Stolen Heat by Elisabeth Naughton

reality formed a knot in the pit of his stomach.
    “You were at the auction house. You’re the woman I saw in the crowd.” The one he’d chased after like a lovesick fool.
    “I—I’d hoped you hadn’t seen me.”
    Hadn’t seen her? He dropped his arms. That knot twisted. His brain skipped ahead, flashed on Maria’s mouth against his in the limo, how they’d tumbled to the floor and he’d looked up into the rearview mirror to see eyes that were the same exact color and shape as the ones he was staring into now.
    “And in the limo. Was that you, too?”
    She nodded slowly. “After I saw them, I just needed five minutes to talk to you. I swear that’s all I wanted, but then everything went to hell and back and,” she threw up her hands, “then I didn’t have a choice.”
    A choice?
    He suddenly didn’t like where this was heading. This wasn’t the reunion he’d always fantasized about.
    Kat tensed, obviously reading his expression. “Before you go getting those half-cocked ideas of yours—”
    “Half-cocked ideas?” he snapped. “You’re alive and yet you couldn’t once pick up a goddamn phone and call tolet me know you hadn’t died in a car bomb in Cairo after all? What, did it slip your mind?”
    His headache took that opportunity to stab him right in the middle of his forehead. He slammed his eyes shut, pressed his fingers to his temples and bent over at the waist to ease the throb. “Son of a bitch.”
    “Oh, Pete.” She rushed toward him. “Don’t pass out on me. I can’t handle that again. I don’t even know how much they gave you.”
    “Gave me? What the hell are you talking about?”
    She stopped inches from touching him with a nervous look in her eyes. “I…um…” When he raised his head to stare at her, she lifted her arms and finally dropped them on a sigh. “A sedative. I don’t know how much you got, but you’ve been out cold for the last five hours.”
    He eased up slowly. “Whoa. Wait. Are you saying you drugged me?”
    She opened her mouth to speak but closed it quickly without answering.
    That was when it all hit him. The auction, the limo, the dark, the cold, and her here alive, alone in this room. She hadn’t sought him out. She’d been at the auction for another reason entirely, and something had happened there to force her into ambushing him. In fact, the more he thought about it, the more he realized she’d obviously been playing him from the moment he thought she’d died. Maybe even before that.
    And wasn’t that just fucking ironic?
    At that moment, with his head pounding and his stomach weak, he didn’t give a flying fuck what she wanted from him or why she’d brought him here. All he could think was that she’d been alive all this time while he’d been…half dead inside.
    “I’m outta here.”
    He moved back out the door he’d stumbled into, ignoring the shock that flashed across her face. Light from theroom behind him poured into the garage, highlighting the limo and the wall of tools on the far side.
    “Pete, wait.”
    Yeah, right. Not in this lifetime. Not ever again.
    He headed for the massive door on the far wall. Footsteps echoed behind him as he fumbled with the lock, but he didn’t turn, didn’t look at her. Tried like hell not to think of her.
    A wave of snow blasted across his face when he managed to get the door open. He held up his hands to block the biting wind, took a few tentative steps out into the snow.
    Where was he? No city lights twinkled in the distance. His dress shoes sank into eight inches of powder. He stumbled.
    The darkness and never-ending flakes slapping his face made it impossible to see, but the rational side of his brain said if there was a garage—wherever he was—then there had to be a house. And houses had phones.
    “Pete! Please come back inside. You’ll freeze out there!”
    As juiced as he felt, he didn’t think it was possible to freeze. And no way in hell was he going back in there with her.
    Okay,