His Private Pleasure. Donna Kauffman

the moment, huh? I’ll keep that in mind, too.”

      “Oh, I doubt you forget much of anything.”

      “You’d be right. You like grilled steak and a good red wine?”

      “Add a tossed salad and we have a date.”

      “Deal.”

      “What else?”

      “What else what? You want the dessert menu?”

      She laughed. “I could make the obvious statement, but that would be way too easy. What I meant was, you started to say something else earlier. Dinner and what?” Something told her he hadn’t been going to say “hot sweaty monkey sex.” Although she might have been perfectly fine with that.

      “Dinner. And an evening spent talking on the front porch, watching the sunset.”

      “Sounds very nice. I guess we can discuss that dessert thing during our porch talk, hmm?”

      He grinned and dangled the key. “I guess we can.”

      She didn’t take the key, not right away.

      “I’m offering to be part of your adventure,” he said, looking at her in such a direct way she couldn’t help but stare back. “Nothing more, nothing less.”

      Liza was used to being the one in charge, the one calling the shots, the one jacking up the atmosphere until the man in her sights was reduced to a quivering mass of need. Needs he believed—in that moment, anyway—only she could fulfill. She was never the one trying to sort out the dizzying swirl of emotions. Never the one reduced to taking what was offered.

      Of course, once she got him alone, there was nothing to say she couldn’t be the one in charge, the one driving the course of the evening’s activities. He’d told her he was willing to be a participant in her adventures, hadn’t he?

      So why, when he pressed the key into her palm, were her fingers the only ones trembling?

      4

      HE’D TOTALLY LOST his mind. Dylan drove his Range Rover past the lightning tree and slowed as he approached the road leading to his house. What in the hell had possessed him to give her the key?

      He thought about the way she’d looked at him, like she’d wanted to inhale him. The light in her eyes that told him she knew just how she’d lap him up. Slowly, and with great relish. He went hard just thinking about it.

      And knew exactly why he’d given her his key.

      “Dinner and some sunset conversation, my ass,” he muttered. They both knew casual conversation was not her reason for taking that key. Which should have been an immediate turn-off to him. Of the fistful of reasons he’d come back to Canyon Springs, women figured prominently among them. Specifically, the type of woman he’d tended to run across in his previous line of work. Hard, cynical. Bored, lonely. He’d had too many of each, before realizing he saw himself in them.

      But Liza wasn’t like that. “That’s just your hard-on talking,” he told himself, shifting in his seat. Although that was partially true, so was his initial take on her. For someone taking a break from life, she didn’t look used up or worn-out. Absolutely the opposite. Alive, hungry, ready. Those were words he’d use to describe her. He doubted she was casual about anything, even sunset conversation.

      He wasn’t that blinded by those aquamarine eyes and candy-apple lips. He knew a player was a player, no matter the league. Okay, maybe he was a little blinded. But they had one thing in common that intrigued him enough not to care. They were both escapees. And they wanted each other.

      He smiled and pressed down on the gas. So maybe this wasn’t the worst idea he’d ever had. At the very least it would be an enjoyable mistake.

      His home, a soaring A-frame with more glass than any sane man with an aversion to cleaning would ever put in a house, appeared on the horizon. He smiled. So what? He’d spent long nights staked out in cramped cars dreaming of this exact house. And now it was a reality. And all his.

      He topped the last hill and something in him settled, as it always did, every time he saw it. It was nestled perfectly among the tall pines and jagged rocks. He’d had to blast out some of it to make an area large enough to build on, but no one could say the foundation wasn’t rock solid. The second-story deck afforded him a wide view of the rincón, or valley, below. A short walk to the other side of the mountain presented him with a spectacular view of the canyons where the springs originated.

      He enjoyed sitting out on the deck with a cold beer, watching the sun go down as the few winking lights in downtown Canyon Springs flickered on, the endless sky full of stars overhead, the moonrise.

      He kept thinking this feeling would wear off, that he’d get that same itch that had driven him from this town the day after he’d graduated from high school. But he’d been back a little over two years now. It had been eight months since he’d hammered the last nail on this place. And he still felt that sense of homecoming every time.

      They said you can’t go home again. But he was coming to believe that you couldn’t really appreciate what home was until you’d left it for awhile. For all the annoyances that went with living in a place where everyone knew you, the sense of security, the steady pace of life, soothed the part of him left jagged and raw by his years in Vegas. That more than made up for the occasional bird rescue or irritating comments from the hometown hero–turned–fire marshal.

      The sudden bleat of his cell phone jarred him from his thoughts. He thought about ignoring it, his body humming as he spied Liza’s shiny little roadster parked in the drive. He reached over to punch the phone off, but stopped when he saw the number on the digital display. His gut tightened in that familiar way he’d hoped to never feel again. He pressed the Answer button. “How did you get this number?”

      The deep voice on the other end chuckled. “Come on, D.J., I worked vice, same as you. If I want to find a number, it gets found.”

      “What part of ‘I’m not interested’ didn’t Hannigan understand this morning?”

      “You know the captain doesn’t listen to what he doesn’t want to hear.”

      Dylan let the truck drift to a stop, still a hundred or so yards away from the house. “And all you’re going to hear is a bunch of silence when I hang up on you.”

      He felt the amusement leave his former squad member’s voice even before he spoke. “You’re the only one she trusted, D.J. She’s ready to talk, but she’ll only talk to you.”

      “I heard all this from Hannigan. She knows I’m not on the force anymore.”

      “That doesn’t seem to matter. We’ve been trying to nail Dugan for—”

      “I know exactly how long.” The old bite was back in his voice. Dylan didn’t appreciate being forced to use it. “It was my case, remember?” His stomach pitched and the acid burned his gut. One phone call and it was like he’d never left Vegas.

      “Yeah, we all remember.”

      Dylan started to tell him where to get off, then bit back the words and sighed. “Quin, I’m out of that game. I’m not coming back.”

      “No one is asking you to come back. We just want you to conduct this one interview.”

      “To conduct an interview,” he pointed out, “I’d have to come back.”

      There was a pause. “Not if we brought her to you.”

      Dylan went still, then his grip tightened on the phone. “Not a chance. I’m hanging up now.”

      “D.J., wait!” There was just enough desperation in Quin’s voice for Dylan to keep his finger hovering over the End button without pushing it. Dylan could be gone for a hundred years and still never forget what it was like to be consumed by that sense of desperation, on the heels of which