Chapter 2

      Tyler didn’t know why he was toying with Nya. But then, no strange woman had ever just kissed him out of the blue. Tyler was a hot-blooded male. When a woman as sexy as this one kissed you, you wanted more.

      But given the look on her face right now, it was clear that the last thing on her mind was kissing him again. Those beautiful lips had parted, and indignation was flashing on her face.

       “Excuse me?”

      Tyler knew he should retract his statement, but even her anger was incredibly sexy.

      “Maybe kissing me had nothing to do with your ex.”

      “You must be out of your mind.” Nya’s eyes blazed. “Of course I wasn’t coming up with an excuse to kiss you. I was desperate, and you were there.”

      “Ouch,” Tyler said. Her words stung more than he expected.

      “Sorry,” Nya said immediately. Closing her eyes, she exhaled sharply. “I didn’t mean to sound so callous.”

      “I’m not sure I’ve ever been kissed—then insulted,” Tyler said, still trying to keep the mood light. He wanted her at ease, because he still wanted her around.

      “I didn’t mean that.” Nya groaned. “I’m sure women enjoy kissing you. Just not me.”

      “Double ouch.”

      “Can we please stop talking about this? I keep saying the wrong thing.” Her chest rose and fell with another sigh, something that made Tyler’s groin tighten. Nya was wearing a black formfitting dress with a low scoop neck that revealed the beautiful mounds of her breasts. Did she have any clue how delectable she looked?

      “It’s just,” she went on, sounding frazzled, “seeing Russell tonight has thrown me for a loop. I really don’t want to talk about him anymore.”

      Tyler had no interest in talking about Russell, either, but he wasn’t ready to be done with Nya. She was stunning, and her kiss had stirred a desire in his gut that had long since been repressed. Oh, he definitely wasn’t ready to be done with her. He wanted to take her out on Friday night, make her forget this Russell character for good.

      “I don’t want to talk about the guy, either,” Tyler said. “But don’t you want to quash his effect on you once and for all?”

      “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

      “It’s clear he still gets to you.”

      “Not because I’m hung up on him.”

      “The problem is,” Tyler went on, “if you don’t go to the premiere on Friday night, he’ll know he still has power over you The power to make you upset, or afraid...or to simply get under your skin. Why don’t you flip the script on him?”

      “Flip the script?” Nya asked.

      “Yeah.”

      * * *

      As Nya looked up into Tyler’s dark eyes, she wasn’t altogether concentrating on what he was saying. She was distracted by the fact that he was the definition of smoking hot. A firefighter being smoking hot...how appropriate was that?

      “Russell is completely full of himself,” Nya said. “He’ll always feel he has power over me.”

      “Especially if you avoid the event on Friday night.”

      Tyler turned to the bar and took a pull of his beer. His blazer jacket slid back as he moved, giving Nya a glimpse of his physique beneath his white dress shirt. Damn, the man was fine. Even with clothes on, she could see that his body was well sculpted.

      There was no doubt that he was exactly her type. And kissing him...she’d felt her body warm in all the right places.

      Which was exactly why she couldn’t go out with him on Friday night. After her last disastrous date, Nya had finally decided to go on a dating hiatus. Indefinitely. She’d examined her behavior and realized that she’d been going about trying to find love with a sense of desperation. Which of course had led to disaster.

      The problem was, Nya didn’t really know any other way to go about dating than to jump headfirst into a relationship. So she’d sworn off dating and was now trying to get to a place where she could accept being happy on her own.

      Nya had analyzed why every relationship she’d had since Russell—and including her relationship with Russell, for that matter—had ended badly. And the glaring reason why things didn’t work out was because Nya went for looks first, character later. If a man looked good and sounded smooth, Nya fell for him like a fool.

      And Tyler had the kind of looks that could have her brain cells going on strike. So Nya didn’t even want to put herself in the path of temptation.

      She tried another tactic. “Obviously, you’re a very attractive man. And you were gracious enough to...to kiss me back...and go along with my ruse. But a man as attractive as you must have several women vying for your attention. I don’t expect you to give up a Friday night for me when you can spend it with someone you want to. I’ll come up with a reason why we can’t go to the film. You know what, it doesn’t even matter if I have a reason or not. It’s not like I have to answer to Russell.”

      “Then it’s going to look like you’re chickening out,” Tyler said matter-of-factly. “Russell’s going to know you made up an excuse not to see him again, and he’ll see right through it. He’ll think you’re still hung up on him.”

      Nya felt a spasm of fear. She wished Tyler would stop saying that, because it was the one thing that was weakening her resolve.

      “I can see that the truth is getting to you,” Tyler went on. “And trust me, that’s how guys think. You went to the trouble of kissing me to make a point to him. Seems as though it would be rather foolish to abandon the plan now when we can drive the point home on Friday night.”

      Nya bit her inner cheek as she thought. She hated to admit it, but Tyler had a point. Russell was that kind of guy. Even when he’d dumped her, he’d rubbed salt in her wound by saying that she would never find another decent guy because she was too clingy.

      He had been right about her not being able to find another man, but the part about her being clingy? Nya wasn’t clingy, and he had hurt her deeply when he’d said that.

      And still, she had foolishly reached out to him during a time when she had been weak and needed a sexual fix. She had remembered only the good times between them and forgotten the hurt. It was her selective memory that had led her to call Russell nine months earlier when she had been lonely. She’d invited