1

      ALEXIS MATHESON WAS dreaming of Christmas cookies and homemade candies and stressing over how her candy thermometer was not working properly—when the scenario changed abruptly.

      Suddenly, she was wrapped in a shadow lover’s arms, enjoying a sizzling kiss that was hotter than baking peanut brittle and she hazily wondered who her dream lover was and why she was torturing herself with a sex dream when she’d sternly declared a moratorium on sex until she got her head on straight.

      Ugh. Plainly her brain thought that might take forever.

      Ah, dream lover was pretty good with his tongue and hands! Now, why had she determined sex was a bad idea for the time being?

      She moaned, wrapping her arms around her lover, sighing with pleasure as his mouth blazed a trail down the column of her neck, nipping and nibbling and sending goose bumps tripping down her skin.

      Everything felt so real and yet dreamy at the same time. Hell, if dream lovers were this entertaining, maybe she could give up wide-awake sex for good.

      Ha! Very funny.

      She groaned again as a strong hand found her breast and squeezed and suddenly her eyes fluttered open at the realization that something didn’t feel right—no, it felt fabulous, but that’s not what she meant—she no longer knew if what was happening was only in her mind.

      Before her sleep-fuzzed brain could fully react, she was being kissed again and, damn, it was good.

      But wait a minute...she’d gone to bed alone!

      An instant shot of adrenaline chased away her sleepy enjoyment of Mr. Talented Stranger and replaced it with a holy-shit-I’m-about-to-become-a-statistic jolt of awareness and she shoved at the big body covering her, landing a strategic hit to his groin area as she kicked.

      He grunted in pain and rolled to his side, doubled over.

      Every serial-killer book and movie she’d ever happened to read or see jumped to mind as she used her feet to shove the stranger’s massive body right off the edge of her bed and onto the floor.

      “This bed is already occupado!”

      Once she heard the thump of his body landing on her carpet, she sprang from the bed and flicked on the light, snatching the first thing she could grab, and hurled it at the stranger when he stumbled to his feet. Oh, good Lord, he was naked.

      He dodged the shoe, yelling, “What are you doing? Stop throwing shit! You’ve already mashed my nuts, lady!” as he shielded his frank and beans and blinked against the light like a mole squinting at the sun. “Watch it!”

      “No, you watch it, this is my room and, more important, my bed. You have ten seconds to tell me who you are before you get a Martha Stewart smackdown.” She hefted the book in her hands with the smiling domestic goddess gracing the hardcover to show she meant business, but the sturdy, dark-haired guy looked strong enough to take a hit without breaking a sweat. Even under the circumstances, Alexis would’ve had to have been blind to miss the fact that her intruder had a body that was worth taking a second look at. Go figure. A sexy intruder. Why did she have the worst luck with men?

      “Calm down,” he grumbled. “Put the damn book down, you crazy lunatic.”

      “Wrong answer,” Alexis retorted and heaved the book straight at his head.

      He tried to evade the projectile, but it caught him on the shoulder. “Holy hell! That hurt!” he yelled and then snatched up his jeans and jerked them on even as he stumbled/ran from her room, but not before she caught a quick glimpse of a near-perfect ass. What a tragedy, she thought before leaping after him, determined to find out who’d had the gall to climb into her bed, but her foot caught on her suitcase and she went hard to the floor, twisting her ankle in the process.

      She’d once been accused of having an obsessive type of laser focus when it suited her, which was why instead of babying her foot, she continued to run after the stranger with the hot ass as he skidded into her brother, Erik’s, room.

      “Your sister’s crazy, man,” the guy said, glowering in Alexis’s direction just as Alexis realized that Erik was home and she’d offered her best friend, Emma, her brother’s bed. Oh crud. Stopping short, Alexis registered confusion all around, which under different circumstances might’ve been funny as hell, but there was nothing funny about the way her ankle was beginning to throb.

      “What the hell, Erik? Who is this?” she asked, wincing as her abused ankle started to really protest. What the hell had she done to her foot?

      Alexis shot a brief, apologetic look to Emma who was watching the situation unfold with wide eyes, the blankets tucked tightly beneath her arms as if trying to superglue the cloth to her body. Egad. Poor Emma. Alexis was going to have to bake an extra batch of lemon bars for this little snafu.

      Erik, ever the peacemaker, stepped between Alexis and the man scowling hard enough to freeze his face that way, trying to be the voice of reason in this awkward situation. “Hey, hey,” he said when Alexis didn’t immediately back down.

      “Jesus, woman,” the man beside Erik said to Alexis, still miffed that she’d tried to neuter him with a donkey kick to the jewels. “I didn’t know you were in there. Give me a freakin’ break.”

      “What are you still doing here?” Erik said, gently pushing Alexis back to protect his friend.

      Alexis stepped back and winced as a jolt of fresh pain took her breath away. “Ow,” she gasped, immediately lifting her foot to relieve the pressure. “I think I hurt my ankle,” she admitted with an irritated glower when Erik frowned with concern. “And we’re here because my memory sucks. I drove to pick up Em, but we decided to take her SUV from her place. Then just as we headed down I-25, I realized I left my laptop charger and we swung back because there wasn’t going to be time to get a new one once we got to Emma’s parents’ place. By the time we could leave again, they had closed parts of the interstate. We figured we’d wait until midmorning to leave. Roads should be clear then.”

      “So that’s why your car wasn’t in the driveway,” Erik surmised.

      “Yeah. I thought you were working,” Alexis huffed, moving past Erik to sit on the bed next to Emma so she could get a better look at her ankle.

      It was then that Emma whispered, “Lex, you don’t have any pants on.”

      Oh yeah, there was that. She hadn’t exactly been planning to entertain and most times she slept naked, so the fact that she had a shirt and underwear on was a bonus. She shrugged, more interested in the state of her ankle than anything else at the moment. “How different is this from my bathing suit? Crap, my ankle is really swelling,” she muttered, momentarily forgetting about the guy, her brother and the whole shebang because holy hell, that smarts!

      But apparently someone else was still holding a grudge because Stranger with the Sexy Ass piped in with, “She punched me and then threw a shoe at me.”

      “You scared the crap out of me,” Alexis said with a glare. As if he had any room to bitch—if he hadn’t been in her bed, she wouldn’t have had to defend herself. And she wasn’t even going to mention how Grabby McGrabbyhands had been all over her—she wasn’t in the mood to clean up a massacre. As even-headed as Erik was, he might take exception to the fact that his friend had been touchy-feely in his supposed sleep.

      “Okay, okay.” Erik held his hands up, obviously bone tired and not in the mood to deal with this nonsense all night. “Let’s all just calm down. This was a big misunderstanding.