CHAPTER ONE

      TEAGUE STRETCHED HIS arms over his head and sucked in a lungful of summer air as he peered at Frankie’s doll-sized cottage, which was situated at the end of a long driveway that ran alongside a squat redbrick apartment building.

      It was so small he’d probably have to duck to fit under the lintel.

      If she invited him in.

      If she even heard him knock, given it was barely eight o’clock on a Sunday morning.

      His memory of Frankie’s Saturday nights was that they were big and wild, so unless she’d changed drastically in the ten years since he’d last seen her, chances were that at this precise moment she’d be either comatose or contemplating the walk of shame from wherever she’d ended up after work last night.

      And it was too bad he chose now to remember that instead of thirty minutes ago, when he’d gotten into the taxi at Sydney Airport. At that point, he could have done as his best friend Matt had suggested during those chaotic last moments at Heathrow: gone to his hotel, gotten some sleep, and called Frankie at a civilized hour to arrange a time to meet for the handover.

      Handover! Like he was doing some illicit drug deal.

      Not that dealers dragged their supplies around with them in wheeled suitcases. Or maybe they did. What did he know? He was a corporate lawyer, not a criminal one.

      Whatever. It was too late to change his mind because he’d let the taxi go and stranded himself.

      “Oh, for fuck’s sake, get it over with,” he ordered himself, and trudged up the path, stopping at a ratty-looking welcome mat that announced, You Have Arrived at Your Destination.

      “I don’t think so, Frankie Lee,” he scoffed, stepping up to the door.

      He tugged at the collar of his shirt to make sure it was sitting straight, ran a hand over his hair, dragged in another lungful of air and knocked.

      Unsurprisingly, there was no answer.

      He knocked again, just so he could say he’d really tried.

      Waited for proof of life.

      Nothing.

      Okay, three strikes and you’re out a-a-and knock.

      Silence.

      He looked back down the driveway, picturing Frankie in one of her vintage dresses, black hair disheveled, makeup smeared, humming a satisfied tune and swinging her shoes from one hand as she meandered up the path as though she owned the world and all its contents.

      Ha! Walk of shame? Not likely. Swagger of pride was more her style.

      But, of course, there’d be no sign of her yet. At eight o’clock she’d still be in bed with...well, whomever she’d gone to bed with.

      Teague tried to picture a likely “whomever” but that wasn’t so easy to visualize. For all Frankie’s brazen sex appeal, Teague could only recall one identifiable boyfriend from that year she’d spent in Washington, DC. Kyle. Big, burly, covered in tattoos. Kyle hadn’t been around long enough for Teague to get more of a handle on him than that; Frankie had dumped him within a month of their arrival together in DC, after he’d pitched a fit over her taking a second job.

      That second job was as a dancer in a gentlemen’s club, so Teague had some sympathy for the guy. Or he would have had, if Kyle hadn’t already worked himself into a lather over Frankie working as a server at Flick’s, which marked the guy as more proprietary asshole than concerned boyfriend. Because come on, Flick’s? Seriously?

      Flick’s was a grungy, student-hangout bar/restaurant. None of its patrons had ever stood a chance with Frankie. Hell, most of them were underage, and Frankie might have only been nineteen, but the rolling confidence of her walk flashed a warning that she’d already seen—and enjoyed—everything life had to offer, so they shouldn’t bother approaching her unless they were packing something more interesting than a fake ID. Teague had been under no illusions that he was in the running, despite being two years older than her and probably the only legal drinker in the place. She could fluster him by doing nothing more than breathing in his general direction. The only guy she hadn’t flustered had been Matt—but then, those two were like spirit animals.

      So, okay, maybe it wasn’t so hard to envisage the guy whose bed Frankie was in. Someone like Matt.

      Teague sighed. He loved Matt like a brother, but sometimes it sucked playing running back to Matt’s star quarterback. And after a twenty-three-hour flight Teague decided he was too tired to receive yet another handoff. So enough! The end! There’d be no call to arrange a time with Frankie. Teague would slip the damn thing under her door, then delete the number Matt had punched into his phone and go have his vacation.

      He bent low, assessing the size of the gap...heard a faint rustle. What the—? Uh-oh.

       Shit!

      The door opened before he could move. He heard his name—“Teague?”—and closed his eyes. Fuck. Just fucking brilliant, to be caught with his head level with Frankie’s crotch.

      “Are you coming up anytime soon?” she asked in her sleepily amused Australian drawl, as though a guy bowing down for her on her doorstep was par for the course. Which it probably was.

      Slowly he unbent, eyes traveling up the length of a silky cream-colored robe covered in bold red flowers. An outfit deserving of a smokily sinful bordello.

      And then his eyes reached her face, and she smiled at him in that how-about-it? way she had, and it killed him that despite the fact he was now thirty-two years old, with a megasuccessful career, property in three countries and billions in the bank, she still had the power to make him feel like a schoolboy with a crush on his teacher. And he didn’t even have a crush on her. He’d never let himself have one, because she was too—too much for him, too dangerous. Hadn’t that been the whole damn point of keeping his distance all those years ago?

      “Hello, Frankie,” he said, blinking a little at her hair, which was hacked off halfway between her ears and her shoulders, the depthless black of it livened up with an inch-wide band of electric blue across the blunt ends. Everything else about her was as he remembered. The gold-tinged skin, the swollen-looking lips that seemed permanently stained a shade of almost red, the pale gray eyes—the left one turned in very slightly, an imperfection that was mystifyingly, profoundly,