A small crowd was waiting for the elevators, so McCord turned toward the stairwell and Sam followed him. He was two steps in front of her, which gave her time to dwell on the short hairs at his nape that touched his collar.

His mind was still on his unwitting part in trying to hang a crime on the wrong man. "I'm so damned glad I gave Valente the benefit of the doubt when I questioned him this morning," he told her sarcastically. "They've been trying to lock him up for years, but I was going to help them stick a needle in his arm for something he didn't do. How much worse can abuse of power and authority get?"

"I think he's actually a very lucky man," Sam replied behind him.

"How do you figure that?" McCord said derisively as they neared the landing on the second floor.

Sam's right hand actually lifted toward his shoulder, but she pulled it back. She'd been able to withstand his magnetic appeal when he was strong and sure of himself, but she was evidently not proof against Mitchell McCord when he was troubled. "Because you'd never have let that happen. You're nobody's henchman. That's what makes you so incredible—"

He stopped walking and turned so sharply that Sam couldn't stop her descent to the next step or her hand from colliding with his on the railing. Her heart began to beat frantically when she found her face only an inch from his, and her fingers seemed to have fused themselves to his on the railing.

Swallowing, she struggled free of the momentary spell and stepped upward a step. He stepped up onto the one she'd vacated, giving her a close-up view of the tanned column of his throat at the V of his open collar. Fear of their discovery by anyone walking into the stairwell made her chest rise and fall rapidly, and his gaze dropped to her breasts, noting it. What he said, however, was exactly the opposite of anything she would have imagined:

"No," he said on a harsh laugh, as if he couldn't believe he'd walked up that last step. "No." Turning, he moved down the stairs rapidly with Sam right behind him, completely mortified and adamantly determined not to show it. The outer door opened onto a tiny, badly lit parking area behind the building. "It's a nice night," she lied with a cheerful voice, stepping into the freezing air. "I'd really like to take the subway and stop for some—shopping on the way home."

She turned with a bright smile and then frowned when his hand locked around her elbow. "Get in my car," he ordered.

Sam pulled her elbow free, but not roughly—not in a way that would show she was upset. Showing a male that you were upset made him leap to a variety of conclusions, none of which were ever what you wanted him to conclude. However, laughing at a man in that same situation thoroughly threw him off guard. Sam laughed good-naturedly. "I appreciate your offer, but I would really rather take the subway and go shopping."

"Get in the car," he commanded, putting his hand in the small of her back to ensure she did that.

The next big mistake you could make with a male in McCord's inexplicably domineering mood, Sam knew, was to appear to make a big issue over nothing. Which of course made them conclude that the "nothing" was a big "something" to you.

Sam got into his car, and he closed the door behind her, then locked it with his key.

She almost got the giggles over that. "We're both armed, you know," she told him when he slid behind the steering wheel.

"One of us is better armed than the other," he replied brusquely.

Sam sent him a speculative smile. "Which one of us is that?"

He turned slowly and put his arm across the back of the seat, and for a split second, she almost thought he was going to curve his hand around her shoulder and pull her close. Instead he moved his arm and started the car. "You," he answered belatedly.

After Sam told him what little she'd learned from Valente in his limo, they made the rest of the ride in complete silence, a silence that had never been present in the past, because they'd always had things to talk about. Sam did not feel good about any of this. He was not behaving predictably at all. Of course, she hadn't behaved predictably in that stairwell either. She shouldn't have said the things she did, she shouldn't have let her voice go soft, shouldn't have stayed on that step with her hand touching his those extra seconds.

"Thanks for the ride," she said as they were pulling up to her building. She half expected him to remark on the fact that she lived at a very fancy address for a lowly NYPD detective, but he didn't. She reached for the door handle, and to her surprise he cut the engine. "There's no need for you to get out," she said, stepping onto the street.

He ignored her and got out anyway.

Nervousness was taking the place of Sam's usual rational calm with members of the male sex. "What are you doing?" she asked when he met her on the curb and started walking her into her building.

"Walking you to your door."

"You can't be serious!" she sputtered, laughing.

"I am very serious," he said curtly, escorting her past the doorman.

Sam pressed the elevator button and decided it was best to tackle the actual problem head-on. "I hope you aren't upset about that silly moment on the stairway."

He gave her a look so quelling that her heart dropped. "We'll discuss that upstairs."

Sam gave him another sidelong, amused smile—the kind that used to drive her brothers crazy and alwaysdiscomfited even the most self-confident adult males. "Are—you under the impression I'm going to invite you in?"

"I am not only under that impression, I am certain of it."

Based on his tone and his attitude, Sam concluded the only thing she could conclude: He was evidently going to reprimand her for her inappropriate behavior. Telling a male colleague—and especially an immediate superior—that he was "incredible" and touching his hand showed bad judgment, probably verging on inappropriate behavior, in the strictest interpretation of the rules, but really—this was going too far!

Sam unlocked her apartment door, walked inside, and turned on the light switch beside the door. He followed her in but stopped there. Folding his arms over his chest, he stood with his shoulders against the door.

Out of some apprehensive need to at least look tidy while she caught hell, Sam nervously reached up and tightened the band that was holding her hair into a chignon at the crown. He stood there, watching her in silence as she did that; then he said, "There aren't going to be any stolen kisses in dirty stairwells or groping each other in parked cars in dark alleys."

He paused to let that sink in, and Sam's lips parted in disbelief that he would dare to exaggerate a few moments in a stairwell and a car, where nothing actually happened, into an attempt on her part to seduce him! McCord not only had a gigantic ego, but, she suddenly realized, he also had a clever little "approach" of his own to use on women he worked with—first a dinner invitation, then a mention of a "lovers' quarrel," then signing his nickname on a note. And it worked! It even worked on her, and she had never been reduced to a state of mushy hero-worship in her entire life. Everything she'd liked about him paled to nothing in comparison with this discovery.

"We not only work together, I'm your superior," he reminded her needlessly. "So I want you to understand that this will never have any effect on our working relationship or on your career. Are you clear on that?"

"That's very kind of you," Sam lied, maintaining her perfect, cool little smile as she, too, folded her arms over her chest. "I understand. Thank you, Lieutenant."

His eyes narrowed. "I am trying to assure you that you don't have to fear any repercussions from what I'm going to do."

Sam was losing her grip on her temper, and she never did that! "Would you care to tell me what it is you're going to do?"

"That was my plan," he said, looking a little amused by her tone.

"Then what is it you plan to do?"

"First, I'm going to pull that band out of your hair and let it loose so that I can shove my fingers into it and find out whether it actually feels like satin or like silk. I've been dying to do that for weeks."

Sam's arms uncrossed and fell limply to her sides as she gaped at him.

"Soon after I do that," he continued in a husky voice she hadn't heard before. "I'm going to start kissing you, and at some point before I leave, I'm going to turn you into this wall—" He tipped his head to the wall right next to the door. "And then I am going to do everything I possibly can to imprint my body on yours."

Blood was beginning to race through Sam's veins, but her brain seemed to be deprived of oxygen, because she couldn't quite match the last part of this with his opening remarks. "Why?" she blurted, furrowing her brow.

He obviously didn't understand the scope of her question, but the answer he gave made her melt: "Because tomorrow, we're going to pretend this never happened, and we're going to go on pretending until the Manning case is over, or one of us is reassigned. If we don't wait—if we let this get started before then—we'll end up in that dirty stairwell and others just like it, trying to steal a few moments together and worrying about your getting caught. This isn't going to be a sordid little backstairs fling, and I don't want to treat it—or you—like it is one."

Sam looked at his ruggedly virile, implacable features while she tried to adjust to the new reality that Mitchell McCord did want her, and had wanted her all along, and at the same time he was also trying to safeguard her career and reassure her about his feelings for her. He had been something of a hero to her before, but now everything she had imagined him to be seemed so much less than he actually was.

"While we're pretending," he continued after allotting her just enough time to catch up with his reasoning so far, "you'll have time to decide whether or not you want to be with me when this case is over. If, during this time, you decide the answer is no, I'll know it, and we won't discuss it. We'll part on the best of terms when this case is over, and you can simply go on pretending that the things I'm about to do to you, and with you, never happened." He paused again to gauge her reaction. "How does this sound so far?"

It was so like him—optimum planning and organizational skills in full use right to the end. Unable to control the trembling smile in her heart or the one lighting her eyes, Sam whispered, "It sounds… exactly like you, Mack."

He rejected that reply as inconclusive and raised his brows, waiting for an answer, his blue gaze pinning hers.

In reply, Sam reached up and pulled the band and pins out of her hair; then she gave the heavy mass a hard shake that sent it tumbling down in a chestnut waterfall over her shoulders.

He took her face in his hands and slowly threaded his fingers through the sides of her hair, turning her mouth up to his. "Sam," he whispered softly, as if he held some special reverence for her name. Lowering his head, he touched his lips to hers. "Sam," he said again in an aching whisper.

When he left, Sam closed the door, secured the locks; then she turned and leaned against the same wall he had backed her against. Smiling, she slid slowly down it to the floor; then she drew her legs against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Resting her cheek on her knee, Sam closed her eyes, savoring the lingering sensations of his hands and mouth against her skin, the hardness of his aroused body against hers. Her long hair, neat and orderly an hour before, spilled over her other cheek and across her leg in a tangled mass, crushed and combed by his hands.

She had followed Mitchell McCord right along that imaginary path, just as she'd known she was doing.

And she had walked off that cliff into thin air.

Oh, but what a fall!