“What were you doing in there?” she countered.

Back at the house the bedroom lights came on, and a voice yelled from the balcony, “Thieves! Don’t you come back! I’ve called the police!”

“I’m not hanging around here,” said the woman, and made a beeline for the woods.

Jordan sighed. “She does have a point.” And he took off after her.

For a mile they slogged it out together, dodging brambles, ducking beneath branches. It was rough terrain, but she seemed tireless, moving at the steady pace of someone in superb condition. Only when they’d reached the far edge of the woods did he notice that her breathing had turned ragged.

He was ready to collapse.

They stopped to rest at the edge of a field. The sky was cloudless, the moonlight thick as milk. Wind blew, warm and fragrant with the smell of fallen leaves.

“So tell me,” he managed to say between gulps of air, “do you do this sort of thing for a living?”

“I’m not a thief. If that’s what you’re asking.”

“You act like a thief. You dress like a thief.”

“I’m not a thief.” She sagged back wearily against a tree trunk. “Are you?”

“Of course not!” he snapped.

“What do you mean, of course not? Is it beneath your precious dignity or something?”

“Not at all. That is-I mean-” He stopped and shook his head in confusion. “What do I mean?”

“I haven’t the faintest,” she said innocently.

“I’m not a thief,” he said, more sure of himself now. “I was…playing a bit of a practical joke. That’s all.”

“I see.” She tilted her head up to look at him, and her expression was plainly skeptical in the moonlight. Now that they weren’t grappling like savages, he realized she was quite petite. And, without a doubt, female. He remembered how snugly her sweet curves had fit beneath him, and suddenly desire flooded through his body, a desire so intense it left him aching. All he had to do was step close to this woman and those blasted hormones kicked in.