Baz eyed the bottle and pushed his chair out of her swinging range.

"I didn't lose it. My roommate threw an impromptu party last night. I think someone at the party took it after I crashed."

Baz braced for her reaction. His only serious relationship had trained him to expect anything from tears to violence when delivering bad news, but Nella's reaction was to fume and funnel the wine.

"Dammit, Baz—" she gulped and choked again. "You just... you just... left it lying around at a party!?!?!"

"I did not leave it lying around. I put it in my roommate's home office, away from the party, where it would be safe. My roommate is uber-organized and responsible. No way did he misplace it. There were only a few people left at the party when I went to bed, but one of them had to have taken it."

Nella scraped her hair off her face in irritation, "What the hell kind of friends do you have that would steal from you?"

This was the tricky part, the part where she was going to freak, he knew.

"Well, it's kind of ironic that you would ask that. I wouldn't call them friends. But you might."

"What?"

"The four stragglers at the party were all TO students. Three of them are in your writing program. One is an undergrad in your department. Mitchell Brooks. Frankie Walsh. Hazel, I-don't-know-her-last-name. Paul Robinson."

Nella's anger blossomed. She rose, her limbs and indignation unfurling like a large, bright jungle flower as she slammed the wine bottle down on the coffee table.

"What the hell are you talking about!?!?" Nella screeched at him, pulling at her hair. "Are you kidding me!?!? How do you even know them!?!?!"

"Mitchell is my downstairs neighbor. Paul lives in my building, too. Frankie and I hang out at Storyteller Night at SmellyBooks. Hazel, I don't know, but I gave her a tat, and she came with the others."

Nella gasped and sputtered.

"You... I... you... I can't fucking believe this!!!! I told you I had shown no one that manuscript! How could do this to me? They are the very last people I would have shown it to! They already think I'm a writer without substance!"

Baz could appreciate Nella's feelings but could not find it in his brain to appreciate the screech in her voice. "Calm down, darlin'. They didn't even know it was your book. Hazel maybe had an inkling, but I didn't confirm—"

"Don't you darlin' me!" She poked him in the chest. "Tell me what happened!"

"I'm trying to." Baz fought to remain calm. Her anger was riling him up. He was somewhere between wanting to put a hand over her mouth to shut her up and wanting to use his tongue to taste her fire.

"Well, you're doing a piss-poor job!"

"Because you keep interrupting me! Sit down, and calm down, and let me explain."

He snatched up the wine bottle, and Nella watched Baz's Adam's apple dip and rise in determined drinking. She put her own hands over her face, then sank back into the chair, doing her best to control her temper with deep breaths. He offered her back the bottle. She took another long greedy pull, her brow furrowing in the discomfort of chugging strong wine. When she couldn't swallow anymore, she pulled her legs up onto the couch and cupped her eyes in the heels of her palms.

"Just tell me the truth, Baz," she said in a low voice. "Did you talk about Rindlewinn with them? Tell them it was mine? Have a laugh about it with your drinking buddies?"

"No. I. Did. Not." he growled. "Come on, Nella. I know we don't know each other all that well, but—"

"I don't know you at all," she whispered, not meeting his eyes, still shielding hers with her hands. "How do I know you're telling the truth about someone taking it? You picked my book up and put it in your satchel without even asking. Maybe you just don't want to give Rindlewinn back because you're some kind of..." her lips worked, trying to find a despicable label, "book kidnapper. Or extortionist. Maybe you're just holding my book hostage for... for more..."

"For more what?" Baz challenged. His chest felt tight at her accusation that he was sketch. Probably because he was sketch and he had hatched schemes like she was implying. Actually, he'd done much worse.

"I don't know." She went to the door of the shop and looked out, but she didn't seem to focus on any of the passers-by, and Baz was sure that she was looking out there to avoid looking inside herself. "That night... you said you wanted... more."

He came to stand behind her, hands in pockets. "If I wanted to see you again, mind-fucking you with your most precious possession is not the way I would go about it."

He was trying to appeal to her sense of logic, but he misspoke, and she focused on the one wrong thing in his statement.

"If?" She rounded on him, her hazel eyes scrunched up. Her pillow lips dropped into an indignant O, then tightened. "Well, if you wanted to see me again," she spit, "it seems like pretending my book is lost and then pretending to recover it would be a pretty good way to make me feel grateful, wouldn't it?"

Her venom infected him, and he returned her sharp tone. "Are you always this goddamn suspicious?"

She stomped her foot. "I'm a writer! Inventing plots is what I do!"

"Fine. Let's go back to my place, and you can search it. You'll see, I don't have your book."

"You could have hidden it somewhere else."

"Right. Obviously, I would have expected that you would accuse me of holding your book hostage so I could get back into your pants," he spat. "I'm not that desperate. You really think you're all that, darlin'?"

Nella gasped in outrage. This time she didn't snap her mouth shut, and it was all Baz could do to keep dirty thoughts of her pretty, angry pout at bay. "You're the conceited one with your stupid swagger and your stupid darlin's and your... your stupid, stupid, stupid..." she poked his tattooed shoulder, "dragon!"

The way anger narrowed down her adjective choice was freakin' adorable. Baz laughed. She scowled.

He took a step closer to her. "You like my dragon."

She glowered, but she didn't move away.

"His name is Nocturne," Baz whispered in her ear. "And your dragon's name is Indahgia, and he would not betray her."

"This isn't some fantasy." Nella's whisper shook. With anger or lust, or maybe both.

"You're right," he murmured back. "What we have on our hands is a mystery. Let's get to the bottom of it. Together."

She looked up at him, anger and sadness swirling on her face, but a softer hope welling in her eyes.

"You really didn't show them my book? You didn't have a laugh with Hazel behind my back? This isn't some bad joke?"

He took her face in his hands.

"I would never do that. Not after the night we shared. Do you think that happens all the time between two people who just met? Do you think I don't feel... something about it?"

Nella's face was paling rapidly. Baz had been around dangerous types enough to identify the pallor of fear.

Was Nella that afraid of facing their night together? Or afraid of making that night more, maybe? That he could understand. He'd been burned before, too.

She averted her eyes. "I don't know. That night was crazy, and then yesterday morning was..."

"My bad," Baz said softly. "I never should have left like that. I should have made you feel more comfortable. I should have realized you were lying, you'd never had..."

"A one-night stand?"

"Don't call it that," he murmured. "Don't make it that."

He brushed her lips with his, and she shivered with soft desire, but he could almost taste the sadness in her. He left off kissing her and pulled her into a hug instead.

"Okay. I won't call it that, but I don't know what to call it. And until I do..."

"You're not down for a repeat," he said. "I get that, Nella. It's cool. I know we're virtually strangers. We can slow it down."

Her hands slid up his back, a thank-you hug, but then she pulled away. "I'm still pissed. And..."

"Beyond sad," he guessed. "I'm sorry I lost your book. Truly," he whispered.

"Yeah, I feel that," she murmured. "But I... I still don't understand how my book ended up going missing from your apartment. Or why any of those four would take it. Mitchell and Frankie are my friends. Paul is a good kid. I've known Hazel for a year and a half, and even though I'm not a fan, I don't think even Hazel would commit random theft from an acquaintance."

"I wouldn't say whoever took it did so randomly..." Baz sought words to explain the undercurrents that had traveled through the party. "Your book came up in conversation. Only because my roommate gave me a hard time for disappearing to read it. I never showed it, or named it, or told them who wrote it. In fact, I lied. Said an old college buddy of mine was soliciting beta readers for a manuscript. I'm not sure if Hazel believed that, though. She kept bringing you up, over and over. My best guess is she put two and two together and took it to mess with you or me. Or both of us."

Nella's face descended into confusion. "What do you mean, I kept coming up? Did you tell them about... us?" Then she blushed and smoothed her expression. "I mean... that we... hooked up?"

Baz liked the gravity Nella brought to the word us. "Of course not. Frankie saw us a Draper's together the other night and brought you up. It was obvious she had told the others... something."

Nella covered her face and gave a muffled groan. "You mean, like how we were making out in public like drunk freshman?"

"Mmm... I think we were making out more like two infatuated sixteen-year-olds," he took a step toward her and tucked her hair behind her ear. "Crushing hard, kissing sweet."

When she gave a breathy laugh at his description and planted her hands on his chest, he put his hands on top of hers.

"Whoever took your book, for whatever reason, I will get it back.I have no problem confronting Little-Miss-Medusa-Disguised-In-Dutch-Braids."

Nella liked Baz's fitting description of Hazel, but she was too busy working up to a vehement head shake and a main point to acknowledge it. "No. No way am I giving her the satisfaction of begging for my book back. She's not the first person to confront, anyway."

Baz raked through his undercut in irritation. Doing nothing when someone had done him wrong was not his style. "What do you mean? She feels like the prime suspect to me."

Nella reached for the wine again, taking a couple of fortifying slugs as she paced, thinking. Baz waited, but when she spoke, she didn't answer his question.

"If you confront them all, whoever took it might do the opposite of giving it back. They might... get rid of it altogether. I... I can't stand the thought of someone just tossing it away. In fact... I can't think about Rindlewinn at all right now." Nella was looking at her smartwatch, clicking through a notification. "I have to go. I have someplace else to be."

"At eleven on a Friday night?" he asked in surprise.

"Yeah."

"Some place doing something more important than this? Than finding Rindlewinn, I mean?"

She bit her lip, as if she were wavering.

"Yeah," she said again, and to Baz's complete surprise, Nella unlocked the door and walked right out.

Where could she need to be so late on a Friday night? How could she just abandon this mystery, this quest to solve it? When would he see her again?

He pushed through the door after her, because damned if he was letting her get away without her phone number this time. It took him a moment to locate her on the boulevard. Then he spotted her in her long-sleeved blouse and short shorts, wine bottle still in hand, across the street and already a half a block away.

Christ, she had a set of legs on her. Not only were they gorgeous, her determined power-walk put the geriatric mall-walkers to shame. He dashed across the street, ignoring the angry honks of the slow-moving cars he forced to an abrupt stop. She turned down an unpopulated alley that cut through to the large, dark park east of downtown.

Oh, hell no. No way was she walking through that park by herself in the dark, upset and distracted.

A sprint allowed him to catch up to her. She had stiffened upon his approach but relaxed as he fell silently into step beside her."What are you doing?"

"Keeping you company on your walk to wherever is better than being with me," he suggested with a grin.

"It's not necessary, and I really have to hustle, I'm late..." She was quickening her pace.

"Oh no, you don't. You're not getting away this time without giving me your number."

He caught her hand, tugging her back, forgetting that Nella was a little clumsy. Her sandal caught in a concrete crack. and she stumbled into him. He steadied them both, but Nella dropped the bottle, and it fell to the pavement, spraying wine.

He twirled a still-stumbling Nella clear of the puddle before she ruined her suede sandals. She yelped as he hauled her back.

To Baz's surprise, someone from the park yelped back.

Much louder and longer.

It wasn't a sound of distress, but of... battle?

It came again, out of place, out of time.

A long and startling war whoop.

"What the hell?" Baz muttered, putting himself between Nella and the two shadows approaching.

"Step the fuck off my girl."

An angry-eyed guy with longish, straight dark hair strode toward them. Baz's imaginative nature had him looking for a tomahawk in the guy's belt, but in actuality, it was the other figure—whose height equaled the guy's but who was decidedly feminine—that brandished something in her hands. Baz relaxed as they emerged into the streetlight. Their messenger bags and the sack of takeout the girl had in the crook of her arm did a good bit to dissolve their ferocity, despite the girl's pepper spray.

Nella rolled her eyes and stepped back around Baz. "Don't mind Lucas. He's all bark and no bite."

Baz's attention sharpened further. "Is he the ex?"

"No, just a friend. Guys!" Nella barked, putting her hands out in the universal sign for peace. "What are you doing in the park at dark?"

"Taking a shortcut to your place," the statuesque black girl said, with her own mild tone of accusation and a shake of the takeout sack. "Did you forget our all-night-write?"

Nella's outstretched hands clasped in a gesture of contrition. "No, of course not. I was on my way to meet you."

"Nevermind that."

The scowling guy strode right up to Baz. He was several inches shorter, but he didn't seem at all intimidated by the height difference, nor the muscle Baz had on him. He appeared to be Native American. "Is this guy causing a problem?" he asked.

Nella bit her lip and gave a mischievous grin. "Sort of."

The girl thrust her pepper spray in Baz's face. "I said back up. Come on, girl, let's go."

Baz tried to dodge the girl, but the pepper spray followed his sidestep. "Nella!" he said through gritted teeth. "Tell your friends I'm not a bad guy before my eyeballs turn into two little worlds of hurt."

"Are you really a good guy?" Nella murmured. She was playing, but then again she wasn't.

Baz was a practiced liar, but Nella couldn't know that. She would have no reason to doubt the sincerity that colored his words now. "Yeah. I am."

He promised himself he would be a good guy when he was with her.

Nella wrapped her hand beneath his. "Stand down, Dani. You too, Lucas. Meet Baz. Baz—"

"Hanlon," he supplied.

"Hanlon. Good to know," Nella laughed. "Danielle Miller and Lucas Gourneau," she clarified. "Baz runs the tat shop. I've been thinking about getting a tat for a while. I went in a couple of nights ago, and we talked, and we found out that we liked to read the same kinds of novels, and we ended up going for a drink and then—"

Baz expected the story of Nella's missing book to come tumbling from her lips in some kind of adorable jumble. Instead, she took a deep breath and said, "and tonight we were having another drink."

No mention of her missing book, not even to her friends.

It surprised Baz at how easily Nella rearranged the truth. Then again, she was a writer, accustomed to making believe. If she preferred to omit the part about her lost book and paint their evening as romantic to her friends, who was he to argue over something as small as the truth? God knew he'd bent his share of it.

In fact, wasn't he doing that right now, with Nella?

"From a distance, it looked like you were fighting." Skepticism colored Danielle's words.

"No," Nella was looking at Baz with the soft eyes again. "Just on the tail-end of an animated discussion. We're both in the middle of the same mystery, and we were discussing whodunit. I got a little carried away and suggested the protagonist might be the villain," she gave Baz the barest wink. "But Baz made some good points that changed my mind..."

Goddamn, he liked this girl. Her resilience, her quick wit, her inventiveness.

"So you're a fan of mystery novels?" Lucas said slowly as he studied Baz the way a protective brother might.

"Mysteries. Fantasies. But I'm thinking of starting a romance," he murmured, giving Nella a grin that didn't disguise his heated look.

Lucas barked out a laugh as Danielle groaned, both recognizing the meaning in his words. The moment fell quiet as Nella searched Baz's face for sincerity, as if they were alone beneath the splashy orange glow of streetlight.

"Well, now that you have an armed guard," Baz tipped his chin toward Danielle, "I guess I don't have to walk you home. I should get back to the shop. I left it unlocked."

Fuck, that was careless. Anyone could be in there right now, giving themselves an amateur tat or helping themselves to the till.

It was not like him to lose his cool over a girl.

Or maybe it was exactly like him, but it hadn't happened in a very long time. And the last time, it was a disaster. What the hell was he doing, chasing another girl out of his league?

"Let's go, Vanella," Lucas drawled. "Theses don't write themselves."

Nella hooked a thumb in the direction of her apartment. "I gotta go. A writing marathon is in my future. But... do you want to meet me for coffee before I crash in the morning, and we can talk about that mystery some more? You know... like the motives and opportunity?"

"Definitely," he assured her. "I'll pick you up? Your place at 10?"

"Perfect," Lucas drawled. "We'll be ready to fall into bed for a few hours by then, right Dani? Preferably together?"

"In your dreams, Gourneau." Dani shot Nella a look of amused tolerance, and without even glancing at Lucas, she turned toward the park, knowing Lucas would follow, leaving Nella and Baz with a private goodbye.

Lucas caught up with her in two long strides. "Exactly. I've been tryna to move you from my dreams to my bed for a while now."

Dani's laughter faded beneath the dark trees that enveloped them.

Baz reached for Nella's hand, wrapping his fingers in hers. "You gonna be okay for your writing session?"

She nodded slowly, looking at their entwined hands. "Rindlewinn is not just a story to me. It's a place I built. A shelter where I am fireproof. The shelter still exists, even if the book is lost. But—that doesn't mean I don't want my book back."