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galloping along, her favorite short suede boots snapping a beat on the crunchy straw underfoot, when she seemed to hurl full force into a solid wall, causing her hat to fly off and a riot of blonde tresses to tumble around her face, blocking the wall from view. She started to stumble backwards into an awkward free fall when all of a sudden two large, strong hands caught her by the upper arms just before she went down.
    “Whoa there , little lady, you pack a powerful punch.” An amused male voice chuckled in a deeply familiar, hypnotic drawl that spread through her senses like warm butterscotch, flowing all around her, covering her being and penetrating her senses in a rush of awareness that stole her breath. She’d know that voice anywhere.  Even in her nightmares.
    Oh no, no, no, no, no , her brain screamed while her head snapped up. She felt her eyes widen and pop from her head at what she saw.
    Still held firmly in large hands , which were sending electric shocks through her careening emotions, Shannon gazed in stunned horror at the face of the man who had changed the trajectory of her life.  The man who had pretended to love her only to later assert that he’d just been having a bit of fun while availing himself of her naïve favors.  Fool her, for he had been given everything she had only to casually walk away without a backward glance while Shannon had in the end lost far more than just her heart to this villainous man.
    To say she was struck dumb was an understatement.  Thunderstruck maybe.  More like a grenade going off in her brain. Dammit.  Nick Temple in the flesh.  No, no, not Nick Temple, the grad student who she’d fallen hopelessly in love with, her memory screamed, but Nicholas Temple Barrett, billionaire dilettante with a heart of stone. As for the flesh, well, Shannon was all too aware of the suddenly superheated atmosphere surrounding them.
    Time stood still. After several long seconds of stunned silence, a shocked , raw voice husked, “Oh my god…Shannon?” as he, too, seemed to be struggling in the moment. “Can it be you?” he ground out. Clearly bewildered and dazed, his reaction seemed to hang frozen in space for several excruciating moments, long enough for Shannon to absorb even more of the warm caramel consequence to his presence.
    Dear heaven , but she’d loved this man so.  Loved the sharp, witty, caring grad student she’d known. Loved his long and slightly shaggy dirty-blond hair when it brushed freely against his collar.  Loved the striking hazel eyes flecked with vibrant gold that gave him a sexy leonine appearance.  Adored the cute-as-hell dimples peeking out of several days’ growth of scraggly beard every time he broke out the huge smile that so often had lit up his face.  She considered that young man to be beautiful and handsome in an innocently shining knight way.
    The face she looked into today, while shocked and momentarily silenced, was older, harsher , and completely lacking in the kind of joy that would bring out those dimples. Gone was the long hair and rakish manner. 
    In its place was a serious -looking grown-up with immaculately cut hair, his chiseled features lending an even greater air of barely contained power to his formidable physical presence, which was big, maybe a little intimidating, and if she wished to admit it, sexy as hell.
    To Shannon’s horror, instead of reacting like a viper had been tossed in her presence , she was instead suddenly fighting an unbidden and completely traitorous physical response.  Indeed, her heart had all but leapt in her chest at finding herself held in the gaze of the hazel orbs that had haunted her dreams these last eight years. While Shannon knew she should run for the hills, she seemed instead to be melting in relief, as if she’d just been waiting all these years for him to come back and take away her unhappiness, so lonely had she been without him.
    What?   What in the hell was she thinking? She wasn’t