Only to get tangled in the hoops making up her skirt. She would have tumbled to the wood floor, making a racket that would have gotten them both killed, but he hauled her against his side. Suddenly, he was blinded as her skirt raised up like a damn flag, right over both of their heads.

Jerking the skirt down with one hand and holding her tight against him with the other, he made his awkward way toward the elevator, feeling her breathing down his neck the entire way. “I can save myself,” she said, her mouth to his ear.

Uh-huh. Right. He’d never imagined it coming to this, crawling on the floor, holding a bossy woman against him, praying for his life. Man, he was tired of this job. Of this city. Of his life.

If he lived-and he intended to live, thank you very much-he was ready, past ready, for a new venue. A few feet from the elevator he heard something behind him-or maybe it was just instincts-and one jerk of his head revealed Jimmy, climbing over the counter.

Forget being quiet, it was hustle time. With a last flying leap, he got them to the elevator. “Open, open, open,” he muttered, hitting the button over and over.

For the first time today, fate was actually on his side and the doors swished open. He tossed Pink into a corner, then followed, reaching for the close button and starting a new prayer.

Close, close, close.

“Who do you think you are? Robo Cop?” Pink snapped, fighting to untangle herself from her dress.

“Gotcha,” Jimmy cried, falling off the counter to the floor. But he recovered quickly and aimed his gun.

Kyle dove over Pink, covering her body with his.

The doors closed.

Several rounds hit the steel doors, leaving an indention, but not quite penetrating all the way through.

“Get off of me!” She shoved at him for emphasis.

Kyle, sweating, sank back against the wall. “You’re welcome.”

“What for?”

“For saving your life.”

She let out a shocked laugh. “Saving my life? You should be thanking me.”

“Why? I just saved your pretty little hide.” Kyle opened his eyes and for the first time leveled them right on her. She didn’t look terrified, or in shock, as he might have expected. Just angry.

“You saved my hide.” She laughed again, though it was a weak one. Sinking next to him, her head thunked back against the wall. “I saved yours, buster.”

“Buster?”

“Who do you think managed to track the gunman?” she asked. “Who found the elevator? Who-”

Another gunshot shut her up. Again, it didn’t penetrate, but the elevator jerked to a stop.

“What-”

“Terrific.” Kyle tipped his head back. The light for the second floor hadn’t come on. “We’re between floors. Sitting ducks.”

“Why is that?”

He looked at her again, taking in the lightest, most arresting golden eyes he’d ever seen, the most amazing matching gold hair tumbling past her shoulders and the impossibly useless pink dress. No use sugarcoating it. He told her the truth. “We’re dead.”

“Not until we stop breathing, we’re not.”

He couldn’t believe she wasn’t hysterical by now, or in shock. And in spite of the added complication she’d been, he felt a reluctant admiration for her. “Yeah, and we’re still breathing, aren’t we.”

“That’s right. Thanks to me.”

Okay, she was being a pain in the butt. But now that he’d had a moment to catch his breath, he had to admit she was a beautiful pain in the butt. As disastrous as the pink was on her, the dress did hang nicely from shoulder to low on her hips. And everything in between. For the first time, he saw everything in between. Her slender throat, her breasts thrust up and nearly out by the cut of the dress, her waist…she was pretty damn mouthwatering. He’d give her this, she wasn’t a hardship to look at it. “Move back.”

She’d come up to her knees, and was inspecting the control panel. “Why?”

“Because I said.”

She rolled her eyes and poked at the panel.

Another gunshot rang out, and directly in front of her the control panel buckled out toward her. Clearly not made of the same strength of steel as the doors, the bullet tore through.

Kyle grabbed her and tugged hard, so that she fell back against him.

The bullet hit the back wall, a foot above their heads.

Kyle’s momentum had tumbled them both down with a jerk. And though he attempted not to notice, the jarring movement nearly freed a breast.

Until she hit the floor, that is, because that’s when the skirt of the dress-buoyed by the hoops-once again flew up and over both their heads.

With a savage sound of frustration, she tugged both of them free and glared at him as if it was his fault she had horrible taste in clothes.

“Maybe now you’ll listen,” he said, gallantly swallowing a cocky I-told-you-so.

“The panel is dust,” she said, ignoring him. “We’ll have to figure out something else.”

She was cool as a cucumber. He’d never met a woman like her.

“I can handle this.”

“Really?” Her gold eyes looked him over. “Don’t take this wrong, but you’re not exactly doing a great job so far.” She turned away to inspect their surroundings. “Don’t worry,” she said in a patronizing voice that made his jaw clench. “I’ll figure this out for both of us. Just stay down so you don’t get hit.”

Not only was he in a tux, not only did he have a mobster trying to gun him down, he had to be stuck in an elevator with the most irritating woman on the planet. “That’s supposed to be my line.”

“What?” She was distracted as she studied the ceiling.

“The ‘don’t worry’ line. The ‘stay down’ line.”

She sent him a vague smile, then went back to inspecting their surroundings as if she knew what she was doing.

Clearly, she thought he was an idiot.

Kyle didn’t need Jimmy to kill him. This nutcase in pink was going to do it by stress alone.


ANNIE STUDIED the ceiling carefully, while wracking her brain, conjuring up every action-adventure film she’d ever seen-of which there were many-for inspiration. “There’s always a way out,” she said. “I just have to come up with it.”

The man behind her made a rude noise. “This whole thing could have been avoided if you’d only listened to me in the first place.”

“Oh, you mean when you told me to get out of here?” Hmm, the ceiling had several panels. Assuming she could reach one, she might be able to crawl out. She was good at escaping. She’d mastered it at age two, when she’d escaped into her mother’s royal closet to avoid eating her peas at dinner.

It had taken the entire army of Grunberg royal bodyguards to find her, as this had been before her mother’s death, when the closet had been the size of a house and filled with enough clothing to clothe everyone in their entire country.

By the time Annie had become a teenager, she’d gained enough skill that no one could find her when she wanted to be hidden, not even Natalia-her sister and closest friend. No one could find her but Amelia, but since Annie was convinced Amelia really was a fairy godmother in disguise, she didn’t count.

“If you’d stayed back,” the man said, “I could have tackled him and wrestled away the gun. Arrested him.”

She turned on him in surprise. Which was not an easy move wearing such a stupid dress. While the skirt might be too wide, the top sure wasn’t. When she turned, she threatened to expose more of herself than she planned on exposing.

Secret exhibitionist fantasy or not, she didn’t plan on showing off her wares to just anyone. Especially this man, with his intense eyes that gobbled her up and his tall, rangy body that could make a grown woman drool. Not that she was drooling.

No, not over him. He was too big, too…real.

Then what he’d just said sank in. “You’re a cop?”

“What did you think?”

She had no idea. Hmm…a cop. He’d dedicated his life to serving and protecting others. How irresistible was that?

But he was about to get married. To someone else. If they lived.

Not that he’d have been interested in her anyway. Well, not past the tiara and prestige anyway. She’d learned, hadn’t she? She should have had it down by now. No men. They wanted only one thing.

Well, make that two.

Sex and money.

Too bad she wasn’t any good at the first and until she came into her trust fund in another year, had a lot less of the second than anyone would believe.

“Maybe,” she said, “the other people in the store, the ones Jimmy sent outside, called the cops. Or maybe the shots alerted someone else in the building. Maybe there’s help on the way.”

“You’re awfully full of maybes.”

“Call me an eternal optimist.”

“In that dress, you’d have to be.”

She ground her teeth together. “This dress is hardly my fault-”

“Look, let’s just get ourselves out of here before Jimmy figures out how to find us.”

“Right.” She figured they’d have to go out the ceiling, crawl along whatever sort of system there was and-

“We’ll go out the ceiling.”

She stared at him. “That was going to be my idea.”

The look he shot her was nothing short of patronizing. “Right. I’ll go first, and-”

“I should go first.” She came up to him, startled anew by his sheer size. She refused to acknowledge how her head barely reached his wide shoulders, or the fact that his gaze dipped down to the barely there neckline of her dress, which she prayed had stayed in place. “I’ll need a boost.”

“Did you forget who’s the cop here?”

“So you’re one of those guys who have a problem with strong women-”

“I most definitely do not have a problem with women, strong or otherwise.”

His voice had gone low and dangerously soft. Sort of the way her father’s got when he was really close to losing his temper.

She had a feeling seeing this man blow his lid would be quite a show, but they didn’t have time for that right now.

A fact that was reiterated when another bullet hit the panel, again piercing the back wall above their heads and echoing throughout their small confines.

She put her hands over her ears at the same time he reached for her, covering her body with his.

“You have to stop doing that,” she said against his chest.

Against his really hard chest. She wondered if he had a smattering of dark hair across it or if he was smooth-

“Shut up. Please,” he begged. “Just shut up and let me rescue you.”

“I’ll rescue myself.”

“This is a nightmare. You’re a nightmare.”

She’d heard that before. “Just bend down and let me get on your shoulders. Do it quick before another bullet tears into us.”

He stared at her, then shook his head. “This isn’t some great adventure, you get that, right?”

“Of course-”

“Because I don’t think you realize that if Jimmy gets smart and gets upstairs before us, and your pretty little neck appears first, he’s not going to drop his gun, give you a hand, and help you out.”

“Well-”

“Unless, of course, you do exactly that.”

“What?”

“That.” His eyes remained on her face, but his voice changed again. Silky soft now. Very silky soft.

And she was clueless. “Do…what?”

“Pop a nipple out of your dress.”

3

BECAUSE HE COULDN’T handle looking at her for another second, Kyle turned his back. Counted to ten. Calculated complicated algebra problems in his head.

Didn’t matter. He could still picture her nipple poking out from the top of her dress. Perfectly rose-colored and perky. Perfect size for a man’s mouth.

He was a man. A typical red-blooded man. With sex now firmly on the brain despite the fact that they were on the run from a bad guy with a gun.

Damn it.

“Sorry.”

This from behind him, in that voice that somehow screamed innocence and sex all at the same time.

“I haven’t had my dress fitted yet,” she said amongst the rustling of her dress. “And-”

“It’s okay,” he said to the wall. No way could he look at her and hold eye contact. Nope, his gaze had a mind of its own suddenly, run by the boss between his legs, and it wouldn’t be able to hold back from taking another look to see if she’d managed to cover herself.

“I couldn’t wear a bra with it because-”

“It’s okay,” he repeated, and pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers, trying to think of something else, anything other than how absolutely delectable her nipple had been.

“Let’s get out of here,” he said in what he thought was a remarkably casual voice. “To do that, I need to concentrate. And to do that, I need you to be really, really quiet. Can you do that one little thing, do you think?” He risked a look at her.