CONTENTS

      CHAPTER ONE

      CHAPTER TWO

      CHAPTER THREE

      CHAPTER FOUR

      CHAPTER FIVE

      CHAPTER SIX

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      CHAPTER EIGHT

      CHAPTER NINE

      CHAPTER TEN

      CHAPTER ELEVEN

      CHAPTER TWELVE

      EPILOGUE

      ACKNOWLEDGMENT

      CHAPTER ONE

      IT WAS Tyler Kincaid’s birthday, and he had the feeling his present was waiting in his bed.

      Atlanta sweltered under the oppressive heat of the July evening, but he didn’t mind. He’d lived in the South all his life and he liked the warm days and hot, sultry nights. He had nothing against finding a woman in his bed, either, especially a beautiful blonde like Adrianna. Under normal circumstances, a man would have to be crazy to object to that.

      Tyler frowned as he slowed his Porsche outside the wrought-iron gates that guarded his hilltop estate.

      But these weren’t normal circumstances.

      If he was right and Adrianna was waiting for him complete with champagne, caviar and flowers, she’d entered his home uninvited. There’d been times he’d asked his mistress to spend the night, but he’d never given her or any woman access to his life—or to the security codes that unlocked the gates and the massive front door to his home.

      And he damned well hadn’t made any plans to celebrate his birthday.

      July 18 was just another day in the year, as far as he was concerned. He never so much as circled the day on his calendar. If there was anything special about the date it was because he’d realized, just this morning, that it was time to tell Adrianna their relationship was over.

      The gates swung shut behind him. Ahead, a narrow road lined with magnolia trees led toward the big white house he’d bought on the same day he’d taken his company’s stock public eight years ago. By day’s end, Tyler had gone from being poor white trash to being a millionaire several times over. “An outstanding citizen,” the Atlanta Journal had called him. Tyler had saved the article, kept it in a scrapbook right next to the clipping dated ten years before that, when the same newspaper had said he was “an example of Atlanta’s lost youth.”

      There was a nice irony there but that wasn’t why he’d kept both articles. He’d kept them, rather, as a reminder of how a man’s life could change with a couple of orbits of the planet around the sun.

      “You’re a true cynic, Tyler,” his attorney had once said with a sigh of mild despair, but Tyler figured there wasn’t anything wrong with acknowledging that nothing in this world was ever quite what it seemed.

      Especially a relationship with a woman.

      He sighed, shut off the engine and looked at the house. It seemed deserted, except for the lights shining at some of the windows, but he knew those came on automatically, at dusk. They were part of his security system. His impenetrable security system, according to the outfit that had installed it.

      “Impenetrable, my butt,” Tyler muttered.

      To thieves, maybe, but not to the machinations of a determined, blue-eyed blonde.

      There was no sign of her, no little green Mercedes convertible parked in the driveway. He’d expected that. Adrianna was bright as well as beautiful. His women always scored high, on brains as well as looks. She’d have found a place to tuck the car away where he wouldn’t see it.

      How else could she hope to surprise him?

      Tyler’s jaw tightened. He sat back in the leather bucket seat and spread his hands along the steering wheel.

      The thing of it was, he didn’t like surprises, certainly not ones that involved his birthday, and definitely not when the surprise suggested a woman, even a beautiful, eminently desirable woman, was getting ideas about changing the status quo.

      He’d made himself clear, at the start of their affair. People change, he’d told her. Their goals change, their needs change. Adrianna had smiled, interrupted, and said she understood.

      “Darling, I promise you,” she’d murmured, “I’m not the least bit interested in fairy tales that end with forever-after.”

      She wasn’t. That was one of the things he admired about her. She lived an independent life, a Southern belle in looks and background but a modern woman when it came to making her way in the world.

      He’d made it clear he liked his privacy, too—meaning he wanted none of her makeup left in his bathroom, nor would he leave his shaving things in hers. There’d be no mutual exchange of house keys or security codes—she’d laughed when he’d said that, in that husky voice that had, in those first weeks, made his blood hum.

      “Darling, you’re just the sort of man that turns me on. A gorgeous rogue, lover, that’s what you are. Why would a woman be foolish enough to want to tame you?”

      Fidelity, for as long as the affair lasted, was all they’d committed to. That was all Tyler was still committed to…but, evidently, somewhere along the way, Adrianna had changed her mind.

      Tyler opened the door of the Porsche and stepped out. Cicadas sang in the trees; the heavy scent of jasmine enveloped him. He looked up at the house, at his bedroom windows, and wondered if she were watching him through the silky curtains.

      He