However, I was suddenly struck by the odd notion that tonight was the night I’d met the man I’d been waiting for all of my life.

  “Okay,” I said.

  Had that word come out of my mouth?

  I’d been raised on my mother’s tales of love at first sight. She’d taken one glance at my Italian-Catholic, working-class father and defied her wealthy intellectual Jewish family to marry him.

  They’d been happy until the day she died. I’d been in my last semester of college, uncertain of what I should do with my life.

  Then—bam—my mother had died from a brain aneurysm. Life suddenly seemed so short. Her work wasn’t done, and I had no pressing place to be. So I slid into her job, and two years later I was still doing it.

  My father never recovered from her death. He’d passed away just this winter. I was so lost without him, I felt hollow inside. Which had no doubt precipitated my sudden search for true love.

  Hand in hand Eric and I left the bar and strolled south toward Chelsea.

  I had an apartment on West Twenty-fourth Street. My mother had been a very good agent. Throughout her married life, she’d made three times the money of my electrician father. They’d deposited the checks and never mentioned it. So when Daddy died, I’d nearly choked at the size of his bank account, which was now mine.

  I’d spent the money on a condo, not too far from my Fifth Avenue office. Trying to live up to my mother’s reputation meant I had to work harder and longer than everyone else. Saving commute time had seemed like the best way to invest my inheritance.

  Eric’s arm slid around my waist. Sighing, I leaned my head on his shoulder.

  “This is nice,” I murmured.

  “It’ll get nicer, I promise.”

  His palm drifted lower, cupping my bountiful butt, squeezing a little. His thumb slid down the center, and I jumped.

  “I can’t wait to get inside you. You’ll die of the pleasure, baby.”

  Baby?

  Uck. I was going to have to put a stop to that. He sounded like a used car salesman, trying to sell me a vehicle I did not want.

  His thumb teased me again, and I decided later would be time enough to discuss endearments. Who’d have thought a guy’s thumb could be so arousing. Of course, I couldn’t recall ever being this aroused.

  Eric must have felt the same way because he yanked me in between two buildings and shoved me against the wall, slapping his lips against mine a little too hard. I tasted blood when my teeth cut my lip, shuddered when he licked the blood away.

  I should have been angry, disgusted, a little scared. Instead I felt…wanted. Something I’d never felt before. Sure, in a tiny sane portion of my mind I knew I’d lost it, but right now I couldn’t summon the will to care.

  Eric’s body shielded mine from the night, his erection pressed against me too high to be of any help. I’d have to climb his body, wrap my legs around his waist if I wanted any relief. I was contemplating doing just that when the snick of a match made me still.

  Someone else was in the alley.

  I yanked my mouth from Eric’s. His lips slid across my jaw, then latched onto my neck. My gaze went past his shoulder to the man hovering in the shadows. The glow of his cigarette did nothing to reveal his face. I got a sense of height, breadth, and darkness.

  “Eric,” I whispered.

  He continued to rain kisses across my chest, then rooted at the neckline of my brand-new black dress like a nursing child. My nipples tightened in anticipation, even as the glitter of eyes from the shadows caused a tingle of unease to dance across my skin.

  What in hell was wrong with me? I was definitely not an exhibitionist.

  “There’s someone here,” I said more loudly.

  “Doesn’t matter,” Eric muttered, fumbling with his pants. “Gotta do you now or I’ll fade away.”

  That got through to me. I might be attracted, aroused, insane, but I was definitely not so far gone that I’d let a virtual stranger screw me in an alley while another one watched.

  “No,” I said.

  He ignored me, sliding my dress up my legs, yanking at my pantyhose. The nylon went ping as his thumb popped through. A run shot down my leg, even as his erection beat a pulse against my stomach.

  I began to struggle, becoming just a little afraid, yet in the midst of all that, I wanted him. And that scared me more than anything else.

  “You’ll die happy, baby,” he muttered. “They always do.”

  A hand slapped onto Eric’s shoulder. “She said no, hibrido.”

  Though the words were harsh, the tone was mellow, the accent south of the border. A voice that could haunt me for the rest of my life.

  Eric shifted, his shoulders blotting out everything but him. Neither the hand on his shoulder nor the whispered warning even slowed him down.

  The salt, however, did.

  I wouldn’t have known what had been thrown in Eric’s face, except some of it hit me. The grains burned my eyes like hellfire.

  Eric made a sound that was half snarl, half shout, and shoved away from me so hard my shoulder blades scraped the brick wall.

  He swung around and the other man shot him.

  Right in the head.

  2

  The shot was muffled—silencer, I thought—yet the sound still bounced off the walls and echoed down the alleyway. Tensing in expectation of the blood splatter, my eyes slammed closed.

  Nothing happened.

  When I opened them again, I was alone.

  No Eric. No stranger. No blood. What the hell?

  I stepped onto the street. No one appeared to have heard the gunshot, or if they had, they didn’t care, continuing on their way with the typical zombielike trance of lifetime New Yorkers. The tourists were too busy staring upward, either dazzled by the neon or trying to find their way to their hotels by way of the skyscrapers—a method similar to using the stars in places where stars could actually be seen.

  I was dizzy with the adrenaline, both confused and frightened, so I wandered back into the alley, and I saw him.

  Just a shadow, a slip of darkness against the light as he moved onto the street one block over.

  I didn’t think; I ran. If he vanished into the crowd, what would I do? How would I prove anything that had happened tonight? I didn’t consider why I thought I needed to prove anything.

  I burst out of the alley, and someone grabbed me around the waist. The force of my forward motion, and the sudden end to it, swung me about so fast, my feet lifted off the ground. A choked sound came from my throat, but I didn’t have the air left to scream.

  Even if I had, it wouldn’t have mattered since he slapped his hand over my mouth and dragged me backward. I just couldn’t win tonight.

  “Why are you following me?” he asked.

  “Why do you think?”

  My lips moved, but the words were garbled. His body, rock-hard against mine, tensed.

  “If I lift my hand, do you promise not to scream?”

  Since screaming hadn’t worked very well for me so far, I nodded, and the hand went away.

  “You shot my date in the head!”

  “What date?”

  I blinked. “The guy in the alley.”

  “What guy?”

  “Eric Leaventhall. Slim, blond, handsome.”

  He snorted.

  “What does that mean?”

  He didn’t bother to answer, continuing to hold me aloft, my feet dangling near his knees. He was so much taller, so much broader, so much stronger, I felt helpless. And while that should have unnerved me, instead I got kind of annoyed.

  “You mind?”

  I swung my feet, almost cracking him in the shin, and he set me down but kept his arm around my waist. I could neither see him nor run away.

  “There wasn’t any man,” he said.

  “Of course there was. He bought me a drink. He—he—”

  I ran my tongue across my lip, felt the telltale ridge where my teeth had ravaged the skin when Eric kissed me. I wasn’t crazy.

  But this guy was.

  “Let me go,” I ordered.

  Amazingly, he did, and I scampered out of his reach and spun around.

  My first thought: What a shame. He was too gorgeous to be insane. As if beauty and lunacy were mutually exclusive.

  As dark as Eric had been light, bulky where Eric had been slim, this man was large, hard, his hair shaggy, his face shadowed by at least two days’ growth of beard. The clothes had obviously been slept in, a lot, though even before that, they’d been years away from new.

  His blue work shirt had faded nearly to white from repeated washings. With it unbuttoned to his sternum, I saw the hint of a tattoo, though I couldn’t tell what the shape was. The jeans were ancient, too, the boots scuffed and dusty, his black leather jacket a relic.

  His eyes were as dark as mine, but he had longer lashes. Isn’t that always the way? High cheekbones, a fine blade of a nose. I wasn’t certain, but I thought I saw the sparkle of an earring. Nothing fancy or swingy, just a shiny silver stud piercing one lobe.

  He was so different from anyone I’d ever encountered—exotic and wild—I had to remind myself he’d just murdered my date in cold blood. Except…

  Where was the blood?

  According to him, there hadn’t even been a date.

  I was back to the eternal question—was he crazy, or was I?

  “There was a man with me,” I said, “and you killed him.”

  “If I had, you shouldn’t be troubling your pretty little head.”

  My eyes narrowed, but he ignored me.

  “That’s the quickest way to getting it shot off,” he continued.

  “In other words, Eric troubled his pretty little head? About what?”

  “I don’t know any Eric. I walked through the alley. You were leaning against the wall. Figured you were high on something.”

  “I was—”

  I broke off as I remembered what I’d been doing. Suddenly I was mortified. Why had I been making out with a stranger? Why had I been bringing him back to my apartment? Both behaviors were completely out of character.

  With Eric no longer attached at the lip, I couldn’t figure out why I’d been so enthralled by him.

  “He was here,” I repeated, “and you shot him.”

  The man cursed under his breath, a long stream of indecipherable Spanish that brought Ricky Ricardo to mind.

  “Come along,” he snapped, and stalked back in the direction I’d come.

  On the opposite end of the alley he paused, knelt, peered at the ground. “No blood, no body.” He lifted his gaze. “No shooting and no guy.”

  Joining him, I stared at the stained, but not with blood, asphalt.

  “You want me to take you somewhere?” he asked.

  I didn’t answer as I inched closer to the wall. I’d been leaning here. Eric had been standing there. Crazy man with a gun had been there, so…

  I peered more closely at the brick and found the bullet hole.

  “Aha!” I stuck my finger into it and glared at the guy triumphantly.

  “Aha, what?”

  “A bullet hole. You shot him.” I frowned, remembering the no blood, no body problem. “Or at least at him. You missed.”

  He joined me, then poked his finger into one, two, three other holes. “So did a lot of people.”

  I yanked my hand away, more miffed than scared. “I know what happened.”

  “Listen, chica, I didn’t see any guy.”

  “I am not crazy. And I don’t do drugs.”

  “Maybe you should.”

  At my glare, he lifted his hands in surrender. “I meant prescription ones. You need help.”

  Maybe I did. Definitely I did if I’d not only imagined Eric but also his murder. Did I miss my dad even more than I thought?

  Frustrated, I shoved my hand into the pocket of my dress. My fingers brushed paper and I remembered. I’d printed out the last e-mail from Eric.

  Withdrawing the sheet, I thrust it at the man. “I’m not nuts, and here’s the proof.”

  The guy narrowed his eyes, read the words, scowled. Then he pulled out his gun and pointed it at me.

  Why had I never learned to leave well enough alone?

  “Let’s go.” He flicked the barrel of the gun toward the street.

  “Wh-where?”

  “Your place.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t think so.”

  “You don’t get to think.”

  “You’re kidnapping me?”

  “What was your first clue?”

  If I wasn’t so scared, I might have found him funny.

  He lost patience and grabbed me by the arm. “Either take me to your place, or I’ll take you to mine.”

  I doubted I’d care for his place. At least in my own I’d be surrounded by the familiar and have a hope in hell of escape.

  “Mine,” I murmured. “On West Twenty-fourth.”

  His eyebrows lifted. He obviously knew the neighborhood. Swell. Now he’d want money in addition to…whatever else he wanted.

  My kidnapper set his left arm over my shoulders and I tensed, trying to inch away, but he wouldn’t let me. Instead, he drew me close, then slid his right hand beneath his jacket and pressed the gun to my ribs. I guess there’d be no shouting for help. He’d obviously done this before.

  “Who are you?” I asked as we stepped onto the street.

  “Chavez.”

  “Is that your first name or your last?”

  “Both.”

  “Right.”

  He shrugged, the movement rubbing his side against mine, making the gun skitter across my skin. I flinched, and he tightened his hold.

  “Relaje,” he murmured in that voice that would have been seductive if he hadn’t been kidnapping me at gunpoint. “I don’t want to hurt you, chica.”

  “Then why are you doing this?”

  “You’ll be safer with me. I promise.”

  I snorted my opinion of that, and I could have sworn he laughed. The sound became a cough as I glanced up.

  As the neon lights spilled over us, his face resembled something carved on a western mountainside. Not a hint of emotion—no humor, definitely no compassion. How could I possibly be safer with him? Right now the most frightening thing in my world was him.

  “What’s your name?” he asked.

  I debated ignoring the question, but since he was dragging me home, he’d find out anyway. And did I really want him to continue calling me chica in a voice that reminded me of tequila on a scalding summer night?

  “Kit,” I said, though not very nicely.

  “What kind of name is Kit?”

  “Nickname. My whole name is longer than your—” I paused and he stared down at me from on high.

  “Arm,” I finished, and his lips twitched.

  “What is Kit short for?”

  “My father called me—”

  My voice broke suddenly, embarrassingly. My father’s death was too new, too painful, too private to talk about with a kidnapper.

  “Kitten,” Chavez blurted.

  I stopped walking. “How did you know that?”

  “Fits.”

  No one but my father had ever thought I resembled a kitten. Strange, and disturbing, that this stranger saw it, too.

  We continued on silently. Every once in a while I couldn’t stop myself from looking at him. He was everything foreign to me; I should be frightened. Instead that foreignness had turned my fear toward fascination. Especially when his hair shifted, a streetlight blared, and his earring sparkled.

  A tiny silver cross. How strange.

  I lowered my gaze, saw where we were, and paused, indicating the building on the other side of the street with a dip of my chin. “This is it.”

  He scowled. “You’ve got a doorman.”

  “So?”

  “Don’t even think about tipping him off. Say I’m your boyfriend.”

  “Right. Out of the blue I come home with a boyfriend like you.”

  “What’s wrong with me?”

  “Besides the gun? The leather? The earring and the—”

  I stopped short of mentioning his tattoo. I wasn’t sure it was there, and I didn’t want him thinking I’d been staring at his chest.

  “The killing,” I finished.

  “I didn’t kill anyone.” His eyes narrowed. “Yet. If we’re both lucky, I’ll get what I want and be out of your hair in a few days.”

  “A few days?” I shouted, managing to startle several passersby.

  “Shh!” He jerked me more tightly against him. “I won’t hurt you as long as you help me out.”

  “That’s what all the psycho kidnappers say right before they kill someone.”

  “You have a lot of experience with psycho kidnappers?”

  “I think I’m going to.”

  His lips tightened. “I’m not crazy.”

  “Which is what all the crazy people say.”

  He glanced at the sky, as if asking for guidance. For some reason, that calmed me. If he believed in the divine, he couldn’t be all bad.

  “I’ll tell you whatever you want to know.” Chavez lowered his gaze from the heavens to my face. “Inside.”

  Since I didn’t have much choice, and he had the gun, I let him lead me across the street.

  3

  I’d always been able to relax inside my home, protected by two deadbolts and an ace security system, not to mention that I lived on the tenth floor.

  With Chavez taking up too much space in my winter white living room, I doubted I’d calm down anytime soon.

  “You want a drink?” I blurted.

  His dark brows lifted, and I wanted to take the question back. This wasn’t a social occasion.

  “I don’t drink,” he said.

  It was my turn to look surprised. Chavez definitely seemed the drinking type. Of course, appearances were never reliable.

  Eric had seemed like a gentleman, but he’d taken off and left me in an alley with a gun-wielding maniac. Guess he hadn’t been “the one” after all.

  You think? asked my increasingly sarcastic inner critic.

  My eyes, scratchy from wearing contacts, ached. I only wore the lenses on dates—in other words, once in a blue moon—preferring my glasses for everyday use.