magically reveal the location of their missing sister by waving his incredible magnetism around a room full of women.
He set out across the floor headed straight for her.
A familiar heat flashed over her, filling her chest and crawling up her neck into her cheeks. Worse still, the heat raged south into her belly and lower, sending searing liquid flames into places that hadn’t been lit in a long time. Not since the last time she’d seen him.
Damn! Why him? Why now?
As his boots ate the distance, a slight smile tipped the corner of his lips, as though he knew the secret and he was going to enjoy every bit of it.
When he stopped in front of her chair, he held out a hand.
Deme stared at it a moment, her mind refusing to engage, her voice completely choked in her throat. She’d never been this off balance in the presence of a man, no matter how good-looking, except this one. The intensity consumed her. Without even thinking it through, she dropped the mutilated cup on the table and laid her hand in his.
Instead of shaking it, he yanked her to her feet and into his arms.
As her chest crashed into his, shock and the whoosh of air escaping her lungs kept her from crying out. Her lips parted in a gasp just in time for his to descend and claim them.
One hand cupped her ass and pulled her pelvis against the natural bulge behind his zipper. The other circled her neck and threaded through her long, auburn hair.
Firm, sensuous lips plundered her startled ones, his tongue delving deep, pushing past her teeth to taste her and drink his fill.
Where their bodies touched, her skin was on fire. Deme squirmed, constrained by the clothing she wore, longing for her naked skin to melt into his.
Long, loud sighs from the young girls at the table beside her brought Deme out of the trance the man’s sheer allure had thrown her into. She pulled back, fighting to mask the shock in her eyes. How could she have fallen into his arms—his kiss—without so much as a mew of protest? What had come over her? She never acted so mindlessly. She’d fallen for this macho bullshit before, and what had it bought her?
Heartburn and heartache.
The blue-eyed blonde coed sighed again. “I wish someone would kiss me like that.”
“Hi, sweetheart.” The man caressed the back of Deme’s neck again before he dragged his fingers over her shoulder and downward to capture her hand in his.
Deme tried to pull free, struggling to come up with words to voice her anger at his flagrant attack on her senses. Anger at herself for responding so willingly. By the goddess, she was here to save her sister, not to crawl into a man’s skin.
“Want to find a quieter spot?” His look was like liquid chocolate, melting into her pores. With a flick of his eyes, he indicated the girls drooling at the table next to them. More sighs rose from the hormonal young ladies.
“The table by the window.” Deme cringed. Was that her voice, that reedy squeak?
Without releasing her hand, he led her to the table at the far corner of the student commons with a lovely view of a rose garden. A table near to where the professor had exploded in a fit of rage.
As she walked like a docile dog behind him, Deme let the anger build. Righteous anger beat mindless lust any day of the week. She’d been in one too many relationships where a man had tried to take charge of her life. Okay, so only one doomed relationship—the relationship she’d had with this man. Besides, her purpose for being at Colyer-Fenton was to find her missing sister, not get all weak in the knees over a cop too sexy to blend in.
With his empty hand, he pulled out a seat and dragged her into it.
Deme sat down hard, her lips drawn into a tight line.
He leaned over her, pressing his lips to her ear. “Try to look a little less like you swallowed a lemon.” Then he slid his mouth down her jawline and claimed hers in a brief kiss.
Rendered speechless yet again, Deme sat with her mouth open and nothing coming out. How’d he do that?
He pulled out a chair, flipped it around and straddled it like a Harley, his brows hiked into the hair dangling like temptation over his forehead. “Deme Chattox. You never did tell me what Deme means. We can talk about that later. We have business to discuss.” He lifted one of her hands and threaded his fingers through hers.
With her lips still tingling from his kiss and the warmth of his fingers on hers stirring up those old feelings of lust all over again, Deme finally pulled herself together. Yanking her hand free, she hid it in her lap.
She leaned forward, her head turned away from the others in the union still watching them. “Is this a joke?” She stared around the room, hoping she’d find some sadistic huckster ready to spring out and tell her she’d been punked. When no one did, she sat on her hands to keep them from shaking in front of him…Cal Black, her former fiancé, lover and her own personal nemesis. “How the hell did you end up on this case?”
He smiled, the act an unaffected thing of beauty. His dark chocolate eyes twinkled and his full, kissable lips stretched over straight, white teeth, a stark contrast to his coal-black hair. She’d fallen for that look once before. “You’re my cover, sweetheart.” He ran his fingers down her cheek and touched a finger to her swollen lips. “To you, I’m the detective the Chicago police assigned to this case. But to everyone else, I’m your boyfriend until we find your sister.”
Cal almost laughed out loud as Deme Chattox’s mouth opened then closed before she gathered enough steam to blast him. He had his cover as a maintenance man nailed shut, having spent the past half hour with the Human Resources Department of the small college, charming everyone from the secretary to the woman who ultimately hired him. She’d explained it was only a temporary position until they could find another, more permanent replacement for their previous maintenance man.
He’d asked what happened to the man, but no one knew. He didn’t show up for work three weeks ago and hadn’t been back. No call, no resignation. Just disappeared. Unfortunately, he didn’t have a worried family calling to report him missing.
Cal didn’t like that. That made two disappearances in the past three weeks from the same campus. He didn’t believe in coincidence and placed a call to Martin Warner, the detective in charge of the case back at headquarters. Was the missing maintenance man responsible for Aurai Chattox’s disappearance? If not, was the same perp responsible for both the missing persons?
Now, sitting across the table from Deme Chattox, he drank his fill of the woman who’d managed to turn his world upside down in just the four short weeks they’d known each other. He hadn’t even realized she had sisters. She’d never told him. Apparently Deme was the oldest of the Chattox sisters. He wondered if Aurai was anywhere near as beautiful. It was hard to tell from the photograph he’d been given.
Deme’s long, auburn hair fell in loose waves around her shoulders and all the way down to her waist. A man could get lost in all that glorious hair. Her deep green eyes sparkled in the fluorescent lights. Lights that normally made everyone else look ill made her pale skin seem only more ethereal. Beautiful women were natural targets for demented kidnappers and killers. “You don’t look anything like your sister, do you?”
“Not even close.” She pushed her hair behind her ear and sat up straighter. “I’m the redheaded Amazon of the family. Aurai’s the pale blonde, petite sister.” Her brows furrowed. “Now what’s this about being my boyfriend? I don’t need a boyfriend.”
His lips pressed together in a thin line. “Maybe not to you and me, but for everyone else on campus we need to be convincing.” He tipped his head up. “Come here and give me a kiss.”
Deme shook her head. “I can’t work with you. I work alone.” She leaned over the table toward him, the swell of her breasts visible above the figure-hugging, low-cut sweater she wore.
As if a hand had reached