Excerpt of Tempted by Lori Foster

Rain and hail hitting the door was one thing. A woman was another.

She ran into it at full speed, and Max stared, seeing long blond hair stick wetly to the glass panel, a small nose smooshed up hard, red and looking miserably cold. The rain came down in a curtain, muffling her grunt but not obliterating it entirely.

Cleo took an instant dislike to the intruder.

Hurrying around the counter of his sister's bookstore, Max opened the door. The small feminine bundle tumbled limply inside. At first Max thought she'd been shot or bludgeoned on the back of the head. In a fury he stepped over her and peered through the downpour, looking for another body, for any type of threat. There wasn't anyone there. Just the miserable rain.

Cleo continued to complain and snarl and as Max knelt down by the felled body, which now moaned loudly, he said, "Pipe down, you mean-tempered bitch."

The woman on the floor gasped, rolled over onto her back, and started to open her eyes. She moaned again instead.

"I'm wounded," she snarled, every bit as ferocious as Cleo.

"I could certainly do without your abuse!"

"I wasn't…" Max stopped when she got one eye peeped open. It was a startling, dark blue eye, fringed by dark brown lashes. It was just the one eye, not even both, but he felt the impact of her gaze like a kick.

Cleo snuffled closer, poking her wet nose against the woman's face while emitting a low growl.

"Where are you wounded," Max asked, still not sure why she'd thrown herself against the door, or why she was still on the floor.

"All over." That one eye regarded him steadily. "Even my teeth are rattled, so the least you can do is not insult me while I'm still down."

Max wondered if that meant he could insult her when she got up. If she got up. She didn't seem to be in any rush to do so.

"Cleo," he explained, more quietly this time, "is my dog. And she is mean-tempered, but not really ferocious. She won't hurt you."

"I'm not afraid of dogs." Even in her less than auspicious position, she managed to appear affronted by the very idea, then she turned her disgruntled one-eyed frown on Cleo, who whimpered in surprise. "I just don't want snout tracks on my cheek."

Max hid a grin. "C'mere, Cleo. Leave the lady alone." Cleo obeyed — a first as far as Max could recall. She came immediately to his side, but continued to grumble out of one side of her mouth, making her doggy lips vibrate, while keeping her watchful attention on the downed female.

A puddle had formed around the woman and since she continued to recline there on the tile floor, apparently at her leisure, Max looked for injuries. He found instead a rather attractive if petite bosom covered in a white T- shirt that read I Give Good Peach.

His brows rose. What the hell did that mean?

The shirt, now soaked through, was practically transparent and put on display a lacy pink bra beneath. Not that he was looking. Nope. He'd made a deal with Cleo, and he intended to keep to his word. He stroked his fingers through Cleo's ruff, just to reassure her.

The damn dog looked beyond dubious.

Maybe she knew him better than he knew himself. "Are you okay?" Max asked the woman, in lieu of what he was really thinking, which had to do generally with her wet shirt and specifically with what it was molded to. He would distract himself. But it'd be easier if she'd just get up.

With what appeared to be a lot of undue effort, she got both eyes opened and stared at him. "I'm seeing two of you," she muttered in surprise, "and surely that's a fantasy, not reality."

"A fantasy, huh?" Maybe she was delirious. Maybe she was drunk.

Maybe she was fodder for his next advice column. No sooner than he thought it, Max discarded the idea. It was just a tad too far-fetched to be believed. Even for his eclectic audience, who so far seemed to believe anything he told them.

One small hand lifted to flap in his face, the gesture making Cleo positively livid. The female human ignored the female dog.

"Well, you know what you look like, I assume. Two of you would be…never mind." As if just realizing what she'd said, she cleared her throat. "Yes, I think I'm okay."

Max had never met a woman like her, and that was saying something since he'd known a lot of women. He was so knowledgeable on the subject of females, in fact, that his column was a rousing success — written anonymously, of course. Even his family had no idea that he wrote it.

They all thought he was jobless.

This woman was most definitely different. She was flirting, then withdrawing — all while stretched out in sodden disarray on the tile floor. "You're sure?"

"My pride is permanently damaged," she admitted, "but beyond that I believe I'll live." She pushed herself into a sitting position, long legs stretched out before her. Cleo again tried to sniff her, but when the woman turned that blue-eyed stare on her, Cleo whimpered, backed away, and from a safe distance, started snarling again.

Max could understand that. Her eyes were incredible. Not the color, the shape or the size. But the intensity.

"Where's Annie?" the woman asked, looking around the bookstore with an air of familiarity.

"You know my sister?"

"I've bought tons of books here," she explained, "to use in my work. Annie and I've gotten to know each other pretty well over the past year. Now we're friends." Then she asked, "Why was the door latched?"

Cleo, suddenly acting brave, inched one paw closer and the woman absently petted her. Outraged, Cleo yapped and howled, and the woman ignored her bluster while continuing to stroke the dog's too-small head.

Amazed, Max could do no more than stare. No one other than he had ever ignored Cleo's hostile swagger to give her affection. Max looked the woman over again, this time with a different type of interest. His heart beat just a little too fast.

He was on a bride hunt, and since his bride absolutely had to get along with his dog — he was marrying for the dog, after all, to give Cleo a stable home and the love and acceptance she'd never had — he couldn't help taking note of the somewhat tenuous friendship forming right before his eyes. It amazed him.

It warmed his cynical heart.

In a way, it even made him horny. But then, the rain had made him horny, too. Hell, he'd been so long without, a smack in the head would have turned him on. The only action he'd seen lately had been in the damn newspaper column, and that sure as hell wasn't enough to appease a man of his appetites.

The woman snapped her fingers in front of his face. "Where'd you go, big guy?"

Max laughed. "Sorry. My mind wandered."

"I could see that." She looked him over slowly, brazenly, then asked, "Why are you in here with the door latched?"

Max remembered that his sister had the habit of leaving the door cocked open, something both he and Daniel had grumbled about endlessly, which was probably why Annie continued to do it. She lived to irritate her brothers.

"Annie isn't here, and the storm kept whistling through the door, so I closed it. I hadn't figured on many people shopping today anyway. And of course, I hadn't counted on a woman throwing herself against it." More softly, because she had that effect on him, he said, "That must have hurt."

She sluiced water off her arms, and wrung out her hair. "I nearly knocked myself silly, but I'll survive."