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that the kid had stopped her ear-splitting screams, Jack could finally think. The woman didn’t look like a thief, with her big blue eyes and curtain of honey brown hair that fell around her shoulders like waves of silk. But then looks could be deceiving.

      “Where did you get a key?” he demanded.

      “From your uncle, Ralph Enteman.”

      Jack frowned. Now that he thought about it, his uncle had called him yesterday afternoon and said something about sending over a surprise.

      “I’m assuming you are Jack Elliott?” the woman continued.

      “That’s right. And you are?”

      “Kayla White.”

      “Am I supposed to know you?”

      “Your uncle hired me.”

      “Great,” Jack groaned, remembering the last person his uncle had hired for him, an “exotic dancer” he’d sent over on Jack’s last birthday. “Tell him thanks, but I’m not interested,” he said wearily. “You can just head right back where you came from.”

      “Excuse me?”

      “There’s the door. I want you on the other side of it.”

      “I don’t think you understand...” she began, when he interrupted her.

      “Look, honey, it’s nothing personal, although I can’t believe a girl like you would bring your kid with you when you’re on a job like this. But hey, that’s your business.”

      “You have a problem with me bringing my daughter with me?” Kayla repeated. “And what do you mean by ‘a girl like me’? I’m a woman, Mr. Elliott, not a girl.”

      “I noticed. Look, I’m just not in the mood, okay?”

      Kayla frowned at him. “In the mood for what?”

      “For—” remembering there was a kid present, Jack substituted, “—fun and games.”

      Her look became tinged with suspicion. “Just what is it that you think I’m here for?”

      “Why don’t you tell me?” he countered.

      “As I said, your uncle hired my company...”

      Jack interrupted her again. “You own a company that does this kind of thing?”

      Actually she co-owned it with her best friend, Diane, but Kayla saw no purpose in going into details like that at this point. So instead she merely said, “That’s right.”

      “So you must have a lot of...experience?”

      “You could say that.”

      “Do you go out a lot on jobs like this?”

      “Every day.”

      After giving her a head-to-toe once-over, Jack wondered if maybe he was being a little hasty here. She might not be as busty as he liked his women, but she wasn’t half-bad. The plaid skirt she wore stopped above her knees, and the black tights clinging to her legs accentuated their shapely length. She was almost dressed like a preppie college coed, probably a popular costume in her line of work. College coeds and nurses were big—that last exotic dancer had been dressed as a nurse. The only thing out of place was the little girl Kayla was holding.

      “Anyway,” Kayla continued, “your uncle told me that you needed some help temporarily, what with your broken leg. He assured me he’d already spoken to you about all this.”

      “He lied,” Jack said.

      “He didn’t tell you I was coming over?”

      “My uncle told me that he had a surprise for me, but that’s all he said.” Jack belatedly registered that she’d mentioned something about his needing help, which got him to wondering exactly what kind of help she was talking about. The possibilities were erotic and endless. But the woman had a kid with her. This was one of the strangest setups he’d seen. “I can’t believe he gave you a key to get in.”

      “He wasn’t sure if you’d be home.”

      “Where else am I gonna be with a busted leg?”

      “The doorman downstairs told me that you’d gone out.”

      “Yeah, well, Ernie is several cards short of a full deck,” Jack retorted. “So tell me, what exactly is it that you do? I mean, you really don’t find it inhibiting to have your daughter with you on jobs like this?”

      “No. Why should I?”

      “Hey, far be it from me to cast the first stone, but I would have thought...I mean...it kind of breaks the mood, you know what I mean?”

      “No, I don’t have a clue what you mean,” she replied. “Do you have something against kids?”

      “There’s a time and a place for everything and I don’t think this is the time or the place for a kid to be watching her mother...do...whatever it is you do. Just how exotic do you get?”

      “Exotic?”

      “Isn’t that the politically correct term for what you do? Exotic dancing, instead of stripping?”

      Kayla’s eyes widened and her mouth dropped open before she icily stated, “I am not an exotic dancer!”

      “What would you call what you do?”

      “Running errands. I own a company called Errands Unlimited. We do a variety of things, Mr. Elliott, but dancing and/or stripping is not one of them!”

      “Hey, it was a natural mistake for me to make.” Jack held out a hand, before remembering that he needed that hand to hang on to the bookcase. He only narrowly saved himself from falling flat on his face.

      But Kayla seemed unmoved by his difficulty. She was too busy spitting fire at him, her voice sizzling with anger. “A natural mistake? Really? I’d love to hear how you figure that.”

      “The last surprise my uncle sent over was an exotic dancer for my birthday. So naturally I thought...”

      “You thought wrong.”

      The haughty look Kayla gave Jack made him feel like something that had crawled out from under a rock. It was January and the weather outside was beyond chilly, it was downright frigid—but even so, the expression in Kayla’s blue eyes lowered the already cool temperature in his apartment by about twenty degrees. She had classy features, icy eyes and a passionate voice, not to mention pretty damn good legs. She was fire, coated with ice, and she didn’t seem the least bit impressed with him; that alone made her stand out among the women he knew.

      Okay, so he wasn’t exactly looking his best, but at least his gray running shorts accommodated the cast on his right leg. His sweatshirt had Northwestern University Wildcats emblazoned across the chest, bracketed by the spaghetti sauce he’d spilled on it when he’d tried carrying a plate of spaghetti from the kitchen to the living room earlier. Should he tell her that he looked better cleaned up?

      As he watched her, Kayla efficiently disengaged the wooden crutch from the wall and handed it to him. “Here. I think you might need this.”

      The crutch seemed to mock him, underscoring his temporary lack of independence. Irritably taking it from her, he demanded, “So why did you bring your kid with you?”

      The kid—who, after her first ear-piercing screams, had been remarkably quiet up to this point—promptly burst into tears again and hid her face in the crook of her mother’s neck, making Jack feel like an even worse heel.

      “All I did was ask a simple question—” he began.

      “You’s mean!” the little girl shouted from the safety of her mother’s arms.

      “Shhh, sweetie, it’ll be okay,” Kayla murmured in a soothing voice. “This is Mr. Elliott, and he’s not as bad as he seems.”

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