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instincts were always dead-on. If she thought there was a story to be written, she’d find it. She always had drive. Or was it a need for the truth that made her such a refreshing part of a sadistic world? Either way, he missed it.
    “What are you doing?” Vic Andrews asked as he entered the office.
    His partner wore chinos and a blue golf shirt and, in Michael’s opinion, took business casual to the boundaries of too casual. Plus, his normally scruffy hair looked exceptionally rumpled and Michael wondered about the fine line between fashion and a mess. Vic had recently started with the day old beard look that had the women in the office going nuts. This company didn’t need its already over-stimulated vice president becoming the sexual fantasy of half the female employees. What a shit storm that would be.
    “You golfing today?” Michael asked.
    Vic waved him off and dropped into one of the two guest chairs. Vic wasn’t big on rules either. “I asked you a question first.”
    Michael pointed to his phone. “ That was Roxann.”
    “Ahhhh, the lovely Roxann with the most amazing legs you’ve ever seen.” Vic made a low growling sound.
    Michael laughed. “No shit.”
    And wouldn’t it be nice to have them wrapped around him. Whoa. Down boy. No sense getting Mr. Happy worked up. Must be the fatigue.
    Still, the legs got him every time. The first time he’d spotted them, he’d been twenty-seven years old, sitting on a folding chair in the miniscule backyard of a friend of a friend at a fourth of July party he hadn’t wanted to go to. Four weeks fresh out of the army, he’d been dealing with undiagnosed PTSD that left him exhausted and supremely strung-out. Between the lack of sleep and the nightmares, when he did manage rest, he hadn’t had a lot firing in the mental agility category.
    But he’d gone to that party because he felt like crap and needed to get laid. A piss poor motivating factor, but the physical release would clear his mind.
    On that summer night, the sky was clear, the air cooler than normal and filled with a mix of music and chattering voices from the crowd packed into the tiny backyard. He sat alone nursing his beer when the long-legged blonde entered the yard. She wore khaki shorts and a sweater tank top that clung to her lean form. The sleeves of the cardigan tied around her shoulders hung over her chest, but he saw enough to know he’d like to get his hands there. Her long hair, streaked with sun-drenched highlights, fell loose around her face and she tossed one side over her shoulder, exposing a softly sculpted cheek that he immediately wanted to run his fingers over.
    Perfection.
    Suddenly, his world didn’t seem such a fucked up place. Michael breathed in. She’s the one. What that meant in his horny-as-ever state, he wasn’t sure and didn’t necessarily care. He knew he had to have her.
    A group of people huddled in front of him, blocking his view, and he shifted a little. The blonde stepped to the picnic table not ten feet from him and parked her trim ass next to five women.
    Thirty minutes later he still sat there, watching and waiting, damn near mesmerized by her. She hadn’t so much as glanced his way, but she hadn’t glanced anyone else’s way either. He couldn’t call her aloof. Not with the way she laughed and yapped with her friends, but she had a quality to her he couldn’t define. Elegant maybe. He didn’t know, but it worked. Hard.
    A few people stopped to say hello to him, but his attention stayed on the blonde. If she moved from that group, he’d be on her. No doubt.
    The break came when the two women closest to her got up and left. She wasn’t alone, but the three remaining women were deep into their own conversation. Take the shot.
    He made his way to her, squeezing through the crowd that had once again gathered in his path. He stepped up to the table and set his beer down. She glanced at the beer, then brought her gaze, a blue-green that nearly stopped his