Talk Me Down. Victoria Dahl

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СКАЧАТЬ “Okay, I’ll drop by.”

      “Thanks.”

      “Mmm-hmm.” Just a favor for a friend. “Hey, you guys must have found out what Molly does for a living by now, right?”

      “Nope. All I know is she swears it’s legal.”

      “So why won’t she say?” His mind began to churn through all sorts of unsavory possibilities.

      “Who knows? I think she’s just stuck with the mystery of it now. It’d be damn anticlimactic to own up to being an IRS agent at this point. She’s fine and she’s healthy and I’ve finally convinced Mom to leave it at that.”

      Shit. He’d already used Google to search her name and had come up with nothing. He didn’t like mysteries. Not many cops did.

      Ben promised one more time to check on Molly—did she sleep in pajamas? Nothing at all?—said a quick goodbye to Quinn and grabbed his hat and coat.

      Just a favor for a friend. It had nothing to do with Molly’s tight blue T-shirt or the glimpse he’d caught of her moving through her kitchen when he’d come back down the path yesterday. It had nothing to do with the wicked sparkle in her eyes when she’d smiled up at him at the store. It certainly didn’t matter that he’d spent a good part of his shift wondering if her ass was as perky as it had been ten years ago.

      Damn, she’d driven him crazy that summer, always dropping by in little shorts and tank tops that he wasn’t supposed to notice on a sweet, innocent girl like Molly. So he’d forced himself not to notice. He’d known her since she was a baby. Her smooth, tanned legs didn’t exist for him. Neither did her firm breasts or round bottom. Nope. Nothing there.

      And they didn’t exist now, either. She was just another citizen. A responsibility. A favor for a friend. One who was surely awake and fully dressed.

      Ben had assumed his strictest police mien by the time he pulled his black SUV up to her house on Pine Road. Then he saw the car in her driveway and his jaw dropped.

      His fist hit her door a little harder than he meant, but after two minutes there was still no answer. He knocked again, then made himself take a deep breath and count slowly to twenty. The door opened on nineteen.

      “Tell me that is not your car.”

      She hid her mouth behind a hand and yawned. “Hey, Ben.”

      “You’ve got another vehicle in the garage, right?”

      “The garage is full of boxes.”

      “You can’t drive that up here in the winter.”

      She leaned out a little to look past him toward the blue Mini Cooper. “I put snow tires on before I left Denver. It’s fine.”

      “No. No, it’s not fine. First of all, I’m almost entirely certain they don’t make twelve-inch snow tires. Second, you’re going to get high-centered on the first rut of snow you drive over. Third, you will then be crushed by one of the three-hundred SUVs driven by the saner citizens of this town.”

      She leaned against the door jamb and nodded sagely. “Mmm. Fascinating. Did my mother call you?”

      “No, but she will call. And I don’t have the manpower to drive by your place every time it snows just to reassure her. And I definitely don’t have the manpower to rescue you from your own driveway twice a week.”

      “I’ve already arranged with Love’s Garage to have it plowed.”

      “Okay, I don’t have the manpower to rescue you from the grocery store parking lot every Saturday.”

      She crossed her arms and smiled up at him. “You’re kind of sexy when you’re in charge. Has anyone ever told you that?”

      That was when he noticed her shirt. Her long, worn-out, practically translucent white T-shirt. Her naked legs. The bare feet tipped by painted pink toes. She yawned again, then shivered, clearing up any mystery about whether she was wearing a bra.

      “I apologize,” Ben said, his tone carefully formal. “Did I wake you?”

      “Yes, but I’ll have to keep some sort of civilized schedule here or I’ll get awfully lonely. No one else stays up till three around here. Actually, maybe you do. It’d be just you and me…and the snowplows.”

      Just you and me…

      “I really, really like your hat,” she added with that twinkle in her eye again. “Really.”

      Ben found himself reaching up self-consciously to touch the brim and made his hand jerk back to his side. It was the same kind of Stetson most law enforcement wore in the Rockies. Nothing special enough to make her look so…naughty.

      “Back to the car,” he growled. “If it can be called that.”

      Molly opened the door wider and a breeze swept in, molding the shirt to her chest. Ben almost swallowed his tongue at the sight of hard nipples outlined so lovingly by thin white cotton.

      “You want some coffee?”

      She turned, leaving the door open for him, and Ben stepped inside in self-defense. He had to close the door before another gust of wind caught her shirt, because he did not need to get that well acquainted with the curve of her ass. Even if his brain was giving a little victory whoop.

      “Jesus,” he muttered, and stayed next to the door. It was time to go. He couldn’t remember why he’d come in the first place. She still needed waking up about that toy car, but now was the time for a strategic retreat.

      “You want cream and sugar?” she called from the kitchen.

      “No, I—”

      The jangle of an old-fashioned phone interrupted him.

      “Hold on!” Molly called.

      Ben heard her answer cheerfully, then her voice dropped to an ominous note that brought all his cop instincts to life.

      “Where did you get this number?” she growled.

      Ben headed straight for the kitchen.

      “Yes, I turned my cell off. Take the hint, Cameron.”

      He slowed as he came to the white molding that outlined the kitchen archway, but she’d stopped talking. She stood with her hand pressed to her forehead, murmuring “Mmm-hmm,” every once in a while.

      She squeezed her eyes shut, then opened them to catch Ben staring at her. Eyebrows flying high with alarm, she whipped around to face the sink, but he could still hear her side of the conversation.

      “No. Is that clear enough? No. Now goodbye.”

      Her smile was bright and cheerful when she spun back around, still clutching the phone. “The coffee’s almost done!”

      “Who was that?”

      “Who?”

      “On the phone.”

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