Something tight and uncomfortable was sitting coiled in my belly. But it was squirming like it was about to unfurl and I’d had enough experience with that poisonous snake that I knew I didn’t want it to do that.

But it was going to happen. I knew that too.

“I’ll be okay,” I said softly.

His head tipped to the side and something shifted through his eyes, disappointment, maybe, concern, possibly.

“Sure?” he asked, and I nodded.

He opened the door farther but stepped out of my way.

I stepped into the hall and dug into my purse for the phone. Lucky for all citizens of Denver, the taxi companies had easy-to-remember numbers they plastered on the sides of their cars.

I’d never called a taxi.

Until now.

I punched in one of the numbers as I walked down the hall. I put the phone to my ear, listening to it, eyes on the elevators in front of me as I walked out of the mouth of the hall and into a bustling open room filled with people, phones ringing, fingers tapping keyboards, and low conversations.

My eyes moved through the room unseeing. They blinked as I heard the taxi company answer in my ear and I stopped short.

My eyes were pointed through the window of an office, taking in the back of a man I knew.

Hell, I knew that old T-shirt and I’d committed that fine ass in those faded jeans to memory. I’d been pressed to that back on a bike. My hands had moved across the skin of that back and that ass just that night after I’d removed that shirt and after he’d removed those jeans. My fingers had moved through that dark, messy hair that night too, and other times, countless times in the last four months.

He turned toward the door and I didn’t see his face.

No.

I saw the shiny badge on his belt.

“You sleep naked?”

“No.”

“Don’t start tonight.”

Oh.

My.

God.

He left the office he was in and my eyes went from his badge to his face. Since that thing in my belly was unfurling, growing, swelling, filling my stomach, slithering up my throat, I didn’t notice the look on his face or feel his mood hit the room like a slap.

I just knew a man like Jake Knox would have not one thing to do with the pale-faced woman who was me.

Unless it was his job.

His eyes caught mine and he stopped dead.

I’d been stopped dead, but the minute his eyes hit mine I moved.

Rushing quickly toward the elevators, I hit the button at the same time my eyes scanned.

I found what I was looking for.

Exit.

Stairs.

I dashed to the door, opened it, darted through it, and then down.

I heard my heels echo on the stairs then I heard his boots.