was tempted. More than he’d been in a very, very long time.
Stepping into the water, Michael cursed his timing. Why now, when he was on a critical hunt, would he suddenly start feeling a hint of potential life again after Shelley?
Steam rose between them and the sound of the water bubbling from the jets blocked out everything else.
She didn’t say anything more. Just watched him. Leaving the next move up to him.
Michael considered the seat across the small pool from her. Considered the fact that she didn’t know they were there on business. He looked at the seat right next to her. Where, beneath the cover of bubbles, he could bump into her. Skin to skin.
And just that quickly he was thrown into an inner battle. A fierce battle. Newly awakening man versus bounty hunter.
Who the ultimate winner would be was nonnegotiable. But Michael took the seat next to her. He closed his eyes. Absorbed the scent of chlorine mixed with woman. The warmth encasing him inside and out. The balmy night air on his face.
He wanted to kiss her.
He was egged on by the idea that she might let him. That his time was best served relaxing, getting some rest before dawn when, at the first ray of light, his search would begin anew. He hoped with new leads from Sara. Direction.
He was acting on the assumption that Nicole Kramer was down for the night. She would know she’d lost him. And she’d take the chance to rest.
“How was your evening?”
Her question came across to him as sounding intimate. And he remembered that she thought they were both home, enjoying a late dip in their mutually owned hot tub.
“Good,” he lied. For someone who believed so much in the truth, he seemed to have become better at fabricating than anything else.
Sara rolled her head sideways from its resting point on the edge of the tub. “What did you do?”
He met her gaze. “Worked.”
“Me, too.” Her sigh seemed to caress his skin.
They had a dangerous woman on the loose. He had to stay focused.
“Tough night?” he asked her. She’d given him the opening. He could find out things about his prey before he came totally clean. Before he had to watch the desire in her eyes turn to dislike.
No woman liked to be duped. Even for a good cause.
“Tough job,” she said. “Not that I’m complaining, mind you. I love my work. I’m just...tired, you know?”
She aimed that look straight at him again. It hit its mark.
“Why do I get the feeling you aren’t talking about a physical fatigue?”
“Maybe because I’m not.” Her honesty disarmed him.
Hit him where only his closest friends and family had ever been.
“You want to talk about it?” He wasn’t there to care if she had troubles.
Or to do anything about them.
“I can’t.”
Filled with an uncomfortable urge to help her—this stranger who was nothing to Mari or him—he said, “Anything I can do to help get you through the night? I’d offer you a glass of wine, but I don’t have any.”
He knew why he’d asked for this meeting—but had no real idea why she’d agreed.
Except as a woman who had interest in a man. That was how things got started. You met someone. Found something attractive during the meeting. Asked her out and pursued it from there.
“I have wine, but I don’t want it badly enough to go get it.”
He couldn’t drink. He was working.
“Besides,” she said, before he could get straight to business, “I think the combination of exhaustion, hot water, wine and you would be dangerous.”
Michael found himself fighting the overpowering sense that he had to have this woman. Had to sink himself all the way to her core. To know what that felt like, meeting her at her deepest level.
But his interactions with her thus far had been nothing but lies. As soon as she found out the truth, all the invitation he saw in her eyes would be gone.
“Am I being too forward for you?”
“No! Hell no.” He sat frozen in place, while his penis bounced with the bubbles, reminding him that it was there and had gone without attention for a painfully long time.
“You’ve probably already figured out that I have no idea what I’m doing.” The woman made his situation more difficult with every word she uttered.
She was beautiful. And from what he’d seen, completely unpretentious. None of which mattered.
The fact that he was interested in her, feeling things like regret and concern mixed with the sexual attraction, was what had him off his game.
“Don’t worry. I won’t take advantage of your low moment,” he said, trying desperately to keep them on course.
Or get them there.
“That’s not what I meant.” Her gaze was knowing and clear as she looked at him. “I don’t have as much experience as you would probably expect when it comes to relationships with men.”
He’d never met anyone like her. Innocence and knowing all mixed up together. He had to stop this.
“I don’t have any preconceived notions about your experience.” Not that he’d be opposed to finding out just how experienced she might be. She’d been married after all.
But he had to expose his lies and get on with the job.
“I haven’t been on a date in over a year.”
“I find that hard, if not impossible, to believe.”
“I know, right? I just realized how long it had been this afternoon, and I don’t know if that makes me more pathetic or less.”
“So I’m your first attempt to fix your pathetic dating state based on newly realized self-knowledge?”
“No. I don’t need a man in my life. I just need...”
Sex? Something more? He needed her to finish the sentence.
He hadn’t had a date since Shelley’s murder.
Which made them two thirtysomething adults who had both been...without...for an unnaturally long time.
Making them mutually needy?
“You need a little...diversion?” His voice was low. Rough. It was man-turned-on-in-spite-of-knowing-better.
