The fog greets me as soon as I come out of the airport in New York. I smile because it feels like a hug from the city, welcoming me back.I drop my things at a hotel and grab a cup of coffee. I sip it as I reminisce inside the cab headed to the house where my parents and I used to live.So many memories.Even more of them come flooding back once I'm standing in front of the two-story house I know so well. It looks the same as when I left it. Dark blue roof. Pale blue walls. White door. White windows. White porch. The sign on the front says it's still for sale, so I guess no one has lived in it since I last did.I walk up to the front door. It's locked, of course. I peek through the window. All I see are pieces of furniture covered in white cloth, which in turn is covered in dust. Even hidden, I can recognize some of them, and I smile.I go around the house to the backyard. I see the patch of soil where my mother's garden used to be. Only weeds grow in it now.I also see her box of gar

"That will be fifty-eight dollars and forty-nine cents," the pharmacist behind the counter tells me.My eyes grow wide. Nearly sixty bucks for a bottle of pain relievers, a tiny tube of pimple cream and a few bottles of water?I only have a fifty-dollar bill in my hand, so I quickly search my purse for a ten. I know I have one somewhere. Where is it again?I was hoping my headaches and dizzy spells would just go away. I thought that time I nearly fainted on the front porch of my old house would be the last episode. The person who helped me — she lived across the street — was a nurse who just told me to take iron supplements. I did, and for a day, I was fine. But last night, I felt dizzy again, nauseous even. This morning, I woke up with a headache. It's not that painful but it's literally at the back of my head, nagging at me.Also, I had no appetite this morning, and to make matters worse, when I looked in the mirror, I realized I had a pimple on my forehead. What the hell?The pharm

Two months later..."I take it everything is going well?" Ryker asks me as we stand outside my office."Of course it is," Asher answers for me. "Look at Felicity. She's glowing."I watch her as she talks to Dana, the woman she's been training to be my next assistant for the past two weeks.She does look radiant in the yellow dress she's wearing, which is just tight enough to show off the curve of her belly.Even though some people have started nasty rumors about her, she has no intention of hiding it, which I find admirable. And attractive.I still don't know how I found such an amazing woman. Or how I didn't realize I had one right next to me until I lost her. But I'm sure of one thing — I'm never letting her go.And I'm making that clear tonight."What about you?" I ask Asher."How are things going with Violet?"He makes a face."Not good, huh?" Ryker asks."She still hasn't forgiven me for leaving her at that party years ago," Asher says.He did tell me about that. I thought there

I wait in the parlor, a sunken space surrounded by open windows. Salted wind blows in freely, smelling wild and precious. Music plays somewhere, or maybe a wind chime. A figure tends a natural pool down below on the hillside. I can't make out his face."Well, well, well. If it isn't Georgina Felton."I whirl gracelessly, only to stop dead even more gracelessly.Before me stands the most impossibly beautiful man I have ever seen. Tall, golden, sleekly muscular-his thick chestnut curls are dragged back, his sculpted jaw dusted with the chic beginnings of a beard. He wears all linen clothing, showing off golden calves and powerful arms.His eyes, set in a chiseled face, are thick-lashed and the exact color of the wild jungle."Flight was OK, I take it?" He doesn't seem to register my blank awe. Maybe he's used to it. He crosses the room, brushing past me to a bamboo drink cabinet by the windows. He smells of pine and sandalwood and man."What's your poison?""Oh. I. Um."Get it together!

Even hunched over her laptop, wrapped in the drab kind of clothes so many women wear to hide their curves, Georgina is difficult to look away from.Her hair is an unusual shade; black from some angles, but when struck just right by light, a deep, violet sort of red. She has plain features, a nice mouth, a pleasing profile. But her eyes they're striking. A soft brown that seems to glow in the light and deepen to black in the dark.You want her because you can't have her, says the voice in the back of my head. It sounds mysteriously like Lewis. No, worse — you want her because she doesn't want you.I don't like the thought. I'm not sure a woman has ever turned me down. Even though Georgina is here strictly on business, somehow, the idea that she won't sleep with me does make me want her more. A conquest. A challenge. Like work, or college, or the markets.Something that can be broken like a wild horse."You can take that off, you know," I say, gesturing to her rumpled suit jacket. "You