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Award-winning author ANNE McALLISTER was once given a blueprint for happiness that included a nice, literate husband, a ramshackle Victorian house, a horde of mischievous children, a bunch of big, friendly dogs and a life spent writing stories about tall, dark and handsome heroes. ‘Where do I sign up?’ she asked and promptly did. Lots of years later, she’s happy to report the blueprint was a success. She’s always happy to share the latest news with readers at her website, www.annemcallister.com and welcomes their letters there, or at PO Box 3904, Bozeman, Montana 59772, USA.

CHAPTER ONE

NATALIE pulled her car into the garage below her mother’s apartment, shut off the engine—and felt a panic unlike anything she’d felt in the last three years.

“Wholly unnecessary,” she told herself firmly out loud because the truth of the assertion stood a better chance of making it past her nerves if she heard the spoken words. If she heard them, she thought, she might even believe them.

Actually, in her mind she did believe them.

But what she believed logically and what her guts were telling her was not even close to the same thing.

“Don’t be stupid,” she said. “It is absolutely no big deal.”

And it wasn’t. She was cat-sitting, for goodness’ sake! She was watering a few plants and living in her mother’s apartment for two or three weeks because her mother had to go to Iowa to take care of her own mother after a hip-replacement operation. And while the cat was portable, the seven-foot rubber-tree plant was not.

“Harry was supposed to do it,” Laura Ross had explained apologetically on the phone very early this morning. “You know, the boy across the way? But he broke his leg skateboarding last night. Spiral fracture, his mother said. Not even a walking cast yet. I’m sorry to have to ask you—”

“No. It’s all right,” Natalie had made herself say. “Of course I’ll do it. I’ll be glad to,” she’d lied.

So here she was.

All she had to do was get out of the car, go around the building, up the steps to her mother’s apartment, open the door and go in.

She’d done it once already today. She’d come to pick her mother up to take her to the airport late this morning and it had been perfectly straightforward. No worries at all.

Because there had been no danger of running into Christo Savas then.

Chances were, Natalie assured herself, she wouldn’t run into him now, either.

What was the possibility, after all, that she would be rounding the building to go up the stairs at the very moment her mother’s landlord—and boss—was coming up the walk to his house or stepping out on his back porch?

Slim, she decided. None was preferable, of course. Please God she would not see him at all these next two or three weeks.

But even if she did, she reminded herself, she was an adult. She could smile at him politely and go her own way. And it didn’t matter what he would be thinking. It didn’t matter at all!

“Right,” she said now in the no-nonsense tone her mother had used all the time Natalie was growing up. “Grass never gets cut by looking at the mower,” she would say when Natalie or her brother Dan balked at doing the chore. It had since become a family slogan applied to any reluctance to get the job done. Laura would be saying it now.

Of course her mother had no idea why Natalie had spent the last three years avoiding Christo Savas—and she never would.

Taking one last deep breath, Natalie got out of the car, being careful not to let the door bump against Christo’s Jaguar next to it. It was the same one he’d had three years ago.

Once she’d ridden in that car with the top down, had tipped her head back and felt the wind in her hair, had laughed and slanted a glance at the man driving and had dared to dream ridiculous dreams.

Now she turned away and shut her own car door with a bit more firmness than absolutely necessary. Then she opened the back, grabbed her laptop case and the suitcase with the clothes she’d brought, shut it and, heart still pounding more rapidly than she wished, she opened the door to the small walled garden.

It was empty.

She breathed again. Then, with barely a glance toward Christo’s big house on the far side of what her mother had turned into the closest thing southern California probably had to an ‘olde English garden,’ she made a sharp right and quickly climbed the wooden stairs that led to Laura’s apartment over the garage.

Once on the porch, she had a view down the broad street that led to The Strand and the beach beyond. It was empty. She set down her suitcase and laptop and fumbled in her purse for her mother’s key.

It was nearly six. Her mother had said Christo usually went surfing right after work—“to decompress,” Laura had told her—and then came back for dinner which they ate at six-thirty.

“You eat with him?” Natalie had said when her mother imparted this surprising information. Her brows had lifted in dismay—and consternation.

Laura had gone right on packing her bags. “I don’t like cooking for one.”

“You cook for him?”

“I cook for myself,” her mother said primly in the face of Natalie’s undisguised disapproval. “And I make enough for two.”

“Well, I’m not cooking for him,” Natalie said firmly.

“Of course not.” Her mother dismissed the notion. “He wouldn’t expect it.”

No, Natalie thought, and he wouldn’t want it, either.

“He doesn’t even know you’re going to be here,” her mother had gone on, brightening Natalie’s day considerably. “He knew I had arranged for Harry to come. But when Carol, Harry’s mother called this morning, I didn’t even tell Christo because I knew he’d feel responsible. He’d think he needed to take care of Herbie and do the plants, and he couldn’t possibly. He’s much too busy for that.”

Well, perhaps the day wasn’t all that bright. But Natalie knew her mother was telling the truth. She didn’t have to be reminded how hard Christo Savas worked. She’d seen it firsthand. And if he didn’t know she was here, even better. Perhaps she could keep it that way.

Her fingers found the ring of keys. She picked out her mother’s, stuck it in the keyhole, gave it a twist, and pushed open the door. Then with one last quick glance down toward the ocean where, yes indeed, she could see silhouetted against the bright sun a muscular man with a surfboard just coming up the beach, she picked up her laptop and her suitcase, hurried inside and banged the door.

In the blessed shadowed coolness of the small entryway she dropped her bags, shut her eyes and took a deep relieved breath.

“Natalie?” The voice was gruff, masculine and sounded as shocked and disbelieving as her own ears were.

Her eyes snapped open. She blinked rapidly, trying to accustom them to the dim indoor light, to see the cool empty living room she expected, to see Herbie the cat, whom she expected.

Not to see the man who had been crouched by the fireplace and was now straightening, drawing himself up to his full six feet two inches and staring at her with narrowed suspicious eyes.

Her mouth felt as if someone had suddenly dumped a pail full of sand in it. “Christo?” She barely choked his name out. Then she frowned, too.

Their gazes met, locked. And then, in unison, “What the hell are you doing here?” they said.

“I live here. There,” he corrected, jerking his head toward the house beyond the garden. His gaze went to the suitcase by her feet. “What’s that for?”

The suspicion in his voice rankled. Natalie stood straighter. “I’m moving in,” she said, pleased at how firm her voice sounded. “Temporarily.”

Christo’s brows drew down. “What for?”

“I’m taking care of Herbie. And the plants.”

“Your mother said Harry—”

“Harry broke his leg.”

Now the brows went up. “First I’ve heard about it.” There was clear disbelief in his voice. He rested an arm against the mantel of the fireplace and regarded her doubtfully.

Natalie drew herself together. “Feel free to go over to Harry’s and ask. You might be right. Maybe this is all some great plot of my mother’s to throw me and you together.”

Christo grunted at the scorn in her tone. “She wouldn’t do that.”

“No, she wouldn’t.” Laura might well be thinking that it was a good idea for her twenty-five-year-old daughter to start looking around for a husband, but she wouldn’t meddle. Natalie was sure of that.

“I can feed the cat and water the plants.” Christo’s tone made it sound not like a suggestion. It sounded like an order.

Natalie bristled. She’d already survived the part she wanted to avoid. “I’m sure you can,” she said starchily. “But my mother didn’t ask you. She asked me. And I’m doing it.”

His teeth came together. She imagined she could hear them grinding. Well, so be it.

“So we know what I’m doing here,” she said pointedly. “What about you? You don’t just habitually wander into my mother’s apartment, I hope.”

The teeth did grind, then. “No, I don’t habitually wander into her apartment. I was measuring for bookshelves.” He held out his hand. There was a measuring tape in it.

“Bookshelves?” Natalie echoed doubtfully.

“She’s always saying to me how much she loves this room, but that it would be perfect if it had bookcases on either side of the fireplace.” He shrugged, but also jerked his head toward the space behind him and, studying the space, Natalie could see her mother’s point. His mouth twisted. “A belated birthday surprise.”

Natalie was surprised he knew her mother’s birthday had been last week. “And you were going to have them put in while she was gone?”

“No. I was going to put them in myself while she was gone.”

They stared at each other. An awareness Natalie didn’t want to acknowledge arced between them. It had been there ever since she’d heard his voice and opened her eyes to see him standing there. It was a feeling she’d felt with no one else—ever. Once she’d thought she understood it. Had cultivated it. Relished it.

Now she wanted nothing whatever to do with it at all.

“Well, you can’t,” she said and folded her arms across her chest.

His jaw worked, but he didn’t say anything. Their gazes were still locked and Natalie refused to be the one to look away first. Not this time. She was in the right this time.

“Fine,” he said shortly. “I’ll finish measuring now. I’ll order the wood. I’ll put them up when she gets back, mess up the living room while she’s here.” He turned and knelt back down, ignoring her. In effect, dismissing her.

Natalie glared at his back. Why had she ever thought she wanted to spend the rest of her life with this man? Why had she ever been in love with him?

She hadn’t, she told herself sharply. She’d been infatuated, the victim of a law-school clerk’s foolish crush on a brilliant up-and-coming litigator. She’d been dazzled by his brilliance, his extraordinary good looks, and whatever perverse sexual chemistry had always seemed to hum between them whenever he was in the room.

And the kiss, her mental memory box reminded her. Don’t forget the kiss!

No, God help her, she couldn’t forget the kiss. Try as she would she’d never been able to forget entirely the moment she and Christo Savas had locked lips. It had been the most blazingly hot kiss of her then twenty-two years. The most blazingly hot anything of her entire life—even up to this very moment.

It had been the impulse that had spurred on her unutterably foolish action that night three years ago.

Action she was not about to repeat no matter what Christo Savas thought. And it was no secret, Natalie knew, staring at him now, what he thought.

“All right,” she said abruptly. “Go ahead and put in the bookshelves.”

He was kneeling on the floor, about to measure. But he slanted her a quick glance, and in it she saw the instant wariness she expected.

She gave him a saccharine smile. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay completely out of your way. Won’t bother you at all. Won’t invite you to my bed and won’t turn up in yours. You’re perfectly safe.” She made her tone sound mocking.

But they both knew she wasn’t mocking him. She was mocking herself, the hopelessly naive girl who had taken a summer’s working relationship, a sense of kindredness that was, in retrospect, obviously one-sided, and a single spontaneous kiss to celebrate a triumph in the courtroom as an indication of something far deeper. A girl who had thought he must love her the way she imagined she loved him—and who had actually gone to his bed to prove it.

She made herself smile and hold his unblinking jade-green gaze, willing him to believe it because, God knew, it was the truth. There was no way on earth she would ever make a fool of herself like that again!

“If you’re sure…” Christo began.

“Of course I’m sure.” She gathered her laptop case and the suitcase up into her arms, fleetingly aware that she was probably using them as armor, even as she carried them into the room. “I was just…surprised to see you. In here,” she qualified because she didn’t want him thinking she’d been intending to avoid him—even if she had been.

She set the laptop case on her mother’s dining-room table. “I’ll just put this away.” She nodded down at the suitcase, then turned toward the bedroom. “And I’ll come back and help you measure.”

“I don’t need any help,” he said in a tone that brooked no argument.

Which meant that, even though she’d pretty much spelled it out, he still didn’t entirely trust her not to fling herself at him even now.

“Fine. Suit yourself.” Natalie shrugged and carried the suitcase into the bedroom, only sagging down onto the bed and letting out a shuddering breath once she got there.

She could, of course, just leave the suitcase on the bed and deal with the contents later. But rushing back into a room where she clearly wasn’t wanted—and didn’t want to be—was not the best idea.

And there was a whole lot to recommend staying right where she was. She could use the time to put her clothes away—and regain her equilibrium in the process.

She hadn’t wanted to run into Christo at all. She’d done her best to avoid him for the past three years because she still writhed in mortification every time she thought about that night in his apartment.

That night she’d waited for him in his bed.

Even now her cheeks burned at the memory.

That he’d been shocked to find her there when he got home from a business dinner that night went without saying. She’d expected that.

But she’d also expected he’d be pleased. Delighted, in fact. And happy to join her.

Wrong. A hundred thousand times wrong. And if the circumstances had been mortifying, it was how badly she’d misread the situation that she still had trouble facing. She wasn’t used to being a fool.

Well, he needn’t worry, she thought as she got up and began taking her clothes out of the suitcase, hanging them in the closet, trying not to hear every sound he made as he moved in the living room.

She certainly wouldn’t be jumping into his bed again.

But it would be a whole lot easier if her earlier humiliation and subsequent hard-won maturity were complemented now by total indifference to the man in the other room.

Sadly, they weren’t.

Something about Christo Savas still had the ability to make her heart quicken in her chest. His thick dark hair perhaps? His chiseled jaw and sculpted cheekbones? His sharp straight nose and fathomless green eyes? His rangy but muscular body that looked as appealing today in faded jeans and a gray T-shirt as it had in tropical-weight wool suits, starched long-sleeved shirts and ties?

All of the above?

Unfortunately, yes.

But it was even more than that. Always had been.

If Christo’s arresting good looks had first attracted Natalie’s attention the summer she’d been a clerk in the firm where her father was a partner, it had very quickly become more than his hard body and handsome face that held her interest.

His quiet intensity, determined hard work and steel-trap mind were equally appealing. So were his incisive arguments and his way with words. She’d been dazzled by the young litigator and it hadn’t taken long to become smitten.

She’d been raised on the story of her own parents’ courtship and marriage—He was a young lawyer and I was working in the office. It was love at first sight, Laura used to tell her children. So Natalie hadn’t found it hard to believe in a variation on the same theme for herself and Christo.

Bolstered by her own family history, and aware of a certain electricity in the air every time she and Christo Savas looked at one another, Natalie had seen their relationship as fate.

And she’d done her best to make history repeat itself.

It hadn’t been easy. Christo had been consumed with work, not with the summer clerk in the securities department. They had rarely been in the same room as each other, though she did help out with extensive legal research in a securities case he was trying.

She might never have fallen into the trap of her own illusion if she hadn’t found him in the law library late one afternoon flipping through books, and scowling as he made furious notes and muttered under his breath.

“Something wrong?” she’d ventured.

“Not something,” he’d said grimly. “Everything.”

He’d just been appointed guardian ad litem for a seven-year-old boy named Jonas in the middle of a nasty billion-dollar divorce and custody case. “I don’t know anything about family law! I don’t know anything about kids! I don’t even know where to start.”

That wasn’t true, of course. He knew plenty, and certainly enough to figure out where to start. He was just frustrated, overwhelmed. Momentarily vulnerable.

And Natalie, heart beating like a hummingbird’s wings, had offered, “I could do some research if you’d like. On my own time. It would be good practice,” she added, smiling hopefully at him. And then she’d felt it again, that current of electricity arcing between them, when he met her gaze and nodded slowly.

“Yeah,” he’d said. “If you wouldn’t mind. I’ll tell you what I need.”

For the next three weeks, she had worked her tail off for him. Lunch hours, evenings, weekends. She’d spent every waking moment that she wasn’t being a clerk with her nose in a book or scowling at a computer screen scribbling furiously, then reporting her findings to Christo who was almost always in his office just as late.

“You’re a star,” he’d told her when she found some particularly helpful cases. And he’d been almost as grateful for the pastrami sandwiches she brought in because he never took time to eat.

He’d been willing to stop and explain things to her when she dared to ask questions. And sometimes when she found something and let out a little yelp of joy, he’d come over and bend over her shoulder so close that she could feel his breath stir the tendrils of her hair.

“Great. I can use this.” And she’d looked up to see a grin on his face and a determined light in his eye. Once more their gazes had caught and held.

And Natalie had dared to believe.

But she wouldn’t have believed without the kiss.

It came without warning the day he’d got Jonas’s formerly intractable parents to finally see the light and realize it was a child they were dealing with, not a silver service or an Oriental rug. She’d been in the parking garage, heading for her car late that afternoon when he’d got out of his, coming from a meeting about Jonas. She’d paused, waiting for him to get out, expecting yet more bad news. But the look of sheer joy on his face when he shut the door and came toward her was one she’d never forget.

Her heart kicked over. “Did they—?” she began.

The grin nearly split his face. “They did. At last.” And suddenly he was there in front of her, and what had begun as a grin and a high-five turned into a fierce exultant hug.

Instinctively she had lifted her face to smile into his—and they had kissed.

Natalie might have been only twenty-two and not the world’s most experienced woman, but she knew there were kisses and there were kisses.

This kiss might have started out as pure exultation, the shared joy of something going right. But in a second it was something very different indeed. Just as a single simple spark could become a conflagration, so it was the moment their lips touched.

She’d never felt it before.

The kiss didn’t last. Barely a second or two later he let her go and stepped back abruptly, looking around as if expecting to be shot. If anyone had seen them, she knew he could have been—not shot—but facing the wrath of the senior partners and the possible loss of his job.

“You’d better go on home,” he said hoarsely, and without a backward glance he strode off across the garage toward the elevator.

Natalie didn’t move. She’d simply stood there, her fingers pressed against her lips, holding on to the memory, the sensation, the dawning belief that there was substance to the dreams of the future she’d hoped for.

Of course, it had been only a matter of moments. But with one single kiss Christo Savas had nearly burned her to the ground. Even now, running her tongue over her lips, she could still taste—

“Er-mm.”

At the throat-clearing sound behind her, Natalie whipped around, face burning. Christo stood in the doorway to her mother’s bedroom watching her.

“What?” she snapped.

“I’m finished measuring. I’ll order the wood in the morning. Then I have to sand and stain it before I can put it in. I’ll give you plenty of warning.” He sounded very businesslike, very proper.

Exactly the way she wanted him. She gave a short curt nod. “Thank you.” Then, because she knew it was true, and she also knew that, despite her own feelings about Christo Savas, he had done her mother numerous good turns over the past three years, she added, “My mother will appreciate it.”

“I hope so. I like your mother.”

“Yes.” The feeling was mutual. Laura thought the sun rose and set on Christo Savas. She couldn’t understand why Natalie declined invitations that included him.

Still they stared at each other. And there it was again, that damned electricity, that unfortunate awareness. And still he didn’t leave.

Maybe they needed to clarify things further. “My mother said you’d water the plants in the garden.”

He nodded. “She thought it might be too much for Harry.”

“I’m sure she was right. But since Harry’s out of the picture, I can do them. I’m not currying favor—” she said awkwardly.

“Let’s leave it the way she arranged it.”

All lines neatly drawn. Everyone in their own place. “All right.”

At last he turned toward the living room, then glanced back at her over his shoulder. “Maybe I’ll see you around.”

“Maybe.” Natalie didn’t move. Watched his back disappear, heard his footsteps recede, the door open and close, the sound of his feet on the steps outside. Only then did she breathe again, and say aloud what she was really thinking. “Not if I see you first.”

Natalie Ross.

As gorgeous and enticing as ever. Right on his bloody damn doorstep.

Christo tipped back in his desk chair, let out a sigh, rubbed the heels of his hands against his eyes, then leaned forward and tried to focus again.

It didn’t work. He’d been trying to focus all evening. Ordinarily that wasn’t a problem. He regularly settled down and worked well after dinner when it was quiet and there were no clients in and out, no phone calls, no papers to sign or distractions lurking and he could concentrate.

Not tonight.

Tonight every time he tried to bend his mind around where Teresa Holton’s soon-to-be-ex-husband might have secreted assets everyone knew he had, his mind—no, worse, his hormones—had other ideas.

They wanted to focus on Natalie.

It was because he’d been too absorbed with work lately, he told himself. Except for an hour or so of surfing most evenings after work, he hadn’t taken any time off in weeks. His hormones were feeling deprived as well. It had been two months since Ella, the woman who, for the past year or so, had regularly been the object of their attention, decided she wanted more than a casual no-strings affair.

As Christo didn’t—a fact that he had made crystal-clear from the beginning—he had let her go without a qualm. But he’d had neither the time nor the inclination to look for anyone else since.

He didn’t have the time now.

As for inclination, if his hormones were inclined toward Natalie Ross, too damn bad. There was no woman on earth less likely to want a no-strings affair than Natalie. She was her mother’s daughter through and through.

Though Laura and Clayton Ross were now divorced, it had never been Laura’s idea. It was Clayton who’d run off with the paralegal, leaving Laura, after twenty-five years of marriage, to fend for herself. She had, but she still believed in marriage and babies and forever. So did Natalie. Christo knew it instinctively.

He wanted nothing of the sort.

Resolutely he picked up his pencil again and beat a tattoo on the desktop, trying to stimulate brain cells. But his brain cells didn’t need stimulation. They had plenty, thank you very much. It just wasn’t focused on the Holton case. They had something—someone—else in mind.

As did another part of his anatomy.

Irritated, Christo shoved away from the desk and stood up, flexing his shoulders and pacing around the room.

His office was at the back of the house with a wide window facing Laura’s garden. It was dark now. He couldn’t see the flowers. But if he looked up, he could see the light on in Laura’s apartment. The drapes were pulled, but Natalie could, if she were so inclined, look between them directly down into his office. She could watch him pace.

Christo walked across the room and flipped the blinds shut. He wished he could as easily shut out thoughts of her.

He knew, of course, that Laura hadn’t been trying to complicate his life by asking her daughter to come and take care of the cat and the plants. Laura was as protective of his time as he was himself. More so, in this case, because if she hadn’t been she’d have asked him to take care of the cat and the plants when Harry broke his leg.

Instead she’d asked her daughter.

Of course, she had no idea about his history with Natalie.

Not that there was a history. There had very determinedly—on his part—not been any history at all.

Except for that one disastrous totally spontaneous kiss.

He scrubbed his hands over his face now, remembering it.

He had never done anything so stupid before or since. He’d always been absolutely impeccable in his workplace behavior. And if the parking garage had not been precisely part of the workplace, that was pretty much legal hairsplitting and Christo knew it. Natalie had been working at the firm, and if he wasn’t her boss he was certainly senior on the totem pole—and he damned well should have known better.

He had known better.

It had simply been a combination of joy and relief. And desire.

Time to call a spade a spade. But doing so didn’t make the desire go away. Old memories welled up. He squashed them. Memories of scant hours ago took their place. He resisted them, too.

He prowled some more. He cracked his knuckles, then pressed his palms down against the desktop, hunching his shoulders and staring blankly down at the paper he’d given up trying to make notes on. He couldn’t even see what he’d written so far. Visions of Natalie teased at the corners of his mind.

“Stop it,” he told himself sharply.

It was perverse, this desire he felt for Natalie Ross’s slender yet curvy body—as perverse now as it had been the first time.

Christo didn’t do rampant desire. He liked women—in their place. Which was not in his mind or in a relationship. Only in his bed.

He hadn’t lusted madly after any female since his teens. Now, at the age of thirty-two, he should be well over that sort of thing. He was well over it!