The manager emerged from Burger Boy just long enough to threaten her miserable life if she let one of those dogs take a chunk out of his costume. She had tried to wiggle out of the suit, but the zipper was stuck. When the manager disappeared back inside the shop, she had fled.

Now she waddled down the long block toward home, going as fast as she could. Her hair had gotten loose, curls falling all over her face.

One thing was for sure: This was all her ex-husband’s fault. Well, her husband and her ex-friend Sissy LePlante. Portia swung along as fast as she could, her mind full of revenge fantasies—all of them involving skewering, grilling, or butchering. Hamburger related.

She was only two town houses away from her apartment when she realized that one dog was still following her. “Damnation!” she yelped, swatting at the pesky Jack Russell terrier leaping at her side, vibrating with excitement as he tried to get a piece of one of the two faux meat patties circling her waist. The only thing that kept the terrier from true success was that it kept getting tangled in its trailing leash.

Her husband thought she was a pushover? Right. Portia swung around and met the dog’s eye. “Go home!” she thundered.

He squeaked, tucked his leg between his legs, and tore off.

“Ha!” she chirped, swinging back around.

Straight ahead, she could see the thick green trees of Central Park at the end of the long tunnel formed by apartment buildings. Pedestrians, locals and tourists alike, got out of her way. No one, not even the hard-core New Yorkers who had given her nothing but grief since she’d moved to town, were going to mess with Portia Cuthcart in a burger suit, a murderous light in her eyes.

Finally, she made it to the town house. All she had to do was get inside her apartment, find a knife, and cut the burger right off her body before she suffocated or melted.

She barreled up the front steps and through the thankfully, if surprisingly, open front door into the building’s small vestibule. Momentum and velocity squeezed her through the opening, the sound of thick rubber against the door seal like a beach ball being rubbed to a squeal.

But if bad things come in threes—one, the burger suit, two, the dogs—then number three had to be the cherry on top … or the garnish on the burger. The very neighbor she had been working to avoid was in the vestibule, now crowded into a corner, his daughter on the opposite side.

Even plastered against the wall, Gabriel Kane made awareness slide along her skin.

“Oh, hello, Ariel,” she stated, her smile forced. “Mr. Kane.” What wouldn’t she have given to be dressed in a fabulous little dress rather than ten pounds of rubber.

“This is a surprise,” he replied, not looking one bit happy. “Though it explains where you’ve been every time I’ve stopped by to meet with you.”

Awareness, indeed. Sheez. How many times did she have to remind herself that he was an arrogant New Yorker who wanted something from her, though not anything that had to do with shivers of awareness. “That’s me. A regular busy beaver.”

His eyes widened fractionally. It didn’t take a genius to guess he wasn’t a man used to people snapping at him. But after a second, a smile tugged at the corner of his lips. “You mean, a busy burger.”

Portia glared at him. “Ha-ha.”

His reluctant half smile ticked up a notch. Heat rushed through her, the kind of heat that had nothing to do with the layers of the thick rubber suit, which just made her all the angrier.

The man wasn’t good looking in any classical sense, and never mind his broad shoulders, dark hair, and darker eyes. His features were rough-hewn in contrast to the quality of the suit he wore.

Portia hated his perfect suit.

On the other hand … that imperfect face? Lust. Even wrapped in a hamburger suit, she couldn’t miss the flash of non-rubber-induced heat rushing down her body. Yep, pure lust.

I’m attracted to men who are kind and quietly intelligent, she told herself. Men who had sandy blond hair and light blue eyes, who held doors for ladies, and made liberal use of words like please and thank you.

The type of men who were stupid enough to run off with their wife’s best friend.

“Do you work for Five Guys?” Ariel asked. “That’s my favorite. If I was going to be a burger, I’d totally work for them.”

Gabriel raised one of those dark brows. “How is it in the competitive world of burgers?”

The book about courtesy her mother stole from the library was hard to set aside, even north of the Mason-Dixon Line. Portia drew a deep breath, fought for a polite smile, and said, “I was hired as a … representative of Burger Boy, not Five Guys. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll just get out of your way.”

But when she tried to move to the smaller door leading down to her apartment, she realized she wasn’t going to fit. Momentum had gotten her through the wider door. Nothing short of a good hard shove was going to get her through the other one.

Gabriel’s raised brow raised a little bit more.

Damn, damn, damn.

“Need some help?” he asked.

What Portia would have given to be able to say “No need to bother your little ol’ self,” flip her hair, and sashay off. But just as she had never been much of an eye roller, she had never been good at hair flipping or sashaying either. That was Olivia’s department.

“Bless your heart. Maybe a tiny push,” she conceded.

“‘Bless your heart’?”

“Just give me a push,” she practically growled at him.

It took more than a tiny push to get her levered down the stairs without pitching headfirst like an overlarge bowling ball. While Gabriel angled her down the steps, Ariel called out if he started to make a move that would have her tumbling. But then they came to a grinding halt with Portia only halfway down the steps.

“We’re stuck,” Gabriel ground out.

“Hold on!” Ariel said, shoving her shoulder into the burger suit and flailing around underneath, trying to get a better look. “Found it! The lettuce is caught on the banister.”

It wasn’t bad enough that her husband had come home and announced out of the blue that he was divorcing her. Or that her former friend Sissy was now living in the house Portia had worked so hard to make a home. No, she had to get stuck in a burger suit and be manhandled down a stairwell by the kind of man who made her want to forget she was a lady. She really was going to kill her ex-husband, right along with the Burger Boy manager.

Gabriel and Ariel managed to get Portia to her apartment door, but then she came to a halt again. She stood on her toes, trying to see over the burger suit, then didn’t bother to swallow back a curse. Not even a good Texas woman should have to live through this humiliation.

“A problem?” Gabriel asked, his tone utterly even. But he was grinning. She could just imagine him having a wonderful time telling all his sophisticated New York friends about the hamburger who lived downstairs. Though it hit her with surprising certainty that this wasn’t a man who told tales out of school. In fact, she felt equally certain he was a man who didn’t surround himself with friends at all, or even confidants.

Never having imagined she’d be wearing a burger suit, she had forgotten all about how she planned to get back inside. “Thankfully, I keep a key under the mat.”

His grin flatlined and his brows slammed together. “You keep a key under the mat? In New York City?”

Portia’s eyes narrowed. She’d had it. With him. With life. With this whole damned employment disaster. “Last I heard, burgers don’t carry handbags.”

Ariel gave a snort of laughter, which earned her a glare as well. “Go upstairs,” he snapped.

“What did I do this time?”

“Upstairs.”

It took a second, but Ariel stamped her way back up the stairs into the vestibule, then slammed the door to their apartment.

When Gabriel finally got Portia through her door, she waddled with determination over to the kitchen and managed to pluck the sharpest knife out of the drawer. With the grace of a sumo wrestler, she lifted the blade high like a samurai on the verge of seppuku. But before Portia could plunge the knife deep into the rubber bun, Gabriel was on her, grabbing her wrist and twisting it so that the knife skittered across the cracked linoleum floor. “Are you insane?” he demanded.

Her mouth fell open, then closed, then open again as if mimicking the very pedestrians who had gaped at her when she barreled down the sidewalk, a pack of yapping minidogs behind her.

“I’m not trying to kill myself, you, you … you!”

Quick comebacks had never been her strong suit.

“I am not trying to hurt myself,” she said, enunciating each syllable. “The zipper’s stuck. I have to cut myself out of this thing.”

Gabriel fell back a step, and started to say something.

“No more sarcastic comments or weird assumptions,” she snapped icily. “Just get me the knife.” She wasn’t feeling icy, though. Gabriel’s eyes had changed. He wasn’t looking at her waist—or her lack of one, given the suit—he was looking at her mouth.

Portia’s heart sped up.

He didn’t retrieve the knife. He turned her around, his hands impersonal. But when he jerked the zipper, it wouldn’t budge. “Bend over and hold on,” he said, pointing to the counter.

Portia turned slightly to look at him over her shoulder and glowered.

“Please?” he added as an afterthought.

Murder, she decided, was too good for Robert after putting her in this situation.