To the Edge by Cindy Gerard

over by hysteria—standard protocol, in her opinion, when you stepped out of a shower and found a man in your bathroom packing a gun—her mind assessed, cataloged, and filed details neatly away for later recall.
    There was nothing neat about Nolan Garrett's details. In fact, the devil was clearly in his details—all raw power, consummate masculinity, and a pretty good measure of mean thrown in to thicken the stew.
    The elevator finally hit her floor. The doors slid soundlessly open, then shut behind them when they stepped inside.
    She knew now that he hadn't come to kill her, but she'd bet her top slot during ratings week that he h ad killed. Call her crazy, but that still made him dangerous in her book.
    Fallen angel.
    She stood by her initial assessment.
    The reporter in her couldn't help but be intrigued by him. Under other circumstances, the woman in her might even have appreciated the sheer male beauty of the man. The full lips that even now were compressed in a hard, unyielding line as he stared straight ahead at the panel of lights on the elevator wall were unsettlingly sensual. His dark hair was a little on the long side. It gave him a reckless and a bit mussed-up look—like he'd just gotten out of bed or was about to tumble someone into one. Coupled with the heavy five o'clock shadow darkening his jaw, the look didn't quite fit with the clean, defined lines of his face or the honed precision of his body, which he held in a rigid, almost military posture.
    Whoa. Back up. Military.
    Bingo.
    She could see it now. In his ramrod straight stance, in the spring-loaded give of his powerful legs. Regardless of his casual air, it was apparent he was perpetually balanced and ready for action. The man was on red alert. Trained to act and react. Kill or be killed.
    If she'd suspected it before, she was sure of it now. He had killed. Would kill again. For her, if he had to. And while she didn't want to be—she wanted to be angry and incensed— she found herself hopelessly compelled to find out more about him.
    "Special Ops?" she asked into the silence that had thickened to syrup.
    With the slightest shift of his gaze, he met her eyes. He looked annoyed. And something else suddenly. Aware. Of her. Of the fact that they were strangers and alone in an elevator on a hot Florida night—and that he'd seen her naked stepping in and out of her shower little more than an hour ago.
    Before she could stall a damnable blush, his expression closed up again, leaving her wondering if she'd been imagining things. And she still hadn't gotten an answer to her question.
    "I have a right to know," she insisted.
    "You have the right to remain silent, too, but I don't suppose you're going to exercise it."
    What happened then amazed her. A small grin—a mix of amusement and fatalistic forbearance—cracked that granite facade. Earlier, when he'd terrorized her in the bathroom, he'd given up some semblance of a smile. But that had been staged, manufactured to show scorn, to let her know who was in charge and to scare her into wetting her pants—which she might have, if she'd had any on.
    This smile was different. It was spontaneous. Unguarded. And though it had been barely there, it had been a break in his armor—although why she thought she wanted to breach it she had no idea. Just like she didn't know why that small concession to emotion had transformed all of his uncompromising and harsh beauty into something she hadn't wanted todeal with before, either: The fact that he was real. Something more than a stranger with a gun, a protector without a heart. He became a man to her in that moment... a man of flesh and blood and feelings.
    For some unsettling reason, it made him seem even more dangerous. It had been much easier to dismiss him as a cold-blooded machine. Now she had to entertain the possibility of seeing him in a whole new light.
    "Rangers," he finally volunteered, surprising her yet again and snapping her away from those troubling