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  Natalie paused in front of a mirror and faced her reflection. She was playing a game. That was all. Calli was in love with Steven Bradford. But Natalie was not falling in love with Chance Mitchell. What she felt for Chance was lust. And professional respect. The emotions tumbling around inside of her had no relation to what Catherine Weston felt for Steven Bradford. She couldn’t afford to let the different roles she was playing merge.

  Giving herself a nod, she began to pace again.

  Gut instinct told her that Carlo Brancotti had not only been testing her, he’d also been playing some kind of a game with her. Her mind kept circling back to the fact that the tour had been his idea. He’d wanted her to see the layout of the house, his “workspace,” the salon and his gallery. Why?

  She stopped pacing and began to tap her foot. It was in the gallery that her neck had begun to prickle. She often got that feeling when something meshed for her on a case. She and Chance had assumed that the Ferrante diamond would be locked in a safe in his office. Could it be in the gallery?

  A quick glance at her watch told her it was midnight, the witching hour. There was no telling when the poker game would break up, and she needed to talk to Chance. Foot still tapping, she considered her options. As Natalie, she’d have to think of a plan. At the very least, Rachel would have to run through the possible repercussions. Thankfully, all Calli had to do was to go down to that poker game and tell Steven that she needed a walk on the beach before she could sleep.

  She was at the door when she heard the knob turn, and she opened it just as Chance was fishing out his key. What she saw stopped her short for a moment. His hair was mussed, his expression impatient and just a bit dangerous. Her mouth began to water. But it was what she saw in his eyes—the mix of frustration and desire that had her heart taking a tumble. For just a second, she couldn’t move, couldn’t even think.

  CARLO STUDIED the TV screens in the security room adjacent to his office. One of the security men had buzzed him the moment that Steven Bradford had left the poker game.

  And now Bradford was standing in the doorway to his room.

  “What do you think?” he asked Lisa.

  “He’s a man who prefers his woman to a poker game,” Lisa said.

  “But it’s well known that poker is his weakness. He plays twice a month with old friends.

  He doesn’t rush home to be with his Calli.”

  “Perhaps that’s because he’s playing with friends. Or perhaps he was overcome by jealousy when you spent over an hour giving his Calli a tour of the house and gardens.”

  Carlo glanced at her sharply. Something in her tone told him that she didn’t approve, but it wasn’t like her to criticize him. “Are you jealous, too?”

  She met his eyes, but said nothing.

  “You don’t think the tour was wise.”

  “No. You haven’t yet decided who the plant is, and yet you showed her the gallery where the safe is.”

  Carlo smiled then and lifted a hand to trace it along her cheek. “Where one of my safes is.”

  “You’re playing with fire.”

  “It’s just a bit of misdirection, my dear Lisa. And I know what I’m doing. If they think the Ferrante diamond is in the gallery safe, it will make the game more interesting. And you can stop being jealous. My other guests will receive the same tour.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Lisa said.

  He leaned down and brushed his mouth over hers. When her lips warmed and softened beneath his, he drew back and raised her hand to his lips. “Come. I think we can leave the lovebirds to themselves. And perhaps I can make it up to you for spending so much time with Calli.”

  FOR JUST A SECOND after Natalie opened the door, Chance couldn’t move. Feelings swamped him. She was here. She was safe.

  And he didn’t have any idea which woman he was looking at. That realization fueled both his frustration and his desire. Stepping forward, he urged her back into the room, closed the door and locked it. Then he grabbed her arms, drew her up on her toes and closed his mouth over hers. Heat. He could feel it shoot from her to him and back again. He wanted, no, he needed…

  Drawing back for a moment, he stared at her in the moonlight streaming into the room.

  Who are you? he wanted to ask. He wanted to shout it. But he couldn’t.

  What he said was, “I want you.” Then before she could answer, he pushed her back against the wall and kissed her again. By damn, he was going to find out which part she was playing. He had to.

  The flavor would give her away. Rachel was slightly tart. He tasted that. Calli was sweet—

  like wild honey—and he found that, too. He nipped her bottom lip and discovered the dark exotic flavor that had haunted him for three months. Natalie. Even as all three tastes flooded through him, he was desperate for more. Changing the angle of his head, he took the kiss deeper.

  When he dragged himself back this time, they were both panting. In another moment, he would have pulled her to the floor and taken her right there. Scooping her up in his arms, he carried her into the bathroom and kicked the door shut behind him.

  He didn’t set her down until he’d twisted the knobs of the shower. There was a small mike on the ledge of the hot tub. He wanted to make sure that the spray would block any sound. He said nothing as he began to strip out of his clothes.

  Natalie waited, watching as he removed his shirt and allowed his trousers to pool at his feet. In the moonlight pouring through the balcony doors, he looked like a god. She moved closer. Then, placing her hands on his shoulders, she drew his head down and spoke into his ear. “There are cameras throughout the garden, probably microphones, too. And I’ve been everywhere on the first floor. I know where Carlo’s office is.”

  He gripped her hips and set her far enough away that he could see her eyes. They were a bit puzzled, but focused on his. Did she believe that he’d brought her in here to hear a report? She was thinking of the job and all he was thinking of, all he could think of, was her.

  “Do you care if that dress gets wet?”

  He couldn’t hear his own words over the noise of the shower, but she must have read his lips because she turned and pointed to the zipper.

  It extended all of three inches down from the small of her back, and as the silk parted, his fingers brushed against soft, damp skin. She shrugged her shoulders, wiggled her hips, and the dress slid to her feet.

  She was wearing nothing beneath it. Chance’s mouth went dry as a bone. He’d wondered, of course. So had every other man at dinner. But he hadn’t known and hadn’t truly believed that the woman he’d known originally as Natalie Gibbs would have gone to a dinner party, wearing nothing at all under her dress. Even Rachel Cade had worn underwear, hadn’t she? To think she’d spent one hour alone with Carlo Brancotti wearing nothing but that thin swatch of silk.

  Turning, Natalie looped her arms around his neck and pulled his ear to her mouth. What was she going to tell him now? That she knew where Brancotti’s safe was?

  He gripped her shoulders hard. “You can give me the damned report later. First, I want to know who the hell you are.”

  She didn’t answer him immediately, but he could see the way her eyes darkened, the way the pulse at her throat fluttered. Then she smiled and suddenly her mouth was at his ear again. “I can be anyone you want.”

  Not quite gently, he clamped one arm around her waist and kept the other gripping her arm as he pulled her into the shower with him.

  “I can be Rachel.” She nipped his earlobe. Somehow she’d managed to get hold of the soap, and her hands slid over his skin leaving trails of ice and fire in their wake.

  “I love touching your body.” Her voice had become a breathy whisper. “Do you like it when I touch you here?” Her hand slithered from his shoulders down his chest.

  “How about here?” Her fingers drew a line to his waist and then lower. “Or here? Do you like this?”

  He closed his eyes as her slick, hot fist enclosed him.

>   “Or I can be Calli.” She dropped a quick line of kisses along his jaw and began to pump him gently.

  “Or I can be both.” Her laugh was a breath in his ear before her tongue darted inside. And then she was whispering, “I could be two women at once. Is that your fantasy, Steven?”

  He felt his head literally spin, his strength drain away.

  “I could give you your fantasy,” she breathed. “Right now, I’m Rachel.”

  Chance felt the subtle change in her posture. Her hand grew firmer on him and began to move more quickly.

  “All during dinner, I thought of doing this. And this.” She ran a slick hand over his shoulder and down his back to spread her fingers over his buttocks. “If you’d been sitting next to me, I would have found a way to touch you—even with Lady Latham watching us from across the table. Can you imagine it?”

  Her whispered words had the image filling his mind.

  “We might have been caught while I was slipping down your zipper, inch by inch. And then I would have done this.” Her hand stilled, then milked him in one long pull.

  With a moan, Chance slammed one hand against the shower wall to steady himself.

  “You like that. Would you like me to make you come this way?”

  This was madness. As he lifted his head and tried to clear it, she was all he could see—

  those wide eyes, the color now as dark and mysterious as the sea at night. That soft, soft mouth. In the misty steam that swirled around them, she made him think of a mermaid, and for the first time in his life, he understood how mythical sirens had lured sailors to their deaths. Those men simply hadn’t cared about anything else.

  Then she smiled, and releasing him, she stepped closer until the length of his hardness was pressed against her softness. Her mouth was at his ear again.

  “Now, I’ll be Calli. I’m not nearly as experienced as Rachel, but I read. When I was on the patio watching you play poker, I thought about this wickedly sexy book I read. It was all about what went on in this Victorian brothel. On Friday night, the men would gather in the parlor for a game of cards, and the lady of their choice would crawl under the table, and slip between the gentleman’s knees…can you picture that?”

  As the image formed in his mind, she slithered down his body and took him into her mouth. He couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe. He was drowning in her. Everything he was became centered on the sensations she brought him—the movement of that soft, hot mouth, the sharp press of her fingernails as she kneaded them into his backside.

  He’d never felt a pleasure so intense. He wanted it to go on forever. But he wanted to be inside of her when he came. The struggle between those two desires was brief and vicious.

  But he finally found the strength to free himself. He knelt with her on the floor of the shower.

  Water sluiced over them. Her wet hair clung to her forehead in jagged wisps, making her look different once again. The thought had barely entered his head, when she drew his ear to her mouth again.

  “I’m a stranger you’ve just met. You don’t even know my name.” Her quick, wicked laugh only punched up the heat that was boiling inside of him.

  “We have no history, no future, no expectations. You just know that you want me. You do want me, don’t you, Chance?”

  Later he would wonder if it was her use of that name that pushed him to the edge. He didn’t know exactly who she was. When he looked into her eyes, all he saw was himself, trapped. All he was certain of was that he needed her with a desperation that threatened to slice him in two.

  She smiled, but it wasn’t Rachel’s smile this time. Nor was it Calli’s. “I want you. Now.”

  Chance was sure that he heard something inside of him snap as he dragged her to him.

  HIS MOUTH crushed hers. The kiss wasn’t loverlike. It was hard, demanding, and Natalie reveled in the onslaught of sensations sprinting through her. This was what she’d wanted, the mindless passion that only he could bring her. She could almost feel the barriers crumbling inside of her. He made her so aware of herself, so free.

  No other man had ever made her feel this way. It was forbidden. It was delightful.

  Even as his mouth devoured her, his fast, clever hands were everywhere, molding, pressing, possessing. Pleasure, hot spiky arrows of it, pierced her at every contact point.

  When he drew back, she was trembling. Then he dragged her close again. “You’re mine.”

  His voice was a harsh whisper in her ear. “Mine.”

  Mine. The word echoed in her head as his mouth returned to hers. She’d wanted this madness, craved it from the moment she’d opened the door and seen him standing there.

  Now, he gave her no time to think, to breathe—no time to orient herself or anticipate. He ran his hand up her thigh and slipped two fingers into her, and her hips bucked to meet his touch. When he began to move his hand, her body moved with him, her muscles bunching, straining until her release, hot and hard, rocked her system. Only then did he drag her beneath him and drive himself into her on the floor of the shower.

  “Look at me.”

  Shuddering, breathless, she opened her eyes to him. Water poured down, but even through the mists, she could see his gaze—dark and fixed on hers. Her vision and her body were filled with him. Her whole world had narrowed to him. There was nothing that she would have refused him.

  “Say my name,” he said.

  For a split second, she hesitated, trying to clear her mind enough to remember who she was supposed to be. But he’d stripped all of those women from her.

  Swearing, he withdrew and thrust into her again. “Say my name.”

  “Chance,” she said. And she knew that it was Natalie who’d said the word, Natalie who was giving herself to him.

  He nodded even as he began to move.

  Wrapping her legs and arms around him, she gave herself over to the ride.

  11

  WHEN NATALIE opened her eyes in the morning, she found herself staring at Chance’s sleeping face. Even as her mind readjusted to reality, recalling the job, the danger, the events of the night before, she kept studying him.

  In sleep, he looked different. There was a hint of vulnerability, a hint of the boy that was seldom there when he was awake. Both pulled at her, and she felt her heart take a slow tumble.

  Not good, she thought, as she pressed a fist against her chest. She was pretty sure the heart gymnastics thing had nothing to do with hot, sweaty sex or fantasies about what went on in Victorian brothels.

  Where had that one come from anyway? She’d never read a Victorian porn novel in her life. And she’d better remember that the Victorian scenario hadn’t been the only fantasy going down here. This whole thing she was playing out with Chance was a fantasy. He didn’t even know she was here. He thought he was with Rachel and Calli. He certainly had no idea that the woman who’d given herself to him in the shower and all last night had been Natalie.

  Suddenly, she frowned. No, she hadn’t given herself to Chance. The word give was too closely associated with the heart acrobatics. And Natalie Gibbs was much too smart to give her heart to anyone. Maybe Calli was that type. As for Rachel, well, Natalie hoped that any cousin of hers would be wiser than that. But at least Natalie knew the kind of heartbreak that came when you allowed yourself to take that long fast fall into love. She’d seen what could happen up close and personal. Love had left her parents pining for something they could never have. And love for her dead husband had killed her mother.

  No. She was not going to even think about the L word. L-O-V-E was not in her vocabulary.

  But as she lay there staring at him, she felt the little flutter near her heart begin again.

  Panic bubbled up. She had to get away from him to think.

  After easing herself off the bed, she tiptoed backward to the closet, grabbed shorts, sandals and a shirt, then slipped as quietly as she could from the room.

  SHE WAS GONE. Chance stood in the bathroom and struggled to keep panic at bay. Wh
en he’d woken up in an empty bed, he’d assumed she was in the bathroom. Their clothes were still lying where they’d dropped them, and her damn scent was still there. But there was no sign of Natalie. After moving out onto the balcony, he let his gaze sweep the grounds below. Relief streamed through him when he spotted her hurrying off in the direction of the beach.

  Relief was pushed out by anger as he moved back into the bedroom for his clothes. What in the hell was she doing going off by herself? He dragged on trousers and pulled a shirt off of a hanger. They had roles to play, a job to do.

  The next emotion to sweep over him was guilt. He should be lecturing himself on that score. Obviously, she was upset by what had happened between them during the night.

  Facing himself in the mirror, he tucked in the shirt and slipped into shoes. He could see the reflection of the bathroom door and the shower beyond. What had happened in there and later when he’d carried her into the bedroom had nothing to do with the masquerade they were involved in—or the job. He’d let his hormones take over.

  No, that wasn’t the whole truth. Placing his hands on the dresser, Chance leaned forward and met the eyes of the man staring back at him. Self-deception was not something that he’d ever let himself indulge in. It hadn’t been merely hormones that had made him leave the poker game early. It had been feelings—feelings that he couldn’t name, let alone sort out.

  And he’d been swamped by feelings again in the shower. Calli, Rachel, Natalie—all three of them had gotten to him. But in the end it had been Natalie he’d made love to. Natalie he’d dragged to the floor. Natalie he’d demanded say his name. He was certain of that.

  What he wasn’t certain of was who Natalie had been making love to. Was it all role-playing for her? That was the question that he wanted to ask her, and it was not the question that should be foremost in his mind.

  It was the job that should have his undivided attention.