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untangled himself from the feather boa and was already in the second lane. Biting her lip, Lara looked left, then right. Spotting a cab at the corner, she used her long legs to their best advantage. Ten seconds later, she threw herself in the backseat, panting to the driver to hurry.
    Angling to her knees, Lara twisted to look out the rear window. The mountain was only two car lengths away.
    “Hurry, hurry, hurry,” she chanted.
    The taxi driver must’ve looked in his mirror, because suddenly he laid on his horn, then, muttering, hit the gas, drove up on the sidewalk and around the lookie-loos still stopped at the light.
    As the car squealed around the corner, Lara relaxed enough to wave, a little finger wiggle, at the mountain.
    The guy wasn’t even winded.
    Nor, she noticed as she wrinkled her nose, did he look upset.
    Instead, he only grinned and waved back.
    “Lover’s quarrel?” the driver asked.
    “Something like that,” Lara said, settling into the seat and giving him an address.
    Nerves screaming with relief, she tried to shake off the adrenaline and settle her mind.
    It wasn’t fear that was dogging her, though.
    She laid her head back on the cracked seat, closed her eyes and took stock of her body.
    Nope.
    That wasn’t fear tightening her nipples or making her thighs tremble.
    That was desire. Pure, lusty need.
    Figured.
    The first guy to turn her on in three years showed up now, when her entire focus was on—had to stay on—finishing her computer training and getting the plum internship the school offered. Which meant no distractions, no men, no sex. She’d made a vow—this time nothing was going to get in the way of her success.
    It wasn’t that vow that put him firmly off-limits, though.
    Nope. Sadly, she’d ditch her vow in a heartbeat for a sexy guy. That’s how she’d lost a plum role and effectively destroyed her career when she was dancing on Broadway. She’d called in sick one weekend to run off for a romantic trip. Snowy sleigh rides in the country, a quaint bed-and-breakfast with candlelight dinners and sex. Incredible, hot, wild sex. When she’d broken her leg, her boyfriend had left her in an E.R. two hundred miles from home and she’d been fired.
    A year later, she’d given up a boring but lucrative teaching job at the dance institute to follow Mr. Perfect to Reno. A smart girl learned, after enough failures, to keep her vow and focus on the career.
    Still, it wasn’t the vow that had her sagging in relief over the near miss.
    What put the sexy hunk with the gorgeous dimples off-limits was one simple fact: he knew her brother.
    And anyone who knew any member of her family wasn’t anyone she wanted to know. Even if he did have the good taste to admit that he’d deny a relationship with Phillip, too. That was guy talk, his way of trying to charm her.
    “We’re here.”
    Mulling and just a few breaths away from pouting, Lara grabbed her bag, glanced at the meter, then handed the driver the last of her cash and slid from the cab.
    Phillip was a SEAL?
    Lara blinked, trying to take that in. She’d known he was in the Navy. He’d been at Annapolis when she’d run away. No noncom status would suit a Banks, by God, nor would the heir apparent dare skip college. Two birds, one stone, that was Phillip.
    A lot of people had been surprised that he’d joined the Navy. Phillip wasn’t exactly the fighting type, the let’s-serve-our-country type or the gung-ho-sailor type. But Lara had known better. Their grandfather, great-grandfather and a fistful more greats over the years had been naval officers for various countries, and he’d always been fascinated by the stories.
    So the Navy didn’t surprise her at all.
    But the SEALs? That was a straight-up shock.
    She tried to imagine her brother doing heroic deeds, part of an elite team in the special forces. But the picture just wouldn’t jell in her mind.
    Then she shook her head.
    What did it matter? She hadn’t seen her brother in