One Stormy Night. Marilyn Pappano

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      Chapter 3

      A minute shy of six o’clock, Jessica ran out of steam.

      She’d taken every CD and DVD out of its case, checking for original labels, and flipped through the pages of every book. She’d looked behind every picture and painting and underneath every shelf and drawer. She’d unzipped the sofa and chair cushions and tipped the furniture upside down, searched for loose tiles in the kitchen and bathroom and crawled the perimeter of the apartment checking for places where the carpet might have been pulled up. She’d heaved the mattress and the springs off the bed, dragged the frame from the wall so she could see behind it and taken every single item from every drawer, cabinet and the closet.

      In the process, she’d discovered that Jen had been an amazing housekeeper, gotten hot and dirty and found nothing. Now, after a shower, she was calling it quits for the evening and heading out to dinner. Snacks could only take a woman so far.

      “Going somewhere?”

      She started as she locked the door but thought she did a decent job of hiding it. Letting her key ring dangle from one finger, she turned to find Mitch kicked back in a folding lounge chair underneath the scrawny oak. He wore denim shorts, faded and soft, and a Belmar High School basketball jersey that looked about twenty years out of date.

      He looked incredibly hot—and she didn’t mean his temperature.

      “To dinner.” She moved to the edge of the grass, wishing she were barefoot like him and could curl her toes into the cool green growth. There she could see a beer can on the ground next to the chair and a book open in his lap. She recognized it as the one she’d read on her last flight from Hong Kong—a thriller about a vulnerable woman taking on police corruption.

      She chose to ignore the book. “Drinking on duty. Why am I not surprised?”

      “Not much surprises you, does it?”

      She shrugged.

      He picked up the can, drained the beer, then crumpled the aluminum. “I’m not on duty.”

      “Uh-huh. After following me around town this morning, you just happen to be sitting outside my door now by coincidence?”

      “No coincidence. I sit out here most nights. I’ve been doing it since I moved in here—which, by the way, was before you moved in. Look.” He rolled to his feet with more grace than any man should show and lifted the chair easily in one hand. “There are places worn in the grass from the legs.”

      The three faint lines showing where the chair had spent many hours were impossible to deny. So was the foolish feeling that curled through her. You could have told me that, Jen.

      Of course, there was no response from her sister.

      “I’m going to that little barbecue place out on the east side of town,” she said. “In case you lose sight of my car on the way.”

      Tilting his head, he studied her a moment before saying, “I told you, I’m not working. But if you want my company for dinner, all you have to do is say so.”

      She blinked at the remark, thoroughly unexpected. She wanted his company like she wanted a hole in her head. He was Taylor’s buddy. The enemy. Not to be trusted.

      But someone was going to be watching her. Better him than the creepy kid who’d hung around part of the morning and all afternoon. Even with the drapes drawn, she’d known the kid was there, had felt his presence.

      “I assume this restaurant requires shoes and a real shirt.”

      “This is a real shirt,” he protested.

      She looked at the jersey. Truthfully, it was perfectly adequate, particularly in a beach town. But it showed a lot of smooth brown skin and muscle and sinew and all that other sexy physical stuff. She would be lucky to taste her dinner, and the same could probably be said for any other female diners in the restaurant. Since she was a firm believer that barbecue, especially Southern barbecue, required all of a diner’s attention, she repeated, “Shoes and a real shirt.”

      Scowling, he carried the СКАЧАТЬ