The pipes groaned and yanked Sid out of her wretched self-pity.

She stamped her foot. A trick taught to her by Larry
Spector, her
motivational coach cum mental and physical boot camp trainer.

Fight cerebral paralysis with physical activity.

When you’re depressed, get moving. Her actions jerky, she
peeled
the sodden garments from her chilled flesh, slid the door open,
and tossed the clothes into the sink.

It had been over half a decade since she assumed control of her
life. She’d clawed and scraped to become her own person, and by
all the gods in the universe, she wasn’t ceding that power to
anyone. Not even Brut Jurango.

“No more thinking about Brut Jurango.” Another Larry Spector
tenet: vocalize your intentions and then act upon them. Sid
nudged
the door closed.

“I’m not a coward. No more knee-jerk reactions.”

No more being too terrified to pee.

She adjusted the water temperature, waited for the goose
bumps to
dissipate, and grabbed the shampoo. While she washed her
hair and
showered, Sid analyzed all that had happened in the last few
weeks.

Davy vanished three weeks ago.

He and a buddy set out on a trip to Rosarito, a coastal Mexican
town, to party yes, but also to check out a recently
two-starred
Michelin farm-to-table restaurant. Davy had both workaholic and
OCD tendencies, and the long hours spent laboring over the
tapas
menu had left him overwrought and bone-weary. Sid suggested the
weekend excursion, and she hadn’t been worried when Davy didn’t
show up on Monday. Davy was a creature of impulse and his
timeliness suffered constantly because of it.

When Davy didn’t contact her by Monday night, Sid phoned him
only
to have the call go to voice mail. She texted him
repeatedly. By
Tuesday she started to panic. The Grape Escape’s grand opening
loomed, she had no chef, and worse, the boy-man she loved and
considered a younger brother had disappeared.

“Where are you Davy?” Sid thunked her head on the tiles and
turned
off the shower. She had stayed sane since Davy vanished by not
letting her mind wander to Davy being tortured or raped. “Lycus
went to the East Coast. Why? Is what Davy’s involved in
linked to
our culinary school?”

The shower door slid open.

Sid froze. The steam blurred her vision. The bathroom
exhaust fan
went on overdrive and the thick mists cleared to reveal Brut
Jurango, arms outstretched. A chocolate bath sheet hung tautly
between his hands.

Her palms itched to yank into the instinctive cup-her-breasts
defensive reaction. Instead, she glued her wrists to her sides.
Didn’t attempt to hide her truculent outrage or her nudity.
“What
do you want?”

His mouth curved. “That’s been obvious from day one, Sidonie.
You’ve been in the shower for nineteen minutes. I thought you
might have drowned.”

Sid locked out her shaking knees. Brut’s wolfish grin
mesmerized
her. That dazzling brief beam sent her pulse into hopscotching
fits and starts. He had a boyish smile. Who’d have guessed?

Unable to muster enough gray matter to compose a virulent
retort,
far less connect actual vocal cords, Sid didn’t resist when he
flipped the towel to her back, see-sawed the soft cotton a few
times across her shoulders and rear, and swaddled her in the
warm
terry. He tucked the ends together at her collarbone. Nosed her
forehead and said, “I’ve been waiting outside that door for
seventeen of those nineteen minutes.”

Mother Mary, he smelled incredible. She’d never been this
close to
him before today. His proximity proved intoxicating.
Breathing in
his musky aroma served to multiply the pace at which she
pictured
his naked body parts. He’d be cut with that V shape right at
his
hips and groin. His café latte complexion would be all over. No
white lines. Did he masturbate on a regular basis?

“Hold that thought.”

What thought? His cocky attitude sparked her belligerence. “You
can’t read my mind. You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

He fingered her ear. Smoothed a dripping curl off her cheek. “I
can scent your desire. I can also smell your fear and worry.
Know
that when you speak aloud, even in an almost imperceptible
whisper, I hear you.”

She whipped her head back. “No way. I don’t care if you have
wolf
and cat in you—”