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      For Don and Jean Fridline, who lived a love story. I miss you both.

      Chapter One

      “IS THIS seat taken?”

      Mallory Stevens knew that deep, seductive voice. As best she could, she braced herself before looking up into a pair of smiling gray-green eyes and a face that would have made Adonis seem homely by comparison. It was no use.

       Zip, zap, zing!

      Just that fast, her hormones snapped to attention and her limbs turned liquid. It was a bizarre reaction, though she’d be lying if she labeled it unpleasant. Nor was it unprecedented. She’d experienced its twin a week earlier when she’d met Logan Bartholomew for the first time.

      They’d been in his office, and she’d written it off then as a fluke. She’d been working too many hours. She’d barely slept the night before. She’d gone without the company of a man for way, way too long.

      But a fluke didn’t happen twice. When it did, and it involved a member of the opposite sex, it was called something else: attraction.

      Mallory sucked in a breath before letting it out slowly between her teeth. She certainly had nothing against mingling with members of the opposite sex. She liked men, but she had a rule about mixing business with pleasure. It was a no-no. Logan Batholomew was business, even if everything about him made her body hum with pleasure.

      “You’re welcome to join me, Doctor,” she told him. Though it took an effort, her tone was blessedly nonchalant. She hoped the smile she sent him was the same.

      He folded his athletic frame into the chair, managing to look both elegant and masculine. For the umpteenth time in their short acquaintance, she found herself thinking his gorgeous looks were wasted on the radio. He hosted a call-in program that had all of Chicago talking.

      “I thought we’d agreed it was just Logan,” he said.

      Mallory knew he was wrong. Even though, now that he was here, sitting through the Windy City Women of Action luncheon she’d been assigned to cover held far more appeal, a qualifier such as just didn’t apply when it came to Logan. Everything about the guy was off the charts, from his leading-man looks and tri-athlete physique to the way his show had burned its way to the top of the ratings in a little over a year. It was no wonder he’d been voted Chicago’s most eligible bachelor in a recent poll sponsored by her newspaper.

      As a reporter, Mallory reminded herself that she was interested in more than his heart-palpitating appeal and sigh-worthy exterior. She was interested in a story and she smelled one here. Not necessarily the sort that went with his sophisticated cologne and designer tie, and certainly not the trivial one that had landed her in his office the week before.

      In her experience, no one was ever as perfect as this guy appeared to be with his Harvard degree and penchant for supporting worthwhile causes. She intended to unearth the skeletons in his closet and then expose each and every one of them. Maybe then her editor would forgive her for the embarrassing faux pas that had the newspaper’s lawyers fending off a libel suit and Mallory writing the kind of general assignment fluff that usually went to the college interns.

      “I should thank you for the article you did on my commencement address to the students and faculty at Chesterfield Alternative High School,” he said.

      Fluff, definitely. So much so that the airy advance had wound up buried in the bowels of the Chicago Herald’s Lifestyles section.

      “You read it?” she asked, equally surprised that he’d found it.

      “All four paragraphs,” came his dry reply.

      Truth be told, Mallory had had to pad it with his background to make it that long. God, she missed her city hall beat. Two months of writing nonsense had her feeling like a carnivore at a vegetarians’ convention. She needed meat, the rarer the better, and unless her instincts were wrong, Logan was prime rib.

      Angling her head to one side, she said, “So, any truth to the rumor I heard that Doctor in the Know might go national? Or that a certain cable television network has made you an offer for a prime-time program?”