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might not be able to swing the mortgage payment.
    “What about Chaz? Where does he fit in?”
    “Chaz worked for DeeDee when I first started. Then his freelance work started paying better, so he quit. Anyway, after my ex and I broke up, I moved in with Chaz. I didn’t know anyone in Denver besides the group my ex and I ran around with, and he got custody of them in the split. Chaz took me under his wing. After I assumed ownership of the building and company, he asked to rent the tiny room, which was the employee break room before the remodel. He doesn’t like working alone in his apartment all the time.”
    When Ronin continued to stare at her, she bristled. “So, did I pass the Sensei Ronin Black business qualifications test?”
    He leaned forward. “That wasn’t a business test. Have I not made myself clear that it will be more than self-defense training and business between us?”
    “Why me?” she blurted. “To hear people talk, you’re some kind of martial arts god. You have that whole scary, mysterious Zen thing going on. And you are one of the hottest guys I’ve ever met.”
    “One of?” he repeated.
    “Okay,
the
hottest guy I’ve ever met, but I didn’t want to admit that because I didn’t want you to get a swelled head.”
    Ronin smiled. “Thank you for the compliment. But I’m just a guy, Amery. A guy who works too hard and plays too little. And after meeting you?” His heated gaze roamed over her face. “I’m more than ready to play.”
    His deep velvety voice dripped with promises of sweaty, combustible sex. And her panties started getting very, very warm.
    “Are you seeing anyone?”
    “No. I have a hard time finding a date.” Now, why had she admitted that to the hottest guy she’d ever met?
    “You are a beautiful woman. But I’d venture a guess to say if you’re hanging out in gay bars with your friends, then you’re batting zero on the dating front because of your choice of venues.”
    Since both Chaz and Emmylou wore their sexual orientation like a banner, his insight about them wasn’t shocking after one meeting. But his supposed insight into her was wrong. Dead wrong. And she told him so.
    “I’m never wrong.” Ronin cocked his head. “I’ll prove it to you.”
    “How?”
    “Pick a bar around here where young urban professionals hang out after work. I’ll bet you get hit on at least six times. In an hour.”
    “There’s no way to prove it,” she argued. “I could just tell you I didn’t get hit on at all and you’d never know.”
    He picked up her hand. “But I will know because I plan to be in the same bar. I’ll keep track of how many men hit on you. You just have to be your beautiful, charming self.”
    His thumb was drawing tiny circles on the base of her hand. Sexy circles. Gentle, yet insistent. Would Ronin kiss that way? Starting out slow and then unleashing the heat that burned in his eyes?
    “What were you thinking about just now?”
    She guzzled half her glass of water. “What’s in this bar experiment for you?”
    Ronin brought her hand to his mouth, pressing soft kisses from the edge of her wrist to the fleshy skin below her thumb. “I get to look at you for an hour, which you know I like. And when the time is up, I get to be the guy you’ll leave the bar with.”
    Amery gave him a skeptical look. “You won’t have a bunch of your friends there as ringers, pretending to be interested in me?”
    “First of all, I wouldn’t do something so dishonorable. Second, I want
you
to see all the men that flock to you when you’re not surrounded by gay camouflage.”
    She laughed. “Okay. You’re on. But I have two conditions.”
    “Which I’ll allow you to mention but I do not have to abide by, since the experiment was my idea and the rules are mine to make.” He smiled serenely. “But please, go ahead and tell me your conditions.”
    “I want to hear your backstory.”
    “Didn’t you read my bio on the Web site?”
    She had, despite the fact