his forehead, his hard mouth twisting into an expression of confusion. She knew confusion—she didn’t have a reputation for creating St. X’s most diabolical exams for nothing.
But it wasn’t his questioning look that had caused her to pause in front of her home, dropping her chin to look over the tops of her sunglasses.
Emma, you and your stupid annual craving for adventure. This happened to her every time her Intro to Literature students reached the unit on the Romantics. Last year in October, she’d nearly thrown her entire hard-won career out the proverbial window to hike the Inca Trail and build solar showers and other ecotourism infrastructure with the Quechua in Peru. And now, in her Keats-addled mind, she’d turned a man who was probably canvassing for the Sierra Club into Indiana bloody Jones. Shifting the satchel to better balance it on her hip, Emma stepped forward, prepared to dispel this year’s birthday fantasy, courtesy of the mysterious stranger, once and for all. “Hello,” she said to the man. “May I help you?”
Emma’s breath caught as he turned to face her head-on. In profile, he was a hottie. But the full frontal assault of his face was singularly striking. He didn’t respond to her question—just stared at her with a pair of deep, startlingly light brown eyes set under sharply angled black eyebrows. Emma could only stare back.
A heartbeat later, it finally occurred to her that the man could be dangerous, and what she should do is fling her bag at him and run.
But she couldn’t stop looking at him.
“What do you want?” she finally managed, her mouth suddenly dry. Dark hair, prominent cheekbones, tan skin. He looked Latino. Maybe he didn’t speak English. She tried again, in Spanish this time. “Necesita ayuda?”
His eyebrows drew together, and he shook his head, stepping close enough to her that she should have stepped backward instinctively. But she didn’t. “I don’t know what I need,” he finally said.
Oh, great. Like turning thirty-five-which-is-almost-forty, wasn’t traumatic enough without having two close encounters with the mentally unstable in one twenty-four-hour period. Ignoring the fact that having a mysterious and rather Byronic stranger talking about his needs in the middle of your front yard ranked pretty high on the romantic meter, Emma shifted the satchel in her arms, readying herself for one good fling. She had no doubt that the number of research papers she carried with her would pack a wallop.
But she couldn’t. Heaven help her, his lost expression moved her.
“Who are you?” she asked.
“Joe,” he said.
Then he blinked and shook his head, scrubbing a hand across his face. As she watched, the dream-like cast to his golden-brown eyes faded. His jaw tightened, his brow furrowed, until the man with the tough, uncompromising expression before her bore almost no resemblance to the one she’d been talking to mere seconds before.
“I’m sorry,” he said gruffly, turning his head away from her. “I don’t remember—I don’t know why I’m here.” With a sudden, quick movement, he moved across the lawn to the sidewalk. “I’m sorry,” she heard him mutter again. And then he was gone.
WHAT THE HELL was he doing here?
Joe stalked down the sidewalk, away from the giant Victorian house and the tall, pretty woman who lived there and now presumably thought he was completely deficient. “I don’t know what I need.” What the heck? His pickup lines were usually better than that.
The fact is, she’d scared him to death. Or, rather, that frilly Hansel and Gretel house of hers did, with the turret and brightly painted shutters and meticulously placed flowers and palms. Because both it and her entire goddamned neighborhood resonated somewhere deep inside him, in the darkest corners of his mind, where the secrets of his past had long lay dormant.
But she hadn’t recognized him. That much was clear. There had been one moment when Joe had looked into her green eyes and thought she had, but then it had quickly become apparent that it was just her fight-or-flight-or-scream-holy-murder mechanism kicking in.
Not that he would have blamed her for doing any of the above, the way he’d been lurking in her yard. And the thing was, he didn’t even know how he’d gotten there. One minute, he was getting into his rental car—a sweet Honda S2000 with a convertible top, a 6K VTEC engine that went from 0 to 60 in 5.2 seconds, and a roar like a topless rocket—and heading for the Convention Center; the next, he was standing in the yard of an old house doing his best impersonation of Rain Man and scaring some poor woman to death.
Maybe he needed a vacation.
Maybe he just needed to get away from that damned house.
As he approached the rental car, Joe fished his keys out of his pocket, then aimed the remote key chain in the Honda’s general direction. A shrill beep signaled that the doors were now unlocked, and he was only too happy to crawl inside and slink away. As much as one could slink inside a fire-engine-red sports car.
That was twice now that he’d been out for a drive, minding his own business, only to find himself several minutes later standing in front of that woman’s house.
That house. He’d dreamed about that house.
“Concentrate, Lopez,” he muttered to himself, whipping a right onto Figueroa, which would take him straight to the Holiday Inn he was staying at near the Convention Center. The last thing he needed was to slip into another driving coma and boomerang back to the house like some sort of Mexican lemming.
The drive back to the convention was a smooth one—light traffic, sunshine and warm breezes, and a killer ride, if he did say so himself. He parallel parked the Honda near the curb in record time, then cut off the engine and opened the car door. Maybe he’d have time to hit In-N-Out Burger before…
Holy Mexican lemming.
With one boot on the pavement and the rest of him still inside the Honda, Joe turned his head slowly, taking in his surroundings in what had to be the most surreal moment of his life.
He was back in front of that freakin’ house.
Chapter Three
“Look.” Emma yanked open the door of the flashy red sports car with such force, a few locks of her hair flipped forward into her face. With one no-nonsense flick of her neck, she sent them all flying back out of harm’s way. “I don’t know what you’re doing here—again—but you have exactly one minute to explain yourself.” As if barely escaping a violent attack and turning thirty-five-which-is-almost-forty, weren’t enough, now she apparently had a stalker on her hands. Or her house had a stalker. Either way, it was bloody uncomfortable finding some unforthcoming stranger in her personal space every time she stepped outside, and she was determined to find out what on earth it was he wanted, even if she had to keep him from driving off by taking a screwdriver to that flashy car of his. Which probably got terrible gas mileage and had a poor emissions record.
The man she knew only as “Joe” scrubbed a hand across the side of his face, pushing his glossy black hair briefly off his temple. Wearing what appeared to be his trademark dazed and confused expression, he rooted his attention firmly on the house. Even when she stepped directly into his line of vision, he gave the impression that he hadn’t noticed and was looking right through her. She wasn’t sure what was more unforgivable—his lack of manners or his lack of fear in the face of her anger. She scared the St. X football team into
