Free Taming the Fire by Sydney Croft Page B

Changing locations and her personal style each trip kept the heat off her. Since arriving in Germany, she wore her short cap of dark hair with no hints of color other than natural highlights. She dressed high-end—Chanel. Manolo Blahniks that killed her feet, but gave her the haughty air of a woman who wasn't to be bothered. The large, dark sunglasses she wore, rain or shine, indoor or out, rounded out the look.
    She enjoyed playing dress-up, but deep down, she'd already found herself—a no-nonsense, jeans and T-shirt woman who wondered if she'd ever get away from the online world to live in the real one again.
    In her parents' eyes, she was most definitely beyond redemption. In her own, she wasn't so sure.
    As she typed, and listened to Mose giving her advice—all of it unsolicited—someone sat down across from her—a man, from the look of his hands on the small table. She didn't look up at his face at first, because this happened quite a bit. Men saw a woman sitting alone and instantly assumed she was lonely.
    Okay, well, she was lonely, but not desperate. But when she finally glanced up, said desperation ran hot through her body, tightened her throat. She pressed her thighs together and wondered if the man knew he was beautiful.
    She wondered why he bothered sitting here with her.
    He had dark, fierce eyes—his body was strung tight, like he could hit the ground running at any second. Definitely not your garden-variety computer geek. Not by a long shot.
    “Interpol is at your apartment right now,” he said, instead of the more traditional nice-to-meet-you greeting she'd been expecting. At his words, her back straightened and she closed the lid of the laptop with a crisp snap and waited for him to continue. “There's a note there, from you, in your date book, with the name of this café penciled in. So I'm guessing that in about five minutes or less, they'll be here, looking for you.”
    “Meg, are you listening to me?” Mose asked.
    “I'm going to have to call you back,” she told her brother calmly and then clicked the phone closed and asked the man sitting across from her, “What is it you'd like me to do?”
    “Come with me, Coco. You've got some explaining to do.”
    Coco . Suddenly, she knew, without a doubt, that the man in front of her was Ryan. And that she was, in a word, screwed. To the wall. “And why would I do that, Ryan?”
    He barely registered surprise, but his fists curled. “You know me, then.”
    She couldn't breathe. There was a time she'd known him—better, she'd thought, than anyone. But she'd been so wrong and wore the scars inside her heart to prove it. She wouldn't let herself be wrong again. “As well as you know me. Although you're five years too late.”
    He ignored that—or he seemed to anyway. “As I said, it's your choice. Me or the police.” He grabbed her drink and took a nice, long pull from the straw. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught the familiar green-and-white car that always signaled trouble.
    The police. Or Ryan—who, if given the opportunity, might strangle her.
    After she'd left her home, she promised herself that she'd never live in a place with so many rules and regulations again. She'd rather take her chances… rather be dead than bound.
    She stood and held out her hand to him, as if they were lovers leaving after sharing a lovely meal at an outdoor café. Ryan stared between it and her, and for just a second she swore she saw something behind those eyes… something that she'd dreamed about all those years ago. And then he took her hand, his palm cool and strong against hers, and she fought the fleeting urge to ask him to kiss her, to do things to her body that he'd promised so long ago. To ask him not to kill her.
    So yes, Ryan it was.
    S URPRISINGLY , C OCO didn't give Ryan any trouble on the way to the airport. In fact, she didn't say a word. Which was fine, because he was still trying to figure out how to handle her. Even after she calmly