She faced the bar and took a drink. The rum slid down easy and added a little kick to her growing buzz. With single-minded determination, she pushed thoughts of the Meyers family from her head and concentrated on the hearts strung along the bar. It was Valentine's Day, and that reminded her that she hadn't been on a good date in months. Sex since the Bellagio and Manny. And while she really didn't miss Manny, she did miss intimacy. She missed the touch of a man's strong hands. Sometimes she wished she were the sort of woman who could pick up a man in a bar. No regrets. No recriminations. No wanting a criminal background check first.

Sometimes she wished she was more like her friend, Marilyn. Marilyn's motto was, "If you don't use it, you'll lose it," as if her vagina had an expiration date.

She looked at her reflection in the mirror behind the bar and wondered if losing the desire for sex was like losing a sock at the Laundromat. Did it just disappear without a trace? By the time you noticed it was gone, was it too late? Was it gone for good?

She didn't want to lose her desire for sex. She was too young. For just one night, she wished she could turn off the interrogator in her head and find the sexiest guy around, grab him by the front of his shirt, and lock lips. For just one night, she wished she were the type of woman who could gorge on wild sex with a man she'd never met and would never see again. His touch would burn her alive, and she'd forget about everything but his mouth on hers. She'd take him to her hotel room, or perhaps they wouldn't even make it to the room and they'd have to do it in the elevator, or a service closet, or maybe she'd do him in the stairwell.

Kate took a drink and turned her attention to the good-looking bartender. He stood at the end of the bar laughing and joking and shaking up martinis. She might have become cynical about people and especially men, but she was still a woman. A woman with dozens of secret fantasies spinning about in her head. Fantasies of being swept up into big strong arms. Of eyes meeting across a crowded room. Of instant attraction. Remorseless lust.

Since her breakup with Manny, all her fantasy men were the complete opposite of her old boyfriend. They were all bad boys with big hands and bigger… feet. The star of her current fantasy was a blonde badass with size thirteen biker boots. She'd picked him from a Dolce & Gabbana ad in Cosmo, looking all cool and unkempt with his bad self.

Sometimes her fantasy involved him tying her to the back of his Harley and absconding with her to his love shack. Other times she'd see him in different dive bars with names like The Brass Knuckles or Devil's Spawn. Their eyes would meet and they'd only make it as far as the alleyway before they tore at each other's clothes.

Someone took the stool beside Kate and bumped her shoulder. Her drink sloshed, and she cupped her hands around her warm mug.

"Sun Valley Ale," a masculine voice next to her ordered.

"Draft or bottle?" the bartender asked.

"Bottle's fine."

As much as Kate would love to live out one of her fantasies, she knew it would never happen because she could not turn off the PI in her head. The one that, at a crucial moment, would decide she needed background check first.

The scent of crisp night air suddenly surrounded her head, and she slid her gaze from her mug to the green plaid flannel rolled up thick forearms. A gold Rolex was strapped around his left wrist, and a thin silver band circled his middle finger.

"Do you want this on your room tab?" the bar-ender wanted to know.

"Nah, I'll pay for it now." His voice was low and a little rough as he reached for his wallet in the back pocket of his Levi's. His elbow brushed hers as she ran her gaze up the green flannel of his arm to his big shoulders. The ceiling lights above shone down on him and picked out variegated gold in his brown hair. Unruly and finger-combed, his hair covered his collar and the tops of his ears. A Fu Manchu mustache framed his wide mouth, and he'd grown a soul patch just below his full bottom lip.

Her gaze continued upward to a pair of deep green eyes staring back at her across his broad shoulder, past all the greens on his shirt. His lids looked a little heavy, like he was tired or he'd just gotten out of bed.

She swallowed. Hard.

"Hello," he said, and his voice just seemed to pour through her like her hot buttered rum.

Holy Mary mother of God! Had thinking about her badass fantasy man conjured him up? He wasn't blonde, but who cared? "Hello," she managed, as if the hair on the back of her neck hadn't started to tingle.

"It's a beautiful night to hit the slopes. Don't you think?" he asked.

"Spectacular," she answered, although her mind wasn't on skiing. This guy was big. The kind of big that came from genetics and physical labor. She'd guess he was in his mid to late thirties.

"Lots of new powder."

"That's true." Kate pressed her fingertips into the warm porcelain mug and fought the urge to play with her hair like she was in the eighth grade. "Gotta love all that fresh powder."

He turned on his stool to face her, and her heart just about stopped. He was even better than her fantasy man, and her fantasy man rocked.

"So why aren't you out there?" he asked.

"I don't ski," she confessed.

Surprise lifted one brow and the corners of his mouth. "You don't?"

You'd never mistake this man for a male model. Never see his face pushing Dolce & Gabbana or him lying on the beach in a Gucci suit. He was too big. Too masculine. Too male. The full impact of him all too real. "No. Just passing through. It's been snowing so hard, I had to stop for the night." He had a tiny white scar just below his soul patch, and his nose looked like it had been broken. It was hardly noticeable really, but Kate was trained to notice everything about a person's face. And studying this man's face was pure pleasure.

"Hope it clears up." He snagged the beer bottle in his right hand. "I'm heading out for Bogus Basin in the morning."

"Are you a ski bum?"

"During the winter months, pretty much. After Bogus, we'll hit Targhee and Jackson Hole before heading to Colorado." We'll? "Are you here with friends?"

"Yeah, my buddies are still out on the slopes." He hooked the heels of his boots on the bottom rung of his stool, and his wide-spread knees brushed the outside of her thigh.

The casual touch did something to her insides. It wasn't exactly instant, remorseless lust, but it was something. "Why aren't you out there with them?" Buddies. As in male friends. Men didn't generally refer to female friends as buddies.

He raised the beer to his lips. "Knees acting up," he answered and took a long drink.

But there was little doubt in her mind that this guy had a woman in his life. Probably more than one. "Skiing with buddies on Valentine's Day?"

He watched her through those green eyes of his as he lowered the bottle. "Is it Valentine's Day?" he asked and sucked a drop of beer from his top lip.

Kate smiled. The fact that he didn't know meant he probably didn't have anyone serious in his life right now. "Every year on the fourteenth of February."

He looked about the room as if really seeing it for the first time. "Ahh. That explains the hearts."

Her gaze lowered past the mustache framing his mouth and chin, down the wide column of his thick neck to the hollow of his tan throat. "I think we're the only two in here who aren't a couple."

"Don't tell me you're here alone?"

Kate returned her gaze to his and laughed. She liked the way he'd said that, as if he found it hard to believe. "Yeah, go figure." In her favorite fantasy, she was trapped with a hunk of man in Nordstrom's shoe department. "How about you? Anyone going to be angry with you for forgetting Valentine's Day?"

"Nope."

She'd never set a fantasy in a ski lodge, but she was thinking about it now. She couldn't help it. The man was throwing off pheromones like he was a nuclear reactor at Chernobyl. Sitting so close to ground zero, the fallout was lethal.

He pushed up the sleeves of his flannel shirt and exposed what appeared to be the tail of a snake or some sort of reptile on his thick left forearm. "Is that a snake?"

"Yeah. That's Chloe. She's a sweetheart." Right. The tattoo was dark gold with black-and-white bands and appeared so real she leaned in for a closer look. The scales were perfectly defined, and without giving it a thought, Kate reached out and touched his bare arm. "What kind of snake is she?" She half expected to feel cool scales instead of warm, smooth flesh.

"An Angolan python." Python. Yikes! "How big?" Kate looked back up into his face. Something hot and sensual shimmered within the green depths of his eyes. A need that made her pulse jump and tingles spread up her wrists.

He raised the beer to his mouth and looked away. "Five feet." He took a long drink, and when he returned his gaze to her, that flicker of that something was gone, as if it had never been there.

She dropped her hand. "Are all five feet of her tattooed on your body?"

"Yeah." He pointed to his forearm with the mouth of the bottle. "Her tail ends here. She's wrapped around my arm, down my back, and is coiled around my right thigh."

Kate looked down at his thigh and straight at his groin. Soft worn Levi's covered his legs and cupped the bulge in his crotch. She quickly looked away before he caught her staring. "I have a tattoo."

He laughed. A low rumble in his chest that did funny things to her chest. "What? A heart on your ankle?"