I follow suit but as I try to pull myself up, my heels wobble and I lose my balance and fall back. My chained wrist pulls Daren down with me but where he kind of slides to the floor on his knees, I end up landing square on my butt with my legs sprawled beneath me and my skirt hiked up to the palest skin of my thighs.

Daren looks at me with a suppressed laugh and throws my words from earlier back at me. “Real smooth.”

“Hey,” I snap. “It’s really hard to get off the floor when you’re handcuffed and wearing heels and a skirt.”

He stands. “Oh I have no doubt. That’s why I opted for my casual shoes today.” He mocks, “They don’t do much for my calves but they’re quite comfortable, and they go with everything.”

“I hate you.”

“No, you don’t.” His eyes skim my naked thighs and his smile shifts from amusement to appreciation.

I yank the tight material of my skirt down as far as possible and he clears his throat and moves his eyes back to mine.

“Here.” He has his genuine smile back on. “Give me your hand.” He reaches for my left hand as he threads his fingers through my cuffed right one. Then he starts to pull me up.

It’s a practical gesture but it feels intimate. His fingers, laced between mine, are big and warm as they fold over the back of my hand and lift me up.

I manage to stand without flashing him or toppling over. “Thanks.”

Once we’re on our feet, we quickly untangle our hands. As his fingers slide out of mine and his skin rubs against my skin, something low in my belly twitches. My eyes drift up the sinewy muscles of his forearm and bicep, across the thick muscles of his chest, and down his lean stomach to his hips where he’s brushing dust off his jeans. For a brief second, I wonder what those hips would look like without jeans on. Then I mentally slap myself.

This is Daren Ackwood, for God’s sake. Mr. Sleeps-With-The-Whole-Town. I will not get sucked into his funnel of good looks and sexy hips.

I glance him over again and frown. Goddamn Daren and his bandit kissing, getting my body all worked up and bringing on unsolicited belly twitches. I really need to get away from his fingers and hips, STAT.

“Let’s hurry up and finish this.” I start tugging him back toward the front door.

“Yes, ma’am. But first?” He stops walking and the handcuffs snap me back. “I’m going to find my baseball cards.”

“What?”

“You heard me.” He moves in front of me and marches down the hallway, whipping me behind him.

“No way,” I say as I’m reluctantly towed behind him by our steel restraints. “We don’t have time for you to play card detective.”

He doesn’t look back. “Sure we do.”

“What is with you and these baseball cards?” I say. “You’d think you were twelve by the way you’re so emotionally attached to these things.”

He looks over his shoulder and grins. “I have attachment issues, remember?”

I roll my eyes.

“Seriously, though. They were a Christmas present I got when I was thirteen. All valuable collector’s cards.” He takes us back into the living room where he opens the cabinet in the corner and starts going through the shelves. “I barely had a chance to enjoy them before your dad jacked them.”

I nod. “Uh-huh. And why, exactly, did he ‘jack’ them?” I make air quotes and Daren frowns at my fingers.

“He jacked them,” he says, “because he thought I was too spoiled to appreciate them.”

I snort. “You probably were.”

“I was.” He nods. “At the time.”

I raise a brow. “You admit you were spoiled?”

“Oh yeah. I was totally spoiled.” He shrugs. “Growing up, my parents bought me anything I wanted whenever I wanted, as long as it kept me out of their way. I had all the money and freedom in the world. And I took it all for granted.”

He looks back at the shelf. “I thought having money was the most important thing in life. Money got me video games, popularity, friends… girls. But as I got older, my home life started to crumble, and I realized that there was a huge difference between the kind of rich that my father was and the kind of rich that, uh… that your father was.” He glances at me. “Your dad had an appreciation and humility—for life, for money, for people—that my father never had. And when I was young I was just like my father. Selfish. Ungrateful… So yeah.” He looks back at the shelf and resumes his search. “I was a spoiled brat and your dad knew it.”

I watch him for a moment, wondering what he meant by his home life starting to crumble. I know about his mom running off with the reverend, Brad Keeton, and how his dad started drinking after that, but the way he said as I got older makes me think there’s something more to the story.

I muse, “Sounds like you deserved a lesson in appreciation.”

He tosses me a crooked smile. “I may have been a spoiled brat but that’s still no excuse for a grown man to steal a kid’s baseball cards. And frankly, I think Turner’s lesson on gratitude would have been better spent on you.”

I blanch. “Excuse me?” His insult stings, but the casual tone with which he said it hurts more. “I’m not spoiled. I—I’m the opposite of spoiled.”

“Sure you are.” He moves from the cabinet to the entertainment center, dragging me along as he looks inside, under, and behind every nook and cranny. “Didn’t your father set up a trust fund for you?”

“What? No.” I blink. “No. Why would you think that?”

He lifts a shoulder. “That’s what I heard.”

I scowl. “From who?”

“It’s a small town. From everyone.”

“Well I don’t know what people told you, but I do not have, nor have I ever had, a trust fund. That’s ridiculous.”

He eyes me skeptically before moving to the sofa. “Maybe I’m wrong then.”

Everywhere he goes, I have to go but all I want to do is storm off. Damn these handcuffs!

“Yes. You are wrong. You know nothing about me,” I say as he crouches down to look under the couch. “And I seriously doubt my father hid your baseball cards under the couch.” I look down at him with an exasperated breath.

He frowns at the nothingness beneath the sofa. “Where would he have put them?”

I pinch my lips together. “He probably has a secret vault where he stashes all the toys he takes from little kids and the candy he steals from babies.”

“Laugh all you want,” he says, “but if he stole something from you when you were thirteen, you’d be just as mad as me—” He sits up and his words catch in his throat when he comes face-to-face with my skirt.

With him still crouched on the floor, and me standing beside him, my bare lower thighs are right at his eye level. An exhale leaves his mouth and his hot breath grazes the inside of my legs, floating up my skirt and between the bare skin of my thighs. I suddenly forget about his insult and my anger as my head clouds with desire.

He looks up at me from under those long dark eyelashes of his and my entire body flushes. My throat goes dry. My nipples harden. I want to swallow but my brain doesn’t seem to be working as I stare down at his large pupils boring into me.

He rocks back on his heels and my leashed wrist swings back with his, our arms moving in sync. I watch his Adam’s apple bob with a thick swallow as his eyelids grow heavy and his gaze returns to my legs. I grasp for something to do or say, anything to distract me from the fact that there is a hot beautiful mouth breathing against my thighs. And not just any mouth. Daren’s mouth.

I’ve got nothing.

Nothing but white-hot arousal and naughty, naughty thoughts.

Jolting me out of my stupor, Daren clears his throat and leans away. I’m finally able to swallow as I watch him slowly stand, and time crawls along in the silence.

He swallows as well. “Will you please just help me find my baseball cards?”

Baseball cards… baseball cards… Oh, right. That’s what we were talking about.