Kyle grabbed her and tugged hard, so that she fell back against him.

The bullet hit the back wall, a foot above their heads.

Kyle’s momentum had tumbled them both down with a jerk. And though he attempted not to notice, the jarring movement nearly freed a breast.

Until she hit the floor, that is, because that’s when the skirt of the dress-buoyed by the hoops-once again flew up and over both their heads.

With a savage sound of frustration, she tugged both of them free and glared at him as if it was his fault she had horrible taste in clothes.

“Maybe now you’ll listen,” he said, gallantly swallowing a cocky I-told-you-so.

“The panel is dust,” she said, ignoring him. “We’ll have to figure out something else.”

She was cool as a cucumber. He’d never met a woman like her.

“I can handle this.”

“Really?” Her gold eyes looked him over. “Don’t take this wrong, but you’re not exactly doing a great job so far.” She turned away to inspect their surroundings. “Don’t worry,” she said in a patronizing voice that made his jaw clench. “I’ll figure this out for both of us. Just stay down so you don’t get hit.”

Not only was he in a tux, not only did he have a mobster trying to gun him down, he had to be stuck in an elevator with the most irritating woman on the planet. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

“What?” She was distracted as she studied the ceiling.

“The ‘don’t worry’ line. The ‘stay down’ line.”

She sent him a vague smile, then went back to inspecting their surroundings as if she knew what she was doing.

Clearly, she thought he was an idiot.

Kyle didn’t need Jimmy to kill him. This nutcase in pink was going to do it by stress alone.


ANNIE STUDIED the ceiling carefully, while wracking her brain, conjuring up every action-adventure film she’d ever seen-of which there were many-for inspiration. “There’s always a way out,” she said. “I just have to come up with it.”

The man behind her made a rude noise. “This whole thing could have been avoided if you’d only listened to me in the first place.”

“Oh, you mean when you told me to get out of here?” Hmm, the ceiling had several panels. Assuming she could reach one, she might be able to crawl out. She was good at escaping. She’d mastered it at age two, when she’d escaped into her mother’s royal closet to avoid eating her peas at dinner.

It had taken the entire army of Grunberg royal bodyguards to find her, as this had been before her mother’s death, when the closet had been the size of a house and filled with enough clothing to clothe everyone in their entire country.

By the time Annie had become a teenager, she’d gained enough skill that no one could find her when she wanted to be hidden, not even Natalia-her sister and closest friend. No one could find her but Amelia, but since Annie was convinced Amelia really was a fairy godmother in disguise, she didn’t count.

“If you’d stayed back,” the man said, “I could have tackled him and wrestled away the gun. Arrested him.”

She turned on him in surprise. Which was not an easy move wearing such a stupid dress. While the skirt might be too wide, the top sure wasn’t. When she turned, she threatened to expose more of herself than she planned on exposing.

Secret exhibitionist fantasy or not, she didn’t plan on showing off her wares to just anyone. Especially this man, with his intense eyes that gobbled her up and his tall, rangy body that could make a grown woman drool. Not that she was drooling.

No, not over him. He was too big, too…real.

Then what he’d just said sank in. “You’re a cop?”

“What did you think?”

She had no idea. Hmm…a cop. He’d dedicated his life to serving and protecting others. How irresistible was that?

But he was about to get married. To someone else. If they lived.

Not that he’d have been interested in her anyway. Well, not past the tiara and prestige anyway. She’d learned, hadn’t she? She should have had it down by now. No men. They wanted only one thing.

Well, make that two.

Sex and money.

Too bad she wasn’t any good at the first and until she came into her trust fund in another year, had a lot less of the second than anyone would believe.

“Maybe,” she said, “the other people in the store, the ones Jimmy sent outside, called the cops. Or maybe the shots alerted someone else in the building. Maybe there’s help on the way.”

“You’re awfully full of maybes.”

“Call me an eternal optimist.”

“In that dress, you’d have to be.”

She ground her teeth together. “This dress is hardly my fault-”

“Look, let’s just get ourselves out of here before Jimmy figures out how to find us.”

“Right.” She figured they’d have to go out the ceiling, crawl along whatever sort of system there was and-

“We’ll go out the ceiling.”

She stared at him. “That was going to be my idea.”

The look he shot her was nothing short of patronizing. “Right. I’ll go first, and-”

“I should go first.” She came up to him, startled anew by his sheer size. She refused to acknowledge how her head barely reached his wide shoulders, or the fact that his gaze dipped down to the barely there neckline of her dress, which she prayed had stayed in place. “I’ll need a boost.”

“Did you forget who’s the cop here?”

“So you’re one of those guys who have a problem with strong women-”

“I most definitely do not have a problem with women, strong or otherwise.”

His voice had gone low and dangerously soft. Sort of the way her father’s got when he was really close to losing his temper.

She had a feeling seeing this man blow his lid would be quite a show, but they didn’t have time for that right now.

A fact that was reiterated when another bullet hit the panel, again piercing the back wall above their heads and echoing throughout their small confines.

She put her hands over her ears at the same time he reached for her, covering her body with his.

“You have to stop doing that,” she said against his chest.

Against his really hard chest. She wondered if he had a smattering of dark hair across it or if he was smooth-

“Shut up. Please,” he begged. “Just shut up and let me rescue you.”

“I’ll rescue myself.”

“This is a nightmare. You’re a nightmare.”

She’d heard that before. “Just bend down and let me get on your shoulders. Do it quick before another bullet tears into us.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. “This isn’t some great adventure, you get that, right?”

“Of course-”

“Because I don’t think you realize that if Jimmy gets smart and gets upstairs before us, and your pretty little neck appears first, he’s not going to drop his gun, give you a hand, and help you out.”

“Well-”

“Unless, of course, you do exactly that.”

“What?”

“That.” His eyes remained on her face, but his voice changed again. Silky soft now. Very silky soft.

And she was clueless. “Do…what?”

“Pop a nipple out of your dress.”

3

BECAUSE HE COULDN’T handle looking at her for another second, Kyle turned his back. Counted to ten. Calculated complicated algebra problems in his head.

Didn’t matter. He could still picture her nipple poking out from the top of her dress. Perfectly rose-colored and perky. Perfect size for a man’s mouth.

He was a man. A typical red-blooded man. With sex now firmly on the brain despite the fact that they were on the run from a bad guy with a gun.

Damn it.

“Sorry.”

This from behind him, in that voice that somehow screamed innocence and sex all at the same time.

“I haven’t had my dress fitted yet,” she said amongst the rustling of her dress. “And-”

“It’s okay,” he said to the wall. No way could he look at her and hold eye contact. Nope, his gaze had a mind of its own suddenly, run by the boss between his legs, and it wouldn’t be able to hold back from taking another look to see if she’d managed to cover herself.

“I couldn’t wear a bra with it because-”

“It’s okay,” he repeated, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, trying to think of something else, anything other than how absolutely delectable her nipple had been.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said in what he thought was a remarkably casual voice. “To do that, I need to concentrate. And to do that, I need you to be really, really quiet. Can you do that one little thing, do you think?” He risked a look at her.

Her eyes narrowed. Her mouth opened. Then closed.

“Good girl,” he said.

“I’m not a girl. I’m a grown woman.”

He knew his eyes went hot, knew his voice sounded low and husky, but he couldn’t help it. “I realize that.”

“Do you? Do you realize there’s no need to be rude? Just because your manhood feels threatened by me suggesting you might need my help-”

His manhood didn’t feel threatened so much as…horny. “I don’t need your help-” He broke off when another bullet tore into the control panel, getting ensnared high in the corner this time. Not forgetting to save her ungrateful hide, Kyle drew her down into the corner yet again.

They stayed that way for a moment, until he realized how still she’d become. Damn. She’d probably, finally, gone into shock.

But then she shoved him off her, stood and hiked up her dress, revealing a pair of long, toned legs in thigh-high stockings rimmed with lace, held there by a simple white, devastatingly sexy garter belt.

His jaw dropped. “What-” His voice cracked like a teenager and he tried again. “What are you doing?”

“Did you see that? The direction of the bullet entry?”