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“Dallas?” she’d said to Ginny, who roomed with her on the road. “Dallas?”

“Um,” Ginny had replied. “Last-minute change in plans.”

“No,” Leanna had said, trying to stay calm. “I can’t go to Dallas.”

“Oh, it’s a great city.” Ginny had glanced up and smiled. “Lots of terrific restaurants. Good shopping. And, oh boy, the men…”

“I can’t go there,” Leanna had repeated.

Ginny’s brows had lifted. “What’s the problem?”

What, indeed? What could she have said that wouldn’t give everything away? Nobody knew about her and Cam. Nobody needed to know. It was bad enough she had to live with the memories of the time they’d been together.

So she’d muttered some foolish excuse about being in Texas before and hating the heat, and Ginny’s brows had shot up again.

“It’s winter, Lee. It’s gonna be cold in Dallas.”

“Oh,” Leanna had replied. “Oh, of course.”

So she’d gone to Dallas. What choice did she have? She needed her job. She was still amazed the company had kept a spot open for her, after all the time she’d been out, first because of the kidnapping and then because she’d been ill.

She’d gone to Dallas, and lived through a week of hell.

Cam, she’d kept thinking, Cam was here.

How many times had she almost done something stupid? Too many to count, but she’d come close. Oh, so close! She’d looked up his name in the phone book. His home address wasn’t listed but his firm was. Knight, Knight and Knight. Risk Management Specialists. Not that she’d do anything about it, she’d told herself…

But she’d taken a cab, gone to the address, stood staring at a tower of glass and steel while she came up with all the reasons it would be logical to just walk in and ask to see Cameron Knight.

After all, he’d saved her life.

Thank you, she’d say, oh, and by the way, you were right, that stuff back on the other side of the world was just silliness.

She hadn’t done it.

She still had some pride left.

At least the week of torment was over. Tomorrow morning, she’d climb on the bus, close her eyes and when she opened them again, Dallas would be only a memory.

Like Cam.

Leanna dipped her fingers into a jar of cleansing cream and smeared it over her face.

There was no sense in thinking about him. She was back in the real world and so was he, and though she’d dreamed of it happening a thousand times, he’d made no attempt to get in touch with her but then, why would he?

He’d been brutally clear about what their relationship had meant to him. She knew he’d been deliberately blunt so she’d obey his orders, but the essence of what he’d said had been the unvarnished truth.

What had happened between them was a fairy tale, and fairy tales never lasted.

Leanna tissued off the cleansing cream.

She was sweaty and exhausted. Her muscles burned and even before she got her toe shoes unlaced, she knew she’d bled into them. That was one of the things that happened when you danced en pointe. Normally she didn’t pay it much attention but after what had happened weeks ago, she knew enough to be cautious.

She’d collapsed in the chopper that took her to Dubai.

One second, she’d been weeping, incoherent even to herself, begging the men half-dragging her to the helicopter to let her go back to Cam. The next, the world went gray. She came to days later in a hospital bed, antibiotics pumping into her veins, an infection in her left foot and her temperature so high she was unconscious half the time.

When she finally surfaced, the first words she heard were the doctor’s. He said she was a lucky young woman. She might have lost her foot—even died—after a couple more days without antibiotics.