spewing out papers, makeup, a mirror, and roll of mints.
He crouched down and flipped his cell phone open for her. “Use mine.”
She rose from the disarray and gave him another suspicious look, then studied the keypad as she punched in a number.
Why didn’t she just pick up her cordless phone from the table in the living room?
She pressed his cell phone to her ear and looked away. “Hi. This is…Jessica. I need to talk to you. It’s very important. Call me. On my cell.” She snapped the phone shut with finality and handed it back to him. “If you just leave me a number where I can reach you, I’ll call you after I’ve heard back from him. I’m sure you understand my reluctance to have a complete stranger in my home.”
Nothing added up right. There was no way this woman would have misremembered the name of the man who’d recently bought her TV station. And she hadn’t had a clue where to find the light switch or alarm pad when she’d walked in. Alex’s gaze dropped once more over the revealing top, down to the black boots surrounded by the chaos of her handbag. Something was definitely wrong with this picture.
“Let me try him myself,” he said as he flipped the phone open. “I have his private line.”
He faked thumbing of a phone number, but simply pressed redial. He held her gaze while he listened to the taped message.
Hi. This is Jessica Adams. Please leave a message and I’ll get right back to you.
“Well, what do you know,” he said, dipping his head so close to hers he could almost kiss the smeared lipstick from her mouth. “I jumped the wrong Miss Adams.”
Chapter Two
H e was so close that Jazz could see her reflection in his inky-colored pupils. Leave it to her to get assaulted by a guy who looked like Antonio Banderas, had the body of a personal trainer, and a mind like Sherlock Holmes.
“The wrong Miss Adams? I have no idea what you’re talking about.”
“Oh, yes you do.”
“I can’t imagine what you mean.”
He pinned her with another black-eyed glare. “Where’s Jessica?”
Good goddamn question. “I am Jessica.”
“You are full of shit. You’re her twin sister.”
Jazz stifled a sigh of surrender. “What difference does it make who I am?”
“It makes a huge difference. Your sister isn’t safe.”
A sobering uneasiness spiraled through her. “How do you know that?”
“Because I’ve been hired to protect her. And someone wouldn’t go to that expense and trouble if the threats to her security weren’t legitimate.”
Damn it, he was right. “She never mentioned any threats to me.”
He leaned against the back of a sofa that framed a magnificent living room, which Jazz hadn’t even noticed yet. Her focus had been riveted on Alex Romero, and for good reason. There was just so much of him, and all of it so…riveting.
“Let’s try this again,” he said, a smile softening the angles of his face as he reached his hand toward her. “My name is Alex Romero. And you are…Jasmine Adams?”
This time, she shook his hand. His fingers were as long and strong as the rest of him, his palm warm. “Jazz. Are you a stalker or a bodyguard?”
He laughed softly as he let her hand go, then ran his fingers through the straight black hair that fell over his eyebrow and hung well past the collar of his black shirt. She’d had a handful of that hair, and it had reminded her of a thick, silky mane on a thoroughbred stallion.
“I am her personal security professional.”
Only Jessica could win the Lottery of Bodyguards.
Jazz lifted her foot from the quagmire around her purse, and stepped past him. Time to check out the apartment instead of the man. “Do you always attack your client?”
“Principal,” he corrected.
She felt his gaze follow her as she took in the utter whiteness of the vast living room, uncluttered but for a few choice pieces of Jessica’s collection of precious antique glass bowls and decanters. The cranberry-colored Victorian candy basket that Jazz had sent for their last birthday enjoyed a place of honor at the middle of a coffee table.
“I told you,” he said, “I was trying to make a point.”
She walked toward the sliding doors to the breathtaking nightscape of downtown Miami and the lights winking on Biscayne Bay. “There are easier ways,” she said. “Like telling someone they are in danger. That really cuts down on the physical strain.”
“I wasn’t strained.”
She cut him with a menacing look. “You’re just lucky I