Leigh Riker - Change of Life

“I was home, alone.” Perversely, considering the situation, Nora wished he would smile. She’d like to see what he looked like then, because she suspected he didn’t smile often. Or maybe she was trying to divert herself from her obsessive study of the wedding invitation a few minutes ago—that is, until he brought up Starr. And the apparently missing vase.

“Yes,” Nora admitted, “I did see Starr yesterday.”

He had picked up on her cool tone. “You’re not friends.”

“I didn’t say that. We’re, well, more than acquaintances. We’re competitors in interior design.” Oh, you bet. Nora had barely been out the door yesterday before Geneva Whitehouse called to inform her that she’d chosen Starr to do the work on her home. The sudden decision had wounded Nora, but she tried not to show it. “Ours is a small world, Detective Caine. One can’t afford to make enemies.”

“Would you call Ms. Mulligan an enemy?”

Nora felt her cheeks heat. Before she knew it, they were as hot as a pancake griddle, and she could sense the blood rushing through her veins, centering in her chest and making her feel breathless. Nora fought the strong urge to fan herself with Wilson’s invitation. Her skin must look as red as fire. Dear God, she was having another of those flushes, worse than before. Caine’s fault. That alone was enough to make her dislike him.

“Starr and I may have had words a time or two, bless her heart. She doesn’t have the best…disposition. But we both know where our bread is buttered.” She had formed a small lie, hoping to tamp down the fiery blush spreading across her skin, hoping to defuse his keen attention. “If you must know, yes, we sometimes quarrel.” A new insight struck her. “I suppose it’s almost a hobby for us.”

Her heart thundered like a cannon during a twenty-one-gun salute at Arlington Cemetery. Nora looked from him to Daisy, who was now curled at Caine’s feet as if she belonged to him rather than Nora. Surely he didn’t think…

“Do I look like a common thief to you?” she asked.

Nora drove home in a blue funk, her fingers trembling on the steering wheel of her convertible. She knew she hadn’t conducted herself well in the interview with Detective Caine. Still, she wasn’t behind bars tonight for something she hadn’t done. Look on the bright side.

Daisy certainly did. She hadn’t stopped smiling since Caine walked into the office, not even when Nora worked late then dropped her off at the vet’s on the way home. Daisy didn’t know it, but she was staying overnight at the clinic to get her teeth cleaned.

Alone in the car for the rest of the ride, Nora put down the top and let the warm, sultry Gulf breeze blow through her hair. Overhead the sky had darkened to a velvety blue, and she glimpsed a few stars trying to come out.

She was putting her key into the door of the home she’d worked so hard to pay for as a single woman—an honest woman—when a hard hand covered her softer one. Her pulse jerked in alarm. She hadn’t recovered from Caine’s interrogation, and Nora half expected another attack right at her door.

Then she smelled him, that recently familiar scent of man and the pricey cologne she had given him for his birthday. Instead of a real assault, to her relief this was some fantasy come to life in her doorway.

A hoarse masculine growl threatened to melt the skin at the nape of her neck. There was no “Your money or your life” forthcoming, but every square inch of Nora’s flesh quivered.

He didn’t bother with talk. He didn’t have to.

Heath Moran seemed fully involved in a replay of that scene from the 1969 film Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The young Robert Redford. Katharine Ross. A classic now. Like Nora.

Before she could breathe again, he gently nudged her inside and shut them both into the cool darkness of her entryway. He pushed her up against the closed panel of the door and set his delicious, wicked mouth on hers, and she went limp.

“Why the hell do you keep torturing me like this?” Heath mumbled, his mouth pressed to the cleavage above the top button of her silk blouse. “Three flipping weeks without a word from you. Then I get that desperate-sounding tone on my answering machine. The Steel Magnolia in full meltdown mode. You’re enough to drive a man out of his freaking, already-insane mind.”

“Heath—”

Nora didn’t get the chance to continue. Or explain, as if she could. Clearly, he was a man bent upon a mission of the utmost importance. Critical. Now.

Within the next heartbeat, Nora agreed with him.

She felt his hard body against hers, the press of his already-stiff penis against her through the coarse fabric of his cargo shorts. He would be out of them in the next five seconds if she didn’t take control.

“You didn’t answer my call.”

“I’m answering it now.” She barely understood his muttering. “I was at work last night. Or did you already forget that Thursdays and Fridays I’m on the schedule?” Before she could push him away, his mouth dipped lower and he had unbuttoned her sufficiently to slip his hand inside her blouse. The heat of his palm on her breast, his fingers snaking inside her bra, felt like heaven. His breath came in pants. “The club’s…short-handed right now. One of the trainers…quit and I’m working…more hours.”

“Some excuse. And your cell phone battery died? I called both numbers.”

“Sounded important.” He nuzzled her half-exposed breast. “So is this.”

Nora fought not to whimper.

She didn’t think she could resist much longer. When she moaned, Heath smiled against her other breast.

“You want it. You know you do. You want me.”

“You do have…your skills. And here I thought—” she couldn’t help the movement of her own body “—that you were nothing more than a sadistic personal trainer. I’m still hurting,” she murmured, trying to be rational. “Those last pull-ups were murder.”

“A month ago? And you’re still sore? I doubt it.” Heath laughed a little, but he sounded winded. “Through tormenting me, then? Because if you are, we can get down to business here.”

Heath was forty-two and a stud muffin, as Savannah might say, the likes of which Nora had never known up close and personal until a few months ago. That is, until she’d finally rediscovered her common sense. She’d already made one mistake with Wilson, as today’s announcement reminded her. When compared to Wilson’s more cerebral, poetic nature, Heath might be embarrassingly physical, more of this earth with his sandy brown hair and eyes the color of topaz, and he was sensible to the core, but he was still a man. And men dumped her, or forced her to dump them, no matter what they promised.

“I can’t, Heath.” She pulled back, smoothed her skirt and rebuttoned her blouse. Her whole body felt sensitized as she glanced at his still-dazed face. “This is ridiculous. I’m—”

His head jerked up. “If you’d only get over this cockamamy theory that I’m too young for you, Nora, we could have some fun. Again.”

“We’re really not compatible.” Except in bed. She couldn’t deny that. What was she waiting for?

Heath’s voice stopped her. “I still scare you, don’t I?”

Nora couldn’t disagree. “Old habits—like Wilson—are hard to break.” And then, there was Detective Caine with his questions and his sorrowful eyes, the inspiration for yet another, different blast of heat. This time Nora couldn’t pretend it hadn’t happened.

Heath ran a hand through his thick sandy hair. He was obviously frustrated. “I’m not a habit. You’ve been divorced for over two decades. Isn’t it time to be happy again? With someone else? Me, for instance.”

She had to turn away not to jump his bones. He wasn’t just a pretty-boy face, a pack of muscles and six-pack abs. It wouldn’t be fair to him. Or to her.