Heather Graham Pozzessere - Slow Burn

www.mirabooks.co.uk

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

“Wait!”

Danny Huntington paused at the foot of the stairway, looking back.

Spencer was standing on the marble landing, both hands gripping the mahogany banister. She was wearing a cobalt silk nightshirt, and her hair was sleep-tousled and wild and spilling all around her face. She had an exotic look about her, as if she belonged in one of her own promo pieces, beauty against a backdrop of elegance. Behind her in the hallway was the Victorian love seat, above it the handsomely carved mirror. A maroon runner, picking up the shades in the brocade tapestry on the love seat, ran beneath Spencer’s bare feet and manicured toenails. It drew attention to the length of her legs. In the old Mediterranean house Spencer had salvaged and brought back to glory, Spencer herself looked like a million bucks. Sometimes Danny thought that she’d been born perfect. She had crystal blue eyes, corn blond hair and classical, delicate, stunning features. He’d known her most of his life and been in love with her for half of it. It probably hadn’t been much of a surprise to others when she married him, but it had been a shock to Danny. And not only had she married him, but she’d understood him, his need to be something other than what was expected of him, to join the police force instead of the family business. And when the chips were down—or at least scattered all over—she had come to the fore with a smile and a laugh, and done everything in the world to make sure that he didn’t feel the least bit badly about anything. Sometimes, when he thought of all Spencer had been willing to go through for him, he felt a sweat break out on his palms and he shook a little bit inside just to think about how much he loved her, and how good she had made his life.

“Danny, I’m blue!” she said the words with tremendous excitement.

“What?” He arched a brow, looking at her with confusion.

“The test, Danny, the little line on the ovulation predictor test turned blue!” she said, smiling at his confusion.

“Oh. Blue!” he repeated.

Then he stared at her blankly for a moment. He was due at David Delgado’s house. They were going to jog together before combining their information on the Vichy case. But if Spencer was blue…

He was the one who wanted children so badly. He and Spencer had been only children themselves, both born to wealthy parents, what they called old money families, though, frankly, some of the money on his side wasn’t all that old. But enough years had passed for the world to forget that it had originally been made in heavy-duty bootlegging. They’d both grown up in Miami, as well, down in Coconut Grove, where what there was of old-time Southern gentility and Northern snowbird affluence sat side by side with poverty and the ghetto. He’d always had the best of everything, and gone to the best schools. What he’d lacked was people to love, and as he’d watched friends with their sisters and brothers, he’d realized from a very early age that happiness wasn’t something that could be purchased from a store. He’d promised himself then that his own children would never be lonely—he would have a dozen if he could. He’d gotten over the concept of having a dozen, but he still wanted a family, two to four children, whatever Spencer thought best.

They’d started out the marriage trying, but after two years, when they still hadn’t become parents, Spencer had suggested they start testing. She had quietly gone about getting every test possible, and she hadn’t cared that a few were painful and humiliating. He’d sat in a little cubicle himself, chagrined to discover that the setting made his penis as limp as overcooked fettucini, but he’d needed to be tested, so he’d endured whatever procedures the doctor ordered. The only good thing about it all was that, in the end, he had been told they were both normal—the doctor’s suggestion had been that they were just too busy, too tense. Since her grandfather, Sly had semiretired, Spencer was all but running Montgomery Enterprises herself; and his schedule was worse than hers. They just might be missing the right time to try for children, and that could well be all there was to it.

“Can you take the day off?” he asked her.

“You bet,” she told him. “What about you?” She hesitated just a moment. “I thought you had set up a meeting with David Delgado?”

“I had,” Danny told her. “I’ll get out of it.”

“Can you?”

Danny grinned at her good-naturedly. “I’ll just tell him the truth. That you and I are trying to be fruitful and multiply.”

“Danny—”

“Spencer, I’m kidding. I’ll find a way to reschedule. Don’t worry about it.” He wished she hadn’t turned quite so dark a shade of crimson, but, in truth, he was more amused than anything else. Once upon a time his wife and his best friend had been one of the hottest things going—but hell, that had been all the way back in high school, for Christ’s sake! Spencer wouldn’t talk about it on pain of death, and David Delgado was just as much of a clam about the whole thing. Until recently, David and Danny had been partners on the force as well as longtime best friends. But then David had quit being a cop because he had saved up enough money to open his own security business, and so far, with his experience, he had done very well. They still saw each other frequently on a professional basis, though, because David sometimes did work for the city, and then they needed each other’s files—and opinions.

Spencer and David were always polite when they met. He knew they both worried about his feelings regarding the past, so they avoided each other as much as they could. And when they did meet, they were civil and cool, and managed to make him feel like hell over their damned determination to be honorable.

They were honorable; he knew that. And he loved them both all the more for it. But every once in a while, when they had no choice but to meet, the tension in the air was as hot and heavy as the August humidity in this searing place they all called home, and he had to admit that he was afraid—just in a little tiny corner of his heart—that if the two of them weren’t so damned moral, they would be naked, in the heat and crawling all over one another, and it wouldn’t matter one bit that they didn’t have a thing to say to each other anymore, that they’d broken up explosively all those years ago, and that even back then they’d been as different as night and day, Spencer so fair, David so dark, Spencer the height of society, with ancestors who had all but stepped off the Mayflower, and David the child of an immigrant and a refugee. But if twelfth-grade rumor had been true…

He’d been in twelfth grade with them, known them both all his life. And now Spencer was his wife, David was still his best friend, and one day he would manage to turn the two of them back into good friends, too. Maybe if he and Spencer could actually get this parenthood thing going…

He was already in his jogging shorts, T-shirt and sneakers. He’d been eager to get all the help he could from David on the Vichy case, but nothing in the world was more important that sharing this morning with Spencer. “I’m supposed to meet David right out on Main Street. We were going to jog over to his place and then go through the files over breakfast. I’ll meet him on the street like we planned and give him some excuse. It won’t matter what—he won’t press me. I’ll be gone about twenty-five minutes, then I’ll be home. How about it?”