Chapter One


Give me ice cream or give me death.

—Chrissy McMullen, during an ongoing bout of teenage angst

I had just drifted into the feathery nest of Sleepdom when the phone rang. Cracking one aggravated eye, I glared at my bedside clock. Eleven-seventeen. Okay, eleven-seventeen may not exactly be the wee hours of the morning, but I have a deep and abiding affection for sleep and tend to get somewhat miffed when I and my beloved are separated. I happen to consider REM to be the next best thing to chocolate, which is the next best thing to . . . damnit. I couldn’t remember anything that beat the cocoa bean for sheer unadulterated bliss, and that wasn’t a good sign. I was pretty sure there had once been something rather titillating.

The phone blasted my eardrums a second time. I gave it a jaundiced glare, but it remained unrepressed and rang again. Cheeky bastard. Snaking an arm across Harlequin, a dog who disguises himself as a hundred-pound door?stop, I hauled the receiver from its cradle, dragged it into my lair, and rumbled an impolite salutation.

There was a moment of silence followed by, “Jesus, McMullen.” Rivera’s smoky voice sizzled through my system like cheap wine. “Did your larynx have a run-in with a sander or are you just on a bender?”

Meet Lieutenant Jack Rivera, LAPD down to his cotton boxers. He and I go back a ways. When Bomber Bomstad, client and ex–football star, dropped deader than kibble on my overpriced berber, Rivera was the first on the scene. Irritating, smart-mouthed, and preposterously hot, he’s as tempting as truffles. He is also equally restricted, because although a little dark chocola...