Reviewers love New York Times and USA TODAY
bestselling author
Susan Andersen

“A smart, arousing, spirited escapade that is graced with a gentle mystery, a vulnerable, resilient heroine, and a worthy, wounded hero and served up with empathy and a humorous flair.”

—Library Journal on Burning Up

“A sexy, feel-good contemporary romance…a winner.”

—Publishers Weekly on Bending the Rules

“This start of Andersen’s new series has fun and interesting characters, solid action and a hot and sexy romance.”

—RT Book Reviews on Cutting Loose

“Snappy and sexy… Upbeat and fun, with a touch of danger and passion, this is a great summer read.”

—RT Book Reviews on Coming Undone

“Lovers of romance, passion and laughs should go all in for this one.”

—Publishers Weekly on Just for Kicks

“Andersen again injects magic into a story that would be clichéd in another’s hands, delivering warm, vulnerable characters in a touching yet suspenseful read.”

—Publishers Weekly, starred review, on Skintight

“A classic plot line receives a fresh, fun treatment… Well-developed secondary characters add depth to this zesty novel, placing it a level beyond most of its competition.”

—Publishers Weekly on Hot & Bothered

Dear Reader,

Family, whether it’s one my characters were born into or one that they’ve created for themselves, is an ever-present theme that runs throughout my books. Carly Jacobsen has assembled her own. She’s never had her mother’s approval, but she has the love of her best friend and BFF’s husband, as well as that of a young-at-heart older couple. Together the five of them have forged a clan. Between her crew’s unconditional approval, her beloved pets and her dancing, she’s built a life that fulfills her, and needs nothing else to complete it. Or so she believes.

Wolfgang Jones is not a people person. He’s a man with a plan for his future who doesn’t see the point in cluttering up his life with personal entanglements. Then he’s sucked into Carly’s messy life, his troubled teenage nephew is dropped on his doorstep, and his agenda gets shot to hell. Wolf fights the good fight, but like any good hero he eventually realizes what’s really important in life.

I hope Carly, Wolf and their tribe will make you laugh out loud and maybe shed a tear or two.

Plus, be sure to check out my new book, Playing Dirty, coming soon. In Ava’s long-awaited story, golden boy Cade Gallari may have broken her heart back in high school by publicly revealing he’d slept with the “fat girl,” but she’s a decade older and wiser now. Ava isn’t the gullible dreamer she once was—and she plans to prove it when Cade, hotter than ever, breezes back into town with an offer she can’t refuse.

Susan

Just For Kicks
Susan Andersen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

Before you start reading, why not sign up?

Thank you for downloading this Mills & Boon book. If you want to hear about exclusive discounts, special offers and competitions, sign up to our email newsletter today!

SIGN ME UP!

Or simply visit

signup.millsandboon.co.uk

Mills & Boon emails are completely free to receive and you can unsubscribe at any time via the link in any email we send you.

This is dedicated, with love,

to two special women in my life

To

Caroline Cross

For apples and cherries and friendship and

long phone conversations.

And for all the excellent suggestions

that helped improve my writing.

And to

Mimi Armitstead.

That memorable weekend you spent drilling

intelligent answers to dumb questions into my head

was merely one shining highlight out of so many.

You guys are the best.

~Susie

CONTENTS

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

CHAPTER THIRTY

EPILOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

“I DON’T KNOW WHAT to do about him,” Carly Jacobsen complained to her friend Michelle as they paused to accommodate a group of Japanese tourists wanting their pictures taken with real live Las Vegas showgirls. “He’s stubborn, opinionated and just won’t listen.”

“A typical male, in other words.”

She muffled a snort. “Yeah.” Her feet were killing her, but she smiled prettily for the camera and tried not to feel like an Amazon as she towered above the tourists. Thank God she and Michelle were wearing the silky brunette twenties-era flapper-style wigs from the final act instead of the towering headpieces from an earlier number. That made them only a foot taller than everyone.

“Look at it this way,” Michelle murmured over the shutterbugs’ heads. “At least you can be grateful he’s got four legs instead of two like the guy I live with.”

“There is that,” she agreed. “Rufus has been one tough pup to train, but at least I have some eventual hope he is trainable.”

“Which is more than you can say for most men.”

“Right.” Carly had never had any interest in living with a man. And yet… “On the other hand, you get regular sex. I only have the dimmest memory of what that was like.”

They struck a couple more poses before easing away from the tourists, who bowed, smiled and murmured their thanks. Carly flashed them a genuine smile in return. She really liked the Japanese. They were polite, and that was very much appreciated, because she didn’t see lovely manners every day in her business. Especially among the male half of the population.

“You wanna stop for a drink?” Michelle asked as they crossed the casino a moment later.

“No, I’d better get home. I’ve got hungry pets to feed.”

Leaving Michelle at the little lounge they often frequented, she headed toward the dressing room to change into her street clothes before going home. She’d been dancing in la Stravaganza, the big production show at the Italian-themed Avventurato Resort Hotel and Casino, for so long now that she rarely heard the sounds of the casino around her any longer. But she was particularly tired tonight after spending the early morning hours wrestling with the dilemma of Rufus. He was the newest of her babies, as she called her rescued pets, and fretting over how she was going to get him past his recalcitrant behavior had made it all but impossible to fall asleep. He simply refused to be trained. And thanks to her new neighbor, she was very much afraid that the clock was ticking on the mutt’s fate.

So now every clang and clatter of the electronic slots, every rattle of the balls in the roulette wheels and triumphant yell or commiserating groan of the gamblers crowding the casino floor kept time with the headache beginning to throb behind her left eye. Which perhaps explained why, when a petite white-haired lady clutching a bucketful of silver dollars slammed into her with an oversize handbag, Carly, who was generally sure-footed as a mountain goat, staggered backward.

A little clumsiness would have been the end of it, except she’d just climbed the two stairs that divided the high-stakes slot machines from their humbler brethren. Her stumble back sent the heel of her right T-strap stepping off into space, and, unbalanced, she grabbed for the railing while automatically tightening her core muscles to lift her shoulders back into alignment with her hips.

Her fingers brushed the railing but it slid through her grip. And although she straightened enough to keep from back-flopping, she landed in a graceless heap on the floor, her right leg twisting beneath her.

An obscenity hissed through her teeth as pain exploded in her ankle.

There were exclamations all around and a vague sense of people crowding close. Someone bent over her. “Are you all right, miss?”

She looked up at a man with light brown hair, backlit by the garish lights of the hundred-dollar slots at the top of the stairs. When his face swam into view, she noticed in a hazy sort of way that he was extremely handsome.

He could have been a troll for all she cared, since she could barely see through the pain clouding her vision. Besides, what she did manage to focus on was enough to tell her he lacked the edginess that usually attracted her—that certain something that turned men into what her friend Treena referred to as Got Testosterone? guys.

His face was also merely one of many. Pulling her gaze away from him, she saw that several people were gathered around gawking at her. But not, she noted, the little old lady who had knocked her on her ass.

Damn fanatic gamblers.

Studying her with concerned eyes, the man who’d inquired about her well-being crouched down next to her. “Is anything broken?”

She gingerly untangled her legs until she’d freed her trapped ankle, her breath catching as the shifting weight sent a fresh shard of pain zinging around her foot. “No. At least, I don’t think so. I twisted my ankle, though.” And it hurt so damn bad it was all she could do not to whimper. She was never at her finest when injured.

A guy young enough to think multiple piercings and black eyeliner and lipstick were actually a fortunate fashion statement pulled his gaze away from the generous stretch of her legs long enough to nod. “Yeah. It’s swelling up.”

“Needs ice,” someone else agreed.

“So,” murmured a portly man in a pair of Sansabelt pants that were hitched well above his natural waistline, “could I get my picture taken with you?”

“What is going on here?”

Carly’s blood pressure immediately spiked. Shit. She knew that last voice. It was deep and accented, and God knew she’d heard its disapproving timbre directed at her on more than one occasion these past few weeks. It belonged to Wolfgang Jones, second in command of the Avventurato’s Security and Surveillance department.

And her recently moved-in, pain-in-the-ass, next-door neighbor.

CHAPTER TWO

CARLY PEERED AT THE approaching man through the forest of legs surrounding her and conceded that, if she had to be absolutely honest, Jones didn’t have an actual accent. Still, there was something about the precision with which he formed his words that made you just know his thoughts probably didn’t wind through his brain in English.

She would have snorted if she wasn’t already concentrating on not mewling like a soaked-to-the-skin kitten. But, please. Like the name Wolfgang hadn’t already given the game away?

He muscled his way through the crowd, tall and lanky, blond and built, managing to irritate her beyond measure simply by breathing the same air she did. This was the man who had her worried sick over Rufus. All too aware, however, of the public behavior the Avventurato expected from its employees whenever they were on the premises, she pressed her lips together to keep the snarl she felt forming in the back of her throat from slipping out.

But sometimes representing the hotel and casino really bit.

From the expression that flashed across Jones’s deep-set eyes, she was pretty sure he wasn’t any happier to see her than she was to see him. Still, he waded through the crowd, then turned in front of her to face the people gathered around.

“Go about your evening, folks,” he said with his habitual stern, I-am-God-therefore-you-will-obey-me haughtiness. “I will take care of this situation.” Then, turning back, he squatted down in front of her in his faultlessly tailored black suit, charcoal Egyptian-cotton shirt and pearl-gray silk tie, without an apparent doubt in the world that the tourists would do exactly as he’d bid them.

Which they did, dammit. God, he was vexing.

He had a reputation around the casino for being a guy who got things done, though. Considering their recent history, she hated to admit that Jones had any redeeming qualities at all, but she had to concede that if he gave even half the attention to his work that he was currently focusing on easing off her shoe, his rep was probably well deserved.

All the same, she knew him for the dog-hating jerk he was and she didn’t trust him an inch further than she could throw him. For all she knew, his gentle handling was nothing more than a ploy to make her relax her guard. Pushing up on her elbows, she monitored him closely through narrowed eyes to make sure he didn’t pull anything tricky that would cause her ankle to hurt even worse than it already did.

As the young man with the Goth makeup and facial piercings had pointed out, the area surrounding the joint in question was swollen. It was also beginning to grow warm. Her injured flesh felt downright frigid, however, compared to Wolfgang’s sizable hands as he slid one over her heel and up to her calf to brace her leg while he probed the puffy flesh around her ankle with the other. The hot-skinned touch shocked her. Who ever would have suspected such a grim, cold guy could radiate so much heat?

Cupping his palm over her instep, he gently rotated her foot. His gaze flashed up in time to catch her wince. “That hurt?”

“Yes, it hurts,” she said testily. Then fairness forced her to add, “But I’m pretty sure it’s just twisted.” She’d had enough injuries to be a pretty good judge. But all she could think was that she had two days to get the swelling down and the joint back into dancing form, because she didn’t want to have to call Vernetta-Grace, la Stravaganza’s general manager, to tell her she’d injured herself. Again.

Carly looked down at the scimitar-shaped red scar on the knuckle above her right index finger that had cost her two days’ work less than a month ago.

“How did this happen?”

She looked up at Wolfgang, at his lightly tanned face beneath pale, spiky hair. “I was ambushed by a little old lady with a monster purse.” Wanting his hands off her, she thrust one of her own out at him. “Help me up.”

“I don’t think it is broken or even badly sprained,” he agreed, and slid his fingers away from her leg with an enthusiasm that seemed to match her own. He rose to his feet in a single, easy movement, then reached down and grasped her outstretched hand, hauling her upright.

She came up faster than she expected and instinctively put her injured foot down to keep from slamming into him. The flash of pain spearing her ankle made her crumple, and only Wolfgang’s quick hands wrapping around her upper arms kept her from sagging against his chest. The lilac-and-gold-beaded fringe of her costume swung out, sparkling bits of confetti that slapped up against his dark shirt and slacks.

Damn, damn, damn. Of all the men in this casino, why did he have to be the one who’d come to her aid? And what the hell was one of Security and Surveillance’s higher-ups doing playing nursemaid to a dancer, anyway?

Probably grabbing yet another opportunity to rub her nose in how responsible he was. As if being anal was a good thing.

He helped her to a nearby chair in front of a bank of poker machines, swiveled her seat to allow her leg to extend into the aisle and turned a plastic coin bucket on end for her to prop her heel on. Then he flagged down a waitress.

“Bring some ice and a towel, please,” he said. It was clear it wasn’t really a request, and the woman promptly turned away to do as he’d commanded.

“I’m guessing you don’t have a lot of friends,” Carly said dryly.

Crouched in front of her to check her foot once again, he slowly raised his head and looked at her with expressionless eyes. “I have no need of friends,” he said with apparent unconcern.

“You’re kidding me!” She was genuinely taken aback. This was the most civil exchange the two of them had ever managed, since their usual interaction consisted of heated confrontations, which had started the day Jones moved into the condo complex.

Well, heated on her part, anyway. He’d pretty much been a Popsicle. Still, even though she had little use for a man so patently lacking in appreciation for animals, she’d at least assumed he was marginally human.

Apparently not. No need of friends? That was just plain barbaric. There were a lot of things she didn’t need in this world—beginning with this guy as a next-door neighbor. But her friends certainly were at the top of her Must Have list. She simply couldn’t imagine what she’d do without Treena and Jax or Ellen and Mack. Dog-hating, grim-faced security guys, however, were on a different list entirely.

“I do not kid,” he said stiffly.

She snapped her mouth shut and looked at him, at his chilly green eyes beneath straight, thick brows, at those sharp cheekbones and that hard, unsmiling mouth. Then she blew out a breath and gave him a clipped nod. “Gotcha. No sense of humor. I’ve noticed that about you.”

His eyebrows gathered over the prominent thrust of his nose. But before he could respond, the cocktail waitress returned with a bag of ice and a towel and Wolfgang pulled his gaze from Carly’s face to accept the items with the barest acknowledgment.

“Thanks, Olivia,” Carly said to make up for his brusqueness. “I appreciate you going out of your way.” After the waitress squeezed her shoulder, wished her a speedy recovery and walked away, Carly turned her attention back to Jones, who was draping the towel over her foot. “I take it you have no need to get to know your fellow workers or show the least bit of civility, either?”

He slapped the ice onto her ankle.

She hissed a breath in through her teeth. When stars quit dancing in front of her eyes, she narrowed the latter on the man in front of her. “You’re a real prince, Jones.” Flapping the hand she hadn’t used to anchor herself against the fresh onslaught of pain that threatened to shoot her straight out of her seat, she shooed him away. “You can go now.” Begrudgingly she added, “Thanks for your help.”

He stood and looked at her down the length of his strong, slightly hooked nose. “You’ll be able to drive?”

Probably not. “I’ll be fine.”

“Isn’t your car a standard transmission?”

“Yes,” she agreed. “A cute little five-speed. But I’m sure you have better things to do than stand around talking about my car. So, please. Don’t let me keep you.”

He didn’t budge. “How do you intend to get home? Will you call your redheaded friend, the other dancer?”

Nope. This was Treena’s day off and she and Jax had left for San Francisco after last night’s show. They didn’t plan to be back until late tomorrow night. She gave Jones an earnest nod anyway. “Sure. That’s exactly what I’ll do. Bye-bye.”

Wolf looked down at her and knew she was lying through her teeth. Shit. He was going to have to take her home himself.

He didn’t want to spend another minute in her company, let alone the time it would take to get her to his car, drive back to their complex and help her into her condo. She was frivolous and irresponsible, and every time he came within a foot of her she got on his nerves so bad he wanted to howl and chew concrete, to commit reckless, poorly thought-out acts, many of which culminated in turning her over his knee and blistering that round ass the way someone ought to have done years ago.

This was very not like him. So the last thing he wanted was to be thrown together with her. Still, she was through work for the night, he was through work for the night and she lived right next door. Clearly she couldn’t work the clutch in her automobile with that badly swollen foot, and it would be criminally irresponsible of him to leave her to fend for herself when they were both headed for the same destination.

Not to mention that he owed her for the pain he’d inflicted with the ice bag. That had been uncalled for, no matter how angry her smart mouth had made him.

He sighed. “Come. I will take you home.”

She looked at him as if he’d offered to molest her worthless dog instead of provide her with needed transportation. “No!” It came out loud and emphatic, and she smiled weakly at a gambler at the far end of the row of machines who glanced up from pushing the buttons that selected his poker hand. She lowered her voice. “Thank you very much, but no. That’s not necessary.”

“You cannot drive.”

“I told you I’ll call Treena.”

“You lied.”

She gave him a cool look from killing blue eyes. “And you know this how?”

“By being good at my job. I know how to read people a hell of a lot tougher than you.”

“Fine. I lied. I’ll call Mack.”

He shook his head in disgust. “You would disturb Mr. Brody at this time of night when I am perfectly willing to take you home? You are the most irritating, irrespon—”

“—sible woman you have ever had the misfortune to meet. Yeah, yeah. We’ve had this conversation before.”

Color flushed her cheeks, and only then did Wolf realize how very pale they’d been just a moment ago. She probably was in a great deal of pain. Before remorse could assail him, however, she raised her fine-boned chin.

“Fine. Thank you. A ride home would be very…thoughtful.” She sounded as if the words were strangling her, but he couldn’t inspect her expression for she bent over just then to lift one corner of the ice bag off her foot and check her ankle.

“Can you walk?” he demanded of the crown of her glossy brown wig.

That snapped her head up in a hurry and heavy-lidded blue eyes blazed up at him. “As opposed to what—being carried by you? Oh, yeah—I can walk.”

His palms started itching. Smacking her ass would be so cathartic. He’d never met anyone who needed paddling more than this woman. He jerked his chin toward the exit leading to the parking garage. “Come on, then.”

She took her time removing her remaining shoe, then got up to follow him. She did manage to hobble along under her own steam, but God she was slow. More than once he was tempted to throw her over his shoulder to improve their odds of getting home sometime before the next millennium. He didn’t, of course. It would be giving in to the Jones wild streak—and unlike his dad and his sister, Katarina, that was an impulse he always kept on a tight leash. So, gritting his teeth, he strode ahead of Carly, then stalked back to take baby steps by her side for a few minutes before his impatience got the better of him and he suddenly found himself several yards ahead of her and had to rein in his strides once again.

Finally they made it to his car, and he unlocked the passenger side for her.

“Wow,” Carly said as she braced one hand on the automobile’s roof and looked over the vehicle with patent admiration. “This is the last car I would’ve associated with you.”

He didn’t take umbrage to the implied subtext that he was a dullard. Buying something as flashy as the converted street rod had been uncharacteristic. Still, giving in to his desire for the classic muscle car was the one time he’d let the cursed family wild streak run free. He’d figured it was a safe-enough outlet—especially if it saved him from freeing other, more destructive urges as was the usual Jones way. He ran his fingers over one of the graduated-color flames that flared from burgundy to red to orange to gold across the glossy black paint job, then opened the door for her. “Get in.”

Peering into its immaculate interior, she looked down at the melting ice bag in her hand and hesitated. “I’m afraid I’ll muss it up.”

That was the most intelligent thing he’d yet to hear her say, and for just a moment he felt almost warm toward her. He studied her closely for the first time since they’d begun their tortoise-paced trek from the casino and saw that not only was she pale again, but now sweat beaded her upper lip and brow, as well. She clearly was not feeling her best, and with unaccustomed gentleness he reiterated, “Get in.”

She did and had her head braced wearily against the seat back when he got in the driver’s side. She ran her hand over the gray leather of the bench seat. “What is this? A Ford?”

“Yes.” Turning over the engine, he listened to its throaty growl with satisfaction. His smile lingered as he turned to look at her. “A 1940 Ford coupe.”

“It’s very cool.” Lifting her head slowly, as if it weighed more than her slender neck could bear, she pulled off the swingy brown wig. “Oh, that’s better,” she murmured. Her short blond hair was matted to her head, but she ruffled it with her long fingers and soft spikes began popping up until she once again looked like what she was: a careless, carefree showgirl.

But one with shadows beneath her eyes.

They traveled the short distance to the condominium complex in surprisingly companionable silence. Wolf began to think that perhaps a miracle might occur and they’d actually end this night in a civilized manner.

Dropping Carly off in front of their building, he went to park the car in the garage he rented. She moved so slowly that she was still waiting for the elevator when he caught up with her. They’d barely stepped off it on the second floor a moment later when barking erupted from her apartment down the hall. A grunt of disgust escaped him.

Immediately, the momentary cease-fire in their adversarial relationship came to a halt. Carly turned and subjected him to a slow, unfriendly up-and-down, and he watched her grow a good inch taller as her back stretched straight. Her blue eyes grew dark with the screw you expression he was accustomed to seeing in them as her dog continued to yap hysterically in the background.

And his fragile hope for just one lousy night of peace turned to dust.

CHAPTER THREE

SHE’D FORGOTTEN. For a few moments there, Carly had actually let down her guard and forgotten that Wolfgang Jones was nothing but a judgmental, dog-hating jerk.

Okay, sure, Rufus was a trial, more so than any other pet she’d ever owned. But if Jones would just give her some breathing room, she knew she’d find the breakthrough she was seeking in her pup’s training. She always had with the other animals she’d rescued.

She was terrified, though, that she wouldn’t find this one quickly enough. She’d been lucky up until now that everyone in her building had turned a blind eye to the covenant stating that each unit in the condo was only allowed one pet.

Jones could change that in the blink of an eye. He had the power of the rules on his side, and he was such an obvious letter-of-the-law freak that it wasn’t even funny. All he needed was to lodge one formal complaint and she could lose not only Rufus, but two of her other babies, as well.

The idea made her sick to her soul and her hand shook slightly as she fit her key into the lock. Furious that Mr. Grim-and-Grimmer could bring her to this, she couldn’t prevent shooting him a dark look. He was so unyielding, both physically and mentally. And as much as she hated having to explain herself, she choked down her pride and did so, keeping her tone neutral when she said, “It’s not Rufus’s fault, you know. He’s a good dog at heart. I found him abandoned on the side of I-15 and I’m guessing he had a pretty rough puppyhood, so it’s taking him a little longer than usual to settle in.” The tumblers disengaged and she opened the door.

As she stepped over the threshold, her dogs greeted her with a rendition of their nightly frenzied, glad-to-see-ya dance. Rufus continued barking as he leaped up on her. And while Buster was older, quieter and more restrained, he still insisted on getting close enough to lean heavily against her uninjured leg, his tail wagging enthusiastically. Her cats jumped down from their respective perches and flowed across the room to weave in and out of her feet, meowing for their dinner. It was loud and messy and her favorite part of the day.

Wolfgang clearly wasn’t as enchanted. She caught the expression on his face when Rufus jumped with joyous abandon all over his beautiful suit.

Predictably, Jones was not amused.

She swallowed a snort. As if she’d ever seen that particular emotion on his face, anyway.

“Sitz!” Wolfgang snapped.

“Zits?” she repeated in confusion. But Rufus abruptly quit barking, and when she turned to look at her suddenly still dogs, she saw an almost human look of discombobulation on their furry faces. Then, as if it were a synchronized event, they both plopped their butts on the floor and stared up at the tall blond man with rapt attention. Even the cats paused for a nanosecond before resuming their demand for dinner.

Wolfgang turned to her, his posture erect, his face a blank canvas that somehow still managed to project disapproval. “You’re right, it is not your dog’s fault,” he agreed. “It’s yours. Exert some damn control.” And picking a brown dog hair from his slacks with one hand, he reached out with his other to grasp the knob on the door. Gently he pulled it shut.

She stared at the blank panel that had been firmly closed in her face and felt her blood pressure spike from normal to stroke level in two seconds flat. If there’d been a mirror handy she wouldn’t have been surprised to see steam blowing out her ears like cartoon factory whistles. Gasping for oxygen that seemed to have been sucked clean out of the foyer, she gritted her teeth against her choler.

To no avail. “You. Fascist. Son of a. Bitch!” Furiously she swung her bag of melting ice at the door.

Her animals scattered and she limped around to face the suddenly empty entryway. “Sorry, you guys,” she said guiltily. “I’m sorry. But, God, have you ever met such a miserable human being?” What a lousy time for Treena to be gone. Ordinarily she’d be heading down to her friend’s apartment to vent and spend a comforting twenty minutes assassinating Jones’s character. Instead, she sucked it up, shoved down her self-pity and limped into the kitchen to start opening cans and bags.

Hearing the sound of kibble being poured and the can opener whipping lids from tins brought the babies out of their various hiding places. And the familiarity of having Buster and Rufus do their doggy dinner jig while Rags and Tripod rubbed up against every available surface as they waited for her to put their bowls on the floor soothed Carly’s ragged nerves.

She got them situated, then found a corked bottle of wine in the fridge and poured herself a glass. Her ankle was throbbing again, so she tossed back a couple of aspirin. Then, noticing the trail of water where her bag of ice had sprung a leak from its unscheduled bash against the door, she grabbed a Ziploc bag and transferred the dripping contents into it. Deciding that the water on the floor would dry just fine without her help—and that she had been pushed quite far enough for one night—she hobbled into the living room.

Where she stopped dead. “Oh, crap.”

Several of her throw pillows were torn apart. An explosion of feathers, foam and shredded silk festooned her furniture and covered the hardwood floor. She didn’t know how she’d missed it on her way to the kitchen but could only assume her fury over Jones’s behavior had temporarily blinded her. “Rufus!” she yelled furiously.

The dog slunk out of the kitchen and crept past her, his belly close to the floor, to huddle in the foyer. Looking over his shoulder at her with big brown eyes, he started to crouch in a way Carly was much too familiar with.

“No!” she snapped. “Dammit, Rufe, if you pee on top of this, you are a dead dog.”

But when the pup got nervous, he piddled, and a puddle began to form on the Italian tile between his hind legs.

Of course. It had been that kind of night.

She clenched her teeth against her chin’s sudden desire to wobble. She would not cry, dammit. She wouldn’t!

But neither would she clean up the mess right now. Collapsing onto an overstuffed chair, she propped her foot on the mismatched footstool and gingerly arranged the ice over her swollen ankle. Then she knocked back her glass of wine in one long gulp.

Rags jumped up into her lap and circled twice before sprawling over her thighs in a warm bundle of long black fur. His purr kicked in with the first stroke of her hand down his back. Tripod leaped onto the arm of the chair and walked along it with surprising grace for a cat with only three legs. Sitting down close to her, he batted at a strand of beaded fringe on her costume, then ignored her in favor of licking himself clean.

His actions reminded her she was still wearing her costume. Swell. In addition to everything else, now she’d probably have the wardrobe mistress on her case. Hopefully the news of her injury would keep her off the woman’s shit list. Otherwise she’d have to make a special trip back to the casino tomorrow just to return the garment and wig—and never mind that it was her day off. Not to mention that she’d have to bum a ride or call a cab just to get there, since her freaking car was still in the casino garage.

Buster came and laid his brindled head on her knee. She raised the hand she’d been stroking Rags with to scratch between the tufts of fur that stuck up atop the dog’s head. Rufus remained in the entryway, but no longer did he look contrite. Instead, he was now seated in front of the door, staring at it expectantly. She realized with a sudden shock what was likely keeping him there.

“You little bugger! Are you looking for that cretin to come back?”

The dog’s ears suddenly perked up and he began to wriggle on the tiles. A sound Carly knew too well rumbled threateningly in his throat.

“Please, Rufus, no more,” she begged. “No more tonight, okay? Trust me on this, the last thing you want to do is to bring yourself to Jones’s attention again.”

But it was no use. The young dog danced in place as sharp, staccato yaps erupted from his throat like an automatic weapon laying down a line of fire.

The pain in Carly’s head and ankle pounded in rhythm with Rufus’s hysteria. “No speak,” she whispered, giving the command they’d learned in obedience school.

Which, of course, Rufus had failed.

“Dammit, Rufe, you’re going to get us all in trouble.” Infuriated that she was actually intimidated by the thought, she raised her voice. “No speak!”

The pup kept right on barking.

Of course Mr. Hotshot Know It All Jones had made him shut up with a single word. “Zits!” she snapped furiously, then felt like an idiot. Yeah, like that’s gonna work for you, Jacobsen. It was probably the deep voice that made it work in the first place.

But to her amazement the barking stopped and Rufus raced over to stare up at her eagerly.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered, and a choked laugh escaped her. “Oh, my God! You respond to that, huh? I knew Jones spoke German! I mean, that’s gotta be German, right? He can’t have meant zits as in acne—that just wouldn’t make sense.” She gave her head an impatient shake. “Oh, who cares, who cares?” With her fingers splayed across Rags’s back to keep him from tumbling to the floor, she leaned forward and scrubbed her knuckles atop Rufus’s head. “Good dog! Good, good dog!”

Buster, whose chin had been bumped from her thigh, bumped Rufus in return and insinuated his head beneath her hand when the younger dog stumbled aside.

“Yes, you, too,” she agreed, amused at his way of getting his own despite Rufus’s more flamboyant attention-grabbing behavior. She scratched the older mutt between his ears. “All Carly’s chillen are good, good boys.”

She gently displaced the animals and struggled to her feet, feeling slightly rejuvenated. She could at least wipe up the piddle and pick up the worst of the pillow innards. She’d clean up the rest tomorrow.

Then a sudden thought struck her, and looking at her assemblage of pets, she laughed out loud. “Whataya know, kids? It looks like we have a breakthrough, and it’s all thanks to the bastard next door. Maybe the guy isn’t completely useless, after all.”

THE PHONE WAS RINGING as Wolf let himself into his apartment. Restless, he ignored it to pace from room to room, stripping off his clothing and discarding it with none of his usual care. He shed his jacket and dropped it over the back of one of the stools at the breakfast bar separating the kitchen from the living room. He wrestled down the knot on his tie before yanking the neckpiece off through his collar and lobbing it toward the nightstand in his bedroom. When it got hung up on the reading lamp, he disregarded the possible snags to its expensive silk and strode back into the living room, pawing open the buttons on his shirt as he went. Disgruntlement rode him like a bareback rider on a trick pony. Christ, what was his problem? He didn’t get it.

All right, that wasn’t true. He knew exactly what the problem was. Or more accurately, who.

Carly Jacobsen.

“Dammit!” Undecided whether his outburst was intended for the menace next door or the frigging phone, which continued to ring despite the lateness of the hour or the fact that six rings ought to indicate that he had no desire to answer it, he stalked over to the breakfast bar and snatched the receiver off the hook. “What?!”

“Wolfgang? Is that you?”

“Mom?” She was the last person he’d expected to hear at the other end of the line. His mother wasn’t a stay-up-past-midnight kind of woman—and it was even later in La Paz, Bolivia, where she and the old man were currently stationed.

The wireless receiver tucked into his shoulder, he only listened with half an ear as his mother launched into the courteous preamble with which she began all telephone conversations. Pulling his shirttails from his waistband, he shrugged out of the garment and tossed it toward the leather couch. It fluttered to the hardwood floor before it even got halfway there, but he ignored the slowly settling billow of dark cotton to scowl at the wall that connected his condo to his neighbor’s.

God, she irritated him. With her complete lack of organizational skills and her promptly stated opinions, her sloppiness and long legs and that can’t-be-bothered irresponsibility. He hadn’t seen much of her place, but what he had glimpsed was a mess. And not one damn thing even matched. It was a profusion of colors and patterns, with debris all over the place and all those motley cats and dogs.

And red nail polish on her toes.

He snorted and went to pour himself a scant two fingers of Scotch. He tossed the drink back in one neat swallow, and umm-hmmed to his mother as he used the edge of his thumb to rub away an errant drop he felt trickling down his bottom lip. All right, he’d admit that perhaps that last thing was a little picky. Lots of women wore red nail polish. Not the woman he was eventually going to settle down with, though. He was close to achieving part one of the Plan—his dream of being the Security and Surveillance honcho who sent others to take care of problems rather than being the man who was constantly sent. And when he accomplished that, it would be in a real town, not fantasyland Las Vegas. Once he kicked the dust of this place from his heels he’d hit the road to his future without a backward glance.

When the career aspect was settled, he’d start to work on fulfilling part two of his agenda, finding the right woman with whom to share his success. Maybe a nice kindergarten teacher or something. You could bet the bank that a woman like that—stable, reliable, refined—would wear pale pink polish on her toes.

Then something his mother said jerked him back to the conversation. “What? Dad’s retiring again?”

“For heaven’s sake, Wolfgang,” his mother said with brisk gruffness. “Haven’t you listened to a thing I’ve said?” Sweetheart that she was, however, she spared him from having to admit he had not. “We’ll be moving to Rothenburg, Germany, in a month’s time—perhaps two—if the offer we made on a lovely little biergarten is accepted.”

When she put his father on to enthusiastically impart the details of the establishment they expected to buy in the quaint medieval walled town, Wolf’s attention drifted again. Dammit, Carly Jacobsen was breaking the covenant rules with her apartment full of pets, and he’d be well within his rights to turn her in.

It was a shame that, for all the healthy respect he had for the rules, he’d never been and didn’t intend to turn into a whistle-blower. He’d simply have to do his best to stay out of her orbit and hope that one of these days she’d actually bestir herself to give her out-of-control dog some proper training.

So it was settled. He’d made a decision and was prepared to implement it. That should take care of this unusual restlessness.

It pissed him off when it didn’t.

Who needed this irritation? Wasn’t it enough that he dealt with problems every single moment he was at the Avventurato? He shouldn’t have to cope with this shit when he came home, as well. He had decided his course of action; it was therefore time to move on.

His father put his mother back on, and with a start he suddenly realized they were calling from his sister’s place in Indiana. Instead of demanding to know if Katarina was once again unloading responsibility for her son, Niklaus, onto his mother, however, he envisioned the showgirl next door. With her you-can-just-kiss-my-ass blue-eyed glare and that fuck-me body.

Then he snapped upright. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa!” he said, finally giving the telephone conversation his full attention. “You want me to do what?”

When he hung up a short while later, he thrust both hands through his hair, stared blankly at the wall across the room and swore. If he were a superstitious man he would be invoking that ancient mantra of being careful what you wished for.

Because suddenly he had a much bigger problem on his hands than a space-cadet neighbor with dangerously compelling sex appeal.

His parents were coming to visit him. And they weren’t coming alone.

CARLY KNOCKED ON HER second-floor neighbors’ door the following morning.

Ellen answered. “Well, hello, darling,” she said warmly, and stepped back, opening her door wide in welcome. “Come in.”

But when she did as the petite older woman directed, Ellen’s brow furrowed in concern and she reached out to cup a protective hand around Carly’s elbow. “You’re limping!”

“Yeah, I got knocked on my keister at the casino last night by a little old lady with a big purse.”

“Is that Carly I hear?” came a gruff male voice, and Mack, Ellen’s soon-to-be-husband, came into the foyer, folding the sports section of the Review Journal and tucking it beneath his arm. “I thought I recognized that voice. How are you, sweetheart? You’ve been hurt?”

Her heart warmed at the older couple’s concern. Her own mother would have treated her daughter’s injury as a nuisance whose sole purpose was to wreck her day. Or she’d have gotten her maid to take care of Carly. “I twisted my ankle. The swelling’s already a lot better this morning and I’m hoping I’ll be good to go by the time my weekend’s over.”

“That’s right, they moved your days off to Tuesday and Wednesday, didn’t they?” Mack said. “I guess if you had to get hurt, you at least had good timing.”

“That was my thought, too.”

“Meanwhile, I’m sure it hurts like the devil,” Ellen said, and waved her into the living room. “Go in and sit down. Do you want some ice for it?”

“No, thanks. Maybe I could put it up for a few minutes, though. It feels better when it’s elevated.”

“Of course. Mack, help her get settled and see that she’s comfortable. I’ll go pour us some coffee.”

The stocky, gray-haired man ushered her into a chair in the beautifully appointed living room and cleaned a stack of papers off a hassock, then dragged it over for her foot. “Do you need me to walk the dogs?” he inquired as he slid a throw pillow beneath her heel.

Delight flooded her at his thoughtfulness. “Aw, Mack. Have I told you recently how much I adore you?” she asked. “But, no, thank you. I managed to hobble out with Buster and Rufus earlier, and I’m hoping my ankle will be up for a longer walk around the grounds this evening.”

“Let me get this straight.” Mack gave her a speaking look over his reading glasses. “You took the dogs out with a bum foot and Rufus didn’t bolt on you?”

“Here we go.” Ellen entered the room with a tray that held not only three cups of coffee, but her home-baked cookies as well, beautifully arranged upon a paper doily that graced a delicate china plate.

“Carly took the dogs out for their constitutional this morning,” Mack informed her.

The older woman turned to look at Carly, her eyebrows arching toward her stylish salt-and-pepper bangs. “And Rufus didn’t take advantage of your bad foot and take off?”

Carly laughed. “I know—isn’t it miraculous? That’s really the reason I’m here.” She accepted a mug of coffee and picked a sugar-dusted chocolate cookie off the plate. “He started to. He was making his usual Great Escape beeline for the parking lot, but I said Zits! and he came back.”

“Zits?” Mack snorted. “What kind of word is that to make a dog who’s never listened to a thing anyone’s ever said suddenly pay attention?”

“Not zits like a pimple,” Ellen said with a look of enlightenment. She turned to Carly. “Sitz, am I right? It’s German for sit, I believe.”

“Is that what it means? How cool is that? Rufus knows German.” Another rolling laugh escaped her. “Not only knows it—Rufus loves German. He responds to it as if it’s his native language and actually pays attention. Well, he didn’t actually sit, but he came back, which is more than he would have done yesterday. So I wondered, Ellen—” she looked at her retired head-librarian neighbor “—do you think you could look up a couple of other German commands for me on your computer?”

“Oh, darling, I’d love nothing more. Unfortunately, my cable provider is in the middle of merging with another company and my computer hasn’t let me connect to the Internet since last night. When I called the cable company about it this morning they admitted it was a problem at their end but couldn’t give me a concrete time when they’d be back up and running. It’s frustrating. But this news about Rufus is certainly an exciting breakthrough.”

Carly felt as though her heart were grinning. “Isn’t it great? And as much as I hate to admit it, I have Mr. Stick Up the Butt to thank.”

“Who? Oh, Wolfgang, you mean?” Mack leaned forward. “So if he already came up with this, why not just ask him for more commands?”

“And admit the one he issued while he was busy insulting me worked? That’ll be a frosty day in hell.”

“Of course, what was I thinking?” the father of two grown daughters said with a shrug. “I forgot for a minute there that I was dealing with a female.”

“That’s very amusing, dear,” Ellen told him dryly. But the two exchanged a glance so full of love that Carly set down her coffee cup.

“Enough about me,” she said. “Do you have the photos back from your trip to Italy yet? And how are the plans going for the wedding? Pass those cookies and catch me up on the latest.”

But even as she looked at vacation pictures and listened to her friends’ plans, she admitted something she’d give a bundle to ignore.

A cold day in hell had apparently arrived. Because for Rufus’s sake she was probably going to swallow her pride for a second time and ask Wolfgang Jones for help, after all.

CHAPTER FOUR

WOLF PACED THE AREA outside the security checkpoint at McCarren International Airport. The plane was late—and he couldn’t decide if that was a good or a bad thing.

He was anxious to see his folks, but this crazy idea of his mother’s would never work. Had he been able to convince her of that over the phone, however? Hell, no.

He damn well would, though—just as soon as he had a chance to talk to her in person. Meanwhile, she and Dad were dragging his nephew Niklaus here for no good reason.

That wasn’t his mother’s take on the situation, of course. And Wolf did see the disadvantage of Niklaus having to pull up stakes yet one more time. The mere thought made his jaw tighten because he’d been there and done that himself. Just how many changes of address would this make for his parents, anyhow? He’d personally lost track of the number of times they’d moved by the time he was eleven. His dad, then an American G.I., had met his future wife in Stuttgart in the late sixties. He’d promptly married her, and by the time Wolf was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, four years later, his parents had already lived on two different bases. His sister, Katarina, had been born in Camp Zama, Japan, and by the middle of elementary school Wolf had also lived in Heidelberg, Germany, and Shape-Chievres, Belgium, as well as on two or three American bases, the names of which he no longer even recalled. He’d had several additional stateside bases under his belt by the time the old man finally retired from the service.

Not that the traveling had stopped then. Oh, no. His father—

“Hey, son!”

—was striding down the concourse toward him. Wrenching his thoughts out of the past, Wolf watched his dad approach and felt the same confused mixture of emotions the older man had always brought out in him: the helpless love that warmed Wolf’s heart; the disquieting desire for his father’s attention; the simmering resentment that never failed to churn in his gut.

Tall and loose-limbed, Rick Jones walked right up to him and looped a wiry arm around his shoulders, pulling him in for a hug and a manly slap on the back. Wolf caught a faint whiff of beer on his breath, then it was gone as his father pushed him back to hold him at arm’s length.

“Look at you!” Rick said. “You look the picture of success! Are you getting everything you ever dreamed of all those years moping around the embassies?”

“I’m working on it.” If his voice was a little stiff, well, blame it on the raft of memories inundating him. Memories of all the official quarters of the ambassador he’d been dragged to as a teenager, following Rick’s retirement from the army. Of always being viewed as a loser from the wrong side of those embassy doors simply because his old man had been the supply officer rather than an administrative aide or an ambassador. Recollections of the desire that had been born inside of him for something more, something that would put him squarely on the right side of those doors.

He shook the memories aside. “Where’s Mom and Niklaus?”

“They’re coming. All the soda the kid drank on the plane caught up with him, and you know your mother. She doesn’t think anyone can find their way anywhere without her help.”

Or maybe she thinks that Niklaus shouldn’t have to make his way alone through a strange airport.

“She’s been dying to see you, you know,” Rick continued. “What’s it been, cub? Two years? Three?”

Cub. Images of his father flickered across his mind’s screen, faded films of a much younger Rick tossing him up in the air and catching him, tossing him and catching him again while Wolf shrieked with laughter. He heard an echo of his dad’s voice saying, “How’s my little wolf cub? You been a good boy for your mama?”

Then the images were supplanted by the vision of Rick being gone, even when there was no reason for him to be. Of him always being absent when he was needed most. “It’s been a little over two years,” he said coolly. “The last time was in Santiago, when I came down to visit you and Mom.”

“Wolfgang?”

He turned at the sound of his mother’s voice, warmth washing over him at the retained accents of her native Bavaria. That hadn’t changed even after years and years of stateside military postings. Plump and rosy cheeked, dressed in her usual style-free sturdy clothing, she bustled past the security checkpoint. A lanky teen he could only assume was Niklaus slouched in her wake, hands stuffed in his pockets.

Good God, had it really been that long since Wolf had last seen him? The boy he remembered had grown from a chubby-cheeked youngster into a teenager with the Joneses’ long bones and skyscraper height. The only things that still looked familiar were Niklaus’s shiny brown, stick-straight hair and his hazel-green eyes.

Wolf’s mother shot Rick a chastising look. “You might have waited, Richard,” she said with her usual brisk sternness.

But then her eyes turned softly upon her son, and dimples appeared in her cheeks when she smiled at Wolf. She held her plump hands out to him. “Hallo, Liebling.” Stopping in front of him, she rose onto her toes to enfold him in her arms.

He hugged her tightly in return, inhaling the familiar scent of vanilla. Maria Jones may never have been as much fun as his father, but she had been the one constant in his life, a steady and reliable guiding light. “Guten tag, Mom. Willkommen.” Over her shoulder he met his nephew’s gaze. “Hey, Niklaus. It’s good to see you.”

The teen grunted.

Maria released him and stepped back, reaching to brush her hands over his lapels. “Look at you in this beautiful suit! You look so successful, so handsome.” Grasping his hand, she gave it a tug. “Let’s go collect our luggage. I’m anxious to see your home.”

He ushered them through Baggage Claim and out to the lot where he’d left his car. Rick exclaimed over the Ford coupe and even Niklaus’s eyes lit up, although he was playing it much too cool to actually say he thought the street rod was a righteous ride.

Fifteen minutes later they pulled into Wolf’s garage at the condo complex and piled out of the car. Niklaus waited impatiently for Wolf to open the trunk, then dug through a large duffel bag and extracted a soccer ball. Bouncing it with casual expertise from one knee to the next, he looked over at his grandmother. “I’m gonna go check out the pool, Gram.”

“There are a couple of pools on the grounds,” Wolf told him then pointed out his building. “We’re in that unit in 301 when you’re ready to come in.”

The teen shrugged and let the ball drop, then kicked it back up with the side of his foot. Snatching it out of the air, he tucked it beneath his arm and walked away without another word.

Maria watched him go, a worried pucker tugging her eyebrows together, and Rick slung his arm around her.

“He’ll be fine,” he said breezily.

Wolf wasn’t so sure. He’d been in Nik’s shoes. He, too, had been dragged from pillar to post, but at least he’d had his mother’s steady presence to anchor him. The only thing he could think to say to alleviate her obvious concern was “I’ll get your bags.” And that was pretty damn weak.

She turned to him. “No, Liebling, leave them. We’re staying at a hotel.”

“Don’t be silly, Mom. I’ve got room, if Niklaus doesn’t mind bunking down on the couch.”

“I told him we’d stay at Circus Circus,” she said, and gave a helpless little shrug that wasn’t at all like her. “I thought it might…help this latest upheaval when we tell him….” She trailed off, then straightened her shoulders and handed him the carry-on case she’d had with her. “I made you a kuchen.”

“Aw, Mom.” It was so quintessentially Maria. No bakeries for his mother. She made her cakes from scratch, and she provided one for every occasion—even if that meant packing it from one continent to another. Carrying the case with the same care she’d no doubt given it the past three thousand miles, he escorted her up to his condo.

Once inside the foyer, he paused to glance over his shoulder at his father, who was bringing up the rear. “So you’re going into business as a beer garden proprietor, huh?” He carefully kept his voice neutral. “That seems appropriate.”

Maria, who had already disappeared into the depths of his apartment, stepped back around the foyer wall and gave him a warning glance. “I’ll not have you sassing your father, Wolfgang,” she warned him austerely, then took the carry-on bag from his hands and disappeared behind the wall again, no doubt to give his kitchen a thorough inspection.

“I’m not, I’m stating a fact. It strikes me as a good fit.” And it did. His dad was a party animal and always had been. Wolf’s earliest truths growing up had been that when Mom said nein, she meant nein, that the army was superior to any other branch of the United States military and that if Rick wasn’t out of the country on active duty, then he could usually be found at the NCO club with his fellow brothers-in-arms. After his dad’s retirement from the service, the only thing that had changed about the latter was the name of the establishment and the fact that his new cronies weren’t necessarily military. Every time Rick had moved the family to a new embassy, the first thing he’d done was locate a local watering hole where he could go knock back a few and socialize.

“Leave the boy alone, Maria,” Rick said. “He’s right, this will be the perfect fit for me.” He turned to Wolf, all enthusiasm and charm. “Let me dig out my photos while your mom puts on the coffee, cub, and I’ll show you what we’re getting. Rothenburg is a fantastic town, and the Donisl is the prettiest little establishment you’ve ever seen.”

“I’d like to see those, Dad,” Wolf said. “But first we need to discuss Niklaus.”

“Yeah, sure,” Rick agreed. But he headed for the door with a brisk stride. “I’ll just leave you to talk that over with your mother.” And he walked out of the apartment, closing the door behind him.

Wolf swallowed the bitterness that surged up his throat as he strode into the living room. “Well, that’s typical,” he said with what he considered admirable mildness.

His mother, who had located his coffeemaker and was busy scooping grounds into the basket, gave him a level look. “It is well past time, Wolfgang Richard, for you to—how do the Americans put it?—cut your father some slack.”

“Why?” he demanded. “Has he ever stuck around for the tough discussions? No,” he answered without awaiting her input. “He goes out and he has fun. Hell, even at work, he turned it into one big party, instead of applying himself to—” He cut himself off.

Too late, as it turned out, for Maria’s eyes narrowed and she pointed an autocratic finger at one of the stools bellied-up to the breakfast bar.

Wolf sat.

She stood across the counter from him. “I am tired of you looking down your nose at your father because he wasn’t some big, important executive. We’re both sorry that you felt such pain over being on the wrong side of the social divisions that run rampant in so many of the embassies. But there is no shame in hard work, and that’s what your father put into being a supply clerk. He was good at it, and God bless him if he had fun with it at the same time.”

“Yeah, God bless him.” Wolf swallowed the snort he felt crowding his throat. “He had fun. But what about you, Mom? Where were you in all this? Besides left behind all the time to be the disciplinarian and taskmaster.”

“Has it never occurred to you, Wolfgang, that a woman doesn’t stay with a man for thirty-eight years without knowing what she’s getting into? I liked being in charge. It’s my nature to be the disciplinarian and taskmaster.”

“But when do you get to have a good time?”

“What makes you think I don’t? More important, when do you ever have fun?” Her eyes held a deep sadness as she gazed at him. “You have beautiful suits and an important career. But you’re thirty-four years old and you have no wife, no kinders. You don’t even have a pet. This course you’ve set for yourself doesn’t seem to be making you particularly happy.”

He leaned forward. “But I will be, Mom. I’ve got a plan, and I’m getting close to accomplishing it. It’s just a matter of putting everything together. When that’s done, then I’ll be happy.”

“Aw, Liebling. Happiness isn’t a goal for the future. It’s what should be sustaining you while you’re working toward your objectives. You’re half American, for the good Lord’s sake. The pursuit of happiness is one of your inalienable rights.”

She was wrong. Happiness was what he’d be rewarded with down the road for all the hard work he was putting in now. It was what he’d attain once he got everything right.

But Maria was his mother, and one didn’t tell one’s mother that she was wrong. Instead, thinking about his nephew and the insane idea she had come up with for the teen’s care, he changed the subject.

“You do know that this plan of yours to have Niklaus stay with me is impossible, don’t you?” he demanded gently. All right, perhaps that equated to telling her she was wrong. Still, the idea was crazy, a crippled jet fore-ordained to crash and burn. “I work nights, Mom—long nights. Nik’s not going to be any better off in Sin City with no one to supervise him.”

“He’ll be much better off having the influence of a stable man in his life, even if the situation isn’t ideal. Katarina can’t continue shuttling him aside whenever she has a new man or some other enthusiasm-of-the-moment in her life, only to come swooping back to interrupt the new routine he’s managed to make for himself once she remembers again that she is a mother. And I have no doubt that our offer for the biergarten in Rothenburg will be accepted. That means dragging him to Germany, Wolf. He’s headed for trouble already and I’m scared to death another move—this time to a foreign country—will be the final nudge to push him right into the thick of it. We have to head that off before it’s too late.”

“How is he headed for trouble?”

“By—how do you say it?—suspending out with some undesirable young people.”

He had to think that through for a moment. “Hanging out, you mean?”

“Yes, that is the expression. Niklaus is a good boy, but how much longer will he remain one without a strong man to help guide his life? He needs you, Wolfgang. He desperately needs a home that doesn’t get uprooted every nine or ten months.” Reaching across the table, she laid her manicure-free, work-worn hand over his and looked beseechingly into his eyes. “Please.”

Aw, hell. His mother had provided him with the only security he’d ever known, and she had never before asked a thing from him in return. “Fine,” he agreed less than graciously. “But I’m probably not going to be in Las Vegas much longer myself, so his routine is still going to be shot to kingdom come.”

“But you’ve been in this job for two years,” Maria said, her forehead furrowing. “And you just bought this beautiful condominium. That seems pretty settled to me.”

“I’ve been in Security and Surveillance at the Avventurato for almost three years, but I’ve moved up the ladder as far as I can go there because my boss isn’t planning on retiring any time soon. And although I’ve freelanced at a couple other casinos who like my work, I don’t plan on spending the rest of my life in this town. As for the condo, I’m subletting from a guy who took a job in the Middle East. I was unhappy with my old place and this unit had sat empty for so long that he was happy to sign a contract saying I could give a month’s notice at any time. Which I plan to do just as soon as my dream job comes through. So I don’t see where this move will be doing Niklaus any favors.”

Not that he wouldn’t take the kid with him when he went, of course, but he felt no need to verbalize the fact since his mother knew him well enough to understand that that was a given without having to be told. Still, it would be yet one more case of Niklaus having to pull up stakes and move in a long succession of them. Wolf knew only too well what that was like.

He gave Maria a sober look across the table and shook his head. “I’ll do it, Mom, and I’ll try my damnedest to do a good job. But if I were you, I wouldn’t look for Niklaus to be thanking us any time soon.”

YOU GOT THAT RIGHT , Niklaus thought furiously, digging his tense shoulder blades into the six-paneled wood of the entry door he’d quietly shut behind him. He had stood there long enough to overhear most of the conversation, and betrayal bit like a rabid dog deep in his gut. Grandma Maria—the one person he’d always felt he could count on—had failed to mention when she’d come to collect him from his and Mom’s latest home in Evansville, Indiana, that he wasn’t coming home with her and Grandpa Rick. Not that he’d been all that crazy about the idea of living in Bolivia, where Grandpa was currently stationed, but at least with Grandma he felt safe.

He gripped the black-and-white soccer ball to his hip with a force that drove the blood from his fingertips. His free hand fisted tightly at his side and tears burned like acid behind his eyelids.

He squeezed his eyes tightly shut. I am not going to cry, he vowed with silent ferocity. I’m seventeen years old—or near enough, anyhow—and I will not goddamn cry like a baby.

He forced his shoulders to relax and pried his fingers loose of the fist they’d formed, shaking his hand out. What the hell. What was another fucking move? It wasn’t like he and his mom hadn’t been flitting from place to place, anyway, for as long as he could remember. He must have been—what?—twelve, thirteen years old when he’d first realized he was probably more mature than Katarina would ever be.

He’d known forever, though, that Grandma Maria was in his corner, that she would always be there for him when Mom got particularly flaky. He never had to be the grown-up in the group when he was with her. Yet here she was, suddenly fobbing him off on his uncle. What the hell kind of bullshit was that?

And because of his friends? Sure, they dressed kind of Goth, had lots of piercings and tattoos, and occasionally smoked a little weed that one of them managed to score. But they were just regular kids, and at least with them he didn’t have to be the everything’s-okay-so-don’t-you-worry-about-me happy camper the adults liked to believe he was.

If he had known Grandma Maria was going to dump him on Wolfgang, however, he might have attempted to bridge the gap between his friends and her during the week she and Grandpa Rick had spent with them while Mom was packing up to move in with her newest asshole boyfriend. Too late now, though. He’d expected this to be a quick stop to see his uncle Wolf and stay in a cool Las Vegas hotel for a few days before continuing on to Grandpa’s La Paz embassy. Instead, he was being dumped on a guy in whose company he’d spent maybe three or four months combined out of his entire lifetime—without so much as a single discussion or anyone asking what he wanted. The only thing he knew about Wolf was that he was one of those tight-assed über-authoritarian types. Hell, Mom didn’t refer to him as Dr. Gloom for nothing. The guy hardly ever smiled.

For a minute, Niklaus considered grabbing his bag out of the trunk of Wolf’s boss car and striking out on his own. He could take care of himself. Shit, he’d been doing the job most of his life, anyhow. But he took a couple of deep breaths and stayed put.

He had a blueprint for his future, and being a teenage runaway wasn’t part of it. He’d lived hand to mouth most of his life already and he didn’t intend to do so for the rest of it. A kid on his own without an education was looking for nothing better on the employment front than to say, “You want fries with that?” He planned to graduate frigging high school, then get himself a soccer or academic scholarship to a university so he’d have some options. That would be a big improvement over what he’d had most of his existence.

But in fucking Las Vegas? What was he likely to find in the way of a decent soccer program in a city that was a hundred frigging degrees most of the time? What if the high schools here didn’t even have soccer teams? His schooling had already been screwed up so many times, it wasn’t even funny. Every time he’d gotten ahead academically, Mom had either up and moved them or packed him off to wherever Grandma and Grandpa currently resided. That had meant yet another school with yet another system for him to learn.

He was so goddamn tired of it he could spit.

Feeling his shoulders starting to creep up around his ears again, he forced himself to relax. Only thirteen more months to go and he’d be eighteen. Ten months after that, he’d have his diploma and be starting university.

So he’d stay with Dr. Gloom. And if his uncle abandoned him in Las Vegas when he took off for his frigging dream job, well, he’d be just that much closer to his goal, wouldn’t he?

And hopefully by then, if he wasn’t quite close enough, Grandma Maria would be willing to take him back again.

CHAPTER FIVE

“SO THERE I WAS Tuesday morning, girding my loins to swallow my pride and ask Jones for more German commands,” Carly said, winding up the story of Rufus’s amazing progress over the course of the past couple of days. It was Thursday night, and she and her best friend, Treena McCall, were headed to work. “And you gotta know, Treen, that this took some major attitude adjustment on my part after the way he’d talked to me Monday night.” Wheeling her car into a slot in the Avventurato parking garage, she shot a glance at the redhead in the passenger seat. She cut the engine and yanked on the parking brake, then turned in her seat to meet her pal’s interested gaze more fully.

“Yeah,” Treena agreed. “Having seen you in action with Wolfgang, we’ve gotta be talking serious adjustment.”

“As a heart attack, toots. So, anyhow, I did the girding thing—and guess what?” Indignation ruled all over again. “The bum’s disappeared!”

“That rat!” Treena’s tone was full of the appropriate best-friend outrage. But her tongue was firmly planted in her cheek when she demanded, “What do you bet he did it just to piss you off?”

“That was precisely my first thought,” Carly agreed. Then she laughed. “But all right, so maybe I’m not even a blip on Jones’s radar, while I continually overreact when it comes to him.”

“Ya think?”

“I don’t know what it is about him. I mean, it’s not as if I’ve never run up against a disagreeable man before.”

Treena’s lips ticked up in her habitual barely there, one-sided smile. “Just not one with such a great butt.”

She didn’t even have to think twice. “Yes! His is truly world class and, omigawd, it’s been forever since I’ve had sex. So how fair is it that a guy with the finest ass ever designed to spin a girl’s thoughts to getting a grip on it for a little hootchie-kootch, turns out to have the personality of a gorilla accountant?”

Treena shook her head in sad commiseration. “Life’s a bitch.”

“Tell me about it.” She was never attracted to men she didn’t like. They could be Adonis come to life, and it didn’t matter—if they were jerks they left her cold.

Wolfgang Jones wasn’t even close to Adonis and he was definitely a jerk. So why the hell had she been feeling that raw edge of sexual awareness lately whenever they’d encountered each other? “Damn chemistry,” she groused as she climbed out of the car.

Treena gave her a look over the top of the sporty auto’s red roof. “You talking to me?”

“No. It’s just…I don’t understand why certain people have chemistry with each other while other guys—people—leave you cold.”

“Is that what’s yanking your chain with Wolfgang? You got some chemistry going with a guy you don’t like?”

“Hell, no! Well…maybe.” She shook her head. “No, no, of course not. It’s his lack of respect for the babies, that’s all.” But that wasn’t all, and she gave the other dancer a helpless grimace. “Oh, crap, Treena, I don’t know.”

A friend for ages, Treena took pity on her and changed the subject. “So, how’s your ankle feeling? You sure it’s going to hold up for you tonight?”

Carly shrugged. “I’m not even sure of my own name these days.” She held her fist out, knuckles facing her friend. “But here’s hoping.”

Treena bopped it with her own. “Promise me you won’t push yourself if it starts to hurt too much.”

“Cross my heart, Mom.” Her tone was ironic, but she gave her friend an affectionate smile. “It feels so much better than it did Monday night—or even yesterday—and I’m pretty sure I’m back up to speed. But if I feel it start to go I’ll call it a night. You have my word on that.” As they headed down Row E for the garage elevator, she gave her friend a friendly bump with her hip. “So San Francisco was good, huh?”

“Oh, wow.” Treena’s pale brown eyes grew dreamy. “It was so great. We stayed at the St. Francis and saw as many sights as we could pack into two days.”

“Jax didn’t play in a poker tournament, then?”

“No, and it was so smokin’ not to have a single thing we had to do. We ate too much and maybe drank a bit too much and just played tourists. And the weather was gorgeous. So much cooler than it is here.”

“Yeah, this is unseasonable for mid-October. The temps should be dropping any day now.”

“I’m beyond ready. It was such a relief when the thermometer took its normal dip a couple of weeks ago. I wasn’t prepared for the temperature to start soaring again.”

The noise of the casino bombarded them as the elevator doors slid open into the hotel lobby, but after years of working there Carly was adept at automatically relegating the din to background noise. Dodging the tourists who didn’t wait for them to exit the car before barging into it, they skirted a bellman maneuvering a rolling luggage cart across the marble lobby floor and strode into the casino proper. They passed the Italian bistro, with its smells of garlic, tomatoes and olive oil, passed their favorite little after-work open-air lounge, then took a left at the craps tables, heading for the east wall and the short hallway that led to the employees-only area backstage of the Starlight Room.

“Ms. Jacobsen.”

Damn! Carly didn’t need Treena’s murmured, “Looks like the bum is back,” to know who she’d see when she turned around. Sighing, she pivoted on her heel.

She studied Wolfgang Jones as he strode up to them. Looking at him objectively for perhaps the first time ever, she finally got a handle on part of what her problem was. It wasn’t merely that he was so cool and controlled he was damn near robotic; it wasn’t even that he didn’t seem to like animals. It was those two elements combined with the fact that he had that edge she liked in a man. That don’t-fuck-with-me-and-don’t-even-think-you-have-a-chance-of-tying-me-down edginess that sucked her in every time.

Part of the appeal spoke directly to her own personality, since she had no desire to tie any man down. Never had, never would.

Especially not this man.

Still, there was just something that turned her on about a guy with the confidence to stride through life with his goals firmly front and center.

Really.

Turned her.

On.

Wolfgang had that goal orientation. She didn’t have the first idea what his objectives were, but she didn’t doubt for a minute that he had them. He also possessed one superbly fit body. She might have a preference for men in jeans, but beautifully cut slacks did nothing to detract from the muscular swell of his butt. Neither did his pricy well-tailored jacket disguise the width of his shoulders.

No, ma’am. There wasn’t a damn thing wrong with the physique beneath those upscale threads.

He stopped in front of her, standing close enough that she had to tip her head back in order to look up into his cool green eyes. She tried to assure herself that wasn’t a thrill all on its own, but knew it for the lie it was. Because at more than six feet tall herself in high heels—which meant seventy-five percent of the time—looking up at any man was a treat.

“I need to talk to you about your injury the other night,” he said with crisp precision. Pulling his head back, he slid his gaze slowly down her until it reached her ankle, then back up to meet her eyes once again. “You are better?”

A little curl of warmth unfurled in her stomach. “Yes, very much so, thank you.”

“Good. Then you will need to fill out an incident report so I can close the event.”

The warmth iced over. Yet her eyes still narrowed on his lower lip, noting that when he wasn’t all stern-mouthed the way she was accustomed to seeing him, it was much fuller than she’d previously realized. Yes, indeed, he had that beckoning edge, that look she went for in a guy—not particularly handsome, perhaps, but definitely all man.

If only he would keep his mouth shut.

Still, when she raised her gaze and saw him watching her, a frisson of sexual heat curled down her spine.

Whoa. Wait a minute. That selfsame backbone snapped erect. What the hell was she thinking? She didn’t even intend to go there with this man. “Yeah. Sure,” she said. “I’ll get right on that.” She turned away.

He wrapped his hand around her forearm and swung her back. She gave the long fingers and broad palm grasping her flesh—and pumping heat throughout her system—a pointed look.

Wolfgang set her loose. “Now would be a good time.”

“Not for me, it wouldn’t,” she disagreed coolly. “I’m on my way to work, and I don’t intend to bring myself to my G.M.’s attention by being late. Trust me, Vernetta-Grace is scarier than your entire Security and Surveillance force combined. I’m sure you understand.” She shot him a challenging look from beneath her lashes. “You being so big on personal responsibility and all.”

“Fine.” His mouth adopted the slant of grim hardness with which she was much more familiar. “Then stop by Surveillance and sign off on the report when you’re done for the night.”

“Absolutely. I’ll be sure to do that before we go home.” She turned to Treena. “Remind me, okay?”

“Sure.”

She swung back to Wolfgang. “There you go. Anything else?”

“No.”

“Gotta run, then. We’re on the clock in about fifteen minutes and we still have to change and get into our makeup.”

He stepped back with a stiff nod and she and Treena walked away.

Once they were out of earshot her friend glanced over at her. “It’s going to be a cold day in hell before we stop by to sign off on Wolfgang’s incident report, isn’t it?”

Carly snorted. “Oh, yeah. A very cold day.”

SHE WAS FEELING SURPRISINGLY full of herself when she bopped into the backstage dressing room a few minutes later, and just for a minute she wondered if that should worry her.

As if reading her mind, Treena shot her a dry, sideways look. “You might be having just a little too much fun from your encounter with the wolfman, babe.”

Even though she’d had virtually the same thought herself, her initial knee-jerk response was to deny it. But she couldn’t.

“I know,” she admitted in a low voice. “And I feel like that oughtta be scaring the bejesus out of me. Yet somehow it doesn’t.” Instincts insisting that it was wrong, wrong, wrong to be attracted on a physical level to a man she disliked on a personal one, she raised her hand to erase the admission right out of the air. Even her instincts seemed conflicted, however, for she terminated the motion with a jerky movement that gave her a flashback to her gawky pubescent days. That was an age she’d just as soon not revisit.

Blowing out a breath, she dropped her hand to her side and gave her friend a wry smile. “It was easier when he just annoyed me. But lately it’s as if all my senses are in this warped heightened state whenever he’s around. And I honest to God don’t understand what that’s all about.”

“Maybe simply that there’s more to him than you first thought.”

“I doubt that very much.” Then a beautiful arrangement of exotic flowers on the counter at her station caught her eye. “Hey, would you look at that?” she demanded, raising her voice. She picked up her pace across the room full of dancers in various states of undress. “Somebody must love me lots.”

Rude hoots greeted her statement. “Yeah, Carly,” Michelle said from down the row of stools in front of the long lighted mirror. “You’re off on your regular days and rumor has it that you’ve been laid up with a bum ankle. Yet here you are, all hale and hearty and with a rich new Stage Door Johnnie to boot from the looks of things. What’s up with that?” Tipping up her chin, her lower lip drooping open, she leaned into the mirror to align false lashes along her natural lash line. Then pressing them in place while the adhesive dried, she swivelled to meet Carly’s gaze. “He got a brother?” she asked hopefully.

“Toots, if I had a sugar daddy and he had a brother, you can be damn sure I’d be holding the latter in reserve. It’s been a long, dry spell for me, you know? If the day ever comes when I’m faced with that scenario, I’ll probably need the spare. Just in case I break the first one.”

That brought a fresh spate of ribald laughter and comments, and she dropped her dance bag on the floor in front of her station to root through the blossoms.

Discovering a tiny white envelope, she pulled it out and ripped it open. She extracted the card inside. “‘Hope you’re back on your feet and dancing soon,’” she read aloud. There was no signature. “Huh.” She looked up to find several of her sister dancers grinning at her and a lightbulb went off in her head. “Aw, you guys, these are from you, aren’t they?”

Across the room, Jerrilyn paused in fitting her towering headdress over her slicked-back hair to blow a raspberry. “Yeah, right. When’s the last time you remember us buying flowers for anyone in the troupe?”

“When Georgia had her baby,” Carly said. “Okay, I know we don’t usually. So what was all the grinning about, then?”

“Oh, honey,” Michelle said. “A woman getting flowers is always a huge event. And some of us have to live vicariously.”

She looked at the arrangement again. Okay, that made sense. Only… “So, who are these from if they aren’t from you all?”

“Did you meet a hot young M.D. in the E.R. Monday night?” Juney asked.

“Nah. I didn’t even go to the E.R., just limped on home and iced it. Besides, the last time I was at the E.R. the hottest thing I saw was a nurse named Brunhilda who you wouldn’t want to drop your soap in front of in the shower room.”

“You are so full of it,” Treena scoffed.

Jo’s head popped up over the mirror that backed Carly’s “Hey, maybe you’ve got a secret admirer.”

“Yeah, maybe,” she agreed doubtfully. Then she looked at the clock on the wall and headed across the room to collect her costume. “If so, I’ll have to figure out who later. I don’t have time to worry about it now.”

The wardrobe mistress looked up as she approached. Adjusting the measuring tape draped around her neck, she pushed a frizzy strand of hair behind her ear and selected Carly’s costume from the rack. “Thanks for sending your costume and wig in with Treena yesterday,” she said, and handed Carly the wisp of illusion and glitter that comprised the first act’s attire. She also passed over a headdress of fountaining, white-tipped gold plumes, then pushed her slipping glasses up her nose. “I like it when I’m given time to get them clean, although you are one of the neater ones.”

Carly returned to her station and quickly stripped out of her street clothes and donned her own fishnet stockings before pulling on the costume. Plopping the headpiece atop a mannequin head, she quickly applied her greasepaint. It looked trashily overdone under the harsh fluorescent lighting, but features tended to disappear beneath the stage lights in ordinary street makeup.

Her friend Eve strolled into the dressing room a moment later and stopped at her station three places down the row to prop her right foot up on the stool. She smoothed her fishnets up her calf and along her thigh. Glancing up, she caught sight of Carly and smiled. “Hey, girl,” she said. “How’s the ankle?”

“Back to normal.” I hope, I hope.

“It better be,” Julie-Ann said in the sugary, upbeat voice she used to slice-and-dice. “I won’t have you messing up my chorus line.” She laughed as if it were all a big joke.

Carly gave the young dance captain a neutral look. “Yeah, I’d sure hate to have my injury ruin your night.”

“Haven’t you heard, Carly?” Treena asked, deadpan. “It’s all about Julie-Ann. Your comfort doesn’t enter into it.”

“Sure, it does,” Eve disagreed. “You heard her—it could mess up her line.” She cocked a brow at the dance captain. “And when did this become your dance troupe again? I thought we functioned as a unit.”

“Oh, for God’s sake,” Julie-Ann said in exasperation. “Lighten up! It was a joke.”

Uh-huh. The three dancers exchanged brief gazes. Then without further comment they went back to getting ready for the show.

But Carly turned and, reaching between her shoulder blades, gave her back a pat. “Do you see a knife sticking out anywhere?” she asked Treena sotto voce over her shoulder.

The redhead gave her a crooked smile. “Amazing how she does that, isn’t it?” she said equally quietly. “It will forever remain a mystery to me how one woman can smile so angelically while poking her busy little fingers into another woman’s wounds.”

“And if anyone would know how that feels, toots, it would be you.” Treena had come under Julie-Ann’s fire the past several months while she was fighting to get her dancing back up to speed so she could pass the annual audition after an absence of almost a year away from the troupe. Instead of lending support, their dance captain had undermined her friend every chance she got.

Treena’s smile turned into a full-fledged grin. “She has so lost the power to bug me.”

“You’ve definitely decided this will be your last year, then?”

“Yeah. You know it’s time for me. I’m getting too old for this and it’s just plain getting tougher physically. Jax and I have been talking over some of my options.”

“I’ll wager you have quite a few, too,” Carly agreed. “And I’m happy for you, toots. For myself, though, I’m going to miss working with you. What’s it been, a decade we’ve been dancing together?”

“Yes, can you believe it?” Propping her heel on the countertop, Treena bent over her straight leg, stretching out her hamstrings. Slowly straightening, she gave a nod to the bouquet on the counter between their stations. “So who do you think the flowers are from?”

“You got me.” She paused in tucking her hair beneath the turban portion of the headpiece to look at her friend. “I might check with the hotel florist tomorrow to see if anyone remembers anything. Because I honestly don’t have a clue.”

“Hey, maybe it was Wolfgang.”

Carly choked, then laughed so hard tears began to leak over her bottom lashes. “Oh, shit, if you made me ruin my makeup you’re a dead woman.” She grabbed a handful of tissues and gently pressed them beneath her eyes to catch the overflow before it could smear her mascara. Once she was certain the damage was contained, she turned to her friend. “Do you honestly see Mr. Grim and Grimmer sending flowers to someone he’s not sharing the sheets with?”

“Well…no.”

“Me, neither. Hell, I can’t even see him loosening up enough to do the hootchie-kootch.”

And if sometimes she jerked awake from a dream of him hanging over her in a red-hot naked lather…?

Well, that would just remain her guilty little secret.

CHAPTER SIX

WOLF WOKE UP THE following morning to Niklaus playing music at top volume. The discordant notes and screeching guitar licks found a corresponding pulse in his left temple, which began pounding in tune with the inharmonic sounds wailing out of the living room speakers. With a groan he rolled to the side of the bed, where he sat with his elbows dug into his knees and his aching head propped in his hands.

God, he felt awful. Burning his candle at both ends didn’t even begin to cover it. He’d been running his ass off the past seventy-two hours, working his shift by night and squiring his folks and Niklaus around Vegas and its environs by day. He’d eaten rich foods he was no longer accustomed to and worked like a dog to live up to his mother’s expectations.

Which had meant talking. Smiling. Being frigging pleasant.

What he’d netted from so much unaccustomed sociability was a dangerously volatile temper. Generally a well-managed animal, it was suddenly hurling itself at its cage doors, slavering and snarling for release. Having to listen to crap music at high decibels on too little sleep verged perilously close to the key that beast was searching for.

But even if he believed in the self-indulgence of losing his temper, this wouldn’t be the time for it, since it would be the height of unfairness to take it out on Niklaus. The kid was having a rough-enough time as it was. Wolf remembered too well what it was like being ordered to pack up your belongings just when you finally got yourself settled in, only to have to start the whole lousy process all over again somewhere else.

And that was on top of the guilt he felt at leaving Niklaus to fend for himself last night.

After seeing his folks off at the airport for their flight back to Bolivia, Wolf had fully intended to take the teen home, order whatever pizza Niklaus wanted and ease him into his new situation. Instead, they’d arrived home to a message on the answering machine from the Avventurato Surveillance team’s number-one man, Dan McAster. “Emergency’s come up in the casino,” Dan’s voice had snapped out in its usual gruff-spoken way. “I need you here, ASAP.”

So he’d had to leave Niklaus alone in a strange condo in a strange city practically the minute the teen’s grandmother—the only person to provide Niklaus with a modicum of security—had left town. As if the kid hadn’t already had enough to contend with moving in with an uncle he barely knew.

All the same—Wolf dug his fingertips into his pounding temple—that music had to go before his head exploded.

Climbing to his feet, he reached for the shirt he’d draped over the desk chair last night and pulled it on. Not bothering to button it, he grabbed a pair of khaki shorts out of a drawer and yanked them up his legs, zipping the fly as he walked into the living room.

He strode straight over to the stereo and cranked down the volume.

Niklaus, slumped on his tailbone on the couch, glowered at him, and Wolf jerked his head at the wall connecting his unit to Carly’s. “Show a little consideration, Nik. We’ve got a neighbor.”

To his surprise, the boy’s expression lit up. “I know, I saw her out on the balcony last night. She is hot! And she’s got like a hundred dogs and cats. How totally great is that?”

The mention of Carly’s animals made Wolf want to furrow his brow and curl his lip back from his teeth. He managed a noncommittal expression, however, because he didn’t want to ruin the first sign of pleasure he’d seen on the kid’s face since Niklaus had learned his grandparents were dumping him in Las Vegas.

“Yeah,” he grunted. “Great. Totally.” My ass.

God, she made him nuts. He’d cooled his heels in Surveillance last night for a good hour after the la Stravaganza show was over, waiting for her to show up. But had she? Hell, no. She’d blown off the one simple request he’d made of her, and he was still steamed about waiting for her to make an appearance when he should have been back home with Niklaus.

He was hardly blown away by surprise. But he was plenty steamed.

What did surprise him was how close he still felt to losing the tight rein he had on his temper. The need to be nice these past few days must have taken even more of a toll on him than he’d realized. All the same, he had to put it behind him. Get his head screwed on straight.

Niklaus suddenly surged to his feet. “I’m gonna go take a shower.”

“Okay, good. I’ll take one when you’re done, then we’ll go grab some breakfast and visit a couple of schools to see if we can find one that fits.”

The boy scowled at him. “I don’t suppose any of the schools in this town has a decent soccer team?”

His tone was pure teenage, don’t-give-a-shit boredom, but Wolf took one look at his nephew’s stiff posture and intense gaze and realized the answer mattered a great deal to him.

“I don’t know, but I’ll see what I can find out. Your grandmother mentioned you’ve got a real talent for the sport.”

Niklaus shrugged and slouched off toward the bathroom.

Wolf was on the phone trying to get sports information from the nearest school when hysterical barking broke out next door. It continued unabated throughout the remainder of his conversation, and his temper was straining at its leash by the time he finally slammed the phone down. “Son of a bitch!”

He looked down the hallway toward the bathroom, but the shower continued to pound unabated. With an abrupt, decisive nod, he snatched up the incident report that he’d brought home from work and strode over to pull his door open with a force that damn near removed it from its hinges.

A UPS driver who was turning away from Carly’s door jumped, and Wolf wiped the scowl from his face as he approached her.

“Is that for Carly Jacobsen?” he asked, nodding at the package in the woman’s hands.

The brown-uniformed woman glanced down at the name on the label, then nodded.

He reached out for it.

She took a step back. “I need a signature, and it has to come from the recipient.”

“How about from the recipient’s husband?” he said, and reached for it again. “I was just visiting next door.” He could hear the dogs’ hysterical barking on the other side of the door, and at the end of his patience, he roared, “Sitz, dammit!”

Blessed silence fell.

He turned his attention back to the woman. “Look, I don’t know why Carly isn’t answering the door, but give me the package, will you, please? If she has to wait until tomorrow for you to attempt another delivery, she’ll be hell to live with.”

It was apparently a complaint with which the woman was familiar, for she handed him an electronic device and a stylus to write his signature, then passed him the package. “Have a good one,” she said, and marched off down the hallway, disappearing a moment later down the stairs.

He waited long enough for her to exit the building, then whirled around and knocked on Carly’s door. The dogs started barking again and he lost the last tenuous grasp he’d had on his wrath. Hammering on the door, he half expected the solid wood to give way beneath his fist at any second. “Open. The. Goddamn. Door!”

Over the thundering of his own heart and the clamoring of the dogs, he somehow heard the slap of feet against the tile foyer on the other side of the panel. Then Carly’s voice snapped, “Sitz!” and once again the mutts fell silent.

His jaw sagged at the sound of the German command coming from within her apartment, and he barely managed to snap his mouth shut again before the door whipped open.

Then he caught his first good glimpse of her standing on the other side of the threshold, and it was all he could do not to let his jaw drop all over again.

But, holy shit. Her face was scrubbed clean and her hair was wet. She was all gold and pink as water dribbled along her temples, down her smooth throat and over her chest, soaking into a white tank top and turning the edges of the material transparent. As he watched, the transparency spread across the uppermost thrust of unbound, truly spectacular breasts. Puckered nipples that he imagined were the result of leaving a steamy bathroom for the air-conditioned chill of the rest of the apartment poked against the still-dry portion of the top’s stretchy fabric. Her feet were bare, and the sun filtering into the foyer from the living room window turned her pointy-hemmed skirt translucent enough to highlight her mile-high legs. He’d take a wild stab here and guess that she’d recently climbed out of the shower.

Hands hanging limply at her sides, she, too, looked him over as if she’d never seen him before. Even as the thought crossed his mind, her slender eyebrows drew together over her nose and her gaze rose to his face. “What do you want, Jones?”

“Uh…” He couldn’t remember and latched onto the first thought to waft across his mind. “You spoke German.”

Color washed up her chest and climbed her throat. “So?”

“So, nothing. I just…didn’t expect to hear it.” He took a step closer and the shift of weight caused the sharp edge of the cardboard box under his arm to dig into his inner elbow. It jerked him back to reality. “Here.” He thrust it out at her. “The damn dogs were going crazy, so I signed for your package before their noise made my head implode.”

“Oh, for—” Snatching the parcel from his hands, she whirled away and stalked into the living room. “Don’t even start on my pets. There’s not a dog alive who doesn’t bark at the UPS man.”

“Woman,” he corrected. But he was operating purely on autopilot, for his brain was cutting out like a combustible engine laboring on its last fume of fuel.

The hazy view of her thighs and butt beneath her gauzy skirt didn’t improve matters. From what he could see, only a narrow blue thong that widened to a little butterfly above her firm cheeks stood between her and an indecency charge. Sternly pulling his gaze away, he followed her into her apartment. “You are training Doofus in German?”

“Rufus!” She whirled around, blue eyes snapping. “His name is Rufus! How would you like to be called da Wolfgangsta?”

“I wouldn’t,” he admitted stiffly, his head continuing to pound. “I apologize. I will remember it is Rufus.”

“Oh.” She blinked. “Well. All right, then.” She straightened her shoulders and met his gaze squarely. “As for the German command, yes. It seemed to work for you, and contrary to what you obviously think, I’ve been knocking myself out trying to find a way to get through to him.”

“A whip and a chair might do the trick.”

He wished the words back the minute they left his mouth. But it was too late. Carly’s eyes narrowed, her chin shot up and she took an incensed step forward. “Listen, you— Buster!”

Her older dog, the one so goofy-looking he was almost a caricature, with his springy tufts of brindled fur sticking up atop his head and poking out like ruffles around his ankles, stepped between them, seeking her attention. Wolf didn’t know exactly what happened next but thought that Carly must have almost caught the mutt with her foot. It occurred so fast that all he knew for certain was that when she pulled her stride to avoid kicking the dog, she pitched forward.

Buster scrambled aside and Wolf reached out to steady her at the same time that she flung out her hands to be caught. Given their mutual athleticism, they should have been able to right her with the minimum of contact.

But somehow the outsides of her arms slid along his inner forearms, knocking his hands aside. Her hands plowed inside his unbuttoned shirt, shoving back the open sides, then skidded along the bare skin over his ribs. As he reached for her hips to brace her, she grabbed the folds of material and hung on so tightly that she jerked the shirt clear off his shoulders to well beneath his shoulder blades. Her actions yanked his arms to his sides and the reflexive step backward that he took slammed his back against the wall. Her pets scattered, yipping and hissing, and Carly and Wolf slapped together, breasts to diaphragm. Her chin bounced off his collarbone, snapping her head back.

“Ow,” she said, working her jaw. “Shit.”

Wolf didn’t say a word. He couldn’t. Every Y chromo-some he possessed was aware of the scent of soap and heat and woman—not to mention the feel of that long, lush body mashed against his. He was also howlingly aware of the dampness of her thin tank top, which was all that separated her breasts from his flesh. They were real breasts, too, soft, full globes that flattened where they met corded muscle, not the artificially enhanced tits so many of the showgirls seemed to sport these days.

He noticed for the first time that Carly’s eyes had little golden flecks around her pupils and a deeper hue circling the clear blue iris. And her abrupt stillness told him she was suddenly as aware of him as he was of her. Or at least that she was aware of his awareness. Of course, the latter would be damned hard to ignore when he was half erect against her stomach.

Okay, all the way erect.

He saw her pulse tripping madly in the little hollow at the base of her throat, and he reached out to peel her off of him before he did something irrevocably stupid.

Trouble was, his shirt pinned his arms, preventing their usual full range of motion. He could still move well enough to get his hands on Carly’s upper arms, and he did just that, fully intending to move her away from him, if only the couple of inches his currently shackled condition would permit. At least she wouldn’t be pressed right up against the evidence of his happy-to-see-you dick.

That was the plan, anyway.

But somehow his hands, which had reached out with every intention of following the exact commands his brain issued, slid right up those smooth, firm arms and onto her warm-skinned shoulders. Then, since they were already in the neighborhood, they eased up her slender throat to frame her face. With a will of their own, his thumbs gently pressed the underside of her chin, which had a shallow dimple he’d never noticed before, and his fingers tunneled into her short, damp hair. He tilted her head back and to one side while tipping his own in the opposite direction.

Then, his heart thumping against the wall of his chest in slow, hard thuds, he rocked his mouth over the soft curves of her lips.

And, ah, God. They were sweet and pliant, and he wanted them to open up and let him in.

Now.

He widened his mouth around Carly’s, then dragged it closed, sipping at her with steady, demanding suction. Let me in, let me in, let me in.

His eyebrows furrowed when that didn’t gain him the immediate entry he sought, and he raised his head, came at her from a different direction. He tickled the seam of her lips with the tip of his tongue.

She made a sound deep in her throat, and her fingers unpleated the shirt they gripped and shook free of its voluminous folds. A second later, her hands were splayed against his back, bare skin to bare skin.

And her lips parted.

Yes! Wolf plunged his tongue inside.

She tasted even richer and more addictive than he’d imagined she would and every coherent reason why this wasn’t a good idea evaporated like dew in the desert when she kissed him back. The control he took such pride in disintegrated and his mouth turned rapacious.

Carly wrapped her arms around his neck and rubbed her breasts against his chest, returning his kiss with one that was every bit as voracious.

He stroked his hands down her soft nape, over her shoulders and down her back, following the long line of her spine to her round, firm ass. Gripping her through the thin, silky material, he bent his knees and yanked her to him—and his hard-on discovered a little piece of heaven in the soft, giving notch between her thighs.

But it wasn’t enough. He wanted his hands on the bare skin her diaphanous skirt had hinted at, and he began gathering fabric up by the handfuls, inching the garment up the backs of her thighs. Got to have some of this, his out-of-control testosterone insisted, and he wedged a thigh between hers and widened his stance, nudging her legs farther apart.

Got to have some of this now!

Nothing else mattered at the moment. Not the fact that she wasn’t a woman who fit into his master plan. Not the fact that they didn’t even like each other. Not Niklaus waiting for him next door. Not—

Oh, shit, Niklaus!

Damn, something did matter. The recollection of his nephew, who could come looking for him at any minute, splashed cold water all over the hot haze of lust that had made every other consideration seem incidental. Hell, he’d left Carly’s front door wide open when he’d followed her into her apartment, and it was only blind luck that no one had poked their head in to see what was going on.

Dropping her skirt back into place, he jerked his hands away from the tempting territory they’d roamed. He reached up to thread his fingers through her short hair and pull her head back.

She blinked unfocused eyes at him and licked her bottom lip. Then her lips, ruddy and swollen from his kisses, curled up in a sultry little smile and he groaned, his new resolve seriously threatened. He wanted to return that carnal smile, wanted to dive back in and pick up right where they’d left off.

But indulging the Jones wild streak wasn’t in his makeup—even if he had forgotten that fact in a moment of blistering arousal. He gave her a stern look. “I can’t do this.”

She returned a melting, slightly dazed smile that he felt clear to the pit of his stomach and rotated her pelvis against his erection. “Oh, honey,” she assured him. “You can.”

His hips pushed back at her until he caught himself and forced them to still, and he slid his fingers from her hair, gripping her shoulders instead to set her back a step.

The damn shirt pulled him up short again, but he shoved away from the wall so abruptly that it did the chore for him, tumbling her back a step. While she was still off balance, he hitched the shoulder seams of his abused shirt back into place. Then, heart pounding a savage beat, he stared at her.

What the hell had he done?

“No,” he finally said when she locked eyes with him. “I really can’t. You’re not part of my plan.”

Her eyes held confusion. “You have a plan that doesn’t allow for sex?”

“No.”

“No?” She took a tiny step forward. “Well, then…”

He put a hand up, warding her off. “I mean yes, I have a plan that doesn’t include unscheduled sex.” And it was high time he dragged it back front and center where it belonged.

“You schedule sex?” she said in disbelief. “What, between filing reports and busting card counters? My God. You are one seriously screwed-up individual.”

He’d always considered himself a seriously organized individual. Still, looking at the mussed, sexy blonde he was voluntarily walking away from, he wondered if she wasn’t onto something.

But, no. He knew what he wanted out of life, and this wasn’t it. Well, it was, but it would be a mistake he’d regret the moment satisfaction faded. And he had no room in his agenda for mistakes.

So he managed a negligent shrug and slapped his best emotionless expression on his face. “You may be right,” he said coolly as he headed for the door. “But at least I’ve got a plan.”

As he stepped out into the hallway, he heard a sound like steam escaping an overheated teakettle.

“Yeah, well, plan this, you jerk!” Carly yelled.

Closing the door behind him, Wolf thought it was just as well he couldn’t see the precise gesture that undoubtedly accompanied her directive.

CHAPTER SEVEN

CARLY FELT AS IF she were two seconds away from exploding. She took a jerky step to the right, then one to the left. Thrusting her hand through her damp hair, she whirled and took yet another indecisive step in the direction of the breakfast bar.

“Damn.” Stopping dead, she stared out through the sliders. But the attractive landscaping of the courtyard below her small lanai barely registered. Nor did her pets make more than a fleeting impression as they slunk out of their hiding places to vie for her attention now that she was alone again and no longer making any sudden moves.

Her skin felt two sizes too small, her body throbbed with a tight, achy, unsatiated arousal, and humiliation rode her like a monkey on an addict’s back. She didn’t know what on earth to do with herself. She couldn’t even take her contradictory jumble of emotions to Treena to sort out as she normally would. This was simply too personal, too…raw.

And that only made her feel worse, because she had no safety valve for this god-awful head of steam that Wolf had stoked in her.

Stoked to the boiling point, damn him, before strolling away and leaving her with no means of blowing it off.

“You bastard,” she whispered. It had knocked her for a loop when she’d opened the door and seen him standing there, looking completely different from the usual spit-shined, buttoned-down, pain-in-the-ass automaton she was accustomed to seeing. Gone had been the uptight, poker-faced Surveillance honcho, and in his place had stood an angry man who’d looked sort of savage and wild.

Which, of course, had called to her. Maybe her mother was right, maybe she did need therapy.

She rejected the idea out of hand. Because, please. The guy she more or less knew for his quality clothing—the same man who always looked so pulled together, right down to his coordinating ties, who she imagined must prop himself upright in a closet to sleep so as not to wrinkle his fine threads—had pulled a vanishing act.

In his place had stood a man not only sans the tie he seemed to consider de rigueur, but in a shirt he hadn’t even bothered to fasten. And the glimpse of his smooth, hard chest and rigid stomach muscles through the narrow opening, the sight of those long, muscular thighs, hair-dusted calves and big, narrow, naked feet, had frozen her in place for several heart-stopping seconds.

Even then, she’d been cool. And she would have continued to be cool, too…if only she hadn’t tripped. If only he hadn’t kissed her.

Dammit, he should have kept his lips to himself. Or at least had the decency to be a lousy kisser.

But he had done neither of those things. Oh, he was still a jerk, still the worst kind of control freak. Who the hell schedules their sexual encounters, for heaven’s sake? But Wolfgang Jones could kiss like nobody’s business, and no longer did she have the comfort of assuring herself he was a clueless, cold and passionless Mr. Robotics kind of guy.

She truly wished she did, because right this minute she’d rather eat grubs than admit anything good about him. And yet…

While the man definitely had some strange hang-ups, a lack of passion wasn’t one of them. There had been nothing cold about his mouth on hers. Nothing remotely chilly about the body she’d been pressed against. Damn, he’d pumped out heat like a coal-burning furnace. And Lord have mercy, those hands!

His fingers had been long and firm and oh-so-hot on her butt, and they sure as hell hadn’t been the least bit hesitant about rocking her against his erection—which had been even longer, firmer…hotter. It had been so long since she’d experienced any of that sweet man-woman friction, and it had felt so good. Just a couple of lousy minutes longer and she’d have been ready to screw his brains out right there against the partition wall.

An unamused laugh escaped her. Who was she kidding? She’d been so past primed. That was one of the reasons the manner in which he’d pulled the plug on her, the callous way he’d left her twitching with frustration, rankled so much.

Her first impression was obviously correct. Anyone who’d work a woman into a frenzy, then leave her flat because it wasn’t in his frigging schedule, was cold—his hot hands and hotter kisses be damned.

Catching herself standing with gritted teeth and clenched fists in the middle of the floor, Carly sucked in a deep breath and blew it out. Great. She was furious all over again.

Screw it, she had things to do today. Maybe nothing earth-shattering, but a hell of a lot more important than moaning over not satisfying her treacherous libido’s needs. She really did need to get her mind away from Jones’s infuriating callousness and onto something else. The question was: what? Looking around, she saw a piece of paper lying on the floor next to the chintz ottoman, and she walked over and snatched it up, grateful for the distraction.

When she realized it was the incident report Wolfgang had wanted her to sign last night, however, her blood pressure skyrocketed all over again. Crumpling it up, she tossed it back on the floor and ground it beneath her bare heel. That wasn’t nearly destructive enough to satisfy her urge to annihilate, so she snatched it up again and smoothed it out. Then she proceeded to rip it into the tiniest shreds she could manage. Clutching the handful of confetti in one fist, she rummaged through her little secretaire with the other until she found an envelope. She poured her opinion of Wolfgang’s report into it and sealed it up.

Tripod stropped himself against her ankles, and she bent down to pick him up, cuddling the gray-and-white cat against her breasts. He purred and butted his head against her chin.

“You’re right,” she said decisively, scratching the feline between his ears. “Standing around steaming is counterproductive. If I let this turn me inside out, Jones wins—and that is not going to happen.” She gently set Tripod down upon the hassock. “So, let’s go to the hospital and brighten someone’s day. I’ll change into something a little more conservative, do something with my hair, and then we’ll all take off. Well, except for you, Dogface.” She paused on her way to the bedroom to rub Rufus’s head. “You’re doing worlds better, but I’m afraid you’re still not quite there yet. Soon, though, little buddy.

“Soon.”

SHE FELT MUCH BETTER by the time she let herself back into the apartment a couple of hours later. She unhooked Buster’s leash and opened the door on the travel container so Tripod and Rags, who always needed a little time to decompress after one of their trips, could let themselves out when they were ready. Rufus was sulking over by the sliding doors and wouldn’t look at her, but she consoled herself with the fact that at least he hadn’t torn the place apart.

Viewing that as definite progress, she refused to let his displeasure make her feel guilty. She’d been taking her babies to local hospitals as part of the pet-therapy volunteer program for a little over four years now, and Rufus wasn’t ready to be turned loose upon an unsuspecting hospital. The idea wasn’t to have animals running wild, but rather to utilize pets as a means to cheer up patients awaiting surgery or—the ones she had a special affinity for—long-term care patients like the kids on the oncology ward. So until she could be certain Rufus would behave himself on a consistent basis, he’d just have to stay home.

But she was accustomed to having him think she was the greatest thing since the rawhide chew bone, and getting the continued cold shoulder from him was starting to punch little holes in her resolve. In order to keep herself from rewarding his bad attitude, which would no doubt set his burgeoning training back several giant steps, she strode into her bedroom and changed into her electric-blue bikini. She was a responsible pet owner no matter what He Who Would Not Be Named liked to say. So Rufus could just sulk.

But there was no reason she had to stick around to be tortured by it. She’d go take a swim.

A teenager she’d never seen before was rocketing from one end of the pool to the other when she let herself in through the gate several moments later. His form left a lot to be desired, and he was churning up a considerable amount of water, so she decided to give him time to wear himself out before sharing the pool with him. As she snapped her towel over a chaise lounge beneath the shade of the palm trees and made herself comfortable on the cheery blue-and-white delft-patterned terry cloth, she observed his dogged laps. It wasn’t difficult to tell that something was definitely driving him. And she had to admit that all that anger or determination or whatever it was that propelled him was pretty darn compelling. Wryly deciding it almost made up for his lack of style, she applied sunblock while she watched him hack and kick his way through lap after laborious lap.

It became almost hypnotic after a while and she found herself yawning. Another lap and her eyes drifted closed.

The next thing she knew there was a shadow blocking the dappled rays that filtered through the palms. Shading her eyes, she peered up at a tall sun-limned, featureless phantom standing at the end of her lounge chair.

“Hey,” said a young male voice that sounded as if it were consciously striving to be cool. The phantom moved, dropping down onto the chaise next to her, where he turned into a long, lanky teen with slicked-back dark hair and pretty hazel-green eyes. He swiped his forearm over his dripping forehead as his gaze skittered from her breasts to her bare stomach to her legs and back up to her face.

“Hey, yourself,” she said, and cast an inward sigh, waiting for the tired pickup line that was sure to come.

“Where are your dogs?” he asked, glancing around as if expecting them to pop out of the neatly maintained grounds surrounding the pool enclosure. “You shoulda brought ’em down with you.”

It was the last thing she’d expected, and she flashed him a grin that was purely spontaneous. All right, a fellow dog lover—not an adolescent jerk, at all. You gotta love a male with the good taste to be a cut above the average Joe. “No pets allowed at the pool, I’m afraid,” she said, and gave the teenager a discreet once-over.

He was going to be a big man someday, but he hadn’t yet bulked up beneath his lightly tanned skin. He still had that slightly undernourished, awkward look some still-growing adolescents got. She’d bet the bank, though, that one day he’d fill out to be an all-around hunk. And given those poet’s eyes, she imagined that even now he drove the little girls wild.

She stuck out her hand. “I’m Carly, by the way.”

He got tangled up in the towel he’d wrapped around himself as he leaned forward to thrust out his own hand. Dull color promptly stained his cheeks, but he extricated himself with a minimum of fuss and shook her hand firmly. “Niklaus.”

“Nice to meet you, Niklaus. How do you know about my dogs?”

“I saw you with them on your balcony last night.”

At midnight? “From where, toots? The courtyard?”

“Nah.” He jerked his chin in the general direction of her building. “I’m your new neighbor.”

“No kidding?” She regarded him with interest. “I didn’t realize any of the units were even on the market.”

“They probably aren’t. I just moved in next door with my uncle. You might know him.” His voice changed, taking on a slightly resentful tone. “Wolfgang Jones.”

“That’s your uncle?” The Iceberg had a family? That was so…human. And here she’d thought he’d sprung fully grown from the loins of Medusa.

Niklaus nodded and Carly said, “When did that happen?”

“My grandma brought me to Vegas earlier this week, but we stayed at Circus Circus so I didn’t move in until last night.”

And Wolfgang had had the balls to accuse her of being irresponsible? She would never leave a kid all by himself in a strange apartment on his first night in residence. She had half a mind to hunt him down and tell him so, too.

Fortunately she still had a few working brain cells in the remaining half. But she couldn’t prevent herself from asking, “Where’s your uncle now?”

“Dr. Gloom?” Niklaus shrugged. “Upstairs, I guess. Probably starching his shorts.”

She grinned. Oh God, she and this kid were going to get along so fine. It was almost too bad that he wasn’t twenty years older—or that she wasn’t into cradle robbing. Otherwise she might have found her soul mate.

Still, she supposed it wasn’t copacetic to foment rebellion between relatives, so she reeled in her goofy grin and slapped her best I-gotta-be-the-adult-here expression in its place. “Now, now, I’m sure he’s a perfectly nice person,” she said, and even managed to sound as if she meant it. If you like the I’ve-got-a-plan-for-everything—right-down-to-my-own-orgasm—type.

The latter thought kicked the slats out from under her amusement, since it brought with it a much too vivid recollection of the morning’s events. That was a memory she had no desire to revisit.

It also had nothing to do with Niklaus, who was looking at her with the sort of hesitant longing she usually associated with her rescued pets.

There was just no way she could turn her back on that. She’d never been able to with the furry contingent, and she didn’t have the heart to ignore the teen’s obvious need for a friend, either. The poor kid was a stranger in Las Vegas, and within the next couple of days would probably have to contend with being the new kid on the block at a new school, as well. And as if that weren’t dreary enough, he was saddled with the most humorless male in the known universe as his guardian. Who on earth had thought that was a good idea?

She rose to her feet and looked down at the teen. “I’m going to go take a quick dip,” she informed him. “Then if you want to, you’re welcome to come upstairs to meet my babies.”

“You’ve got kids?”

She laughed. “No. That’s what I call my menagerie. And as I said, you’re welcome to come on up and meet them.”

A killer smile flashed across his face and he hopped to his feet with touching alacrity. “Sweet!”

“You think so, huh?” She smiled at his eagerness. Then a thought popped into her mind, and her smiled widened. “So, tell me. Do you happen to speak German?”

“Yeah, sure. Grandma’s from Bavaria, and both Mom and Uncle Wolf speak it so I learned as a little kid. Why?”

“Because you’ve just been enlisted to help me train Rufus.”

They looked at each other. Then, as one, they grinned and said in unison, “Sweet!”

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.