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Chay stepped back, but he didn’t step aside. Instead, he bent down, picked up his jacket and held it out to her. “You’ll need this.”

“Are you pazzo? I want nothing of yours!”

His gaze raked her from head to toe. “Really?”

She frowned and looked down at herself. He knew what she saw. A blouse hanging open. Pants that no longer had a working zipper.

She said something through her teeth, snatched the jacket from him and wrapped it around herself.

“I will ask Tanner to return it to you.”

“Consider it a souvenir,” he said as he mounted the Harley. “Go on. Walk to the hotel. There’s a back entrance to the lobby. I’ll wait until you’re safely inside.”

“I do not need you to do that.”

There it was. That stilted speech. She was upset, and wasn’t that just too damn bad?

“No,” he said, “I’m sure you can take care of yourself, but I’m going to wait anyway. Consider it part of the services I provided this evening.”

She spat a word at him. Then she turned on her heel, a small, stiffly erect figure oozing dignity with every stride as she marched up the beach to the hotel.

He waited until she opened the door and stepped inside. Then he turned the bike on and gunned the engine.

Of course this had been all about what had happened days ago on that fucking mountaintop. It had had nothing to do with Bianca Bellini Wilde.

But that didn’t explain her part in it.

Shit.

The truth was, it really didn’t explain his part either. Sex to shut the door on a bad memory? Yes. It had worked before. But sex like what he’d just experienced…

Chay rode the bike over the sand and onto the road.

Be honest, man.

It had been…different. It had turned him inside out. Left him feeling as if he could never get enough of the woman he’d held in his arms.

And that was ridiculous.

He upped the Harley’s speed.

He knew exactly what to do. Go back to the LZ.

Find a woman. There would be one. There always was. Somebody beautiful, hot and eager. Take her to wherever she was staying. Fuck her again and again until the Tigress wasn’t even a blip in his mind.

It was a good plan. A great plan.

Except, when he reached the turnoff for the Landing Zone, he hurtled past it and headed straight for home.

CHAPTER SIX

5:10 p.m., a Friday evening in late June, Bianca’s office on the Upper East Side of Manhattan

The day had started with bright sunshine. The weatherman had predicted rain, but how often was the weatherman right?

Bianca hadn’t been surprised that the skies remained clear.

Then, with amazing speed, clouds moved in until they covered the city like a thick gray blanket, so dense that a little while ago she’d had to turn on the lights in her office.