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who I am.” She slammed the closet door shut and turned to face him.
    Of course, her job was more covered up than she would’ve liked—she was an investigative reporter, doing the down and dirty kind of work that necessitated her name and image not appear in the paper. So she wrote her articles as K. Darcy and most readers assumed she was a man.
    “I don’t want to have this fight anymore,” he told her, in the same tone he’d say that he didn’t want to stay over at her apartment any longer, that he didn’t understand why she didn’t want to get married. He brushed past her and headed toward her bedroom and she went in the opposite direction.
    Sometimes, in the deepest part of the night, when she felt most alone, she’d do this, wrap a blanket around herself and swing the patio door open. Alone, out on the balcony, she’d stand and look at the city laid out below her and she’d wonder if there was someone out there for her.
    Her body ached for him, this man she’d dreamed about from the time she became interested in boys.
    Aaron had always been more of a best friend than a lover. And in the recesses of her mind, she longed for the man who would come into her world and bring her body to life.
    Carl wasn’t that man. And until today, when Nick Devane’s voice had done more for her than any man’s hands over the years, she’d thought that she was waiting for the unattainable.
    Until today, when she knew she was in trouble. She could still smell the leather scent on her hair, could feel Nick’s grip on her hand as he helped her out of the car, as if she had just taken it for a ride with permission.
    In his eyes, she’d seen the familiar spark of someone who’d had his own brushes with the law.
    She could picture them, a tangle of arms and legs in the car’s tiny backseat, wondered if she’d be the first woman back there and decided she didn’t want to think about that.
    What if I don’t want to forget that I met you?
    She pulled the blanket tighter against the cool spring air and wondered if she’d hit some sort of massive spring fever, if the restlessness overtaking her body was something she’d be unable to ignore for much longer.
    There was only one thing that was going to take the edge off. And it wasn’t going to come from her own touch.
    Meeting Nick was not supposed to be about this—it was supposed to be about getting information on Aaron, discovering the mystery surrounding his death and the money he’d left her. About leaving her past behind her and thinking only on her future.
    A future that if it included Carl Van Patterson might never include her career as a journalist again.
    “Kaylee, are you coming to bed?” Carl’s voice drifted out onto the small balcony. And she stared at the patch and thought about Nick instead of Aaron and wasn’t sure how to tell Carl that no , she was never going to bed with him again.

CHAPTER 4
    What if I don’t want to forget I met you?
    Nick had been halfway into his car when he heard Kaylee call those words out to him, and the relentless energy coursing through his body had nearly won out.
    The hotwire had been enough to make him forget the blackmail attempt momentarily, enough to have him nearly take her right on the hood of his car or anywhere else she’d wanted him.
    And she had wanted him. Had believed he could pull some fucking magic on her body that no one else had ever been able to do.
    For some reason, that made a difference to him. A big difference, and dammit, he didn’t want anything about any woman—especially this woman—to make a difference.
    Just your ego talking, asshole .
    He’d waited until she began to walk back toward the diner’s parking lot after they’d left the park before he’d started to trail her. Just to make sure she got to her car safely, he’d told himself, but fuck it, he’d never been a Boy Scout and the tail was purely a physical pull.
    She’d run her hand over the fender of his car as if soothing a beast