She didn’t say a thing, couldn’t quite catch her breath.

When he released her she was shifted back onto the seat. He reached over and snapped her seat belt buckle. “That answer your questions?”

“I suppose.” She shouldn’t antagonize him further, but if he thought that kiss had put her off, he’d used the wrong ploy. Whether he wanted to admit it or not, that hadn’t been about teaching her a lesson. He wanted to kiss her.

Damn if that didn’t make her feel hot.

Hunter placed an arm against the top of the cab and slipped two fingers under her chin, tilting her face to his. “Never let your guard down around anyone.”

“Even you?”

“What do you think?”

“I’ll remember that if I find myself in a compromising position again.”

“If?”

The snot. She refused to let him goad her over what just happened. She was an adult, capable of kissing men whenever she wanted. Not that the opportunity presented itself often. Hunter was not getting away with insinuating she was prone to being in situations like this or naïve. “You’re still going to have to convince me that we met or cop to checking out my body while I was unconscious. I want to know that I can trust you to tell me the truth.”

“We met years ago.” He sounded positive.

“Where? At the beach?”

“What do I get if I do convince you?”

“I’m not making any more deals with you.”

“Then you don’t really want to know.”

Yes, she did, because a weird sense of “maybe” still poked at her. “You are so annoying-”

“So I’m told.”

“Can’t you just tell me where we met?”

“Nothing’s free in this world.” His lips twitched, another almost smile. His tone dropped a level to sensuous. “What’re you going to give me if I prove we had a memorable meeting?”

“I don’t have anything to trade.”

He quirked an eyebrow.

“I am not trading sex and I never begged you for sex.”

“That’s not what I said.” He stepped back and shut her door.

When Hunter climbed in on the other side, he handed her a towel for her feet and a blanket, both from behind her seat.

She wasn’t done with him. “Yes, you did say that.”

He revved the engine. “No, I said you begged me to take you home with me, but you did beg me to sleep with you, too. So what’s it going to be? I won’t play if the stakes aren’t high enough.”

She had a feeling that said a lot about Hunter.

There was no way she begged him to sleep with her and no way he could prove it. And she knew-without a doubt-they had never met like that before. Not even amnesia would have wiped out spending a night with Hunter. “Tell you what. If you can convince me I said that to you, I will sleep with you. But you only get one chance and have to prove to me we met.” And I mean sleep, not anything else, just as a safety valve. “But if you don’t convince me, I get to go home tomorrow and see my mother.”

She’d never gambled in her life but desperately wanted to get back to her mother. Based on logical analysis, this bet was loaded in her favor. Another woman might have had so many trysts she’d have to hesitate. There was something to be said for a mostly celibate life.

She crossed her arms and smiled at him.

His thumb bumped the steering wheel slowly while he thought. The silence dragged out. Victory stirred in her heart.

Now she’d find out if he backed his bets with honesty.

“We met six years ago in a bar,” he said, giving her a second to think on that before he continued. “You came in wearing a red dress that screamed ‘do me’ and tried to drink me under the table. Later that night, you told me you sneak Godiva chocolates you keep hidden in the refrigerator and you had a crush on your tenth-grade math teacher, before you begged me to take you home.” He angled back into his seat and put the truck into gear. “There’s no road out of here. Sit back and be quiet so I can concentrate or we’ll end up rolling down a ravine.”

She yanked the blanket up and stared straight ahead.

He could still scare her.

She’d never told anyone, not even her sisters, about her crush on her math teacher.

Holy crap. Hunter was that buff shaggy guy she’d met in a bar? He was the naked stranger she’d spent a night with and had lusted after for six years?

And here she’d thought being shot at had been the scariest thing to happen in her life.

What the hell was she going to do now?

Chapter Sixteen

Dr. Don Tatum paced in the dark, pausing long enough to glance out his living room windows, where Chicago’s last snow clung to spots the sun didn’t reach during the day. He squinted, checking the street.

No dangerous figures moved around, but his neighborhood was supposed to be quiet during the first hours of a new day.

Standing inside this much glass gave him a nervous life-in-a-fishbowl feeling. Not good for high blood pressure.

He’d loved this house from the first minute he walked in, happy with all the windows for natural light and to have his entire living space on one level. He’d wanted simple and convenient.

No stairs to carry his bulk up and down.

No attic to shove junk in that should be thrown away.

No basement with leaks.

He’d gladly trade the entire house for a safe room in a basement right now. He smoothed his hand over the bald spot on the back of his head and it came back covered in perspiration. The heat was down low since his girls weren’t at home. Sweat pooled under the arm of the blue cotton shirt he still wore, but now it was untucked from his dress pants.

Streetlight glow from outside stretched from the palladium window over to the blue sofa, and fingered the middle of the rosewood coffee table.

The light gave him some measure of security, a defense against buried childhood fears of the infamous bogeyman, but Don worried about a real bogeyman.

He glanced at the square sandwich-size panel on the wall. Two tiny red LED lights peeked through the dark, assuring him the security system was on and ready should an intruder try to enter.

His two little girls were safe with his sister, who thought he was having the house exterminated. She lived in Alabama on a farm with no mailbox, no visitors. Good place to hide his children. She’d been the one person he could turn to after his wife died three months ago.

Tears stung his eyes. He missed his wife every day. Missed his best friend and only true love.

What would she think of him now?

If she was watching over them, she had to know he was doing whatever it took to keep their two girls safe.

Don had no idea why this strange guy had targeted him.

He had never crossed the law. Never drank or gambled, not even a lottery ticket. Why was this guy threatening him?

Don lifted a trembling hand to cover his mouth.

What about Abbie Blanton? She was Meredith’s daughter. Didn’t Abbie’s safety matter?

Maybe she was okay. The guy hadn’t said-

A floor creak spiked the silence.

Don stopped pacing next to the coffee table and swung his head to check the security panel.

No red lights. No green lights. No lights period.

“Hello, Dr. Don.” The dark figure he’d watched for outside walked across the middle of the living room toward Don, wearing all black, a skull’s face covering the stocking-cap front.

“How’d you get in here?” Don fought the urge to scream for help. He couldn’t. He’d been warned.

Calm down. His children couldn’t lose another parent.

“Let’s not waste time on ridiculous questions, shall we?”

Don detected a hint of a British accent in the man’s speech. He didn’t care where this wacko was from. “Who are you?”

“Jackson, like I told you last time we met.”

“I don’t understand any of this.” Don had never been in any financial trouble or had an enemy he knew of, no reason to be blackmailed into this if not for his children’s welfare. This guy hadn’t asked him to do anything really bad, just convince Abbie to go to the fund-raiser and talk to Gwen Wentworth. Don thought the guy was helping at first, supplying information about the Kore Women’s Center Abbie’s mother had visited and come home sick from.