Changing Constantinou's Game. Дженнифер Хейворд

for you whacking your head. So do me a favor and stay at my place so I don’t have to spend the night worrying about you expiring in a hotel room.”

      And what was she supposed to say to that? Suddenly, staying alone in a hotel room seemed the height of stupidity. The thing was...despite how she knew instinctively she could trust him, despite how he’d taken care of her in that elevator, she didn’t know him. He could be an ax murderer for all she knew. On the other hand, she knew that was ridiculous. As a reporter she lived by her instincts, and her instincts told her she could trust Alex.

      “Just say yes,” he muttered. “I’m out of patience.”

      She chewed on her lip. “All right. If you’re sure it’s not too much trouble...”

      A rueful smile curved his mouth. “I have a feeling you are trouble, Isabel Peters. Having you stay with me is not.”

      But Izzie wasn’t at all sure that was the truth. Seated in the low, sleek sports car Alex had parked in the underground lot, her pulse raced as fast as the high-performance engine rippling beneath her. It might have been the way she couldn’t look at his muscular thighs on the low bucket seat beside her without remembering how that hard, male muscle had felt under her hands. Or the fact that despite his abrupt dismissal in the lobby earlier, there had been a spark between them in that elevator. Unless she was totally deluded...which had been known to happen when it came to her and men.

      Tired of watching Izzie sit on the sidelines in Italy, her girlfriend Jo had finally staged an intervention. “You have to engage with men to catch them,” she’d advised caustically. “We aren’t participating in immaculate conception here.”

      Izzie was clear on that. She just happened to be very, very bad at engaging.

      She darted a sideways glance at the hard profile of the drop-dead-gorgeous man beside her. Could he actually be attracted to her? Or was she just kidding herself about that chemistry in the elevator? A man like that could have any woman he wanted. Why would he want vanilla when he could undoubtedly savor crème brûlée any day of the week?

      The left and right sides of her brain warred with each other. Suddenly she was very, very tired of being Izzie the responsible. The girl who never took a risk. And it occurred to her that until she did, she might never know who she really was.

      A flock of butterflies swooped through her stomach on a wild roller-coaster ride. Did she have the courage to find out tonight whether vanilla cut it? And if so, would it go down as the single most stupid thing she’d ever done? Or the best?