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after the few weeks it had spent out in the wet and mud. She didn’t look like someone a man like Sir would toss a fiver to on the street, let alone allow to set her dirty feet into his penthouse.
    It was while she was despairing over her appearance and her chances of carrying out her plan that the elevator came to a sudden stop and the doors opened. It was like that other night all over again. As she stepped slowly off the elevator and let the doors close behind her, she was again hemmed in by elegant finery and richness that took her breath away, even as it stirred a faint twinge of envy that one man should possess so much while people like her lived every day wondering where their next meal was coming from.
    “So it is you,” a low masculine voice observed from across the room. Sir was seated on one of the white leather armchairs, looking as dark and formidable as she remembered him, for all his casual tone. He was surrounded by stacks of papers and held a highlighter in one hand. But he set his work aside to regard her with an expression of expectancy. If he was curious as to what motive had brought her to him uninvited, he didn’t show it, maintaining the sense Teagan remembered in him so well—that attitude of already knowing what was to come.
    She studied him with a sort of horrified fascination. Dressed in a white button-up shirt and black slacks, as if he had just come from somewhere important, he didn’t look like a man capable of the scene she remembered so vividly from their last meeting. With his expression casual and his hair slicked into place, he looked cool and controlled and…yes, extremely attractive, in a vaguely sinister way. Or maybe it was just Teagan’s previous experience evoking that indefinable sense of danger hovering around him. His expression remained bland as he surveyed her standing at the elevator doors, but she thought his calculating eyes were mocking her, even as they summed up her bedraggled condition.
    “You can come closer,” he said generously, apparently noting her reluctance to abandon her safe position for flight. “I don’t bite.”
    Teagan didn’t wholly believe that. She moved just far enough toward him they wouldn’t have to raise their voices to converse but maintained enough distance to make a hasty retreat if the need arose.
    His amused glance told her he noted her response, but he said nothing of it. Teagan read the silent confidence in his eyes that was an echo of her own uneasy thoughts. She looked away from his taunting gaze and concentrated on her purpose. If she let thoughts like these keep intruding on her determination, she may as well cast everything aside and make a hasty break toward safety right now.
    Only it wasn’t safety that lay on the other side of those elevator doors. It was another hungry night sleeping in an alley or under a hedgerow in some park. She wasn’t sure she’d survive another night in the cold. This morning she had been alarmed at how difficult it was to get up when crawling from beneath a layer of snow. She’d been forced to keep moving all day, afraid of what would happen if she allowed herself to drop off into the seductive embrace of sleep for even a few minutes.
    All these thoughts provided ample reason for her to hold her ground now. Nevertheless, despite her resolve, she leaped like a startled rabbit when he abruptly broke the silence. “Since you don’t seem eager to explain your business, I assume you’re waiting for me to ask. To what do I owe the pleasure of this charming and unexpected visit?”
    Time to practice the speech she’d been working on all day. Teagan licked her lips and grasped after the planned speech as it scattered in bits from her memory. She was unused to such positions as the one she now found herself in. She had never considered herself stupid or socially awkward, but somehow he had the power to freeze her body and mind simply by looking at her. She stood floundering, trying to remember exactly