The Kam Reardon who had first arrived in London for college at seventeen, the awkward, brutish young man, had vanished, replaced by a well-groomed and cosmopolitan, if occasionally taciturn, cardiology resident with a brilliant future. The nearly ten years he’d spent in London had altered him beyond recognition. Many of the quirky mannerisms he’d acquired at Aurore Manor had to be willfully abandoned, strangled out of existence, or at best controlled. His brooding, harsh moods morphed into reserved, aloof ones. He’d believed in the rightness of his self-discipline of his more idiosyncratic, loner mannerisms until the day Diana had found out about his parentage and bizarre, inglorious upbringing. He’d believed until the day she’d fabricated a lie for him to give as a cover story to their affluent “friends.” Until he’d stubbornly shoved his ragged, shameful past into her and her friends’ faces, publically humiliating her—or so Diana had claimed.

Until she’d left him. Or he’d sacrificed Diana to his pride and left her. Kam had never really figured out which.

After that catastrophe, he hadn’t even bothered to rein in his instinct for isolation. He’d been entranced by Diana’s elegance and sophistication, her beautiful body and a face that could make a man like him crazed, it was so beyond his experience. He’d been hypnotized into sacrificing his freedom.

It suddenly struck him that the more refined Kam had recently made a reappearance since coming to Chicago. Yes, his cosmopolitan impression was less consistent than it had once been, and probably a hell of a lot less convincing. But he’d definitely been donning the once-familiar role again.

He’d been doing it because of Lin, and for no other reason.

“Kam?” Lin murmured a minute later as he pulled on his pants, her sleep-roughened voice in the darkness causing goose bumps to rise on his neck and arms.

“Yeah. Sorry. Didn’t mean to wake you. I thought I should go. I’m moving over to the apartment in the morning.”

“I’ll send a driver to the hotel who can help you transport all your things,” Lin said in a hushed voice.

“It’s okay,” he assured, whipping on his shirt and buttoning it rapidly. “I can carry it all, no problem. I’ll take a cab.” He hesitated next to the bed, now fully dressed. Her low, melodious voice, graceful arms and soft-looking form beneath body-warmed covers pulled at his consciousness.

“I’ll see you at two o’clock?” he said, reaching for his discarded jacket.

“What?”

“At the new apartment,” he reminded her, determinedly looking away from the appealing vision of her. “You said you’d be my test subject.”

“Oh. Right. Okay,” she said sleepily.

“Ian told me that you have a workout facility for the managers at Noble. Do you use it?”

“Yes,” Lin said, sounding a little puzzled.

“Can you use it sometime before you come to the apartment tomorrow? I’ll send over a sensor and some instructions. I’ll need to get your resting and exercise heart rate and your blood pressure. This part of the protocol is pretty straightforward. Just use the instructions and then bring the sensor with you when you come. I’ll extract the information from it. I’ll send over a quick questionnaire about your general medical history, too.”

“Sure. I’ll just do my workout before work.”

“Good. I’ll see you this afternoon then.” He started for the door.

“Kam?”

He paused. “Yeah.”

“Thank you for a nice night.”

For some reason, discomfort swamped him. He didn’t know what to say. He almost walked out the door without a word, but instead found himself taking two long strides back to the bedside. He leaned down and kissed her, at first hard, and then lingering.

Which made it all that much harder to walk away a moment later.

“Did you hear anything back from the courier service we hired to pick up Angus from the airport?” Lin asked Maria the next day after she’d finished her workout. She carried the surprisingly small sensor that Kam had delivered to her in order to gather data. He’d been right; using it had been straightforward and easy.

“Yes. The ‘goods’ are supposed to arrive at O’Hare at two forty-five this afternoon. Given the check-in time and evening traffic, Angus should be downtown by four thirty or so,” the administrative assistant told her, smiling. “I actually wish I could be there to see Mr. Reardon’s surprise. I got the impression from Phoebe Cane, the woman who was watching Angus, that they have quite a relationship.”

“Kam and his dog?” Lin murmured, distracted.

“Well, now that I think of it . . . them, too.”

Lin blinked, her gaze sharpening on Maria where she sat at her desk. The small hairs on her nape seemed to stand on end. She walked toward the other woman.

“What do you mean?”

Maria chuckled and shook her head, as if to say, It’s nothing of consequence. It suddenly felt as if she’d swallowed lead. Lin smiled congenially, even though her lips felt stiff.

“Are you suggesting that Kam and this Phoebe woman are an . . . item?”

“She certainly asked a lot of personal questions about Mr. Reardon for your typical dog watcher,” Maria responded with a significant glance.

“Well it’s not too surprising, I suppose.” Lin attempted to make light of the matter. “Kam’s a very good-looking man. He’s bound to get a lot of attention from the women in that village.”

“Right,” Maria said, turning to her computer.

Lin wavered in her heels. Something in Maria’s tone told her there was more to the story. “What sort of things did this Phoebe woman say?” Lin asked, despising herself for not being able to just walk away and dismiss the whole thing.

“Oh, the usual things like, whether or not Kam seemed to be enjoying his stay in the States, when he was returning, and if he missed Angus and Aurore Manor.”

“Anything not so typical?”

“Well,” said Maria, turning and putting her elbows on the desk and leaning toward Lin in a confidential, girl-talk manner. “She did mention that Angus was having trouble sleeping and had run away on several occasions. Then Ms. Cane made a comment like, ‘Angus is just like her master. I can’t keep him in my bed for more than an hour or two before he gets restless and is running for the countryside as well.’”

“Oh, yes, I see what you mean,” Lin said with a small laugh before she walked to her office and shut the door.

For a stretched minute, she just stared out the floor-to-ceiling windows with her back pressed to the closed door, her brain vibrating with tidbits of memory and the knowledge Maria had just casually imparted. She heard Kam’s voice in her head.

I wouldn’t have had sex with you last night if there were someone special.

But how significant was that? Just because he spent a couple of hours a week in this woman’s—Phoebe’s—bed didn’t imply she was his girlfriend.

Or that you are.

A blush of mortification heated her cheek at the thought. What was she, an eleventh grader? Of course she wasn’t Kam’s girlfriend. She was a mature woman who was sharing a private, extremely gratifying sexual relationship with a very attractive single man. Why was she getting so shaken up about the idea of discovering he had a bedmate in France?

She vividly recalled awakening in the early morning and seeing his tall, large form standing in the shadows as he hastily pulled on his clothes. His nighttime exit hadn’t really bothered her all that much at the time, and whatever doubts had started to creep in were quickly silenced by his searing kiss before he left.

The realization that this was typical behavior for Kam, that he was known for not staying in a woman’s bed far beyond what it took for the essentials, shouldn’t have caused that jolt of icy anxiety to go through her.

It shouldn’t have, but it did.

Lin pushed herself off the door and approached her desk, tossing the sensor on the blotter. She knew from years of experience of coping with unrequited feelings that there was one rational way to silence her anxieties: work. She put on her glasses and hunkered down behind her desk, a detailed financial report in front of her.

Much to her chagrin, it was harder for her to rein her mind in today than it had ever been on any occasion when she was heartsore over Ian.

Chapter Ten

Kam opened the door to his new temporary apartment at two that afternoon.

“Hello,” he said, his gaze lowering over her in a manner Lin was determined to ignore.

“Hi.”

His head lowered. She felt herself panicking. His lips brushed hers. He smelled so good. For a few seconds, her lips responded to his kiss without her giving them permission to do so. Something snapped like a whip inside her.

She abruptly shoved an envelope that held the sensor and the completed medical information sheet into his hand and walked past him.

“Any problems with the sensor?” he asked after a pause, even though he sounded a bit puzzled.

“No, it was simple to use, just like you said,” Lin replied airily.

During the past several hours, she’d forced her anxieties into neat storage at the corners of her consciousness. She’d open the containers and rifle through the difficult contents when she felt more in control of her emotions. But one of Kam’s deep kisses could easily rattle something loose and cause some real damage as it bounced dangerously around her brain.

“This is a great place. And only three floors away from Ian and Francesca,” she said, walking into the spacious, luxurious living room that was furnished with a pleasing combination of substantial Asian antiques and modern, comfortable couches and chairs. She turned when she reached the center of the room.