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  A cold shower might have been more effective.

  No matter how much he didn’t want to have feelings for this woman who’d ripped him apart, he did, and that confused him. He wasn’t used to being confused where women were concerned.

  He could tell himself that this deep attraction was due to Taylor, but that would be a big, fat lie. Already he loved Taylor with all his heart.

  But Amber was a separate deal entirely. He’d forgiven her, yes. But he didn’t want to forget.

  T HE NEXT TIME Amber came to the station to pick up the baby, her face was drawn. She was even more quiet and guarded than usual. She offered Dax one unreadable glance and went directly to Taylor, who was lying on a blanket and happily chewing on her own sleeve.

  “Hey, baby,” she whispered, her face lighting up with the smile Dax had never, not once, seen directed at him.

  Taylor wriggled with joy.

  “Well, you lived through it,” Amber said to Dax over her shoulder.

  “What about Taylor?”

  “I wasn’t concerned.” She paused. “You’re a good father.”

  “A compliment, Amber?”

  Her spine stiffened. “No, just fact. Taylor can be a lot of work.”

  “You’re not saying my daughter is a handful, are you?”

  Amber turned and looked at him, lifting a brow at his teasing tone. Her gaze swept his office, taking in the full wastebasket, the sagging diaper bag, the baby paraphernalia scattered around the room.

  And in the corner, at Amber’s feet, was the happily babbling, little handful herself.

  In her well-fitted power suit, Amber kneeled on the floor and tickled Taylor’s tummy. “So how was it, sweetie? Did you have a good time?”

  Taylor responded with a big grin and some drool.

  “Should have seen her,” Dax told her. “She was in high form today. Spit up on the fire chief.”

  Amber’s smile widened as she watched Taylor. “Did you torture your daddy today, sweetie? Did you? Tell me you did.”

  What tortured Dax now was Amber herself. She wasn’t a tall woman, but she had legs to die for. And with her bent over as she was, he got quite an eyeful, up to midthigh. He wondered if those sheer, silky looking stockings ended at the top of those incredible legs, like the ones she’d been wearing on the day of the earthquake.

  Oblivious, Amber leaned even closer to Taylor, nuzzling at the baby’s neck. Taylor squealed in delight.

  Dax swallowed hard, because while he’d felt every inch of Amber’s body that fateful day so long ago, he’d never really seen her, and he’d certainly never gotten such a great view of the most mouthwatering, perfectly rounded rear end in town.

  “She looks good,” Amber said of the baby.

  “So do you.” The words popped out before he could stop them, but even when Amber whirled in shock and stared at him, he smiled, refusing to take them back.

  “That was…inappropriate,” she said primly.

  “No doubt. It was also the truth.”

  As if realizing the suggestiveness of her position, she got up carefully, managing to keep her skirt from rising any further. No ungraceful scrambling for this woman, nope she remained cool as ice.

  “You were looking at me.”

  The words were spoken evenly, yet with such surprise, Dax had to laugh. “And is that so hard to believe?”

  “Men don’t usually look at me that way.” She glanced away. “Never, actually.”

  Odd how she could appear so strong, yet so utterly vulnerable at the same time. “Then they’re blind. You’re beautiful, Amber.”

  She searched his gaze, clearly wondering if he was still teasing her.

  “Just looking at you makes me think of hot kisses and stolen touches.”

  She blushed. Blushed. So, the cool woman could be shaken. “Oh, I’m sorry,” he said, anything but. “I’m being inappropriate again, aren’t I?”

  “You know you are.” Tough facade back in place, she walked the room, passed the piles of work on his desk, passed the additional piles that had simply overflowed to the floor. He’d vacuumed before setting Taylor down, so the vacuum cleaner was still in the corner. His coat, which had fallen from the rack, lay crumpled in a heap. His boots were sprawled on the floor, discarded after his last inspection. So was the bag his lunch had come in, from his favorite hamburger joint.

  “You’re a pig,” she said lightly, scooping up his jacket and placing it on a hook.

  He wondered at the gesture. Was it because she cared, or because she cared that Taylor was in such a messy room? “Talk to your daughter. She’s been a busy girl today.”

  A small smile crossed her lips. But Dax could see past the exterior, past that cool defense she wore like a coat. Deep in thought, he stared at her.

  “What?” she asked when he came close. She didn’t fidget like normal women, so she didn’t pat her hair or look herself over for flaws. But her eyes chilled in response to his silent study. “What are you staring at?”

  Dax knew how to soothe a woman, but he had the feeling the usual compliments and flirtations wouldn’t work with Amber. She was different. Very different. Her dark, gorgeous eyes looked bruised, rimmed with light purple. Her mouth, carefully painted, was tight, pinched. And those shoulders, the ones that seemed to be strong enough to carry the burdens of the entire world, were strained, as if the weight had become too heavy.

  “Stop looking at me like that,” she demanded.

  “Like what?”

  “Like…you’re hungry, or something.”

  Oh yeah, he was hungry. For her. How long, he wondered, would it take a man to dig under those walls? To find the real Amber, the one who’d had the guts to have a child by herself, the one he knew would protect that child with everything she had?

  “Why are you still staring at me?”

  Because she looked exhausted. Because she was a puzzle he couldn’t put together. Because he couldn’t seem to help himself. Backing her to a chair, he applied pressure on her arm until she sat.

  “I don’t have time to sit.” Her voice was weary. “I still have to run to the grocery store, pick up the dry-cleaning and then when I get home, I have a report-” Carefully, she closed her mouth and in a rare gesture of emotion, ran her hands over her eyes. “I have no idea why I’m telling you all of this.”

  “Because you’re too tired. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t say a word, you’d handle it all. Alone, most likely. But we’re a unit now, Amber. You should be able to vent.”

  “And that means you’ll vent, too, I suppose.”

  “If I need to, yes.”

  She looked so genuinely unsettled that he wondered what her definition of vent was. “How about I keep Taylor while you do your errands? She’s fine here, the guys come in every two seconds just to look at her anyway. She’ll be entertained. I’ll bring her home to you later.”

  “I can’t take advantage that way.”

  “Amber.” He came from a family of touchers. It seemed perfectly natural for him to lift a hand and touch her cheek. And if he enjoyed the feel of her soft skin so much that he left his fingers there for an instant longer than he’d planned, what did it matter? He was just trying to comfort.

  Okay, maybe it was more complicated than that, but he wasn’t ready to go there.

  And besides, she backed away.

  “Why do you do that?” he wondered. “Shy away from touch?”

  “I don’t like to be touched.”

  “You did once.”

  A delicious shade of red colored her face. “I should make it clear to you,” she said in that prim voice he was perversely beginning to enjoy. “I’m not being coy here. I acted…wild with you then. I’m not going to do it again.”

  “Are you thinking wild is a bad thing?”

  She looked at him steadily.

  “Or that I don’t respect you?”

  Still, just that look. Damn, she brought new meaning to the word stubborn. “What happened between us was spon