Ann Christopher

Diana. Even her name was an ache in his heart, and had been since the day she showed up in his office and his life and looked into his eyes. Diana.

After dancing to the Black-Eyed Peas’ “Let’s Get It Started,” “Electric Slide,” and several other fast songs, during which she’d tempted him like Salome with her scarves, all swaying hips and lush curves in a filmy black dress that was classy and yet left plenty to his overactive imagination, she’d slow-danced. With him. Her—Keenan repressed a shudder—date.

The punk who’d had his clingy arms all around her like poison ivy strangling an oak.

Stuck in this lousy chair, Keenan had watched from the sidelines and seethed.

Now both he and Diana were spoiling for a fight. It was the perfect time because her date had hightailed it off to the cake line or some such, and they were as alone as it was possible to be in a packed ballroom.

“Your date,” Keenan reminded her, with just as much aggression in his voice as before. So much for not snarling this time. At best, he’d managed to sound as though he merely wanted to maim the punk rather than kill him outright . “The guy who was all over you a minute ago. Remember him? Where’d he come from?”

“Evan?”

He’d preferred to think of him as Punk, SOB, or Loser, but whatever. Evan. If he had to have a name.

She shrugged and sipped her champagne. “We met at the gym … And he asked me out a few times. I finally said yes.” She paused to stare him right in the face, the challenge bright in her eyes. “Why do you ask?”

They were gliding into treacherous waters here, but then everything about Diana felt dangerous to him and always had. Dangerous and endlessly fascinating.

Time to back off a little lest she realize exactly how much she meant to him.