“Obb-viously.” She wished she could choke the son of a bitch with his Spiral lanyard.

He waved her through into the club’s luxurious black-and-bronze interior.

She’d never liked the club scene, not even when she was in her early twenties. All that purposeful merriment made her feel somehow apart, disconnected. But this was business, and Spiral, with its megacelebrity owner, was no ordinary dance club. Two levels of smart design allowed for a great dance floor but also places to talk or troll for hookups without having to scream over the music. The movable leather banquettes and the more private nooks with their softly illuminated, cube-shaped cocktail tables were already filled with the Thursday-night crowd. Tonight’s DJ spun from a booth perched above a dance floor where muted colors blended and reformed like horny amoebae.

She bought her one drink of the night, a six-dollar Sprite, at the central bar. Over it, a suspended ceiling of LED rods hovered like a golden UFO. She watched the bartender for a while, then made her way through the crowd to a recess between a pair of icicle-shaped bronze wall sconces, where she planned to observe the host as soon as he appeared.

A skinny guy with waxed hair and a bottle of Miller Lite stepped in front of her and blocked her view. “I’m not feeling good. I think I’m missing some vitamin U.”

“Get lost.”

He looked so hurt.

“Hold on,” she said with a sigh.

His expression was pathetically hopeful. She adjusted her glasses and said, more kindly, “Most of the pickup lines you find on the Internet are cheesy. You’d do better if you’d just say hi.”

“You for real?”

“Only a suggestion.”

He curled his lip at her. “Bitch.”

So much for trying to be nice.

The guy went off in search of easier prey. She took a sip of Sprite. Torpedo Head had exchanged his door manager position for bouncer duty. His specialty seemed to be chatting up leggy blondes.

The club’s VIP lounge was located in an open mezzanine. She scanned what she could see of it for her quarry, but he wasn’t visible among the guests sitting near the bronze railing. She needed to get up there, but a blond bulldog of a bouncer had been stationed at the bottom to keep out the riffraff, which, unfortunately, included her. Frustrated, she worked her way through the well-heeled throng to the other side. And that’s when she spotted him.

Even in a crowd, Cooper Graham stood out like a beacon in a candle factory. He was ridiculously masculine. Beyond ridiculous. He was the Holy Grail of men, with thick brown hair the color of burnt toast drizzled in honey. He had a square jaw, broad shoulders, and a cleft in his chin that was such a cliché he should have been embarrassed. He wore his customary uniform: perfectly fitted button-down shirt, jeans, and cowboy boots. On most people, cowboy boots in Chicago were an affectation, but he’d been born and raised on an Oklahoma ranch. Still, she didn’t like the boots; the long, muscular legs rising above them; or-as a lifelong Chicago Bears fan-the team he’d played for. Piper had to work hard for every penny, unlike this arrogant, egotistical, overly privileged ex-Stars quarterback and his stable of movie star girlfriends.

She’d been following him for nearly a week, and he’d been on the floor of his nightclub every night it was open, but she doubted that would last for long. Celebrity nightclub owners tended to fade away under the grind of real work.

Graham was doing the rounds-slapping men on the back and flirting with the women who were lined up around him like jets on the runways at O’Hare. She didn’t like judging other members of her sex, but that was part of her job now, and none of these girls looked as though they were future CEOs-too much hair swinging, eye batting, and boob thrusting. Watching them made her grateful that she had zero desire to hook up with anyone right now. All she cared about was her job.

The crowd surrounding him was growing. She looked around for a bouncer, but the only ones she spotted were busily engaged in deep conversations with the female guests. So far, no client had hired her as a bodyguard, but she’d taken a lengthy training course, and she could see that Graham’s lack of security was irresponsible, although it might let her get closer to him.

Graham seemed at ease despite the crush, but she noticed him occasionally scanning the crowd, as if he were looking for a pass receiver. His gaze flicked in her direction, then moved on.

As the crowd around him approached a dangerous level, he somehow managed to work himself free and head up the stairs toward the mezzanine and the VIP lounge. Now that she was inside the club, her inability to follow him there was maddening.

She made her way to the ladies’ room, where she heard nothing more interesting than gossip about who’d made it as far as the fur-covered bed he reportedly kept in his office. Someone touched her shoulder as she came out. Torpedo Head.

Like the other bouncers, he wore dark pants and a white dress shirt that must have been specially tailored to fit the thick neck that marked both him and his fellow goons as former football players. “You have to come with me.”

Other than offering Miller Lite Boy some much-needed advice on improving his pickup game, she hadn’t done anything to draw attention to herself, and she didn’t like this. Rearing back on her unwieldy heels, she brought out her fake accent. “Oh, gawd. Why?”

“ID check.”

“Crikey! I already showed it at the bloody door. And I very much appreciate the compliment, but I’m thirty-three years old.”

“Spot-check.”

This was no spot-check. Something was up. She was about to refuse more forcefully when he jerked his big head toward the steps that led to the mezzanine, inadvertently giving her the chance she’d been waiting for to get closer to the VIP lounge. She gave him a blazing smile. “Right, then. Let’s move along and settle this.”

He grunted.

At the top of the mezzanine steps, a pair of bronzed pillars marked the entrance to VIP, but as they got close, he grabbed her arm and herded her around a corner and through a plain door off to the left.

It was an unimpressive office where folding wooden shutters covered the lower half of a pair of windows, and a wall-mounted television silently broadcast ESPN. An iMac sat on a streamlined desk across from a two-cushion couch. Above it was a framed Chicago Stars jersey with the name Graham on the back. The Stars aqua-and-gold team colors had always looked girly to her in comparison to her beloved Chicago Bears no-nonsense navy blue and orange.

“Wait here.” The goon stepped out and closed the door behind him.

VIP was only a few steps away. She counted to twenty and reached for the doorknob.

The door swung open in her face. She tripped backward, focusing so hard on keeping her balance that the door shut again before she realized who’d walked in. A whoosh roared through her ears.

Cooper Graham himself.

She felt as if she’d been struck by a supernova, and she hated that. After following him for six days, she should have been better prepared. But seeing him from a distance and being ten feet away were completely different experiences.

He’d sucked up all the air in the room, and the good ol’ boy grin he turned on his customers was nowhere in sight. This was his face at the line of scrimmage. One thing was certain. If Graham wanted to see her, this wasn’t about a simple ID check.

She mentally ticked off the possible reasons she’d been detained and decided she hated every one of them. But she told herself Graham wasn’t the only one in the room who knew how to fake a play, and unlike him, she had everything at stake.

Even though her heart was pounding so hard she was afraid he’d see, she tried to look as if this was the thrill of her lifetime. “Brilliant! I say, I’m quite gobsmacked.”

His eyes, a shade darker than his burnt-toast hair, swept over her, taking in her long wig, pushed-up breasts, and okay legs. She wasn’t a beauty, but she wasn’t a dog, either, and if she had a shred of vanity, she would have been demoralized by his obvious disdain. But she didn’t, and she wasn’t.

She dug her toe-numbing heels into the carpet as he came farther into the office. His thick brown hair was a little disheveled. Not fashionably rumpled-more the dishevelment of a man who couldn’t be bothered with bimonthly haircuts or a shelf full of grooming products.

Stay calm. Keep your focus.

Without warning, he snatched her clutch away, and she gave a little hiss of dismay. “Bugger!” she cried, a few beats too late.

She stared at his oversize hands-ten inches from thumb to little finger. She knew this because she did her homework. Just as she knew those big hands had thrown more than three hundred touchdowns. The same hands digging in her clutch and pulling out her fake green card.

“Esmerelda Crocker?”

A good investigator had to improvise, and the more detail she could give, the more convincing she’d be. “I go by Esme. Lady Esme, actually. Esmerelda is a family name.”

“Is that so.” His voice rolled from his lips like deep water over a parched Oklahoma prairie.

She gave a shaky nod. “Passed down through the generations to honor the second wife of the fifth Earl of Conundrum. Died in childbirth, the poor cow.”

“My condolences.” He looked inside again. “No credit cards?”

“They’re so vulgar, don’t you think?”

“Money’s never vulgar,” the cowboy drawled.

“How very American of you.”

He began rummaging in her clutch again, something that didn’t take long, since she’d left her wallet safely stashed in her car-a wallet that held her fresh new private investigator’s license as well as half a dozen business cards.

DOVE INVESTIGATIONS

Est. 1958

Truth Brings Peace

The original business cards had read: “Truth Brings Piece.” Her grandfather had been a brilliant investigator, but a lousy speller.

Graham smelled like money and fame, not that she could exactly describe what either one smelled like, but she knew it when she sniffed it, the same way she knew that the future of her business depended on what happened next. She pulled in the few molecules of air his presence hadn’t already burned up. “I don’t really mind you mucking about in there like that, but I am curious what you’re looking for.”

He shoved the clutch back at her. “Something that’ll explain why you’ve been following me.”

She’d been so careful! Her mind raced. How had she given herself away? What rookie mistake had she made that had sunk her? All her hard work was for nothing-sleeping in her car, living on junk food, peeing into the Tinkle Belle, and-worst of all-spending her life savings buying Dove Investigations from her cheating, detestable stepmother. Dove Investigations-the detective agency her grandfather had founded, her father had built, and the one that would have been hers from birth if her father hadn’t been so bullheaded. Every sacrifice she’d made would be useless. She’d be forced back to life in a cubicle, right along with having to live with the knowledge that a pampered jock like Cooper Graham had gotten the best of her.

Acid churned in the pit of her stomach. She arranged her forehead in a confused frown. “Following you?”

He stood silhouetted against the framed Chicago Stars jersey displayed on the wall behind him. His blue, button-down shirt made his already formidable shoulders look even wider, and the rolled-up sleeves showcased the lean muscles of his lower arms. The expert fit of his dark jeans-neither too tight nor too loose-exhibited the long, powerful legs that had been designed by God to be steady, strong, and quick-much to the disadvantage of her Chicago Bears.

His gaze was as grim as an Illinois winter. “I’ve seen you parked outside my condo, following me to my gym, to here. And I want to know why.”

She’d thought she was being so inventive with all her disguises. How had he managed to see through them? Denial would be futile. She sank onto the couch and tried to think.

He waited. Arms folded. Standing on the sidelines watching the enemy’s offense fall apart.

“Well…” She swallowed. Looked up at him. “The fact is…” She released her breath in a whoosh. “I’m your stalker.”

“Stalker?”

A rush of adrenaline spread through her. She wouldn’t go down without a fight, and she shot up from the couch. “Not a dangerous one. Lord, no. Merely obsessed.”

“With me.” A statement, not a question. He’d been here before.

“I don’t make a habit of stalking people. This… quite got away from me, you see.” She didn’t know exactly how this tactic could save her, but she plunged on. “I’m not full-out barmy, you understand. Just… mildly unhinged.”