Hearts Are Wild. Laura Wright

to pull her close and kiss that long, graceful neck of hers. “If that wish was for me to go clothes shopping without complaint, it’s not coming true.”

      She tilted her chin up at him. “You’re being unnecessarily stubborn.”

      “I’m not changing. This is who I am, Maggie. Take it or leave it.”

      “This is not about who you are. This is just about your clothes.” She smiled. “C’mon. It’ll be fun.”

      “Fun for who?” he asked.

      “For me. And it’ll be my treat.”

      “Oh, please,” he grumbled. “I own my own company. I can pay for a few pairs of jeans.”

      “Pants,” she corrected. “Nice pants.”

      “I hate to point this out, but I never agreed to a wardrobe change.”

      “Don’t make this more difficult than it has to be.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him toward a men’s store. “You have a roof over your head—and I have you. For four weeks. Body and soul.”

      He liked the way that sounded. He knew he shouldn’t. But he did.

      She glanced at her watch as they walked. “Then after you get clothes we’ll go see Domingo.”

      He narrowed his eyes. “What’s a Domingo?”

      “Not what, who,” Maggie explained. “Domingo is a hairstylist. Well, actually he’s a hair genius, but—”

      “Hell, no. No way. No!”

      “Oh, c’mon.”

      “No.”

      She stopped at the store’s entrance, crossed her arms over her chest. “Is this a Samson thing? Shed your locks and lose your strength?”

      “First of all, I don’t have locks and second, women find my hair sexy.”

      “It’s not the hair, Nick,” she said.

      “What do you mean?” he asked.

      Her gaze flickered from his face to the floor and back. “Well, maybe it’s not the hair they find sexy. Maybe…ah…maybe it’s just you.”

      His gut tightened as if he was taking Suicide Pass at eighty miles an hour. She wasn’t supposed to be talking to him like that or looking at him like that, either. This whole day was just plain strange. He had no idea how it could get any stranger.

      But it suddenly did.

      Out of the corner of his eye he caught sight of a young woman. Blond, pretty, with eyes like his own.

      He muttered an oath, grabbed Maggie’s hand and pulled her into the men’s store.

      “Good decision,” she said as he turned to see the woman glance in his direction. “They have very nice things in here.”

      What was she doing home from college? Nick wondered, his gaze fixed on the huge plate-glass window, on the young woman and her searching eyes.

      He dropped to the floor behind a rack of pants.

      “What on earth are you doing down there, Nick?” Maggie asked as she peeked around the rack and looked down at him.

      “Looking for the lowest prices,” he muttered, pulling apart several pairs of pants to get a better view. She was still there.

      Maggie stared at him, questions behind her eyes, then she began to laugh. “I had no idea you had a sense of humor, Nick,” she said, hunkering down on the ground next to him. “That’s going to be a big plus with the ladies.”

      Yeah, right. He was a regular Jim Carrey, he mused as his gaze flickered to the store’s entrance. The woman was gone. Relief swept over him.

      “We can get up…” His words petered out and he stayed where he was. Maggie was close, inches away, her sweet scent impaling his senses.

      Under the soft lights, beside a mess of pressed pants, she smiled at him again, her eyes still glowing with laughter. At that moment he would’ve worn a sweater vest if she’d asked him to.

      And for Nick Kaplan—a man who hadn’t worn a sweater since the third grade—that realization meant he was headed for trouble.