Leslie Parrish - Pitch Black

“What can I say? Beating the hell out of little cyber dudes on the Wii helps my mood tremendously at the end of a crappy day.” His words brought another tiny laugh and a smile that stayed on her lips.

“Okay. Scotch and video games. Can’t say I have any scotch, but I can twist the top off the bottle of Jose Cuer vo Tricia gave me for Christmas.”

“Tequila instead of a sweater or one of those plastic bags full of flour and chocolate chips that you’re supposed to use to make your own damn cookies? Maybe you should forgive her phone manners.”

She laughed again, and this time a gorgeous dimple, which she probably hated, if she was like most women, appeared in her cheek. Obviously she had gotten over the embarrassing answering machine incident. “Like I said, a pain in the butt. But she’s also the best friend I’ve ever had.” Clearing her throat, she softly added, “She’s the one who got me, the, uh, nightshirt I was wearing this morning.”

He’d noticed the nightshirt. Actually he’d noticed what she had on under the nightshirt. Especially the absolutely nothing she had on under the nightshirt.

“It probably seemed a bit angry.”

Actually, it had seemed sexy as hell to him. But he’d go with angry if it made her feel better. “I think divorce is a pretty angry subject.”

“You?”

He shook his head. “Never married.” Something made him add, “I did go through a breakup last summer. We had dated for over a year.”

“Rough,” she murmured. “Do you miss her?”

“I miss my dog.”

Her jaw dropped. “She took your dog?”

“Yeah. I was…” He thought about how to explain without really explaining. “I couldn’t take care of him for a while. She had given him to me in the first place, and she loved him. So she got him from my place and took him to hers, temporarily, then refused to give him back.”

“What a bitch.”

Her anger on his behalf both amused and warmed him. “Nah, he was male.”

She rolled her eyes. “That was so not funny.”

“What can I say? Considering my ass is falling asleep after being in this chair all day, I guess I’m not at my wittiest.”

He wasn’t exaggerating. Having given up on finding any comfortable position, he was now sprawled back in one of the uncomfortable seats, arms linked across his chest and legs extended, crossed at the ankle.

She shifted in her own chair, obviously feeling the same way. Like the tenacious woman she was, she got right back to the subject. “How could your girlfriend do such a thing?”

“She thought he would be better off with her.”

Another eye roll. “Lame excuse.”

“Actually, it wasn’t. At the time, she was probably right, which is why I didn’t fight her on it. I was away from home for quite a while.”

“Yeah, but stealing your dog-that’s cold.”

As cold as whacking up your laptop with a golf club? The question almost emerged, but he swallowed it down. Along with the curiosity that had been nagging at him today as he’d pictured the possible reasons for the incident, and the identity of the person holding the club.

“Anyway, once I got back, I wasn’t capable of running with him or taking care of him the way I once did.”

“Why not?”

He hesitated, wishing he’d cut the story short. He should have thought about how inquisitive she was and expected her to quickly stop focusing on the dog and zone in on the backstory. “I had been pretty badly injured.”

She cast a quick, instinctive glance over him, from his head down the length of his body, as if she might spot some sign of what had happened to him.

Then she looked again. Nothing quick about it this time.

Her attention shifted. The perusal became about something other than casual conversation. Almost feeling the heat of her stare sliding all over him, he knew what she was seeing. With his clothes rumpled and his jaw lightly grizzled, he probably didn’t much resemble the guy who’d shown up at her door Tuesday.

She didn’t seem to mind. In fact, her expression implied the opposite.

Her lashes slowly lowered in almost sultry fashion, until she was watching him from behind half-closed lids. Those expressive eyes darkened; the lush lips parted. A soft, nearly inaudible sigh flowed across them, and a flush crawled up her cheeks.

No. She no longer looked afraid. She looked hungry.

He was being visually devoured by a beautiful, sensual woman who’d been wearing a shield of angry armor toward men since her divorce and had suddenly remembered she once had a sex drive.

His heart picked up its pace, and he felt the blood in his veins heat to near boiling. He hadn’t bargained for this. Being physically attracted to her was one thing. He could handle that. At least, he thought he could, despite knowing, after spending a whole day with her, how much he could like this woman.

Just now, though, realizing she was attracted to him, too, things had gone from intense to almost dangerous.

Dangerous for him because, with his track record, getting tangled up with a witness was about the dumbest career move he could make. Dangerous for her because… well, because Alec’s head wasn’t in the game right now. He was still too screwed up from what had happened to even think about involving somebody else in his battle with his own demons.

Easy to remember earlier, when she’d been afraid, on edge, and uncertain. Now that she’d segued into aware, sultry, and sensual, he could get into serious trouble.

When she realized he’d seen her response, Sam caught the corner of her bottom lip between her teeth. The room, old and poorly ventilated with one small heating vent, usually felt chilly. It suddenly got warmer, the walls almost seeming to shrink around them, making the cramped space even more intimate.

“Sorry,” she whispered.

He didn’t know if her apology was for the intrusive questions or the deliberate, provocative stare. Good manners said she should owe him one for being nosy. But his own need to keep thinking of her as just a witness meant it had better be the look. That dangerous, oh-it’s-bad-but-it’s-still-so-good look.

“It’s okay.”

Though she was visibly embarrassed, Sam didn’t turn away. She made no effort to avert her eyes or change the subject. She watched him closely, waiting for him to speak. The woman wanted either a left turn into the tale of his injury, or a right one into something a whole lot more dangerous: an acknowledgment that he’d seen, that he understood. That he’d responded.

When he didn’t humor her, didn’t take the conversation one way or another, she finally blew out an impatient sigh. “Well?”

“Well what?”

“Well, how were you hurt?”

She’d gone left. And he was suddenly so relieved, he spat out the truth. “Shot.”

Her gasp could have been heard outside. “You were shot ? Like, with a gun?”

“No like about it.” Reading her dismay in the quiver of her mouth, he shrugged in unconcern. “It was five months ago; I’m fine.”

Sam obviously wasn’t so sure. She reached out and put a hand on his arm, touching him so lightly, so fleet ingly, he wondered afterward if he had imagined it. “I’m sorry.”

“Wasn’t anything I ever want to repeat, but I survived it.”

“Who shot you?”

The question he most didn’t want to answer. Because being shot by a psychopath or a bank robber, an abusive dirtbag, any of those would have been okay to talk about. Heroic maybe. At least something he could wrap his mind around.

He still hadn’t wrapped his mind around what had really happened that hot summer day.

He intentionally averted his gaze, staring past her. “It’s a long story.”