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sabbatical from sex made her feel so in control, so at peace with herself that she’d considered shipping her libido to Florida for permanent retirement.
    But what harm did it do to look?
    She did just that. Felt flustered when he caught her look and smiled. Managed a smile in return. “Get here by six and I’ll finish the tour,” she said.
    “I’ll look forward to that,” he said.
    So would she. All day she’d be looking forward to it. In fact she had already set a mental timer on countdown.
    She bent down to scratch behind the basset hound’s floppy ears in case any hint of interest in Nick showed on her face.
    At that moment when he’d trapped her hand beneath his, she’d felt protected, not panicked; reassured rather than ready to run. She’d thought she would never feel that way around a man again. Not after the Valentine’s Day dumping and the unpleasant incidents that had preceded it.
    But he still made her feel edgy. She still felt he wasn’t a Yorki-poo kind of guy—and that there was something not quite right about the mismatch. There was no way this guy had a valid passport for dog world.
    Of course she would make darn sure she was around when he dropped off and picked up his dog. Even if she had to fight the other girls for the privilege. But that was as far as it would go.
    Because when it came to Nick Whalen her instincts were on red alert. There was too much unexplained about him for her to trust him.

Three
    “She’s hot, man, is she hot,” Nick groaned to his buddy and business partner, Adam Shore. He rocked back in his chair, feet propped on his desk. “She tries to look like some frumpy schoolma’am, but man, she’s so not that. She. Is. Hot.”
    As he drove from Paws-A-While in the Marina District to the South Beach office of S&W Investigations, Nick had spent way too much time thinking about Serena Oakley. And his instant, unprecedented attraction to her.
    Adam looked up from his desk. “That’s three times you’ve used the word ‘hot’ about this possible perp,” he said. “I suggest you stay more detached.”
    At age thirty-four, with his already-thinning-at-the-temples dark hair and frameless glasses, Adam looked more like a bank executive than the powerhouse FBI special agent he’d been when Nick and he became friends. When Adam had suggested Nick leave the agency and go into partnership with him, Nick hadn’t hesitated.
    Nick had had a gutful of bureaucracy. And an incompetent manager who’d blocked his promotion and made it very clear he was going nowhere soon. There’d been the money, too. A special agent’s salary beat the minimum wage but not by a hell of a lot. He hadn’t left a comfortable life in his hometown in far northern California to live in debt.
    Nick swung his legs back onto the floor and got up. He paced the wooden floor of the small but smart office in a remodeled bond warehouse on Delancey. Right now S&W Investigations comprised just him and Adam and a part-time bookkeeper. But this was only the start.
    “Detached. Focused. Maintain suspicion. I know all that.” He cracked his knuckles, a habit he had never been able to get out of. “But you should see her, she’s—”
    “Hot. Yeah, I get it.”
    “I was going to say funny and warm and charming. Despite her back-off tactics.” He cracked his knuckles again, in spite of—or perhaps because of—Adam’s shudder. “The damndest thing, the more I think about her, the more I have this feeling I’ve seen her somewhere before.”
    “On America’s Most Wanted ?”
    Nick glared at Adam. “No.”
    “It’s possible,” Adam replied. “Better check up on this crazy dog woman.”
    “Don’t call her that.” Nick surprised himself at the vehemence of the tone he used to his partner.
    “Isn’t that what you called her yourself?”
    Nick stopped his pacing and stood in front of Adam’s desk. “Guilty as charged. But that was before I met her.”
    Adam took off his glasses and narrowed his