‘Good thinking, Batman,’ Nate muttered, annoyed by the familiar surge of heat. ‘That’s what got me into this fix in the first place, remember.’

‘Oh, yeah,’ Zane drawled before taking one last slug of his beer. ‘Good luck, Kemosabe—and stay the hell away from janitors’ closets.’

Nate watched as his friend sauntered over to the waitress’s station and whispered something into the young woman’s ear. The girl laughed flirtatiously and gave Zane a playful punch on the arm, then gazed dreamily at his retreating back as he strolled out of the door.

The band around Nate’s temples tightened into a vice.

Sure it was simple for Zane. Zane understood women as well as any mortal man could. He actually seemed to enjoy uncovering those dark secrets that most men couldn’t even begin to fathom.

But even a guy like Zane would have trouble handling someone as unpredictable as Tess Tremaine.

NATE clicked on his smart phone to double-check the address Zane had texted as he sat in his Jeep on the tree-lined street in Parnassus. Then stared at the duplex opposite.

Four-Five-Six Carl, Apartment Two. The address listed on a Miss Theresa Tremaine’s driver’s licence.

He contemplated the building’s pale yellow frontage, the row of buzzers on the door panel, and the shutters covering the second-floor window. Then glanced down the street at the Japanese café on the corner.

This was nuts. How could he possibly have fathered a child with someone whose apartment he’d never even been inside of?

Because you’ve been inside her, you dumbass.

He shifted in his seat, disconcerted by the inevitable swell of heat that accompanied the thought. The possibility she had been telling the truth might be slight, but it was there.

She hadn’t contacted him since that one brief meeting in his office, which kind of confirmed his suspicions. She’d been there to ask him for money and, when she’d realised he wasn’t playing ball, she’d decided not to push her luck.

But that image of her face, the distress in her eyes, still refused to go away, so he’d speak to her one last time—to make sure.

He straightened, catching sight of the slim young woman who jogged round the corner and waved to someone in the café. Baggy sweats hung low on her hips, allowing a strip of taut creamy skin to peak beneath the tank top that hugged her breasts. She moved with an easy comfortable grace as she leapt up the steps of the apartment block and then checked what he guessed had to be a pedometer on her wrist. Her dark blonde hair was tied back in a ponytail, her bangs covered by a wide purple sweatband, and her face cast into shadow by the branch of an overhanging maple tree, but recognition burned through his system and the swell of heat started to pound.

She went through a series of stretches as he recalled the feel of slender, sleekly muscled thighs wrapped round his waist. She stopped to key in a door code, then shouldered open the apartment door with a hard thud. The sound reminded him of the soft thud as her back had hit the locked door of the janitor’s closet.

He gave his head a swift shake, forcing himself back to reality. Grabbing the keys from the ignition, he jumped out of the car and jogged across the street.

There were going to be no more closet interludes for him and Tess Tremaine. Letting his libido torpedo his common sense once had been enough. What he needed now was to concentrate on his goal. No matter how damn sexy she was.

‘Tess,’ he shouted. ‘Wait up.’

She swung round as he took the steps two at a time to join her on the stoop.

The sheen of sweat glowing on her cleavage above the scooped neck of her tank top drew his eyes and brought with it another hot jolt of memory.

‘What do you want?’ she snapped.

His gaze lifted to her face, and he had the uncomfortable thought that even without a lick of make-up on, and the wisps of hair framing her face matted with sweat from her morning run, she had to be the most extraordinarily beautiful woman he’d ever laid eyes on. Her impossibly high cheekbones and those sultry green eyes and full kissable lips were only accentuated by the rosy flush of exertion on her cheeks.

He cleared his throat. ‘I want to talk to you,’ he managed at last.

The sultry green flashed molten fire and her bee-stung lips pursed into a thin line. ‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you,’ she shot back, slapping a hand on her hip. The antagonistic stance made her full breasts flatten against the thin cotton of the tank top and his eyes nearly bugged right out of his head. Had her breasts got a size larger in the last ten days?

‘Now go away.’

The hurled words startled him and she was almost in the door before he managed to claw his mind back out of his pants. He wedged his palm against the door just in the nick of time.

She shoved her shoulder against it, so he leaned in harder. She was tall, the top of her head almost level with his chin as she struggled to close the door, but she couldn’t weigh more than a hundred pounds. He waited patiently, easily holding the door ajar.

‘Either we talk out here, and let the whole neighbourhood know our business, or we talk in your apartment, and keep this private,’ he said, his voice hoarse as he kept his gaze riveted to her flushed angry face, and off that mind-boggling cleavage. ‘Your choice.’

‘Oh, for Pete’s sake!’ she muttered, but finally surrendered the door. ‘Fine. Come in.’ She stomped off up the stairs, pointedly turning her back on him. ‘You’ve already ruined my morning.’

He followed her up the stairs, and judiciously kept his gaze off her moist cleavage as she yanked on a thin gold chain round her neck, and lifted out a key. She opened the apartment door on the second floor, leaving him to grab it before it shut in his face as she waltzed inside. He took in the light, airy and compact apartment, glad that her attitude had changed since their last meeting. Hostility was a lot easier to handle than fake fragility.

Hardwood flooring complemented the plain white walls of the living room, but apart from a stack of boxes on the floor there wasn’t a single piece of furniture in the whole room. He heard the sound of running water, then looked across to see her walk out of the galley kitchen, which was also bare except for another large box resting on the countertop.

She took a deep swallow of the water, then lifted her tank top to wipe her face. He ignored the throb of heat at the quick glimpse of a white cotton sports bra, and the smooth translucent skin stretched taut across her narrow waist.

Strike one to him: there was no visible sign of a baby there. Her belly was as flat as he remembered it. Plus what sort of woman went jogging when they were pregnant? His spirits lifted a little.

‘What could we possibly have to talk about?’ she said as her tank dropped back into place covering up that incriminatingly flat belly. ‘I think we covered just about everything the last time we met, don’t you?’

Despite being hacked off by her snippy tone, and the instant effect she had on his libido, he held off launching into his newest suspicion about her condition. One of them was going to have to be a grown-up about this. And it looked as if that person would have to be him.

‘Where’s your furniture?’ he asked, keeping his tone admirably civil.

‘I’m just about to move out, not that it’s any of your business,’ she said in a sing-song voice that was obviously meant to be a dig. She straightened away from the door frame and rested a palm on her hip, the stance doing that weird optical illusion thing to her breasts again. ‘And by the way, how did you get my address?’

‘You can lose the hostility,’ he said, losing his own civility as the heat resolutely refused to die. ‘If you didn’t want to have anything to do with me, you wouldn’t have contacted me last week.’