Guardian Groom. Sandra Marton

in which raindrops glistened like tiny jewels.

      For a man who had seen everything, Grant was suddenly speechless.

      “What’s the matter?”

      Grant blinked. She was eyeing him narrowly, her face tilted at a questioning angle. The anger was still there but something else was there, too. Wariness? Suspicion?

      He sighed. Hell, she was right to look at him like that. Only a nut—or a man in a very bad moodwould go off the deep end the way he had.

      She’d run into him, or he’d run into her—who could tell? And what did it matter? The one indisputable fact was that their collision had been forceful. For all he knew, she damned well might have twisted her ankle when she fell back off the curb.

      “Nothing’s the matter,” he said. “Look, I’m sorry I’ve been so—”

      “Unpleasant?” That determined chin shot forward. “Hostile? How about just plain nasty?”

      He tried a polite smile. “I was just heading into that building,” he said, and nodded toward an entryway on his right. “Why don’t we step inside the lobby? You can get off that foot and I’ll check to see if—”

      Her hand drove into his belly, hard enough to make the breath shoot from his lungs.

      “That’s the most pathetic come-on I’ve ever heard,” she snarled. “Next you’re going to ask me to come up to your office so you can examine me on your couch.”

      “Don’t be a fool. I simply meant—”

      “Oh, I know exactly what you meant.” Crista’s chin lifted. “First you knock me down, then you accuse me of faking an injury, and now you’re trying to—to—”

      “Listen, lady—”

      “I’m on my way to a meeting with my attorney this very minute. I swear, I’ll tell him to sue you for—for—”

      “The charge is stupidity, lady. First degree stupidity,” Grant said coldly. “Go on, limp your way to wherever it is you’re going. And good luck to the next poor chump you run into.”

      “The same to you,” Crista said, and flounced past him.

      She didn’t get very far. This time, she didn’t so much stumble as drop to her knees.

      “Oh,” she said in surprise.

      “Give me a break,” Grant said wearily, stooped, and swung her up into his arms.

      “Hey,” she said, “what are you doing?”

      Being a glutton for punishment, Grant thought as he carried her toward the building where Horace Blackburn’s office was located. Hell, he thought grimly, at least he was getting closer to that damned meeting.

      “You put me down!”

      She was beating her fists against his shoulder, but Grant ignored her. At some later point, he thought with bemused detachment, he’d probably laugh at all this, especially at how a woman who felt so soft and smelled so good could land such solid, uncompromising punches.

      Right now, all he could hope was that none of the passersby tossing amused smiles in his direction was Horace Blackburn.

      Grant shouldered open the lobby door and made for a marble planter that held a scrawny rubber tree trying to survive. With a grunt, he dumped his burden unceremoniously on the planter’s edge.

      “No couch,” he said briskly as he knelt down before her. “But then, you can’t have everything in this life, can you?”

      “Let me alone,” she snapped as he reached for her foot.

      “I’m checking to see what you’ve done to yourself.”

      “What I’ve done? You’ve got to be kidding! You ran me over, you called me a swindler, you—you kidnapped me—”

      “I told you,” he said pleasantly as he grasped her ankle. “Sue me. But first you’re going to have to take this boot off.”

      “Not on your life! Dammit, I didn’t ask you to—” The furious words ground to a halt. “What’s so funny?”

      “You won’t need an ambulance or an orthopedist.” Grant looked up at her, his lips twitching. “What you will need is a shoe repair shop.”

      Crista frowned as she leaned forward. “What?”

      “It’s your heel. It broke when you—when we—collided. That’s why you had trouble keeping your balance.”

      Crista shut her eyes as the man began to chuckle. But she couldn’t blame him. What a fool she’d made of herself, starting the minute they’d bumped into each other and going straight through to that performance she’d put on as he carried her inside this lobby.

      She was in a terrible mood, angry at herself and the world, but he had no way of knowing that. He was just a stranger and she’d let it all out on him.

      She took a deep breath. “Look,” she said, and opened her eyes…

      The apology died on her lips. He was still holding her foot, but he wasn’t smiling any longer. Instead, he was taking a slow, steady inventory, that topaz gaze of his sweeping up the length of her inch by inch.

      Crista knew, with awful certainty, what he was seeing. The T-shirt. The ridiculous leather skirt. The stupid boots…

      Those incredible boots, Grant thought. They were the sexiest things he’d ever seen. And that skirt—it was leather, like the boots, and it barely came to midthigh. Above it, a wide belt cinched an impossibly slender waist and above that…

      Oh yes. Above that, her breasts rose in exquisite fullness, rounded and high and encased in a pale pink cotton shirt that had been dampened by the rain. He could see the outline of her nipples so clearly defined that the need to reach out and touch them, to stroke them until they hardened in need, was almost overpowering.

      “Well?” Her voice was low pitched, controlled, and very cold. “Have you had a good look, little boy?” She pulled her foot free of his hand and, with a lurch, got to her feet. “Then run home to Mama and I’ll be on my way.”

      Grant rose, too. Her eyes had gone from violet to plum. She was angry at him again, which was laughable—almost as laughable as her pretended outrage when she’d thought he was coming on to her a few minutes ago.

      Why would a woman dress this way unless that was exactly what she wanted from every man she met?

      “Of course,” he said silkily. “I wouldn’t want to keep you. An appointment with your—ah—your attorney, isn’t that what you said?”

      Crista drew her raincoat around her. “You go to hell,” she said. With as much dignity as she could manage, considering the broken boot heel, she turned and walked toward the door.

      Damn him, she thought, trying not to tremble. And damn herself even more for letting him do that to her. It was a long time since she’d cared how men looked at her in this awful outfit.

      But this man, the arrogant bastard, had more than wanted her. He had judged her. Not that she was surprised. Even soaked to the skin, he wore his money and his breeding like a badge of office. People who didn’t meet his hard-hearted standards, who didn’t measure up to some rigid set of rules of his own making, were beneath his contempt.

      He didn’t even believe her story about having a meeting to attend. Well, for all she knew, she didn’t. She was so late now that…

      Crista stopped as the directory on the wall caught her eye. Blackburn, Blackburn, and Katz were located in this building, on the twentieth floor.

      She spun around. There were two elevators, and the doors of both were just shutting. The man might be in either one.

      So what?

      “Hey,” she yelled,