to find some clue to the man’s real identity. He started with the bedroom, but the only thing he found that didn’t belong to him was a lone black sock underneath the drapes.
When he walked into the living room, his gaze fell on the bookshelf. Two books caught his eye. He walked over and pulled them out, noting a sticker on each spine from the Denver Public Library. Books he hadn’t checked out.
“Success at Any Price,” he muttered, reading one title. Then he looked at the other book. “How to Change Your Life Forever.”
His darkroom yielded more evidence. It had been a small bedroom that he’d converted into a darkroom to allow him to develop pictures at home. Several items had been moved and one of his old cameras was missing.
He continued his search, even digging though the trash cans in the bathroom and kitchen. It was clear from the amount of garbage he found that someone had been living here recently. Someone pretending to be him.
Adam strode into his office and opened his file cabinet. All his files were neatly in place, but that didn’t mean the impostor hadn’t combed through his records. They detailed almost everything about his life. Bank accounts and insurance policies. His professional contacts. Even all the names, addresses and telephone numbers of his family and friends in his hometown, Pleasant Valley, Colorado.
Adam had to figure out what the impostor had done with this information. But first, he needed to contact Cole Rafferty, a good friend and local private investigator, to find out just how badly this guy had screwed up his life. Then he’d call his editor at Adventurer magazine and tell him the trip to New Zealand would have to be delayed for a while. Because he wasn’t going anywhere until his life was his again.
ON MONDAY MORNING, Josie rushed into the main branch of the Denver Public Library just before the doors opened to the public. Always punctual and professional, she drew stares from the other employees as she hurried to her desk. No doubt they’d all go into a state of shock if they were to discover Josephine Sinclair had spent Saturday night in the arms of a stranger.
A fact she didn’t plan to divulge to anyone.
But she couldn’t put it behind her, either. She’d spent most of last night tossing and turning in bed, then slept through her alarm this morning. Running late for work had only made her feel more harried, more out of control.
If only she’d never gone through with that surprise midnight seduction. But Josie so often resisted the urge to do something wild and spontaneous that she’d been unable to help herself.
With disastrous results.
After settling in behind her desk, she straightened her nameplate and the electric pencil sharpener, then untangled the telephone cord. She had to put her life in order again. But to do that she needed some answers.
As a reference librarian, she excelled at providing information to patrons on some of the most bizarre subjects imaginable. Now she was the one in need of information. Cold, hard facts about Adam Delaney that would tell her why she’d found a stranger in her boyfriend’s bed.
By late morning, she’d discovered enough to start a folder. Inside, she placed back issues of Adventurer magazine that featured his photographs and added printouts of newspaper articles she’d found on the Web site of his hometown, Pleasant Valley, Colorado.
What she hadn’t found was a picture of him.
Frustrated, Josie sorted through the Pleasant Valley Gazette’s articles once again. A weekly paper, it focused on local news in the small town, and she’d found several feature stories in it about the hometown hero’s adventures, including Adam’s harrowing rescue of a Siamese cat in Egypt.
According to the article, Adam had been raised on an acreage just outside of Pleasant Valley and had always had an affinity for animals. So he’d brought the cat back to Denver with him. Josie already knew all of this—Adam had told her the story himself, modestly downplaying his heroic role in saving Horatio.
But he’d never told her anything about the man she’d found in his bed on Saturday night. Despite her extensive search, she still didn’t know why he was there or what he’d done with Adam. Her Adam.
She’d tried e-mailing her boyfriend, as well as calling him on his cell phone all day yesterday. But for some reason he wasn’t answering.
Or he wasn’t able to answer.
She suppressed a shiver, not wanting to believe the worst. Her boyfriend was safe—he had to be. She couldn’t make love to a man capable of violence, could she? Not only make love to him, but thoroughly enjoy it. She groaned under her breath, then buried her face in her hands.
Josie had never before indulged in one-night stands or anonymous sex. She preferred to play it safe in both her professional and personal life. Despite the erotic allure, sleeping with a stranger was a risk she’d simply never been willing to take.
But no matter how hard she tried to forget, the night she’d spent in her stranger’s arms kept flashing into her mind. The way he’d touched and kissed and tantalized her until she’d become someone she didn’t recognize. Wild and wanton and begging him for sweet release. Heat suffused her cheeks as she closed the file, wondering how she could have acted that way. And how she would ever explain what had happened between them to her boyfriend.
But she had to find him first.
Then Josie looked up and saw the stranger she wanted to forget, the one who claimed he was Adam Delaney, walk through the door.
She grabbed a magazine, almost ripping it in half as she held it open in front of her face, hoping he hadn’t seen her. But her hopes died when she heard footsteps approaching her desk.
“Excuse me.” His familiar, whiskey-smooth voice sent ripples over her skin.
“Yes?” she said behind the magazine. Too late, she realized it was a copy of his magazine. Her gaze moved from a spectacular aerial photograph of the Grand Canyon to a small blurb at the bottom of the page that credited Adam Delaney as the photographer who had taken the picture while skydiving.
“I’m hoping you can help me.”
She slowly lowered the magazine until just her eyes peeked over the top of it. “What do you need?”
He placed two books on the desk. “These were left in my apartment and I need to know who checked them out.”
“Perhaps someone at the front desk can help you,” she replied, relieved that he didn’t recognize her. Of course, the last time he’d seen her she’d been wearing a sheet. Today she wore a light-gray suit and her blond hair pulled back into a neat French braid.
He hesitated, his gaze narrowing. “Have we met?”
She looked up at him, the magazine still concealing half her face. “I don’t think so.”
He stared into her eyes. “You’re her. You’re my dream girl.”
“Hardly,” she said, lowering the magazine and facing the man she’d never wanted to see again. “I’m sorry, but you’ll have to ask someone else for assistance.”
But he didn’t take the hint. Instead, he pulled her pink scarf out of his shirt pocket. “Don’t you remember leaving this at my place?”
