It was also in the wrong place at the wrong time wearing the wrong . . . nah-ah, Chicago Fire Department T-shirt that stretched taut against chiseled pectorals, the sleeve hems pushed north by biceps she remembered gripping as he pistoned those trim hips into her over and over.

Five years ago.

Five years of climbing a pinnacle of fame to that coveted spot on the A-list. Well, four years. The last year wiped out all that had gone before. Every high, every joyful moment.

But before it all began, back in a simpler time, there had been a week—six glorious, sex-filled nights, actually—with the Marine. Who was not a Marine at all, it seemed, or no longer was.

Cal, seeing that Molly had been struck stupid, donned her personal assistant hat and stepped forward.

“Hi, I’m Calysta Johnson. I’ve been emailing CFD Media Affairs about today’s meeting, and this is . . .”

“Miss Cade,” he grated. Or perhaps Molly only imagined that husky tone, wanted to think he was affected by this reunion as much as she.

Molly felt like her legs would give out. A thundering sound started in her head. Her blood. The Marine-firefighter said something to Cal, maybe his name, but she missed it.

She had never known that name, had never wanted to. That was their unspoken agreement. No names, no history, no future. Just six nights of scorching passion and inhibitions annihilated. He had done things to her no other man had ever done. Plumbed the depths of her pleasure and scaled her to orgasmic heights she had forgotten existed during the icy wasteland of her marriage. She used to like sex. She used to like the person she was during sex, but Ryan had drilled it out of her—literally—with his all-consuming focus on himself.

“Mol?”

She turned to find Cal, eyes wide with concern.

“You okay?”

Molly swallowed. “Yes! I’m fine!” Squeaky voiced, about to fall over, but otherwise okeydokey.

She met the cool gaze of the Marine. “Mr. . . . ?”

“Fox. Wyatt Fox.”

Oh. My. “God.”

He stared.

She stared back. It was him. Not just him from all those years ago, but him, the elusive Dempsey. How was it possible that the man who had lit her on fire, body and soul, was also the same man who could get her closer to her heart’s desire—a way in with his sister?

Wyatt Fox. It suited him. Clean, masculine, not a syllable wasted. Like James Bond, if 007 had added cowboy-Marine-firefighter to his stable of personae.

Fox. Wyatt Fox. License to thrill—and send your panties plummeting.

A manic giggle bubbled up from somewhere deep, the same place where illicit laughter in church originated. The wicked, don’t-you-dare-Molly kind of giggle she had never been able to smother whenever Pastor Morrison delivered his sermon with a booger hanging from his nose. Every Sunday, without fail, at St. Peter’s Episcopal Church in New Haven, Missouri.

She held out her hand. To distract from her tremble, she parted with that giggle. Wily move, she thought.

Wyatt Fox stared at her as if she had lost her mind. Don’t worry, Marine, that train left the station long ago. Only now was she starting to put the splintered mess back together again.

She cleared her throat, drawing on Serious Molly. Though she was quite enjoying this giddy version. It had been awhile.

“Thanks so much for meeting with us today.”

No reaction. Whatsoever.

God, this was priceless. The one guy on the planet who could probably map all her freckles and he clearly didn’t remember a single one—or her! But that had been their game, hadn’t it? Each night, they would circle each other in that hotel bar as though they were strangers, as though they hadn’t already memorized every inch of each other’s bodies, the pulse points, the weak spots, every breathy sound.

Could he be reverting to their previous dynamic? Is that why he was looking at her as though she was nothing to him? Or had she truly made so little impact?

He dwarfed her hand in his giant one, squeezed once, and let go. As if her touch offended him. No, she was reading far too much into this.

“Miss Cade.”

“Molly. Call me Molly.”

The prickle of heat on the back of her neck could only mean one thing.

Cal was staring at her and compiling a list of questions in her head to be brought out later over a bottle of Pinot.

“Hey, do you guys, uh . . . know each other?”

Or why wait? Just get it out there and clear the air. Thanks, babe.

Not a muscle moved in the Marine’s—Wyatt’s—face, not even an eyelash, but then . . . then . . . yes! A slight rise of his eyebrow, like the ghost of a breeze fluttering practically invisible molecules. He did remember. The enormity of his reaction, and what it meant, smashed her to the ground.

He was feigning ignorance, allowing her the freedom to admit or deny.

For the past five years, her life had not been her own. A Faustian bargain she had made knowingly, of course. Hello fame, good-bye privacy. But those hacked photos infecting the Internet, that violation, had not been her choice.

Her heart clenched at Wyatt’s small gesture of discretion. Gallantry. So perhaps banging Molly fifteen ways from Sunday before she was famous might not be worth bragging about, but any other guy would be salivating at the chance to compose a headline of Hot Nights in the Sack with Molly Cade! Instead Wyatt was giving her the choice whether to reveal their past affair.

Tears pricked her eyelids at the unexpected kindness. Get it together, Mol.

This prior connection could not get out. She was trying to rehabilitate her sorry rep, not create more gossip for the gutter rags. Which is why she really should not have said in answer to Cal’s question about whether they knew each other, “Depends on your definition of ‘know.’ ”

One razor-straight eyebrow shot up, hovered near the cocoa brown hairline, and lowered slowly. How gratifying to be able to throw him like that. He had always been so unshockable.

“We had some mutual interests once,” Wyatt said, a devilish gleam in those blue-gray eyes. “Bars. Shakespeare.” Sexy pause. “Elevators.”

Heat rose to her cheeks.

Point to you, Mr. Fox.

KATE MEADER was raised on romance. An Irish girl, she started with Catherine Cookson and Jilly Cooper novels, and spiced it up with some Mills & Boon. Now based in Chicago, she writes romances of her own, where sexy contemporary alpha heroes and strong heroines match each other quip for quip. When not immersed in tales of brooding mill owners, oversexed equestrians, and men who can rock an apron or a fire hose, Kate lives on the web, at www.katemeader.com.

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