The taxi left her at her gate. Suzanne paid him then looked across the street. Her car was parked right there. On an impulse, she walked over and got in, resting her hands for a moment on the steering wheel. At the first turn of the ignition key, the car started right up without that choking, grinding roar she’d grown used to. It purred gently, powerfully. She sat there, pleased, listening to her car hum, healthy and whole.

Her car was back from the dead and better than ever, thanks to her tenant. Her sinfully sexy tenant.

She’d overreacted. Yes, they’d had sex and that was at least as much her fault as his. It’s not like he’d overpowered her or anything. The instant his lips had touched hers, she’d melted. And though it had been rough it had also been exciting. Certainly more exciting than anything she’d experienced in…ever.

Suzanne had no doubt whatsoever that if, instead of bolting in panic back into her apartment, she’d asked John in, he would have followed right on her heels and they would have spent the rest of the night…what?

Making love, no doubt about it. In a bed. Instead of having sex. Against a wall. And in between bouts, they’d have talked. Maybe laughed a little, opened that bottle of Chablis she’d had in the fridge for weeks, finished the jar of contraband caviar a client had brought her.

John had flubbed it but so had she. She’d run from him like a scared rabbit.

And it wasn’t as if he’d blown her off the next day. He’d immediately acknowledged her, taken responsibility, said they needed to talk.

And the biggie—he’d dealt with Murphy for her and picked up her car. Which now purred beneath her hands. Pleased, she switched off the ignition and sat there, feeling a little foolish at her reaction to him.

A sudden vision of John Huntington formed before her eyes. His size, his strength, his intensity, his brute male power. Nope, she hadn’t overreacted. The man was formidable in every way.

She thought about what Todd had said as she opened her gate and walked to the door. That maybe the men she’d been dating had been too predictable, too bland, too…safe.

What was wrong with safe? she thought as she disconnected the alarm, opened the door, and then switched the alarm back on, just as John had made her promise to do. Safe was nice, warm, comfortable. Not words she’d ever associate with John Huntington.

He threw her for a loop.

He’d occupied most of her headspace all day. All day yesterday, too. Every second, in fact, since she’d met him, and that wasn’t good. She was a busy professional, just about to make that leap into the spheres of the very successful and she didn’t have time for obsessions. She barely had time to date, so what little time she had should be with men who would stay nicely in the background where they belonged and wouldn’t occupy her every waking moment.

Like now, walking warily into her own building. Wondering if he was in. Hoping he wasn’t. Hoping he was.

He wasn’t here. She paused for a moment in the hallway. He was a quiet man, almost eerily so, but she knew her building. It held the stillness of emptiness. And come to think of it, she hadn’t seen his Yukon parked outside.

From the sudden certainty of that, Suzanne realized that she’d been subconsciously looking out for his SUV and listening for signs of him. He’d said he’d be out of town this afternoon and would be late getting back. So she’d see him tomorrow. Which meant that she definitely needed a good night’s sleep if she wanted to face him with anything approaching equanimity.

To get that good night’s sleep she had to put Commander John Huntington right out of her head. She had to get her life back.

Tomorrow. She’d get her life back tomorrow. Today had been much too exhausting. Marissa Carson had topped herself today, changing her mind about everything that had been decided upon up until now. Most of the furnishings had already been ordered. When Suzanne pointed out that she’d lose a lot of money, Marissa had tilted her lovely head back and laughed long and hysterically, saying she was soon going to be very rich.

Marissa had been feverish, jumping out of her skin. Suzanne imagined that she was having problems with Mr. Carson, whom she’d never met. But she knew what he looked like. Pictures of him, a handsome, blond, cold-eyed man, were pasted all over the apartment. Had been pasted. Now all the photographs of him had been either taken off the walls or placed face down on the coffee table. Clearly, there was trouble in paradise. That was confirmed by the tall, blond, cold-eyed man who’d nearly knocked her over as she was exiting Marissa’s building a few hours ago. He’d looked furious and Suzanne was sure that fireworks were in the offing.

It had been difficult to absorb Marissa’s hysteria while trying to deal with her wishes for her apartment, which changed hourly. They’d finally agreed to meet again in two weeks, when presumably Marissa would have a better grasp on what she wanted.

In the meantime, Suzanne had spent an emotionally exhausting afternoon and had had to skip lunch, which made her cranky.

Her evening ritual calmed her, soothed her. A hot bubble bath with lavender oil. A bowl of frozen minestrone heated up in the microwave, a glass of red wine, half an hour in bed with the latest Nora Roberts and lights out at ten.

Suzanne closed her eyes, savoring the clean linen sheets, the warm light eiderdown, and the stillness of the night. The weather forecast had been for snow and she’d opened the curtains in all the rooms because she liked snow. As she snuggled deep in her bed, sure enough, a few stray snowflakes were drifting down from the sky, visible in the halo of the streetlights. She could feel her muscles start to relax, feel that slow slide into sleep…

Which didn’t come.

Two hours later, the grandfather clock in her living room next door tolled midnight. She listened to the slow tock and whir of the mechanism, and then the solemn chimes. She counted twelve and sighed as she slipped her legs out of bed.

The night was beautiful. Low-lying fluffy white clouds, like a child’s vision of Christmas, hugged the tops of buildings. Fat, lazy cartoon flakes floated down, gently, as if they had all the time in the world.

Snow was kind to her street. It covered the ruts and cracks and potholes. It softened the buildings grown raggedy with age and neglect. It spread its gentle mantle over this part of town, abandoned and sometimes violent, full of unhappy, failed souls.

The night sky glowed, reflecting the bright lights of downtown off the low-lying clouds. The clouds shimmered and snowflakes danced. Suzanne watched for a few minutes, searching elusively for peace.

Like sleep, it wasn’t coming.

She felt edgy and unsettled, as if she had somehow crossed a divide without meaning to. Without even wanting to. Moved into a new part of her life where she didn’t know the rules.

Todd’s words kept coming back to her. It was true—she had always dated men with whom she knew she could keep the upper hand and it was also true that there was no question of her keeping the upper hand with John. He was a dominant male in every sense of the word.

Of course, they weren’t exactly dating. One evening out, one bout of sex… what was the word for that? Dating? She had no idea; it didn’t fit any of her neat categories. And to top it all off, they were living together. Or rather not living together, but living in the same building. Just the two of them.

John was like a tiger. A gorgeous, wild animal that needed to be approached gingerly because it could rip your heart out without even trying. You needed to keep your distance from beautiful, wild animals. How was she going to do that when she would be seeing him every day?

The silent night wasn’t offering up any answers, just gentle snowflakes slowly tumbling out of the shimmering clouds. A light played erratically against the low hedge of box trees which ran along the side of the building, and Suzanne watched it flicker and glow against the dark leaves.

She peered more closely.

Why was it doing that? Where on earth was the light coming from? Not downtown, that was for sure. Not against her hedge.

And the light wasn’t a shimmer but a pinpoint glare. She frowned. A car? No, the beam was too small and it jumped around. And anyway it was coming from inside the hedge not from the street outside. At that angle, it had to come from…her house! From her office.

A fire!

Suzanne’s heart leaped in her throat as she ran to the door, ran through the living room and kitchen without bothering to switch on the lights. Each room had big picture windows and she watched the shiver and play of the light against the hedge as she went from room to room.

The little circle of light kept flickering on and off and she stopped, hand on the door that would take her into her office. Her mind was just catching up with her body.

What was she thinking? Was she crazy?

No fire would make that kind of light. A fire’s light would be steadier, and bigger. There was only one thing that would make a light like that. A flashlight.

And a flashlight meant…someone was in her office.

Thank God she was barefoot. She hadn’t made any noise. Whoever it was in her office couldn’t have heard her.

The door to the office was ajar and she carefully pulled her fair hair back from her face and peeped around the corner.

There was nothing to see at first, just the blackness of a large dark room. Then there was a bumping sound, like a human limb meeting a piece of furniture, and a soft curse. If she hadn’t actually had her head practically in the room, she wouldn’t have heard it.

Someone had broken into her house.

A man. The low pitch of the curse had been unmistakable. Then a dark form crossed the window, perfectly silhouetted against the brighter night sky and Suzanne’s heart stopped. Then started again, pumping hard. She had to clench her teeth to keep from gasping.

The intruder was tall, lanky, with longish hair brushing his shoulders, holding a pencil flashlight in one hand. The flashlight was the source of the light she’d seen spilling out the window.

In his other hand, he was holding a big black gun.

Oh God, oh God! She thought, taking an involuntary step backwards. Another curse, low and vicious came from the room. He had tripped over another piece of furniture.

Her office was complicated, almost over-decorated, which she’d done deliberately as an advertising tool, showcasing what she could do. It was almost impossible to navigate if you couldn’t see. The man was finding the furniture pretty much by touch. Or by banging his shins.

He had a gun. A burglar with a gun. Hadn’t she read somewhere that burglars don’t carry guns? That they know that the penalty for breaking and entering is much less than that for armed robbery. That they have a different psychological profile from other criminals and are basically non-violent.

All a burglar wants, the article said, is to get in, get as much of your expensive stuff as possible, and get safely back out.

Except this man wasn’t doing that. The flashlight picked out her brand-new Bang and Olufsen, worth a lot of money—worth more, actually, than she could afford—then moved steadily on. It skimmed over her collection of antique silver frames collected by three generations of Barrons, which an appraiser date once said was worth more than her new car. It lighted briefly on the original Winston Homer great-granny Bodine had bought from the great man himself. Suzanne had used it as collateral for the mortgage.

The flashlight didn’t even linger over these items, but just kept roaming over the walls. Looking for something.

Looking for what? It was a poor part of town. There weren’t many buildings containing what the burglar had just skipped over as unworthy of stealing. What else could he possibly be looking for?

And just like that, Suzanne knew.

The burglar wasn’t there to steal her stereo system or her frames or her paintings.

He was there for her.

He was armed and on the hunt. Hunting her. For some unknown reason this man with the gun wanted to kill her. That was why he’d broken into her house and why he was ignoring all the valuable objects he could steal without any trouble at all. He didn’t want them. He wanted her and he was going to get her because there was no way out of the building except past him.

Her home was four big rooms, one after the other, and only the last one, her office, had a door leading out into the corridor. The rest were internal doors, and all the intruder had to do was go through them, one after another, until he found her.

The windows were alarmed and bulletproof. Opening a window would set off the alarm system, which could only be disengaged at the front door. There was no hope of breaking a window and crawling through. The man who’d sold her the windows had given her a demonstration of what bulletproof meant. He’d taken her to the company’s underground test room and fired a gun at a test windowpane, which had starred but hadn’t broken.

No way could she get through.

The closest police station was downtown. It would take them at least a quarter of an hour to get here and by then, the intruder would have gone through all the rooms, would have found her and…

John!! Only John was close enough—and tough enough and dangerous enough—to help her. If he was home.

Please be back, John, she prayed, running swiftly, silently, back through the kitchen, the living room and into the bedroom. She quietly closed each door, locked it, and then ran to the next.

The locked doors wouldn’t hold back a man capable of getting through her security for long, but maybe it would buy her a few minutes if he was trying to be quiet and not attract attention. All she needed was enough time to call John for help. If he was here, he was only across the hallway.

And if he wasn’t?

I’ll be home late, he’d said. What was late? Had he come back in while she’d been trying to sleep? Was he sleeping just a few feet away? Or was he still out of town, completely unable to answer her call in time?

Please don’t let him still be out of town!

She was sobbing as she locked the last door, the door to her bedroom. She was now as trapped as a mouse in a cage. If the intruder reached her bedroom, there was nowhere else to go, nowhere else to hide.

Fumbling, crying, she reached for her purse and with fingers that felt as thick as sausages rummaged for her cell phone. Her hands were shaking, useless. With a curse, she upended her purse, rummaged madly then—with a sob of relief—found her cell phone. She grabbed it and switched it on.

Her throat was raw from the panicked breaths she was gulping in. She held the phone in one hand as she frantically went through the seeming thousands of bits and pieces of paper in her purse with the other.

Damn! She was usually tidy, but she’d been so busy lately she hadn’t had time to clean her purse out. It looked like every number she’d ever known was written down on a small piece of paper. There it was! No, that was the number of her tax advisor. Old high school friend she’d bumped into at Nordstrom’s, antique dealer, and new hairdresser—all of them had scribbled their numbers on scraps of paper.

Think, Suzanne! She commanded herself. She closed her eyes, jaw clenched, and tried to think past her pounding heart and shaking nerves back to when John had written his cell phone number down.

If the intruder had found her kitchen door and picked the lock, he’d already walked through it. It was basically an open space. No obstacles at all. He could already be in her living room, or worse. Maybe he was already at the bedroom door.

She whimpered. Think!!

Cold, it had been cold outside. John had stood towering over her, angry with her because she’d called a taxi, writing his number down—she remembered his handwriting—bold, black, and distinctive—and she’d stuck it in…

Her planner!

Frantic, she scrambled for it, flipped through the pages and…there it was!

Shaking, she punched out the number, hoping she was getting it right. Hoping her shaking hands wouldn’t betray her. What if she’d punched the number in wrong? Ah. The line connected and started ringing. Make it be the right number, she prayed.

One…

Did she hear a small thud in the next room? Oh, God.

Two…

Come on, come on!

Three…

“What’s the matter, Suzanne?”

She nearly dropped the phone in relief at hearing that deep voice. So calm, so matter of fact. Some part of her was glad that he seemed to be always a step ahead of her. He’d already entered her number in his cell as a contact and already knew that she wouldn’t be calling him after midnight unless she had a problem.

“John,” she whispered. “Where are you?”

“About three blocks away,” he replied. The deep tones seemed to vibrate through the phone. Just hearing his voice made her feel better. Less panicky. “Why?”

“Please hurry. There’s a man in the house. He was in my office a few minutes ago. John, I don’t think he’s a burglar. He wasn’t trying to steal anything and he’s—he’s armed.”

“Where are you now?” His voice was still calm, but she could hear a deep rumble in the background as he gunned the engine of his SUV and the squeal of tires as he rounded a corner.

“In the bedroom,” she whispered. She clutched the cell with wet hands, as if it were a lifeline. “The last room down. I locked the door.”

“Okay, this is what I want you to do. Put a chair under the handle. Don’t move furniture—that would make too much noise. Unscrew the lightbulbs on the lamps. Do you have a walk-in closet?”

“Y-yes.” She got the word out through chattering teeth.

“Get in and lock the door to that from the inside. Move to the very end and wait there for me. I’m coming. Do you hear me, Suzanne?”

“Yes.” Her voice shook. She bit her lips. “Hurry,” she whispered and broke the connection.

She only had one chair and placed it under the handle. It was pretty but flimsy. By the time the intruder made it to her bedroom door, he might not be worrying any more about making noise. The chair would hold a determined man back only a few seconds. She quickly unscrewed the light bulbs from the three lamps in the bedroom before heading for the closet door.

For the first time in her life, Suzanne cursed her tidiness as she locked the door behind her. How much better it would be to crouch in a tangle of old jeans, ratty tee shirts and discarded dressing gowns, instead of the bare floor of her superneat closet trying to hide behind two rows of shoes, neatly lined up and no defense whatsoever, unless you counted the killer stilettos on one pair of Manolo Blahniks which she’d bought in a moment of insanity and had never worn.

She crouched and waited. And bitterly regretted that she’d never taken a self-defense class, though she wasn’t sure what she could do against an armed man.

Wonder Woman would have known what to do. So would Xena the Warrior Princess. And Charlie’s Angels. They’d have known how to disarm an armed man and then they’d kick butt, but there were three of them and only one of her.

She moved slightly, brushing a lavender sachet dangling from a satin ribbon she’d hung from the rod. She closed her eyes in the dark, breathing in the sharp scent. She’d made the sachet herself from lavender gathered in her parents’ retirement home in Baja. It smelled of summer gardens and sun and earth. Her hand touched a cashmere shawl she’d worn to a production of The Mikado with Todd. She fingered it, taking comfort from the softness and warmth.

She didn’t want to die.

She wanted more summers with her parents, more theater evenings with Todd. More summer picnics, more skiing vacations. More evenings out, more evenings in.

More.

Life was so sweet, so rich, the highs and lows of it. She loved her parents, she loved her home, and she loved her friends. Her career was just taking off. She was going to live a hallway away from the sexiest man she’d ever seen. She’d been shocked at the sex they’d had, but it had made her feel alive in every cell of her body. She wanted more.

She didn’t want to die. Oh, God, she didn’t want to die.

How far away had John been? Three blocks? Even driving fast, how quickly could he get here? Was he parking now? Running toward the house?

With a sudden disconcerting sense of certainty, Suzanne knew that as fast as a human being could make it—that’s how quickly John would come for her. Whatever could be done to protect her against an armed intruder—that’s what John would do.

There was no one else in the world right now she’d rather have coming to her rescue than John Huntington.

Where was the intruder now? Her living room was very decorated, too, with two sofas, armchairs, occasional tables, footrests, floor vases scattered all over. If the intruder wanted to proceed stealthily, all the objects in the room would slow him down considerably.

If he didn’t care about making noise anymore though, then he was moving fast. Had he simply turned on the lights, tired of bumbling around in the dark? If he knew she was home, then he also knew there was only one other place she could be. If he wanted to, he could break down her bedroom door, wrench open the closet and shoot her in the space of a minute.

What was that noise? Every muscle tensed and her breath left her body in a rush. Her mouth was bone dry.

It was so horrible huddling here in the dark like a fox hounded to earth. Her heart was pounding so hard it seemed impossible that it wasn’t making a noise. It sounded loud to her. Surely it could be heard in the next room?

She wiped her face on her sleeve. Whatever happened, she needed to be able to see. Even if it was only the gun that would end her life. She swiped at her eyes as she bit down on her lips and ordered herself to stop crying. To stop trembling. She pressed her hands between her knees so she could tell herself her hands weren’t shaking.

She never knew she was such a coward. How could she have known? She’d never faced danger—real danger, as opposed to the danger any woman living alone is subject to every day—in her life.

I don’t want to die, she thought again as she rested her forehead on her knees. A tear dropped on her knee and ran down her calf.

She waited in the dark, endlessly.

Her watch was on the bedside table. She had no idea how much time had passed since she’d spotted the intruder. Since she’d called John. Ten minutes? Two minutes? Half an hour? There were no bearings here, in the muffled scented darkness of the closet, no way of telling time except by her thudding heart.

Had she sent John to his death? He hadn’t even hesitated, had simply said he was on his way, but should she have called the police instead of him? She might well die, but she might go down having brought another man to his death. A good man. A man who willingly stepped into danger for her.

Right now, he might be out there, bleeding, dying…

Somehow, that was the worst thing of all.

Suzanne straightened abruptly. That had definitely been a sound. Like something heavy falling. A piece of furniture? A…body? The sound came from the living room, right outside the bedroom door. A long moment of silence, while she strained her ears.

And then another sound, metallic this time.

Someone picking the lock.

Suzanne wiped her eyes. Whatever was going to happen in the next few seconds, she wanted to be clear-eyed.

A scraping…the chair was pushed out of the way. Suddenly, light flooded through the louvered slats of the closet door. A shadow fell across the door.

Suzanne waited, dry-eyed now, breathing slowly. Trying crazily to brace herself against a bullet. She scooted as far as she could go against the wall, pressing against the wooden slats with her shoulders, wishing she could push herself through to the other side.

The closet door opened and a man filled the doorway. Broad shoulders barely cleared the frame. A killer’s face—lean cheeks, cold gunmetal eyes, hard mouth. He looked at her with narrowed eyes, a large black gun in his hand.

With a glad cry Suzanne rushed into his arms.