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renovation. You know damn well this street gets heavy foot traffic on a daily basis. You never know who’s going to come pawing through here looking to steal supplies or tools.”
    â€œI lock up.”
    He let a rough snort.
    â€œI’m staying, Mac.”
    â€œThere are going to be times where there’s no electricity. No water. No gas. This isn’t going to be the Ritz, Princess. This is going to be little more than camping at best.”
    She hadn’t had luxuries in months, but hell if she’d admit that. Or the fact that she was slowly selling off her beloved antique collection just to keep afloat here. He thought her a spoiled princess, so be it.
    What he thought was no skin off her nose.
    And if he really believed she was going to back off the first challenge in her entire life, the first chance she’d ever had to prove herself, to get by on her own, he was sorely mistaken. She’d continue her spaghetti and canned tomato diet for as long as it took. She was going to do this, and do it right, and not even for him, the first man to make her feel a twinge in the heart region in ten years, would she give it up.
    â€œI’ll make sure I have batteries and drinking water,” she said.
    He stared at her for one, long, unwavering heartbeat, then shook his head. “Are you always impossible and stubborn, or is it just me?”
    Trick question, that.
    He certainly hadn’t been the first man to find her difficult, and she doubted he’d be the last. But only one thing mattered to her, her battered pride. No way was she going to admit she couldn’t afford to go anywhere for the duration of the renovation, not to him, not to anyone. “I’m staying, Mac.”
    â€œThrough the dirt and noise, through the inconvenience, through the danger?”
    The only possible danger came from him and him alone, but she doubted he’d appreciate the irony. “Through the dirt and noise, through the inconvenience, through the ‘danger.”’
    â€œTaylor—”
    â€œWow, my name,” she marveled, cocking her head. “You do know it.”
    His jaw tightened. “You’re doing this, aren’t you? No matter what I say.”
    â€œI’m doing this.” She had no choice. “No matter what you say.”

4
    S OUTH V ILLAGE’S NIGHTLIFE rivaled the Sunset Strip as the busiest, most energetic area in Southern California. And yet the crowds it attracted weren’t wild or aggressive. Instead the attitude was a sort of laid-back and easygoing elegance.
    The town’s founders had perpetrated this atmosphere with one goal in mind.
    Wealth.
    The old adage turned out to be correct—build it and they will come. The place had roared in the twenties, declined in the thirties and forties and rebelled in the fifties and sixties. True to the circle of life, it had been given a face-lift, slowly over the past twenty years, and had been turned into a gold mine.
    As a result, there was never an available parking spot. Swearing, Mac circled the block. Then again. Damn it, he’d had a long day, all he needed was one little spot. Somewhere. Anywhere.
    The heat was going to kill him. If Taylor didn’t kill him first, that is. She could do it with just her eyes, those amazing green eyes she thought hid everything from to the world and yet seemed so expressive to him.
    Then there was her calm and cool, sophisticated, elegant exterior, which he hated. But he also was be ginning to understand all that was really just a front for a boiling pot of stubborn orneriness, and where there was stubborn orneriness, there was heat and passion.
    And damn if he wasn’t a sucker for heat and passion. Oh yeah, he enjoyed a woman who knew what she wanted and how.
    Or at least, he used to.
    But his and Taylor’s fate was sealed, no matter how explosive he figured they’d be in bed, because she was everything he would never go for again.
    And she