Leslie Kelly - Killing Time

Unsure whether to knock, Caro first tried the door handle. When it twisted easily in her hand, she stepped inside. The outer reception area was, indeed, dark and deserted. Before she could decide whether to just sit down and wait, or step back outside, she heard voices coming from an inner office.

Glancing at her watch, she made out the numbers in the semidarkness. “It is 8:00 a.m.,” she whispered. And since she had to first find accommodations, do the paperwork, and then get back to Chicago for her flight home to L.A., she wasn’t in the mood to sit patiently.

Following the sound of the voices, she rounded a sofa and coffee table loaded with sale flyers, finance company brochures and photo albums. An archway revealed a back hall, lined with closed doors, one saying Meeting Room, another Restroom. The rest were unmarked offices. One of those doors was partly open, the inside brightly lit. That’s where the voices were coming from.

Standing in the darkened hallway, Caro had an easy view of the people in the room. But it still took a moment for her to mentally assess what was happening.

A woman stood inside, with her back to the hall. She hadn’t even noticed Caro’s entrance. Stepping closer, Caro realized why the woman was so distracted.

She was staring toward a man. A bare-ass naked man.

A bare-ass naked man with a very nice ass.

“Son of a….” she whispered.

They didn’t hear. Obviously whatever was happening in the room had engaged their complete attention.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Louise, haven’t you gotten a good enough look yet?” the man asked over his shoulder, his back to his captor.

Though the question obviously hadn’t been directed at her, Caro immediately answered for the woman. No. Huh-uh. Not enough. Not nearly.

“Nope,” the woman replied.

Good answer, Louise.

“Can I at least turn back around?”

Oh, please please please please please.

“Not just yet.”

Argh.

Finally realizing exactly what she was doing, Caro sucked her bottom lip into her mouth and stepped back, pressing herself against the corridor wall. Her heart pounded in her chest, and she struggled to control her ragged breathing, wondering why the duo couldn’t hear her shocked inhalations.

Obviously, the Realtor hadn’t been showing up early for her benefit. He’d had another kind of appointment altogether. The sexual kind. The kind that urged her to move her feet and get the heck out of the building before the panting and moaning commenced. At this moment, Caro really couldn’t be sure she, herself, wasn’t already doing one or the other.

“Good Lord, no wonder the women in this town are all fools whenever you’re around,” Louise, the woman in the office said.

One fool standing in the hallway completely concurred.

A discreet person would have left immediately. A calm business executive would have cleared her throat to alert them that someone was present. A sane woman would have resisted thinking about how the rest of the naked male body might look.

Caro did none of the above.

She stayed right where she was. Waiting, trying to work up the strength of will to leave quietly and not steal another peek. Finally, good sense won out. No matter what, she was not a Peeping Tom. She hadn’t been reduced to the level of a woman who hadn’t had sex in so long she had to live vicariously through other people’s sexual adventures.

Preparing to walk away and come back later when the Realtor was less, um, occupied, she pulled away from the wall. But before she could take one step, the woman in the office said something that made her freeze in place.

“I hope I don’t have to shoot you, because there isn’t a place on ya that isn’t just about perfect.”

At first she wasn’t sure she’d heard correctly. She replayed the words in her mind as the truth dawned.

She hadn’t interrupted anything as mundane as an office romance. Either these two were playing some kind of fun and kinky sex game—burly prison guard attacks sexy, helpless, naked, studly criminal came to mind—or else a crime was being committed.

One scenario said she had to leave. The other demanded she stay. Because, it was entirely possible Mr. Naked Guy was about to get shot.

“YOU WERE SUPPOSED to turn tail and run,” a male voice said, sounding both weary and amused.

The voice sent a shiver of awareness down Caro’s spine. It sounded silky smooth, much too calm for a person being held at gunpoint, which made her think these two were, indeed, playing some kind of game. For some strange reason, the man’s voice sounded familiar to her ear. She’d just been too much in shock to pay attention the first time he’d spoken.

The woman laughed. “It takes a lot to make me run away.”

Caro inched closer to the door frame. There was just something about that man’s voice—not to mention his naked body—that made her itch to take another quick peek.

“That’s why you stripped, even though you knew I wouldn’t shoot you?” Louise asked. “You thought I’d run away at my first sight of a naked man, even though I have four little brothers?”

Caro took a deep breath and worked up her nerve to steal one more glance just as the man muttered, “Something like that.”

Louise had moved slightly out of the way. From this angle, Caro could only see the man from the waist up.

Wow, what a waist. Wow, what an up.

The man had crossed his arms in front of him, so his shoulders and triceps flexed and bulged. His hair was light brown, cut a little long, but not long enough to hide the thick strength of his neck.

Caro gulped. If she’d been the one with the gun, she figured it would’ve slipped from her hand due to the sweat breaking out all over her body. Good Lord, how could anyone be that close to a man so hot and not get weak in the knees?

“Oh, sweetie, you’re so funny. I helped raise the boys. Plus I grew up on a farm. I’ve seen male equipment. And while you’re, well, of generous proportions, you can’t compare to Buddy.”

Caro had to wonder who Buddy was. If the mysterious Louise really did know some man named Buddy, and he was better built than the guy in the office, Caro thought perhaps her stay in Derryville might be more interesting than she’d expected. Though she wasn’t sure her heart could take it. Not to mention her diaphragm, which had been sitting unused in her medicine cabinet for so long she could probably use it to strain pasta.

Truly, though, she didn’t see how anyone else could compare to Mr. Naked Real Estate Guy. At least not from her angle. She doubted anyone could look as good from behind as this man did, and she included a number of Hollywood heartthrobs in that assessment.

“Buddy’s a bull, Louise,” the man said, his voice shaking with what some might have interpreted as fear, but which Caro recognized as unbridled laughter.

Bull-like. There was something a man would aspire to, right? The thought inspired several wicked images. She had to back away again, if only to force herself to stop trying to peer around the armed woman for another tantalizing glimpse of the hips and down.

Wow, what hips. Wow, what down.

“I know. But for some reason, you made me think of him,” the woman replied.

“I don’t know many men who would compare favorably to a bull. But thank you very much, all the same.”

Still hidden in the near darkness, and still wondering whether the two were playing some sort of lovers’ game, or if she’d really stumbled into a hostage situation, she took a few calming breaths to decide what to do.

Look some more.

That worked.

This time, she gave into her impulse, dropped to her knees, and peered around the door from a lower angle. Definitely a better angle. For assessment purposes only, she told herself, knowing she was a big fat liar whose pants, if she had been wearing pants, would be incendiary right about now.