"Making a phone call."

"Couldn't it wait? We're having a fight!"

"A fight about what?" He glanced at her over his shoulder. "You made me an offer. I turned you down."

"You fondled me!"

"Yeah, I did, didn't I?" His irreverent gaze came to rest on her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

"Stop that! You perverted-"

He waved her silent. "Buenos dias, Rico! Como esta usted?" he shouted as whoever he'd been calling came on the line.

Randy felt as if she'd had a bucket of cold water thrown in her face. She could hardly believe the arrogance. If she'd had any doubts about Geoff Dias's go-to-h.e.l.l att.i.tude, the back of his sweatshirt answered them when he turned full around. Printed in neat block letters were the words UP YOURS, AMIGO. Apparently, he'd read the book on guerrilla management tactics too.

She was too angry even to consider the intelligent solution, which would have been to cut her losses and leave. Her compet.i.tive instincts had been triggered yesterday by the first glint of his green eyes. By now they were armed and ready. She had no intention of giving up her quest to hire him, but her anger at the moment had more to do with salving wounded pride than with failed business negotiations. Outrage didn't seem to have the slightest affect on him, and as much as she might have wanted to s.n.a.t.c.h the phone out of his hand and carry out the instructions on his sweatshirt, she couldn't let herself. Cool heads prevailed, she reminded herself. She had to collect her wits and be as cool as he was. Cooler.

Her chiropractor had given her some breathing techniques for eliminating tension, but she needed something faster, something foolproof.

"E ... N ... O," she murmured, mentally reciting each letter as she said it out loud. "O ... W ... T." Counting to ten might work for others, but like a high-performance race car, Randy's temper required more sophisticated braking power. Years ago she'd started spelling the numbers backward as she counted. It required sufficient concentration that she often forgot what she was angry about before she got to ten.

She was on ytnewt-enin as Geoff hung up the phone.

"I'd like a moment of your time," she said politely.

"Try me tomorrow." He punched out another number.

"Perhaps you didn't hear me." But her protest fell on deaf ears. He was already immersed in another conversation.

"Y-T-R-I-H-T." Staring at his back, Randy p.r.o.nounced each letter of the number slowly and through clenched teeth. Cool heads be d.a.m.ned, she thought, glancing up at the posters on his wall. If any of those guns had been real, Geoff Dias would have been a dead mercenary.

By the time he hung up, she'd abandoned counting techniques and regressed to thinking murderous thoughts. Only her voice was cool as she spoke. "What do I have to do to get your attention, Mr. Dias?"

"Are you still here?" he said, glancing her way.

"Am I still-" The last word jammed in her throat. Something about his profile stopped her. From that angle he looked suddenly, frighteningly familiar. Was it his jawline? The ridge in his broken nose?

"You never answered me," she said suddenly, urgently. "Have we met before?"

He merely smiled, that same infuriatingly sensual flicker of amus.e.m.e.nt that implied everything and revealed nothing.

As he turned back to the phone. Randy saw red. "Are you going to answer me, dammit?" Without giving a thought to the consequences, she walked over, s.n.a.t.c.hed the phone receiver out of his hand, and slammed it into the cradle. "I'm talking to you, Mr. Dias. And I want an answer!"

His emerald eyes caught fire as he turned to her. Gripping her by the arms, he whipped her around and backed her up against the wall in one swift, heart-stopping movement. Before she could catch her breath, he had her arms raised above her head and pinned to the wall.

"Are you crazy?" she gasped, straining against him.

"Certifiable," he said. "But at least I'm not rude."

"Rude?"

"You didn't say please."

He kissed her before she could say please or anything else, kissed her with such shocking force and potency that all the air in her body seemed to get trapped in her lungs. She couldn't breathe for several seconds, and then she forgot all about needing to breathe. The heat of his mouth enveloped her, melting her unwilling lips, stroking and shaping them to his, mastering her responses. She knew that if he had his way, he would ultimately master the rest of her as well.

He was a big man, but it wasn't just his size that made her feel helpless. The instant his mouth touched hers, she was lost in the kiss. It was hot and heavy and punishing, an act of conquering, as if he was determined to prove something, to force her to acknowledge him. Why? she asked herself frantically. Who was he?

She tried to move, but he pressed her to the wall with his hips, forcing a soft moan out of her. He wanted something more than a stolen kiss, Randy realized with shocking clarity. Even more than the physical act of s.e.x. He was calling for unconditional surrender. That awareness swirled through her senses as feverishly as hot steam.

Again she tried to move, and again he reacted swiftly, bringing her arms down, anchoring them alongside her head. He pressed his forearms to hers and held her fast, easily subduing her efforts to escape.

"Temper, temper," he said, his voice husky with pa.s.sion. He grazed her mouth lightly with his, but instead of kissing her, he nipped the flesh of her lower lip.

Randy recoiled at the stinging pleasure. Why was he doing this to her? And why was she responding? She wanted to resist. She was trying to resist, d.a.m.n him! And yet everything he did sent urgent thrills spiraling through her. The feel of his body flush up against hers melted her defenses, making her feel weak and heavy, weighing her down with sensations. The heat of his thighs seemed to flow into hers, and the power of his arms made her dizzy.

"Open your mouth," he murmured.

No, she thought. Never! She meant to tell him that, but as she parted her lips, he stole into the warmth of her, sweeping deeply into the vault of her mouth with his tongue. Randy's legs nearly buckled with the pleasure as he began to stroke into her rhythmically, his tongue repeatedly penetrating the soft barrier of her lips. If he hadn't been holding her, she would have sagged to the ground.

It was all so shockingly exciting.

It was all so terribly familiar!

"How does it feel, Randy?" he asked, whispering against her mouth, then breaking the kiss to search her face. "After all these years?"

She didn't answer him. She couldn't, not with her senses spinning wildly. He held her gaze with his eyes and pinned her to the wall with his lower body. He was aroused, hard enough to commit sin on a Sunday, and he wanted her to know it.

"Remember, baby?" he said softly, grinding his hips into hers.

Randy swallowed an anguished sound and slumped against the wall. Her stomach clutched as he pressed himself into its quivering softness. The motion of his hips was slow and grindingly sensual, as if he meant her to feel every twitch and throb of that one part of him. Lord, she did! He felt huge against her, and beautifully hard. He was forcing her to think about the act of lovemaking, about how all that rigid male flesh would feel inside her!

Remember, baby? Was that what he'd said? She couldn't remember anything but the steel heat and power of the man's body. She couldn't remember anything but the crazy pleasure of hard, deep lovemaking. The rocking of his hips had touched into some primitive female response and left her in a state of whimpering helplessness.

Remember, baby? Surrender, baby ...

He picked her up and carried her to the desk, sweeping the papers and debris off it as he laid her down. He was going to make love to her right there on the desk, and Randy wasn't sure she had the power to stop him. Maybe she didn't want to stop him!

She waited for him to join her, but instead he stood beside the desk, his golden hair swirling forward, falling across his face as he looked down at her. He combed the hair back with his hand, revealing the unbridled sensuality in his features, the fever-brightness of his eyes.

He looked hot, hungry, ready to devour any woman who stepped in his path. The cords of his neck stood out, and the muscles of his biceps were thick with tension. He was too much man for her, she realized. Far too much.

A sound shook on her breath, sweet, sharp.

He reached down and slipped his hand inside the neckline of her dress, daring her to stop him as he caressed her breast. She couldn't stop him. She couldn't! Everything he did sent paralyzing currents of excitement through her. Her body reacted to the stimulation as if it were addicted, quivering with antic.i.p.ation, trembling for more.

His green eyes bored into hers, forcing her to find the answer she'd been searching for. "Do you remember me now?" he asked, breathing hard. "Dupont Street, around midnight. The guy on the motorcycle."

Randy let out a soft shriek and scrambled off the table on the opposite side from him. "Oh, my G.o.d!" she said, staring at him, narrow-eyed. She began to back away as the realization hit her full force. "You couldn't be him! You couldn't."

Three.

"YOU'RE HIM?" RANDY WHISPERED, horrified. "The one on the bike?"

"How quickly they forget," Geoff said. "I'm hurt."

"But it couldn't have been you," she insisted, refusing to believe it even though her churning stomach told her it was true. "His hair was short-military short-and he was wearing those d.a.m.n sungla.s.ses. I never saw his eyes."

"You saw my eyes, Randy. You gazed real deep. You just don't remember. It was the middle of the night and you were flying high."

"I was not high. I was upset. I was crying."

"You were hotter than a smoking pistol."

"Stop it!" She turned away from him, shaken. She'd put out of her mind that ghastly night ten years ago the morning after it happened. But she had never come to grips with what she'd done that night, or forgiven herself for it.

Geoff Dias. He'd never even told her his name. Hearing it now gave her the chills because it made him real. It made what happened between them real ... a forbidden encounter with a beautiful drifter on a motorcycle, a man with no name. That entire night had been wanton and surreal, the darkest kind of fantasy imaginable. Up to now it had been easy to pretend that it had all been a bad dream.

She swung back to face him, searching his features, still trying to convince herself it wasn't him. His hair was different, longer and biker-wild, a shotgun blast of white and gold, but his features held undeniable similarities. He was ten years older and his face was craggier, but he was still arrestingly attractive. If anything, he was more appealing. He was unquestionably more dangerous!

But how had he found her after all this time? "Why did you answer my ad for a soldier of fortune?" she asked him. "What do you want?"

He gazed at her a moment before answering. "Isn't it obvious what I want?" His voice was low, male. "I want some more, sweetness."

She glared at him, incredulous. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Shall I explain it to you?"

"No!" she said with an explosion of anguish. This can't be happening! Randy thought, averting her eyes from his slow, insinuating smile. It wasn't fair! She'd made one mistake and now she was going to have to pay for it the rest of her life?

She touched her temple, which was already throbbing with the promise of another tension headache. She'd been out of her mind with heartbreak that night. Otherwise, she would never have done the things she'd done-starting with getting on the back of a stranger's motorcycle. Maybe if she hadn't been jilted by her fiance, maybe if she hadn't been so distraught, it wouldn't have happened. She wouldn't have been on that road late at night, stumbling around in her wedding dress, an open bottle of champagne in her hand. But it had happened- "That's my price to find your fiance," he said, cutting into her thoughts. "I want another night. One night, all night, just you and me."

"What is this? Blackmail?"

"Don't be absurd." His voice flared with heat. "If money was the object, we'd have settled this thing when you walked in the door. You blew into my life like a beautiful cyclone, Randy. You shook me up good, and then you disappeared without even saying good-bye. I told myself if I ever ran across you again, I'd teach you some manners. I should be able to do that in one night, don't you think?"

She kept waiting for that spark of amus.e.m.e.nt to light his eyes, the signal that told her he was playing, baiting her. But it didn't come. His probing gaze drew up sensations she hadn't felt in years, not since she was last with him. He was serious, she realized. He meant to hold her hostage for a night of s.e.x. He meant to wreck her life!

"You're the one who's absurd," she cried. "I wouldn't spend the night with you under any circ.u.mstances. The man who's missing is my fiance. I'm engaged to be married."

"Married to a man you don't love."

He said the words with such conviction that Randy was startled. "What do you know about my relationship with Hugh?" she demanded.

"All I know is you fell apart in my arms that night. You said love had destroyed your mother, and you'd never let a man do that to you. You told me you'd been jilted by some guy you thought was Prince Charming, and the only way to win with men was to keep them guessing. You swore you'd never marry for love." He hesitated, drawing in a breath. "And then you seduced me."

"I did no such thing!" Randy tried her best to stare him down. She would have loved nothing better than to vaporize him on the spot, to reduce him to a heap of ashes.

But he only crossed his arms, leaned against the wall behind him, and gazed at her with the casual a.s.surance of a man who knew-and approved of-every shameful little secret she had.

"I did not seduce you, dammit," she whispered as if fearing someone might overhear them. "My hands slipped! And no wonder, the reckless way you drove that d.a.m.n motorcycle! You had me perched on the back, hanging on for dear life. What was I supposed to do with my hands? Where was I supposed to put them?"

He drew his thumb back and forth across his chin as if scratching an itch. "You found the right place, darlin'. Don't ever let anybody tell you you aren't good with your hands. You're an artist."

"And you're a b.a.s.t.a.r.d," she breathed. "Why are you doing this to me? It was ten years ago. I'm not that person anymore. I never was that person! I don't know what happened to me that night." She clenched her lists, but her voice was almost pleading with him to understand. "I hate motorcycles!"

"You didn't appear reluctant to take a ride on mine."

"I was reluctant. I don't know why I did it!"

"I've got a pretty good idea."

"Don't say it!" She held up her hand, her eyes colliding with his, sparks flying. But Randy had no intention of backing down this time. There was too much at risk. "I was distraught that night," she insisted, forcing out the words.

He lifted a shoulder. "Okay ... have it your way."

"What does that mean?"

"It means you're lucky I'm a boy scout. Otherwise, this could be the blackmail you accused me of. I've got plenty on you, sweetness, all of it amazing." After a pregnant pause he pushed off the wall as though intending to leave. "But it isn't blackmail. I haven't sunk to that, yet. It's pretty clear you don't want to deal on my terms, so we don't have a deal. If you change your mind, you know where to find me."

Once again Randy watched Geoff Dias make an exit, this time out of his own office. She followed him to the door as he pushed it open and strode toward a vintage black Porsche parked at the curb. Within seconds he'd tucked his oversize frame into the driver's seat, keyed the ignition, and driven out of her life.

Randy didn't know whether to be relieved or angry. Everything he did provoked her, even the way he'd just let her off the hook. Boy scout? If he was a boy scout, then Attila the Hun must have been his den mother.

Not knowing what else to do, she left his office. But as she started for her own car, she noticed the motorcycle he'd ridden the day before. It was parked in a stall between his office and the gym. She hesitated, feeling weak at the knees and hating the way her heart was knocking. The machine brought back so many memories, all of them frighteningly vivid. And all of them hot enough to make her want to spend the rest of her life in a cold shower.

She approached the stall slowly, coming to a halt as soon as she got close enough to see what was painted on the bike's gas tank. Emblazoned in hot pink was a broken valentine's heart and just beneath it were the words SURRENDER BABY.

If Randy had been clinging to a slender thread of hope that Geoff Dias wasn't really her beautiful drifter, that thread had just snapped.

Geoff wound the Porsche down through its gears, reining in the surging car as he took the freeway exit that spilled into the foothills of the Santa Monica mountains. The whine and grind of harnessed horsepower brought a stirring of satisfaction to his soul. It felt almost as good as the quivering responsiveness of the gears tick under his hand.

He still got off on power and performance. There weren't too many things that did it for him anymore. But powerful things, they interested him. More than that, he liked exercising the control that came with mastering power. Maybe that's why she interested him. He'd meant it when he'd called her a pistol. He'd never met a hotter female, in every sense of the word. Her pain was as fiery as her pa.s.sion.

Something hit the windshield with a crack, distracting him. It sounded like a rock, but all he could see was a huge tumbleweed rolling down the street straight at him. He cranked the wheel hard, swerving to miss it. The Porsche shuddered and squealed, leaving streaks on the asphalt before he got the car straightened out.

The devil winds were blowing again today, he realized, checking out the hilly terrain around him. Hot gusting Santa Anas moaned in the sycamores and whooshed through the car's open windows, whipping at his hair. The air was saturated with the dense smells of sage, laurel, and road dust.

Moments later he was traversing the narrow road that snaked toward his small house in the backwoods of Coldwater Canyon. As he took the curves, he was aware of another scent, her perfume still clinging to his sweatshirt. It was a hot fragrance, earthy and spicy, redolent of cloves.

Yes, she did interest him.