Strangers In The Night. Kristin Gabriel
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to start a folder. Inside, she placed back issues of Adventurer magazine that featured his photographs and added printouts of newspaper articles she’d found on the Web site of his hometown, Pleasant Valley, Colorado.
What she hadn’t found was a picture of him.
Frustrated, Josie sorted through the Pleasant Valley Gazette’s articles once again. A weekly paper, it focused on local news in the small town, and she’d found several feature stories in it about the hometown hero’s adventures, including Adam’s harrowing rescue of a Siamese cat in Egypt.
According to the article, Adam had been raised on an acreage just outside of Pleasant Valley and had always had an affinity for animals. So he’d brought the cat back to Denver with him. Josie already knew all of this—Adam had told her the story himself, modestly downplaying his heroic role in saving Horatio.
But he’d never told her anything about the man she’d found in his bed on Saturday night. Despite her extensive search, she still didn’t know why he was there or what he’d done with Adam. Her Adam.
She’d tried e-mailing her boyfriend, as well as calling him on his cell phone all day yesterday. But for some reason he wasn’t answering.
Or he wasn’t able to answer.
She suppressed a shiver, not wanting to believe the worst. Her boyfriend was safe—he had to be. She couldn’t make love to a man capable of violence, could she? Not only make love to him, but thoroughly enjoy it. She groaned under her breath, then buried her face in her hands.
Josie had never before indulged in one-night stands or anonymous sex. She preferred to play it safe in both her professional and personal life. Despite the erotic allure, sleeping with a stranger was a risk she’d simply never been willing to take.
But no matter how hard she tried to forget, the night she’d spent in her stranger’s arms kept flashing into her mind. The way he’d touched and kissed and tantalized her until she’d become someone she didn’t recognize. Wild and wanton and begging him for sweet release. Heat suffused her cheeks as she closed the file, wondering how she could have acted that way. And how she would ever explain what had happened between them to her boyfriend.
But she had to find him first.
Then Josie looked up and saw the stranger she wanted to forget, the one who claimed he was Adam Delaney, walk through the door.
She grabbed a magazine, almost ripping it in half as she held it open in front of her face, hoping he hadn’t seen her. But her hopes died when she heard footsteps approaching her desk.
“Excuse me.” His familiar, whiskey-smooth voice sent ripples over her skin.
“Yes?” she said behind the magazine. Too late, she realized it was a copy of his magazine. Her gaze moved from a spectacular aerial photograph of the Grand Canyon to a small blurb at the bottom of the page that credited Adam Delaney as the photographer who had taken the picture while skydiving.
“I’m hoping you can help me.”
She slowly lowered the magazine until just her eyes peeked over the top of it. “What do you need?”
He placed two books on the desk. “These were left in my apartment and I need to know who checked them out.”
“Perhaps someone at the front desk can help you,” she replied, relieved that he didn’t recognize her. Of course, the last time he’d seen her she’d been wearing a sheet. Today she wore a light-gray suit and her blond hair pulled back into a neat French braid.
He hesitated, his gaze narrowing. “Have we met?”
She looked up at him, the magazine still concealing half her face. “I don’t think so.”
He stared into her eyes. “You’re her. You’re my dream girl.”
“Hardly,” she said, lowering the magazine and facing the man she’d never wanted to see again. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to ask someone else for assistance.”
But he didn’t take the hint. Instead, he pulled her pink scarf out of his shirt pocket. “Don’t you remember leaving this at my place?”
Mortified, Josie reached out and snatched it from him, all too aware of the stares from some of the staff. “Please lower your voice. This is not the time or the place to cause a scene.”
A wry smile curled up one corner of his mouth. “You call this a scene? I just want to talk to you.”
“Not here,” she insisted.
“Then where? I’m free all day,” he said.
“I’d rather not talk about it at all,” she told him. “We both know it was a huge mistake. So let’s just forget it ever happened.”
“Not an option.” He leaned forward, planting both hands on her desk, a flash of fire in his brown eyes. “Some guy walked into my life and pretended he was me. Now I want to know why and, like it or not, you’re my only connection to him.”
He was so close she could see flecks of gold in his brown eyes and the tiny scar near the corner of his mouth. The same mouth that had tasted her lips. Her breasts. The tender skin inside her thighs. For a moment, Josie found it hard to breathe. “The Adam Delaney that I know would never do anything like that.”
“Prove it.”
She stood up, ready to do battle. This man seemed to bring out the passion in her—a reaction she didn’t like one bit. “I don’t have to prove anything to you!”
“Then I guess you leave me with no option but to go to the police.”
“The police,” she echoed, certain she’d heard him wrong.
He gave a slow nod. “I’d rather not, because they’re going to want to know every detail about what happened between us. How you broke into my apartment in the middle of the night…”
“I had a key,” she protested.
“How you took all your clothes off before climbing into my bed,” he continued, as if she hadn’t spoken. “How you even brought a condom with you…”
“All right,” she cried, cutting him off, “I’ll meet with you. Just tell me where and when.”
He glanced at his watch. “It’s almost noon. Why don’t we meet for lunch at Spagli’s on Bannock Street? That’s not too far from here.”
Josie had no appetite, but better to get it over with as soon as possible. “Fine. I’ll see you there.”
He smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”
Her fists clenched as she watched him leave. How dare he threaten to expose the most embarrassing moment of her life. She hated the fact that he had that kind of power over her—and hated even more that he seemed to enjoy it.
Josie had been tempted to go the police herself when he’d claimed he was Adam Delaney. The only thing that had stopped her was the very reason he’d cited. She’d be forced to tell them everything about the night she’d spent in his arms and she simply couldn’t bring herself to do it.
Besides, she wanted to talk to Adam first. Her Adam. There had to be a reasonable explanation for this mess. Something she had yet to find in her research. She had yet to find her boyfriend, too, and that bothered her.
Josie sat back down at her desk, hating the way that her life was spinning out of control, just like it had when her father had been arrested. Only she’d been a child then, and now she was an adult. Perfectly capable of handling this or any other situation.
She took a deep breath, then another, aware of the quiet whispers of the staff at the front desk. How much had they overheard? Josie had never raised her voice at work before, even when dealing with the most irritating of library patrons. She had always prided herself on her self-control.
Now this man who called himself