ONE

      AH, FANTASY: the stuff of life.

      As he dressed for work, he looked in the mirror. Staring back at him was a handsome man around six feet four…

      No. That was way too tall.

      Staring back at him was a six-foot-one, devilishly handsome angular man with a surfer mop of sun-kissed hair and preternatural blue eyes, so intense that whenever any woman looked at him, she had to avert her eyes in embarrassment.

      Well, the eyes part was probably true.

      How about this?

      In the mirror, staring back at him was an angular face topped by a nest of curly, dark hair and a shy smile that made women swoon—so boyish and charming, yet masculine at the same time.

      He felt his lips turn into a smile, and he raked fingers through his own curly locks, which were on the thin side—not thinning, but not a lot of weight to the fibers. Pulling up on the knot of his tie, he eased it into the folds of his collar and felt the fabric: deluxe, heavy silk handpainted with an array of colors that would go with almost anything randomly chosen from his closet. As he tucked his shirttail into his pants, his hands ran over the rises and falls of a six-pack courtesy of crunches and weight lifting and a very strict eating regimen. Like most bodybuilders, his muscles craved protein, which was fine as long as he trimmed the fat. That was why whenever he looked in the mirror, he liked what he saw.

      More like what he imagined he saw.

      DECKER WAS GENUINELY perplexed. “I don’t understand how you got past the voir dire.”

      “Maybe the judge believed me when I said I could be objective,” Rina answered.

      Adding artificial sweetener to his coffee, Decker grunted. He had always taken his java straight up, but of late he had developed a sweet tooth, especially