Gathering herself, she lifted her lips in a practiced smile, said, "Go," and then held her breath.

s.e.xual awareness slowly uncoiled inside him. Her long ponytail teased the skin of his arm, her sweet little body tucked in against his.

It was as if the years had never happened-except that now she was more mature and plenty old enough for his interest.

And yet, something held him back. Maybe her new reserve.

After snapping a few photos, Cannon handed her back her phone-and stayed put. He'd go slow, but he wouldn't retreat.

He wanted to nuzzle her neck, drink in the light fragrance of her shampoo and the warmer scent of her skin. If she was any other woman, he'd whisper a suggestion or two in her ear. But this was Yvette, and they had a lot to talk about.

"So."

She concentrated on adding the photo to her Facebook page, along with the location of Rowdy's bar. "What?"

I want to get you naked. "How come you went to the fight alone?" Leaving his arm around her, Cannon idly let his fingertips tease the warm sleek skin of her shoulder. "Boyfriend isn't into Mixed Martial Arts?"

After peeking up at him, she said, "If I had a boyfriend, would I be sitting here like this with you?" Satisfied that she'd labeled the picture properly, she tucked her phone away in her purse.

"Why not?" He pressed his thigh to hers. "We're friends."

She seemed preoccupied with reading the front of his T-shirt. After a shaky indrawn breath, she looked away. "I don't have a boyfriend-but if I did, I doubt he'd like me getting so close to you."

"No boyfriend." He ran his hand down her ponytail and found her hair every bit as silky as he remembered. Expanding l.u.s.t made his voice lower and huskier. "California guys are blind?"

"I had been dating, but..." She rearranged her purse, her drink, looked around as if seeking a distraction.

Cannon had a feeling she kept busy just to avoid answering. "But what?"

She folded her hands together on the tabletop. "We split up a little before I bought the ticket."

For reasons he didn't want to explore too much, he was glad to know she wasn't with anyone else. He gave her ponytail a gentle tug. "I'm sorry."

"It's okay. Things hadn't been going well anyway, so I'm glad I didn't waste the experience with him."

He liked how she put that, as if seeing him fight had been special.

"My best friend wanted to go, but she couldn't get off work. So I went alone." She lifted her narrow shoulders. "No big deal."

"Cheap seats?"

"What?" Confusion brought her gaze back to his.

He'd remembered her eyes as a striking green, but he'd forgotten how it made him feel when she looked right at him. She had that absorbed, heated look a woman got while straining toward an o.r.g.a.s.m.

d.a.m.n. He blew out a careful breath, determined to get his l.u.s.t under wraps. "At the venue. How far were you from the action?"

"Oh." Once again fascinated with the logo on his shirt, she murmured, "Club seats. They weren't too bad."

Without even thinking about it, Cannon continued to play with her hair. "I could have gotten you floor seats if you'd let me know."

"It wouldn't be right to ask you for a favor like that! And besides, the floor seats didn't appeal to me."

"How come?" Most everyone he knew coveted the limited vantage point.

"It looked like they had their own party going on. No one was really watching the fights. The guys were all going back and forth for drinks and the women were all f lirting."

True enough. The ladies often showed up dressed for a club atmosphere and hopeful of hooking up. "I take it you didn't plan to flirt?"

She shot him a guilty look that he didn't understand. "I never do."

"Never, huh?" That'd be a shame. He remembered her as being really good at it. He settled his hand on her shoulder again. "Why stop now?"

"Because it was wrong!" As if she hadn't meant to say that, she turned her face away. Even in the dim light of the bar, Cannon could see the blush on her cheeks. Seconds ticked by before she spoke again, this time quieter, more composed. "I know I used to be a terrible f lirt."

That was so opposite of what he'd been thinking, he smiled. "Nothing terrible about it." She'd just gotten out of high school-though at the time he hadn't realized that she'd fallen behind and was older than most graduates. "Everyone flirts at that age."

Shaking her head, she denied that. Nervously, she pulled her ponytail over her shoulder so she could play with a lock of hair, winding it repeatedly around two fingers. "I was bad, always eyeing you like I did."

"Hey." Squeezing her shoulder, he hugged her a little. "I liked it."

Her soft lips tweaked to the side. "You did not. You avoided me when you could, and when you couldn't, you were careful not to be too familiar. I understand why now. But back then..."

Gently, he touched her chin, lifting her face so she met his gaze. "You're one of the prettiest, s.e.xiest women I've ever met. Of course I liked it when you looked at me." But he'd thought her too young, and he'd been so determined to make it in MMA that, as she'd said, he'd avoided her.

She sounded strained when she whispered, "Thank you."

Watching her fingers stroke in and around her hair made him think about her fingers on him-teasing him the same way.

He wondered what she was thinking, if her mind had wandered into the same s.e.xual arena as his.

"I don't want to make excuses."

"About?"

"How I...came on to you. It's just that after so many years of uncertainty, I'd finally finished school and was able to get a little independent. Not that I was planning to leave Grandpa."

"I know." She'd been very dedicated to Tipton, and vice versa.

Her gaze shifted away. "I loved him so much."

"He loved you a lot, too."

Her lips pursed, then curved with banked happiness. "He used to get after me for flirting. He said I was inviting trouble."

At the time, Cannon had considered her the trouble. "I'd always a.s.sumed you were just eighteen." Later, before leaving, she'd told him she was almost twenty.

As if that embarra.s.sed her all over again, her pleasure faded. "It's not that I was dumb or that I screwed off in school."

"I know that." Because her parents had died when she was thirteen, she'd spent the rest of that school year grieving and got held back. Then for the year after that, different relatives shuffled her around from state to state, no one wanting to keep her.

Until she'd landed with Tipton Sweeny. But again, she'd missed so much schooling... .

"I felt dumb," she admitted. "Most of the kids knew I was older. Especially the boys."

Cannon could imagine how they'd hit on her. With the way she looked, she'd have been every high school boy's wet dream.

She tugged at that lock of hair a little more before flipping it back behind her shoulder and putting both hands on the tabletop.

She did that often, catching herself and slipping back behind that mask of poise.

"You were so different," she said. "I guess that's why I always felt safe teasing you."

Safe. An odd word to use. "If it's any consolation, I had to concentrate real hard to resist you."

Biting back a laugh, she nudged him. "You are such a fibber."

"It's true." And now, being older, she was even more appealing. And he no longer had to resist.

Maybe gathering her thoughts, she sat silent for a moment. Tipton wanted him to be there for her, to make things easier, so Cannon waited patiently, giving her time-strangely content just to be with her.

When she looked at him this time, she kept her gaze deliberately direct. "After that, I proved what a coward I am." Loathing sounded in her tone. "That was even worse than the infantile flirting."

He was here for Tipton, Cannon reminded himself. But Tipton was far from his mind as his fingertips grazed her jaw, his thumb smoothing over her downy cheek. "That's not true."

Shying away from his touch, she leaned forward, her forearms on the table, her head dropping. "The rest of you were strong and brave and all I did was fall apart." Laughing, she covered her face. "G.o.d, it still humiliates me to remember it."

"Listen to me, Yvette." He cupped his hand around her nape, his voice low, intimate. "You were young and afraid. No one would blame you for that. But you didn't get hysterical. You didn't escalate things. So you shed a few tears. So what? h.e.l.l, I was shaking I was so p.i.s.sed off."

Twisting, she faced him-and in the process she managed to move away a few inches. "You shook with anger, I shook with fear." For a brief moment, her eyes closed. "I remember that day like it just happened. Those men breaking into the p.a.w.nshop, threatening me and hurting Grandpa, abusing that woman..."

"Shh." Cannon remembered it all in detail, too. If he lived to be one hundred, he would never forget. How much worse must it be for her? "They'll spend the rest of their lives rotting in prison."

"Thank G.o.d."

"Yeah." The cops had been after the sick f.u.c.ks for a while. They were known for underground p.o.r.n, forcing women into s.e.xual situations and taping it for their own twisted thrills. They'd used the p.a.w.nshop to make one of their videos, gaining Yvette's and Tipton's compliance by dousing them in kerosene and threatening to set them on fire. Not because they needed the location, but because that had been part of the thrill for them.

Yvette worried that she'd been a coward; he marveled that she was still able to smile so easily.

"They'll never hurt anyone else," she swore softly.

"No." The two who had survived would die in prison. "They're gone for good." Before being caught, they'd twice gone after Yvette, breaking into Tipton's house with a twofold agenda in mind.

They had wanted to rape Yvette, using her in the p.o.r.n video.

And they'd wanted to trap the cops who'd been after them.

She clenched her hands on the tabletop. "I want to see the lieutenant while I'm here in Ohio."

"I'm sure she'd like that." Cannon remained friends with the lieutenant and the detectives who had intervened that day. It was that friendship that had taken him to Tipton's house at the same time as the detectives. He'd been a part of it all, experiencing firsthand the helplessness and fear as the thugs repeatedly explained their plans to kill the cops and use Yvette.

Luckily, they'd been outmaneuvered and things had backfired on the b.a.s.t.a.r.ds in a big way. Cannon had gotten in on that action, too, and the attack had ended with one of them dead and the other two arrested-but not before Yvette had suffered a living nightmare. No, she hadn't been raped, but she had been groped, threatened, terrorized and forced to watch the torment of others.

What Cannon remembered most about that day was how badly he'd wanted to protect her. He had avoided getting involved with her, but when he'd seen her so defenseless, when he'd felt her stark fear, it had all become very personal for him.

And somehow, through the pa.s.sing of three long years, it remained personal. His hand curled into a fist.

Leaning into him, Yvette ducked her head and covered his hand with her own. "I'm sorry. I shouldn't have brought it up."

"We were both thinking about it." He turned his palm over to twine his fingers with hers. "We haven't really talked since then. Better to just get it out in the open." And then hopefully they could put it to rest. He didn't want the ugliness always between them.

He wanted, eventually, to be more to her than a reminder of a living nightmare.

"Actually, that's why I'm here." Carefully, she disengaged from him, straightened, sat properly.

"Here, in Ohio?"

She shook her head. "I a.s.sumed you'd be here, at Rowdy's." Determination squared her shoulders. "I want you to know that I'm different now. I won't get in your way. I won't be a pest."

Cannon frowned. "I never said-"

"I can take care of everything, so you don't need to be involved."

He didn't understand her. Worse, he didn't understand himself. "What if I want to be involved?"

That stymied her.

Her lips parted but no words came out. She sank her teeth into her bottom lip, and before he could think better of it, he cupped her face in his palm, used his thumb to rub that lush lip.

Her breath came a little faster.

Time to redirect, or he'd be kissing her right here in the booth-and that was something better started in a more private place. "We have a lot to talk about, I know. But you look exhausted. How long have you been in town?"

"I was here for the funeral two weeks ago, but then had to fly back to Cali to take care of some things."

"That's a lot of traveling. When did your flight get in?"

"I got here yesterday." She sat very still until he removed his hand. "But I didn't fly in this time. I drove."

No way. "From California?"

"There's no telling how long it'll take to get things settled, so I brought a lot of my stuff and my car. It wasn't a problem. I enjoy driving."

"And sleeping in hotels?"

"Sometimes."

No wonder she looked so tired. "How long did it take you?"