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important mapping data. Perry is his golden-boy assistant. I may have to lay low in the history department for a while.”
    “So what’s the deal? Were you into that guy?”
    “I thought I was, until he drank too much. Good lord, he was so full of himself. I’ve written dozens of articles and a book on military history. Which I know he has a copy of because I gave it to him when he visited my office. Yet he thinks I’m a token. I may not be Doris Kearns Goodwin, but I’m no slouch in my field. As if the navy would pay me to sit in my cubicle and do nothing just because I have ovaries.”
    Keith took his eyes off the road. Warm color lit her cheeks. Moral outrage looked good on her.
    Everything looked good on her.
    “Crap!” She bolted upright. “We have to go back.”
    “Why?”
    “I left my purse in Erica’s car. My ID, phone, keys, money. I don’t have anything.”
    He pulled his cell out of his pocket and handed it to her. “Call Erica. Ask her if you can pick it up later tonight from her place.”
    “What do I do until then?”
    “I’m taking you out to dinner.”
    “I suppose she could give it to Cressida—my roommate. After Cressida gets home, I could get into the apartment.”
    “Perfect.”
    Trina made the call and was grateful to leave a message on Erica’s cell. The last thing she wanted was to answer questions right then. She set the phone on the console and said, “We have one problem. I don’t have ID. I always get carded, and frankly, I would really like a stiff drink right now.”
    Keith grinned. “Well then, you’ve just given me the perfect excuse to take you back to my place.” An image of her splayed out in his bed flashed in his mind. His fingers tightened on the steering wheel. “If that’s okay with you.”
    She looked at him speculatively. “Can you cook?”
    “Babe, I’m the youngest of four boys. It was learn to cook, or starve.”
    “Good, because I can’t. Your place it is.”
    He pulled a U-turn in the middle of the empty country road. The sun was shining, the top was off, he had a job offer on the table from Rav, and a beautiful woman had just agreed to go back to his place. Not a bad result from a party he hadn’t even wanted to attend.

    T RINA COULDN’T BELIEVE she was back in Keith’s town house only nine hours after she’d fled this morning. It was a dangerous place to be, considering she’d come down from a slight adrenaline rush, and all she wanted to do was drag the man up to his bedroom and take advantage of him.
    It didn’t help that his living room contained her ultimate aphrodisiac—one entire wall was loaded floor-to-ceiling bookshelves. She studied the feast, running her hands along the spines, realizing with a jolt that the nonfiction books were organized according to Dewey. She shifted to the fiction section and noted those books were organized by genre and author.
    What kind of man did that?
    The same man with a mudroom that lacked mud and a kitchen without crumbs.
    She plucked a paperback copy of one of her favorite Truman biographies from the shelf and admired the gently worn spine. Either he’d bought it used or he’d read it.
    She opened to the title page and felt a strange flutter to see the author had signed the book with an inscription to Keith. The soft thud of footsteps on the carpet told her he had entered the room. She turned to face him. Damn if he didn’t look even more appealing now that she knew he not only read biographies, he went to signings to meet the authors. Was there anything sexier than that?
    He handed her a glass of red wine. “That’s a great book, but have you read this one?” He set down his own wineglass and plucked a history of the battle of Peleliu from the shelves.
    She nodded. “It’s heartbreaking. Sledge’s account is the definitive story, but I appreciate that one for the historical perspective, which you can’t get from a first-person account.” She slid the biography back into its slot and