Cobb salad with low-fat rasp-berry vinaigrette, rye crisps, a fruit bowl for dessert and a bottle of Evian in the hospital cafeteria. Her follow-up ap-pointments in the clinic had been run-of-the-mill.
And then her cell phone had rung and she’d heard a voice she hadn’t heard in years. A voice she’d prayed never to hear again. A voice that had shaken her to the core.
Even now the memory of the phone call had her hand trembling and her heart racing.
It’s not finished, a man had said. You owe me fourteen years of my life.
Drink. Dance. Forget.
The mariachi band trooped past her as they returned to the stage from the side door after their smoke break. They smelled of tobacco and marijuana and alcohol. Grinning knowingly at each other, they picked up their instruments and began to play a familiar dance tune with sexually sugges-tive lyrics.
It was the perfect song for her mood. Fast and hot. Vanessa smiled and licked her lips. Now all she needed was a dance partner.
She scanned the room for possibilities.
A minute later, she spotted him sitting in a darkened corner nursing a beer. Light skin, blond hair. His Nordic ethnicity stood out starkly in a roomful of Latinos. Not to mention that he was jaw-droppingly handsome.
For a brief, startling moment, his eyes drilled into hers.
Delicious bedroom eyes. Brilliant, blue and yet strangely brooding. Sultry, enigmatic eyes that both roused her curiosity and inspired her lust.
She studied him through the smoky haze. He possessed rugged masculine features that would make other men think twice about crossing him and he looked like a person who planned everything. She imagined he laid out the clothes he would wear in the morning the night before, hooking a wooden coat hanger laden with his pressed chinos and starched chambray shirt on the bedroom doorknob. Crisp new boxer shorts and rolled up socks stuffed inside his shoes.
Vanessa tilted her head. No, she decided. He wore briefs. He just seemed the tighty-whities type. Straight and narrow. Traditional. A good boy lurking behind that hard-ass mask.
The pulse at the hollow of her throat fluttered, and Vanessa’s fingertips itched to trace the lines of his unyield-ing chin. To run her fingers through that thick shock of blond hair. To test his lips to see if they were as hard as they looked.
The thought sent her imagination soaring. In spite of her miserable day, Vanessa smiled. She hadn’t had sex in months, and he was looking more and more like an ideal candidate to help her forget.
He was different from the other men in the bar. He didn’t stare at her the way they did, but he was paying attention. It sounded illogical and maybe she was fooling herself, but he looked like a man she could trust.
Stupid, that thought.
But the expression in his eyes wasn’t one of lust so much as concern. As if he somehow knew exactly what she needed and was more than willing to provide it. Scary.
Drink. Dance. Forget.
Then he quickly glanced away, dropping her gaze as if it was a hot lava rock. As if he had something to hide and he was afraid that if she looked too long into his eyes, she would figure out what it was.
Odd, this strange, inexplicable tugging that pulled her toward him.
Intrigued, Vanessa decided this was a man she simply had to know better. He looked like her ticket to oblivion.
And she intended to seduce him.
SHE WAS DEFINITELY the woman he was looking for.
Tanner Doyle didn’t even need to consult the photograph he carried in the pocket of his jacket. Her beautiful face wasn’t one a man easily forgot. And her slight resemblance to his dead wife made her doubly memorable.
Not to mention that today was the fourth anniversary of Maria’s death.
Maria.
Tanner strummed the pad of his thumb along the back of his bare ring finger. God, how he missed her.
Briefly he closed his eyes, tamped down the grief he couldn’t seem to shake. Maria wouldn’t want him to grieve this hard, this long. She’d want him to let her go, get on with his life. But that was easier said than done.
Especially today.
He swallowed back the remains of the beer he’d ordered from the cocktail waitress after he’d followed the woman into Emilio’s. His drink had gone warm in the meantime and tasted darkly bitter. Tanner didn’t even like beer, but Maria had been a Dos Equis fan, which was why he’d ordered it.
Don’t think about Maria, do your work.
Even though it entailed shadowing a woman who looked like Maria.
She doesn’t look that much like Maria, he argued with himself.
Sure, they were both tanned, black-haired beauties with deep brown eyes and wide, generous mouths, but Maria had been petite, just over five feet. This woman was statuesque. At least five-eleven even without those stilettos. With them, they would probably stand eye to eye.
Maria had possessed a small chin, heart-shaped face and button nose. Vanessa Rodriquez had a strong jaw, oval face and regal nose that lent her a queenly air.
He’d seen the drunk at the bar mouth off to her with some smart-assed sexual comment, and Tanner had also noticed how quickly and effectively she’d shut him down with one stern look and a barb from her sharp tongue. Whenever he looked at Vanessa Rodriquez, the word formidable sprang to mind.
She slid off the bar stool as the band struck up a fast-paced dance tune, the hem of her sexy red dress swirling against her firm thighs as she walked. She was heading straight toward him.
When Tanner realized this, he set his beer on the table and straightened in his chair.
Had she figured out he was following her? If so, his employer was going to be pissed that she’d spotted him so easily. What kind of security expert was he?
How had she spotted him so easily?
You’re off your game tonight.
She stopped at his table, held his gaze.
Unnerved but determined not to show any weakness, Tanner latched on to her bold stare.
She extended her hand. “Dance with me.”
Restraint had him hesitating a fraction of a second. He’d already screwed up by letting her get a bead on him and he didn’t want to draw any more attention to himself than he already had and risk blowing his cover. But then again, he didn’t want her going on to the next guy—who could very possibly be the person he’d been secretly hired to protect her from. “How do you know I can dance?”
She eyed him up and down. “You look graceful.”
“Just what every guy wants to hear.”
Her soft laughter sounded like wind rustling through cot-tonwood leaves.
Actually, he did know how to dance. In college Tanner’s football coach had made his players take lessons to improve their balance and agility on the field. It had worked. During his senior year, the University of Texas Longhorns had won the Southwest Conference.
She just stood there, one hand cocked on her shapely hip, her other palm held out for him to accept, a challenging quirk raising one perfectly arched eyebrow, her long, dark eye-lashes lowering seductively.
It was his duty to watch over her. What better way to accomplish that than to dance with her?
Tanner took her hand and got to his feet in one fluid movement, pushing his chair back with a bump of his thigh. He shouldn’t have noticed the sensuous curve of her breasts beneath the silky fabric of her low-cut dress.
But he did.
And