memories, thanks to the blast from the past that felt like a one-two punch to the solar plexus.

He’d let Chloe Cooper get into his head.

And against his body.

He’d been shocked to see her tonight outside in that courtyard, looking sweet and sexy and like hopes and dreams revisited. But if he’d been shocked to see one of his greatest memories, he’d been even more shocked to find her snooping inside the auction house he’d been casing.

“Ian.” She was fighting him, fighting the handcuffs. “What’s going on?”

He’d like to know the answer to that question himself. With all his heart he’d like to know. Not wanting to give himself away, he said nothing, but she was struggling. Unfortunately for him, the way he had her pressed between the plaster and his body, the only thing she was really doing was making his eyes cross with lust.

And it wasn’t just his eyes. It actually wasn’t his eyes at all, since he couldn’t see a damn thing and had lost his penlight in the scuffle.

But he didn’t need to see. Not with her ass pressed into his crotch, and the arm he’d wrapped around her now trapped between her breasts and the wall. He could feel her nipples pressing into his forearm, two hardened peaks that were making him sweat.

And she was still wriggling. Wriggling and squirming, rocking and rolling all those glorious curves against him. He tried not to notice, he really did, but he’d have to be dead not to be affected.

Then there were the memories assaulting him, pummeling him, reminding him how much she’d once meant to him, which was to say everything. Once upon a time, in her arms, he’d felt as if he could do anything. He’d been stupid enough to leave her behind when he’d gone off to find himself, but he’d never been too stupid to know what a great thing he’d lost.

It was driving him crazy now.

She was driving him crazy, and if she didn’t stop wriggling-“Hold still,” he ground