He cocked his head, but at least he was listening. And why not? Lunatics were always fascinating.

“I assure you, I’m only a bit of a nutter,” she said breathlessly. “Absolutely harmless. You don’t have to worry about violence.”

“Only that I have a stalker.”

“Not the first one, I daresay. A man like you…” She paused and tried not to choke. “A god.”

The hard look in his eyes indicated he wasn’t easily swayed by flattery. “I don’t want to see you anywhere near me again. Got it?”

She got it. It was over. Fini. But still, she couldn’t give up. “I’m afraid that will be impossible.” She paused. “Until my new medication kicks in.”

The cleft in his chin deepened as he set his jaw. “What you’re doing is illegal.”

“And mortifying. You can’t imagine how humiliating it is to be in this position. Nothing is more painful than… unrequited love.” The last two words came out as a croak she hoped he’d attribute to adoration, because everything about him got her hackles up. His size, his good looks, but most of all, the arrogance that came from a lifetime of people kissing his taut butt just because he’d been born with natural talent.

He didn’t show even a flicker of sympathy. “If I catch sight of you again, I’m calling the cops.”

“I-I understand.” She was done. This had been a futile tactic from the beginning. Unless… She nodded at him with manufactured sympathy. “I understand how terrifying this must be to you.”

He leaned back ever so slightly on the heels of his cowboy boots. “I wouldn’t say that.”

“Rubbish.” Maybe she’d found the chink in his manly armor. “You’re terrified I might suddenly pop out at you when you’re walking down the street. That I’ll be armed with one of those odious handguns you insane Americans insist on carrying around like chewing gum.” And like the Glock in her car trunk. “I’d never do that. Good gracious, no! But you don’t know that for certain, and how would you defend yourself?”

“I think I could handle you,” he said dryly.

She managed to look puzzled. “If that’s true, why would you be concerned about a harmless twit like myself following you around for a bit?”

He no longer seemed quite so laid-back. “Because I don’t like it.”

She tried to appear both sympathetic and adoring. “So terrifying for you.”

“Stop saying that!”

“I understand. It’s a dreadful dilemma.”

His eyes flashed lethal golden sparks. “It’s not a dilemma at all. Stay the hell away from me.”

She forged on. “Yes, well, as I believe I mentioned, it’s not that easy-not until my medication takes effect. The doctor has assured me it won’t be much longer. But until then, I’m quite helpless. Perhaps a compromise?”

“No compromise.”

“A week at the most. In the meantime, if you spot me, you’ll simply pretend I’m not around.” She brushed her hands together. “There. That’s done.”

No surprise. He wasn’t buying it. “I meant what I said about the cops.”

She twisted her hands, hoping the gesture didn’t look as theatrical as it felt. “I’ve heard terrible things about Chicago jails…”

“You should have thought about that before you started your stalking gig.”

It could be the stress of so many sleepless nights, or even a spike in her blood sugar from all the junk food. More likely it was the threat of losing everything she’d worked for. She dipped her head, slipped off her glasses, and dabbed at her dry cheeks with her knuckles, as if she’d started to cry, something she’d never do in a thousand years no matter how horrible things got. “I don’t want to go to jail,” she said on a sniff. “I’ve never even had a traffic ticket.” Now that was a lie, but she was an excellent driver, and the speed limits on the city’s expressways were moronically slow. “What do you think will happen to me there?”

“I don’t know, and I don’t care.”

Despite his words, she detected a hesitation, and she dove for it. “Yes, well, you might as well call them now because no matter how hard I try, I know I won’t be able to help myself.”

“Don’t say that.”

Did he sound the slightest bit rattled? She managed another sniff and dabbed at her eyes with her index finger. “I wouldn’t wish the pain of this kind of love on anyone.”

“It’s not love,” he said with disgust. “It’s craziness.”

“I know. It’s absurd.” She swiped her perfectly dry nostrils with the back of her hand. “How can you possibly love someone whom you only met today?”

“You can’t.”

Until he threw her out, she wasn’t giving up. “Couldn’t you reconsider? Only for one week until the new pills restore my sanity?”

“No.”

“Of course you couldn’t. And I do want the best for you. I can’t tolerate the idea of you cowering in fear, afraid to leave your condo because you’re terrified you’ll see me.”

“I’m not going to be terrified-”

“I’m sure I’ll be able to survive jail. How long do you think they’ll keep me? Is there the slightest chance you would- Never mind. It’s too much to ask you to visit me while I’m behind bars.”

“You’re completely nuts.”

“Oh, yes. But harmless. And remember, it’s only temporary.” She’d gotten this far. She might as well go for broke. “If you were physically attracted to me… You’re not, are you?”

“No!”

His outrage was reassuring. “Then I won’t offer to… sexually satisfy you.” Gleckkk! She was going to wash her mouth out with soap when this was over.

“Get some help,” he snarled.

He went to the door and called in his goon. A few minutes later, she was on the street.

Now what?

2

Cooper had met a lot of loonies during his career, but that lady lived in a bat house all her own, complete with blacked-out windows and a big ol’ hole in the roof. One thing he’d say for her, though… She was straightforward. She’d laid her crazy right out on the front lawn for all the world to see.

He needed to get back down to the club floor, but he stayed behind his desk. After two months in this business, his office still smelled strange-not of rubber and sweat-not of specially formulated pain compounds and chlorine-doused whirlpools. Instead, it carried the scent of paper and paint, of new upholstery and a computer printer cartridge. But as much as he missed those familiar smells, he wouldn’t let himself hold on to the past. Opening Spiral was his announcement to the world that he’d never become one more washed-up jock with nothing better to do than seal himself in an announcer’s booth and broadcast bullshit about plays he could no longer pull off himself. The nightclub business was his new turf, and Spiral was only the beginning. He intended to build himself an empire, and just like in football, failure wasn’t an option.

He turned back to his computer and Googled “Esmerelda Crocker.” Her green card had given her age as thirty-three, but she looked a lot younger. He flipped from one screen to the next and eventually found her name on an alumni list for London’s Middlesex University. No other information. And no photo to show that crazy-wide mouth, firm jaw, or those wily eyes almost the exact color of a blueberry Pop-Tart-eyes that demanded he jump into her crackpot world right along with her.

If he hadn’t been so pissed, he would have laughed at her offer to “sexually satisfy” him. He didn’t need any more crazy in his life. Besides, after eight years of seeing his name plastered all over the tabloids, he was on temporary hiatus from women.

He hadn’t intended to turn into a cliché-one more NFL quarterback with a beautiful Hollywood actress in his bed. He wouldn’t have, either, if he’d stuck with a single actress. But after that first relationship had fizzled due to conflicting schedules, too much publicity, and infidelity-hers, not his-he’d met another beautiful A-lister. And then another. And then one more after that.

In his defense, all four of those relationships had been with stars who were brainy as well as beautiful. He liked whip-smart, successful women who also happened to be heart-stoppingly beautiful. What man didn’t? And being an NFL quarterback gave him access to the cream of the crop. Now, however, all his laser-sharp attention was focused on growing a nightclub empire. Women brought too much drama, too much press, and too damned much perfume. If he was quarterback of the world, he’d outlaw the stuff. Women should smell like women.

Esmerelda hadn’t worn perfume, and with all her disguises, who knew what her hair looked like? But there was that interesting face and those shapely legs. Still, the whole episode was making the back of his neck itch exactly the same way it did right before he got blindsided.


***

Piper jerked off her wig and drove home from Spiral with one desperate scheme after another churning through her head. A different approach. A better disguise. But it wouldn’t take him long to see through both. If she didn’t come up with something quickly, she’d be on a one-way street back to a computer job in a cubicle, something she couldn’t abide thinking about. Her last job as a digital strategist for a local chain of auto parts stores had been interesting at first, but after the second year, boredom had begun to set in, and by the fifth year, she’d found herself dreaming of a zombie apocalypse.

Her father had denied her the career she was born for, working with him at Dove Investigations-or even working with one of his competitors, something he’d made certain didn’t happen. Everybody in the country knew him, and Duke Dove had put out the word. “Anybody who hires my little girl to do any investigating that doesn’t involve stayin’ at her computer is gonna have to deal with me.”

But Duke was dead, and she owned the business he hadn’t wanted her to have-the business she’d paid far too much to buy from her stepmother only to discover too late that Duke’s client list was woefully out-of-date, and her stepmother’s bookkeeping practices were, if not outright fraudulent, the next closest thing. Piper had bought little more than a name, but the name was precious to her, and she wouldn’t give up without the fight of her life.

By the time she fell asleep, she’d made up her mind. She was going to stick with barmy Esmerelda Crocker and hope for the best.

The next morning, she showered, slipped into jeans and a T-shirt, and ran her fingers through her wet hair-no need for a wig. After she’d grabbed her coffee and a slice of three-day-old pizza, she set out.

The second-story condo she couldn’t afford to keep much longer was part of a five-unit brownstone in the city’s Andersonville neighborhood and boasted its own private parking space. As she slung her bag into her car along with her travel mug and the cold pizza slice, she wondered whether she’d be in jail by the end of the day. It was a risk she had to take.

Graham occupied the top two floors of a converted, four-story former seminary on a tree-lined street in Lakeview. Lakeview wasn’t Chicago’s most expensive neighborhood, but it was one of its best with great shops, trendy restaurants, a stretch of shoreline, and Wrigley Field. She wedged her Sonata into a semi-parking spot across from a postage-stamp park and took a few bites of the pizza and a swig of coffee. Her days of treating herself to a morning Starbucks were gone.

She tugged on a blade of her real hair-short, choppy, the same chestnut brown Duke said her mother’s had been, before she’d been murdered in a sidewalk robbery. Piper was four at the time and barely remembered her, but the effect of her mother’s violent death had set the course of Piper’s upbringing.

Duke had raised Piper to be tough. He’d enrolled her in one self-defense class after another, along with teaching her every trick he’d picked up over the years. He’d taught her to be strong, and even when she was very young, he’d freeze her out if she cried. He’d rewarded her toughness by teaching her to shoot and taking her to ball games, by letting her go with him on trips to the corner bar and laughing when she cussed. But no tears. No whining. And no visits to play at a friend’s house until he’d run a background check.

That was the bewildering, contradictory part of her upbringing. At the same time he demanded strength from her, he was also maddeningly overprotective-a constant source of conflict between them as she’d grown older and he’d planted himself firmly between her and her ambitions. He’d raised her to be as tough as he was and then tried to wrap her in cotton.

She wadded up the rest of her pizza and shoved it in the overstuffed litterbag hanging from her dashboard. She’d begged Duke to let her join him, but he’d refused.

“This business is too dirty for a woman. I didn’t spend a fortune on your education to see you staked out in a car photographing some asshole cheating on his wife.”