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"DAMN it, Evangeline, you need to come back home"

Evangeline Tregre shook her head and took a slow look around the bakery It wasn't exactly thriving, but it was still afloat and beco more popular every day The walls were painted a soft blue She'd done that herself Every cupboard, every place fro to the floor--she'd done it The dusty old, torn-up space had been renovated by her It was now cozy and inviting with the tables and chairs She loved the way the bakery sot up to bake, she looked forward to the day Back "home" she detested her very existence

"This is home, Robert I love it here and I'm stayin' It's more home to me than that place ever was" She kept her voice quiet Low She was used to being silent She didn't argue, nor did she like arguments She especially didn't like Rober

t Lenoux co she return "In any case, I thought you were travelin', going to the Borneo rain forest"

She knew all about Robert, although she'd never actually met him until he'd walked into her bake shop He had been sent away in disgrace, had served a brief jail stint, but got out of a real sentence froainst his friends Murderers He'd participated in beating and robbing the elderly in their ho exotic dancers He had co at him, she knew he didn't care about anyone but himself Especially women

"Fuck that," Robert spat "I'oin' to be sent away from my home by some outsider who thinks he can orderhome a woman You'll do just fine I don' care that you aren' a shifter"

Her sto breath She'd left that world behind She wasn't about to allow a bad-tempered, evila woman, into her life

"The answer is no I aoin' back there"

"You have a duty to the rest of us" Robert reached out, settled hard fingers around her upper arm and yanked her close to him

Alarers only tightened into an iron band "Let go ofhi pushed around by hiain "I want you to leave This is my shop and I'm askin' you politely to leave"

The bell over the bakery door tinkled merrily, at odds with the tension in the rooeline's breath caught in her throat She'd grown up around dangerous , viciously cruel men She knew criminals She had a radar for thele doubt that the erous Terrifyingly so

He glanced around her beautiful little shop and saw every single detail, yet he didn't see it because there could be no appreciation None There was no emotion on his face or in his flat, cold, dead eyes Beautiful eyes Gorgeous eyes A shocking blue Like the blue ice of a glacier His lashes were long and as black as night, frale hint of eaze settled on Robert's hand on her ar He walked He breathed He probably killed people But if he did, he did it with absolutely no e She could tell by the way he looked at Robert's fingers wrapped around her

He was very tall, ruggedly built, all roped muscle, and he looked absolutely invincible She was used to h The way he moved--the control, the containlided or flowed across the floor rather than walked He did that in absolute silence too, as if his very expensive Italian leather shoes didn't actually touch the floor

His suit looked as if it had cost as much as the renovations on the bakery space and been custoaze re into her bicep She'd all but forgotten he was gripping her so hard until fear sent a chill arrowing through her

Robert must have felt it too He was leopard A shifter She knew fro as an ox Like most shifters, he didn't fear much His leopard would shred an eneo and stepped back away fro her between them

"Can I help you?" Evangeline asked Her voice sounded different, even to her Her accent was deeper, a soft sultry lure she hadn't le cell in her body are of him The bayou came out in her voice more than it ever had before, and it sounded like an invitation to spend the night floating down a lazy canal together under a starlit night

She wasn't the type of woman to flirt with a man, let alone speak to hier when she saw it, but she came alive the moment he entered her bakery Her body had been asleep but noide awake and very aware of every inch of the Iceht of him as her Iceman, even if it was just in her fantasies

His eyes focused on her He looked at her through a blue glacier without once blinking "Coffee Black A piece of your cinnamon cake"

His voice was deep Dark As cold as his eyes As cold as Siberia--the dead of winter in Siberia At the same time, it was low and sensual She couldn't stop the little shiver that ran through her body at the sound of it Heat pooled low and wicked, and so wild and feral deep inside her stirred She had an unexpected urge to take all of that h her and see if she could unthaw the Iceman's cold