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    Yes. She stood transfixed at the bottom of the steps—because she knew that beneath the designer casual and the fancy watch the raw body was even better.
    â€˜Hey, Kelsi.’ With his athletic grace he rose to his feet and smiled.
    â€˜Jack,’ she swallowed. ‘This is a surprise.’
    â€˜Yeah,’ he agreed. ‘I wanted to see you.’
    Why? All kinds of crazy reasons raced through her brain but none of the good options could be possible. It had to be bad, or maybe he was just passing and stopped to say hi or something. It couldn’t be that she’d made any kind of impact on him.
    She didn’t have the courage to ask, didn’t have the courage to look into those blinding eyes again because one of the best things about her time with Jack was that it had been rejection-free—so she didn’t want to ask for it now. She settled on a safe question instead. ‘You want to come in for a coffee or something?’
    A self-serving invite anyway. Coffee would clear her head—wake her up enough to work out whether this was just one of those hot dreams or not.
    â€˜Thanks.’
    Â 
    Jack couldn’t wrench his gaze from her as he followed her up the stairs. Some sort of skull cap covered most of her hair, only a few blonde tufts appeared around the edges. Her face was as pale as ever but her eyes were really something—silver irises—almost as reflective as a mirror. They went perfectly with the shimmering silver dress that hung as the top layer over the black fabric swamping every inch of her skin. She looked like an ethereal nymph of the night. And she turned him on to an almost uncontrollabledegree. He wanted to push the shiny thin fabric to the ground so he could see the perfect, petite treasure beneath. He wanted to slide the contacts from her eyes so he could see the true colour she so determinedly hid—and her true expression. Her entire outfit was a cover. So was her cool response to him now—or so he hoped anyway, because she hadn’t exactly been all immediate warmth and touch like the occasional reunions he’d had with other lovers. But then Kelsi wasn’t anything like those other lovers, was she? That was the problem—she was the only one to haunt him.
    He watched her unlock her door. He could see the acceleration of her breathing, the faint colour deepening in her cheeks and he felt his own response deepen—horrific in its intensity. For weeks now all he’d been able to think about was the heat of her on that mad day by the beach. The sweetness, the wildness, the total sexiness.
    It was a nightmare distraction. He needed his focus back—because his training was a mess. But it was an attitude problem, not his knee. He had to clear his head and to do that he needed to get Kelsi out of it. Never had a woman interfered with his goals before. Never had he allowed another person to influence his schedule the way Kelsi had. Not that she knew it—or was going to know it. No, this was all about him getting rid of the fantasy for good because he was furious with himself for being this pathetic. He had not got as far as he had by letting personal needs or wants get in the way of competition prep—he wasn’t going to derail now. That gold medal was going to be his.
    He just hoped this would do it. He’d see her again and realise it hadn’t been that spectacular—that memory had somehow magnified how amazing they’d been together.
    But now he was here and now it was worse—all hewanted was to have her again, to know her, to make her laugh. She was every bit as cute as he remembered, every bit as crazy, every bit as breathtaking. She had the towering platform shoes on again that were probably killing her toes with narrowness and still he was burning up worse than a meteor in the atmosphere.
    But he forced the rampaging lust down, needing to check her reaction some more. She was