"This won't help, Devon!" Lucky shouted to the closing elevator doors. She refused to meet his eyes as she punched the button for her floor.
He struggled with the security guards. "Let go of me. I'm leaving, I'm leaving." They didn't take his word for it, but pushed him through the revolving doors.
"If you come back, we'll call the police!" one shouted after him.
Lucky yelled back an obscenity, then stood glaring at the front of the building while pedestrians eddied around him. "Now what?" he muttered. What the hell did she mean by "I can't"?
* * *
Using the transmitter, Devon lowered the automatic garage door, then let herself into the condo through the connecting kitchen door. Once inside, she ran through the dim, silent rooms until she reached the living room, where she watched the street through the shutters until she was satisfied that Lucky Tyler hadn't followed her home. She wouldn't put it past him to try something like that. She'd driven home with one eye on the road and the other on her rearview mirror. The shock of seeing him standing at the edge of her desk this afternoon had affected her more than she wanted to admit. Usually adept at masking her feelings, she feared she hadn't been successful in hiding her reaction to his unexpected appearance. Several of her cohorts had noticed how rattled she was and had teased her about it when she returned to her office.
"Who's the hunk?"
"Nobody."
"Nobody?"
"Just a man I know."
"Someone out of your murky past, Devon?"
You could say it had been murky, she thought now. But the "past" had been as recent as last week. None of her coworkers would guess that.
Finally convinced he hadn't followed her home, she walked toward the back of her house, where the master suite was located. Shedding her skirt and blouse, she gazed longingly through the patio door toward the swimming pool. A swim would cool her off. She'd felt feverish ever since she'd looked up expecting to see the gofer's affable face, and instead had met Lucky Tyler's smoldering blue stare. Several strenuous laps would relax her. She was as jittery as a kitten, wondering when he would pop up next.
He would. She knew he would.
She stepped into a pair of skimpy swim trunks. After taking a towel from the lucite rack in the bathroom, she slid open the patio door and stepped out into her secluded backyard, almost completely taken up by the pool itself.
There was very little lawn to maintain, only the shrubbery that grew along the cedar privacy fence which let her indulge in semi-nude swimming. On the deck she had a gas grill and numerous potted plants. Because her days were spent mostly indoors, she enjoyed spending the evenings on her deck, tending the plants, even reading research material for her articles. Swimming laps in the pool was also an excellent form of exercise, and about the only one she liked. Dropping the towel onto a chaise, she dived into the deep end of the pool. The cooling waters closed over her. Serenely she glided along the bottom, swimming from one end to the other in one breath. Only her head cleared the surface in the shallow end, then, taking another deep breath, she executed a surface dive and went under again.
By the time she had swum several laps, her lungs, heart, and limbs felt exercised and were aching pleasurably from the exertion. Peeling her sodden hair back with both hands, she started up the steps in the shallow end. She walked across the deck, head down. Not until she almost stepped on his boots did she notice him. Then her head snapped up.
Lucky was sprawled in the patio chair beside the chaise. He was half reclining on his spine, his hands folded over his belt buckle, his long legs stretched far out in front of him, ankles crossed. Her towel was draped over one of his thighs. Beneath a shelf of tawny brows, his eyes were riveted on her bare breasts.
Rousing himself, he lifted his gaze to hers. "Towel?" he asked, extending it to her.
She snatched it from him and wound it around her bare torso. "What are you doing here? How did you get in?" She distinctly remembered checking to make sure all the doors were locked and bolted.
"I climbed over the fence. How high is that damn thing anyway? I landed hard. Think I threw my knee out. Old football injury."
His insouciance infuriated her. He acted as though jumping her eight-foot privacy fence was something he did every day at dusk. "You followed me home," she accused him.
"How else would I find out where you live? Since you sicced the guards on me, nobody at the newspaper was going to give me your address. You aren't listed in the telephone directory. I checked.
"See, Devon, the first time I checked the directory, I was looking for Mary Smith. There're dozens of those. But I thought I'd give Devon Haines a try. Sure enough, you aren't there." He ran a glance down her. "Is it heated?"
In the lavender glow of twilight, his eyes shone like twin blue lanterns. They were unsettling. In fact, she hadn't had a coherent thought since he had showed up at her office. The possible effects his reappearance could have on her life filled her with dread. What a fool she had been to lull herself into believing that she could come away unscathed from her earth-shattering experience with him.
Realizing that he was waiting for an answer to a question she couldn't remember, she said, "Pardon?"
"The pool. Is it heated?"
"Why?"
"Because you've got goose bumps as big as mosquito bites, and your lips are turning blue."
She pulled the towel tighter around her. "The air is chilly."