When She Was Bad...

Thanks to her parents’ messy divorce when she was less than a year old, she’d grown up in Philadelphia in her grandmother Pendleton’s house, and she’d never so much as seen or talked to her brothers until eight months ago. She wouldn’t have even known they existed if her aunt Irene hadn’t told her in the letters they’d exchanged. When she’d pressed her grandmother, she’d learned her father had signed her away in the divorce settlement, agreeing not to contact her until her twenty-fifth birthday. He’d kept the boys; her mother had kept her.

According to her grandmother, the Rossis simply hadn’t wanted her, and she was better off for it. She’d never fit in with them because she was a Pendleton. Her aunt Irene had claimed that her father had only agreed to the settlement because her mother had asked her father to on her death bed. Pepper suspected that the truth was somewhere in between.

“It’s intermission, and I’m just checking in,” Luke was saying. What he didn’t say—and what she already knew—was that this was a high-profile job for Rossi Investigations. If they screwed up—if she screwed up—the news would be in all the papers, and that was not the kind of PR her brothers needed. “There are quite a few French doors in that suite. Not the best set-up when you’re guarding a priceless painting.”

Pepper lifted her chin. “I am perfectly capable of handling this job.”

“Okay, okay,” Luke said. “Wait a minute…” For a moment, Pepper could only hear muffled voices. Then Luke said, “Dad wants to know if Irene is there with you.”

Pepper felt her stomach sink. “Isn’t she with you?”

“She must be around,” Luke said. “Dad just hasn’t seen her for a while, and intermission is about over. The Stravinsky piece gave her a headache, and he thought she might have headed back to keep you company. You’ve got me on speed dial, right?”

“You’re number one,” Pepper assured him, but she was already running toward the balcony doors in the bedroom. All of her earlier paranoia returned in a rush. One glance through the glass panes told her it was too dark to see a thing on the balcony. The clouds still blocked the full moon.

“Better still, call Cole if you need backup.”

Pepper frowned. “Why?”

“He’s closer.” Luke chuckled. “The Stravinsky gave him a headache too, and he left to take a walk.”

A suspicion formed in Pepper’s mind. Whirling, she raced from the bedroom and headed down the short corridor to the double doors of the suite. The symphony hall was only five blocks away from the hotel. Cole wouldn’t come back here to check on her, would he? One glance through the peephole confirmed that he had. Cole Buchanan stood leaning against the wall in the hallway, not ten feet away.

A flood of emotions streamed through her. Resentment, jealousy, anxiety—all of those she’d learned to deal with on a daily basis. But there didn’t seem to be anything she could do to block her body’s instant response to him. Her pulse was racing, her body melting, as desire tightened hot and hard inside of her. Even worse, she could feel her brain cells coming unglued. She couldn’t even get a clear picture of that rag doll anymore.

She certainly tried to analyze her reaction to him. She couldn’t deny that he was handsome—if you liked the James-Bond-on-a-scruffy-day type. She evidently did.

But it wasn’t just his looks that drew her in. She’d decided that it must have something to do with his size. Whenever she was around him, he seemed to take up more than his fair share of space. Even now, she was aware of those broad shoulders, that long subtly muscled body. He had his arms crossed and her eyes were drawn to his wide-palmed hands and those strong, lean fingers. A tremor moved through her. Every time she saw those hands or pictured them in her mind, she thought about what they might feel like on her skin. Her knees melted.

Dragging herself away from the peephole, she leaned against the wall for a moment. Would those hands move in that slow, easy way he walked—as if they had all the time in the world and intended to take it? Another tremor moved through her. She was getting very, very good at creating this fantasy, and it was getting easier and easier to slip into it.

COLE BUCHANAN DRAGGED himself out of the little fantasy he’d been weaving in his mind and began to pace the hallway. Where Pepper Rossi was concerned, he’d lived on fantasy alone since before he’d even met her. His fascination with her had started the first time Luke Rossi had shown him a picture of her over six months ago. He’d made excuses for himself at the time, blaming the instant attraction on the fact that he was drawn to the whole Rossi family. He’d grown up in the foster care system, and despite that he’d lived with a lot of families, he’d never run into one like the Rossis. Luke had invited him home for that first Thanksgiving twelve years ago, and just like that, they’d welcomed him as if he’d been born a Rossi.

But any thought that his interest in Pepper had more to do with her family than any real connection between them had vanished the first moment he’d laid eyes on her. His lips curved at the memory. He’d watched her walk into one of Peter Rossi’s Sunday gatherings, and he hadn’t hesitated to follow her into the kitchen to be alone with her. She’d looked into his eyes and he’d felt as if he’d been sucker-punched in the gut. For a moment, his mind had been wiped clean as a slate.

No woman had ever affected him that way. And when she’d dropped that bowl of pasta, he’d had his first inkling that the chemistry between them was operating both ways. That suspicion had been confirmed while he’d finessed the sliver of glass out of the palm of her hand. She’d begun to tremble. He’d never made a woman tremble before by simply holding her hand. And the pulse at her throat had hammered so frantically that he’d almost kissed her right then and there.

Not only hadn’t they been introduced, but she’d come with a date, Evan Atwell, who might have walked in on them at any moment. And that might not have been enough to stop him. Not even the idea that she was his best friend’s sister, and that making a move on her might jeopardize his relationship with the only real family he’d ever known, would have kept him from kissing her.

What had stopped him cold was the sudden fear that if he tasted her even once, he might not be able to stop himself from having her. Right there in Peter Rossi’s kitchen.

No other woman had ever tempted him that way. Only Pepper.

Turning, Cole glanced at the door to the penthouse suite. That had been his primary reason for deciding to bide his time. If there was one thing he’d learned in life, it was that a man didn’t take a flying leap into unknown territory without checking it out and figuring all the angles first. Knowledge was key. So he’d spent some time learning about Pepper Rossi. It hadn’t been hard since her brothers had directed him to keep an eye on her.

On the outside, everything about her was militarily neat yet feminine, from the cap of dark hair she wore in a spiky cut to the business suits she favored at the office. The only thing that jarred the image a bit were the ankle-breaking shoes she always wore. Tonight, she’d been wearing strappy red sandals.

He’d never seen her in casual attire—not even at the family dinners her father hosted every Sunday. And he’d never seen her relax or laugh. Even around her family, she always seemed to be “on,” as if she was afraid that she would do something wrong. As if she was constantly keeping herself in check.

He’d known about her long separation from her brothers and father and about her close relationship with her aunt Irene.

He’d even flown to Chicago and done some investigating into her past as a Pendleton. On the surface, it would seem she’d lived in the lap of luxury for twenty-four years. But there’d been a down side. Pepper’s grandmother, Eleanor Pendleton, was one cold fish, and according to what he’d discovered, she ran her house with the sternness and discipline of a five-star general. Despite that Pepper had graduated first in her class in both high school and college, Eleanor Pendleton had seldom been pleased with her granddaughter.

But the most interesting thing he’d learned about her was that she didn’t have much self-confidence, and she often coped with a difficult situation by pretending in her mind that she was someone else. She’d admitted as much to him the day she’d rescued a pet parakeet and then been afraid to climb down from the roof. When she’d finally screwed up the courage to drop into his arms, she confessed that she’d been imagining herself as a trapeze artist.

That was the day that it had finally clicked for him. She’d coped with her move to San Francisco by playing different roles—the good daughter, the perfect sister, the top-notch investigator. That realization had made him even more curious about discovering the real Pepper Rossi.

Cole shoved his hands into his pockets, and once more studied the door to the suite. He had no doubt that she’d spotted him through the peephole by now. If he’d been in there babysitting that Monet, he’d have checked the peephole regularly. She probably thought that Luke or Matt had sent him to back her up. But they hadn’t. And he hadn’t come back to play guardian angel either. Far from it. The one and only reason he’d come back to the suite was because he wanted Pepper Rossi, and good idea or not, he’d decided to act on his desire.