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 out.

Of course she didn’t, she continued to fight him with everything she had, and then some.

“I know it’s you!” she cried. “Why are we handcuffed?”

Another most excellent question, which begged yet another, which was…just who didn’t he trust, her…or him?

“Just tell me why you won’t admit it’s you!”

Yes. Why didn’t he just admit it was him? Simple. Acknowledging their connection would jeopardize his case, not to mention his equilibrium.

Chloe. After all these years. Soft, beautiful, giving, passionate, wonderful Chloe. His first lover, keeper of his heart and, truthfully…

His biggest mistake.

God, he’d been so lost at eighteen, so sure he’d needed to leave town to make something of himself. And not just leave town, but go all the way across the country.

That’s what came of growing up in an unhappy household.

But he’d learned a lot since then-such as, happiness came from within, not from a job or a location.

He’d been happy enough in New York, and after college had been recruited by the FBI as a stolen-antiquity specialist. But he’d been happier when he’d come back to Los Angeles.

He could smell her, some intoxicating scent, and he wanted to bury his face in her hair like a homecoming, because God, this was Chloe. He’d been with women since her, and he’d even had a connection with some of those women, but nothing like he’d had with her.

Hell, even tonight, when he’d seen her across the grass and courtyard, he’d felt the pull of her, had been helpless against it. Now, here, being this close felt more essential than breathing.

And that was a problem, a big one.

“Say something!” she demanded, still wriggling like crazy. “Goddamnit, say something, anything!”

He’d been trying to restrain her before she made him a eunuch but something in her voice stopped him cold. He was scaring her. Torn between losing his cover and the need to make sure he didn’t give her a heart attack, he leaned over her and pressed his forehead to the wall, squeezing his eyes shut, his mind whirling. “I’ll tell you what’s going on, but you have to be still and quiet. Okay?”

She was breathing like a misused race horse, her soft warm exhales brushing his jaw.

“Okay?” he repeated, his hands gentle on her.

Still panting, he felt her nod. A strand of her hair caught on the day-old growth on his jaw and stubbornly clung. Another stray piece of silk stabbed him in the eyes.

Torture.

He waited a moment to make sure she was really going to behave because she’d nearly kicked his balls into next week, and, as he was particularly fond of all his parts, he didn’t want a repeat.

She didn’t move.

He’d thought that’s what he wanted but it turned out, no. Because now everything that had been moving before was still, giving him a much better grip on her.

And with the grip he had, combined with the blackness all around them, every little thing was magnified.

Intensified.

She was everything he remembered, everything that got into his dreams sometimes late at night: smart, gorgeous and tenacious as hell. God, he’d be so happy to see her, his first lover, the girl who’d once completely stolen his heart. Happy, except for two reasons.

One, he was deep into this stolen antiquities case. And two, as the accountant for his suspect, Chloe had some serious explaining to do. “I’m going to try to find my flashlight,” he said.

“It’s in your pants.”

No, what was in his pants was a hard-on to rival all hard-ons. “Actually…”