Legs weak, she sank to the ground, feeling weird about being so close, but also like she didn’t want to leave him alone. No one should die alone. She set her back to the wall and brought her knees up to her chest to drop her head on them. She was a practical, pragmatic woman, she assured herself. She could survive this, she’d survived worse.

She could hear the sirens now, coming closer. Good. That was good. Then footsteps sounded from the front of the shop, heavy and steady. The cavalry.

Paramedics first, two of them, tall and sure, dropping to a crouch near the body. One of them reached out and checked the man beside her for a pulse, then shook his head at the other.

Behind the paramedics came a steady parade of other uniforms, filling the small pastry kitchen, making Bella dizzy with it all.

Or dizzier.

She answered questions numbly and eventually someone pushed a cup of water into her hands. One of Willow’s pretty teacups.

She answered more questions. No, she hadn’t heard any gunshots. No, she hadn’t recognized the victim, but then again, she had yet to see his face. No, she hadn’t noticed anything out of the ordinary, other than a noise that she’d barely even registered much less investigated… God.

How could she have not have actually opened the door when she’d heard that odd scraping sound?

After the endless questions, she was finally left alone in the kitchen, by herself in the sea of controlled chaos. She backed to the far wall, attempting to be as unobtrusive as possible. Her legs were still wobbling, so she sank down the wall to sit on the floor, mind wandering.

She wished she’d never gotten out of her bed.

Correction: Tall, Dark and Drop-dead Sexy’s bed.

If she’d only broken her own protocol and stayed with him, then she wouldn’t be here now. And she might have, if she hadn’t been so surprised at how badly she hadn’t wanted to leave his bed.

That didn’t happen often-hell, who was she kidding-sex didn’t happen for her often, and certainly not during Eight Dates in Eight Days. She cursed Willow for talking her into doing it, but what was done was done. Besides, it wasn’t as if she’d been finding her own dates since she’d put down anchor in Santa Rey.

Date one had been nice but a snooze.

Dates two through seven had been pleasant but nothing to write home about.

But date eight? Holy smokes. Date eight had blown all the other dates not only out of the water, but out of her head, as well. Jacob.

She knew him only as Jacob, since last names hadn’t been given. They’d agreed to meet at a new adventure facility on the outskirts of the county. He’d been there waiting for her, leaning against the building, tall and leanly muscled, with dark wavy hair that curled at his nape and assessing brown eyes that reminded her of warm, melted chocolate when he smiled, which he’d done at first sight of her.

Flattering, since though she was five foot seven and curvy, she knew she was merely average in looks. Average brown hair that was utterly uncontrollable. Average eyes. Average face…

In comparison, Jacob had been anything but average, oozing testosterone and sex appeal in a T-shirt and board shorts that emphasized his fit, hard body. Sin on a stick, that’s how he’d looked.

For the next two hours they’d bungee jumped, jungle canopied and Jet Skied, none of which were conducive to talking and opening up, but she hadn’t cared.

They’d flirted, they’d laughed, and she’d been in desperate need of both, even knowing he would be nothing but trouble to her heart. She’d had a blast, and afterward, her car had sputtered funny in the lot.

Jacob had said she had a bad spark plug and that he was a car junkie and had extras at his place. If she wanted, he could either follow her home to make sure she got there okay, and then return with the plug to fix her car, or she could follow him home and he’d fix it now.

She’d looked at him for a long moment, ultimately deciding that no guy who looked as good in that ridiculous bungee protective gear as he had-and he had looked good-could be a bad guy.

Naive? Not really. Just damn lonely. Besides, she assured herself, she knew just enough self-defense moves to feel comfortable. She could always knock his nuts into next week if she had to.

And then there was something else. He had that air of undeniable control, that raw male power radiating from him that made her feel safe in his presence. Safe from harm, but not necessarily safe from losing her mind over him. She might not know his last name or what he did for a living, but she knew she wanted him.

So she’d followed him home.

She’d called her own number and left a message.

“If anything has happened to me, check with Jacob, sexy hunk, and mystery date number eight.”

But nothing had happened to her that she hadn’t initiated.

He’d changed her spark plug. And there on his porch, she’d given him what she’d intended as a simple good-night peck.

He’d returned it.

Then they’d both gone still for one beat, their eyes locked in surprise. And the next thing she’d known, she’d been trying to climb up his perfect body.

And she meant perfect, from the very tips of his dark, silky hair all the way down to his toes and every single spot in between. Just thinking about it gave her a hot flash.

He’d actually resisted.

The thought made her want to smile now. He’d really tried hard to hold back, murmuring sexily against her mouth that there was no need to rush things, they could go out again sometime. Sometime.

She’d lived her life doing “sometime,” being laid-back and easygoing, not keeping track of anything, much less something that mattered.

For once she hadn’t wanted sometime, she’d wanted right then. She’d needed right then. It’d been so long, she’d been taking care of her own needs for so damn long…

Startling her out of her own thoughts, there was new movement outside the pastry shop as the ME was finally ready to have the body removed. Once again, Bella set her head down on her knees, feeling a wave of emotion for whoever the guy had been, for his family, for whoever would grieve for him.

A pair of men’s shoes appeared in front of her, topped by faded Levi’s, and she closed her eyes, not up for more unanswerable questions. She heard a rustle and knew the owner of said shoes and jeans had just crouched in front of her.

When she peeked, she saw long legs flexing as he set his elbows on his thighs and waited on her.

He finally spoke. “You okay?”

Wait a minute. She knew that voice. It had coaxed shocking responses from her only last night, and she lifted her head, wondering if her mind was playing tricks on her.

Nope, it was Tall, Dark and Drop-dead Sexy, no longer wearing board shorts and a relaxed, easy grin.

Instead, he wore a light blue button-down that emphasized his lean, hard body, the one that had taken hers to heaven and back.

The man she’d told that she was moving to Siberia.

Oh, God.

He had a detective’s badge on his hip, and he was either carrying a gun on his other hip or was very happy to see her, which she sincerely doubted, given the expression on his face.

Gulp.

“Hey,” she whispered with a little smile.

He returned the little smile, his eyes warming, but he didn’t “hey” back.

Yeah.

She’d had it right last night. She was in trouble with this one.

Deep trouble.

2

DETECTIVE JACOB MADDEN looked into those jade-green eyes and thought Ah, hell. What had already been a really rough morning shifted into something else entirely, except he wasn’t sure exactly what.

Not only was he running on less than two hours of sleep, he was he looking into the face of the reason for that lack of sleep.

The sexiest reason he’d ever had…

And there hadn’t been a wink of sleep involved. Nope, it’d been a physically active sleepover, and just thinking about it had certain parts of his anatomy twitching to life, though those certain parts should be dead after the night they’d had.

Christ.

He knew he shouldn’t have answered his damn cell this morning. He hadn’t been scheduled to work today. In fact, he’d planned on hanging out with his brother Cord, recently injured on one of Uncle Sam’s missions. Today’s physical therapy was to have involved the beach, with a net and a volleyball and some good-old-fashioned ass kicking.

But dead bodies always trumped days off, so here he was. It was what he did. Work.

His job took over much of his life, and it wasn’t as if he was petting puppies for a living. Murder and mayhem was his thing, and he was good at it.

But sometimes it got to him.

And in this case, she got to him. Bella, with those slay-me eyes, heart-stopping smile and tough-girl attitude, got to him.

“Jacob?” she whispered.

“Yeah.” They knew each other’s first names, that they both liked adventure and seafood and that they had physical chemistry in shocking spades. He’d held her, he’d touched her. Hell, he’d had his mouth on every inch of her.

He knew he liked her.

A lot.

That had been the biggest surprise, he thought, considering the fact that the guys at the P.D. had signed him up for the date in the first place. As soon as he’d realized he’d been set up, he’d canceled out his singles club profile, but there’d already been one date planned and it’d been too late to cancel on her. Bella.

He wasn’t sorry. Or he hadn’t been until she’d walked away sometime before dawn. He’d told himself that had been for the best and, considering her line about moving to Siberia, had figured he’d never see her again.

And yet here she sat, in the middle of his crime scene, looking anxious and stressed. He’d never been able to walk away from a perfect stranger, much less a woman he’d had panting and coming beneath him, so with a sigh, he reached for her hand. “Bella.”

Her fingers, icy cold, gripped his. In complete contrast, she kept her voice even. Guts. She had guts.

“I have a little problem, don’t I?” she asked.

He found his lips curving slightly. “Little bit, yeah.”

Letting out a long breath, she pulled her hair out of its messy ponytail. Wild waves immediately fell in her face. “I tend to do that, you know,” she said, trying to corral the hair back into the ponytail holder. “Walk into problems.”

Shit, he did not want to know this. “Define ‘problems.’”

She blew out another breath.

“Bella.” He waited until she leveled him with those eyes. “Dead-people problems?”

“Oh, my God. No.” She rubbed her temples. “I really should have stayed in Cabo. That’s where I was before this. The kayaking was good, and I was learning how to make the most amazing strawberry-and-honey friand-”

“Bella, about the dead-people problems.”

“Right. Sorry. I tend to talk when I find gunshot victims.”

“Again,” he said carefully. “Does this happen often?”

Her gaze met his. “You’re a cop.”

“Detective.”

She nodded. “I guessed cop or military last night.”

She’d made him? “How?”

She sent him a wry smile. “Have you met you? You give off this I’m relaxed vibe but really you’re totally alert, taking in everything around you.”

He took another deep breath and let it out slowly, considering his response. Last night she’d been wearing strawberry lip gloss, her sweet, seductive lips full and curved in an open, easy smile. Her eyes had been warm and welcoming. This morning her lips were bare, and no less kissable for it, but she was breathing a little erratically, and the pulse at the base of her throat was racing. Dammit.

He’d been a cop since college, a detective the past five years, and he never, ever got used to the punch of empathy when dealing with a victim.

Question was, was she really the victim? “You work here at Edible Bliss.”

She nodded, her light brown wavy hair bouncing into her eyes again. Yesterday he’d loved that hair flying free around her when they’d been cuddled up on a Jet Ski, her arms wrapped tight around his middle.

Even later, that gorgeous hair had trailed down his body…

Don’t go there, man. “You’re the pastry chef,” he said.

Another nod. “My lone talent.”

He didn’t believe that. Last night might have been nothing more than a really great one-night stand, but he’d seen a lot of sides to her. She was adventurous as hell, tough as hell and sexy as hell.

She had layers, lots of them. No way was she just her job the way he was. “You found the victim on the stoop when you got to work,” he said, wanting to clarify.