Witness Seduction. Elle Kennedy

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СКАЧАТЬ the way I want to go about it, okay? I’m not having dinner with a complete stranger. It’s too forced, too…intimate.”

      “Then we’ll make it a double date.”

      “No.” Without looking at Gwen, she swallowed back the bitterness sticking to her throat and added, “I can’t agree to go out with a stranger. I can’t do it, Gwen. Not now, anyway.”

      “Fine, but the subject’s not closed, you know. We’ll talk about it later.” Gwen hopped off the stool, her brown curls bouncing on her shoulders, and reached for the black leather purse she’d set on the counter. “I have to run. I’m meeting Nick for lunch.”

      Marley followed her friend out of the kitchen, her bare feet slapping against the weathered hardwood floor. They reached the front hall, sidestepping the stack of two-by-fours obstructing the way. Marley’s younger brother, Sam, had promised to extend the coat closet by a couple feet, so last weekend he’d come over and hacked away at the wall. Then he’d gotten a phone call and taken off to handle a work emergency. He hadn’t been back since, and Marley was now left with a gaping hole in the floor and all the supplies he’d brought into her hallway.

      She didn’t mind, though. Sam was busy working at their dad’s construction company, and it made her happy he was doing well. Her brother had always been irresponsible and scatterbrained growing up. It was nice seeing him act like an adult, even if it did mean he’d left his sister in the lurch.

      Gwen paused on the front porch. “Want to come to lunch with us?” she offered.

      “Thanks, but I’ll pass.” Marley was so not in the mood to watch Gwen make googly eyes at her long-time boyfriend. The two of them still acted as if they were in the mushy newlywed stage when in fact they’d been together for years.

      Her friend looked suspicious. “How are you planning to spend the rest of your day off?”

      “Cleaning out the eaves,” she said, fighting back a smile.

      Gwen blew out a frustrated breath. “You’re incorrigible.”

      Marley’s smile reached the surface. “Yeah, but you love me anyway.”

      “Can’t argue that. All right, I’ll see you at the hospital tomorrow.” Gwen leaned in to give her a quick side hug, then bounded down the porch steps toward the shiny black Jeep parked behind the red Mazda convertible Marley had owned since she was eighteen years old.

      Marley waved at her friend, watched Gwen speed away, then walked back inside. Alone, she let out a heavy sigh. Talking about Patrick always brought this awful feeling to her stomach. A cross between sorrow and bitterness, with a hefty dose of anger thrown into the mix. Everyone in her life kept pushing her to forget about him—Gwen, their friends from the hospital, her dad, her brother.

      None of them seemed to get it. They didn’t understand how badly Patrick had hurt her. Not only that, but he’d taken a skewer to her judgment and punched so many holes in it she wasn’t sure she could ever trust her instincts again.

      What kind of woman fell in love with a murderer? How could she have been so blind to Patrick’s deception? She knew she wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last woman to be duped by a man. Heck, she’d once watched an entire documentary about serial killers and how they skillfully deceived their loved ones.

      But that didn’t make this situation any better. She still felt like a fool. She’d completely fallen for Patrick’s lies and she hated how easily he’d conned her. He’d even convinced her to open a joint savings account, saying they’d need one anyway when they were married. Good thing she hadn’t gotten around to depositing anything into it, but it still irked—especially since she couldn’t close the damn thing because the cops had frozen it.

      And sure, maybe she was hiding from the world, just a little, but the renovations on her house helped keep her mind off her fugitive ex-fiancé. Besides, she really was enjoying the work.

      Her place was nestled in a neighborhood of quaint Victorians and leafy elm trees at the end of the cul-de-sac. Two stories high, it was painted pale cream and in desperate need of new shutters. But she loved the old place. She planned on tackling the exterior after the inside was all spruced up.

      Heading to the laundry room, she grabbed all the cleaning supplies she needed. She slipped her feet into a pair of white sneakers, then hauled her bucket of supplies out to the side of the house, where the wooden ladder she’d set up earlier leaned against the slate-green roof.

      Fine, so maybe cleaning out eaves wasn’t the most exciting thing to do on one’s day off, but it needed to be done. And who knew, maybe one of Gwen’s what-if scenarios would come true.

       A tall, dark and handsome stranger approaches the house. “My mysterious maiden,” he says. “Your beauty overwhelms me. Let me clean your rain gutters.”

      Marley smothered a laugh. Rolling her eyes, she snapped a pair of rubber gloves onto her hands and climbed the first rung of the ladder.

      “This maiden needs no man to take care of her,” she murmured to herself with a grin.

      CALEB FORD LEANED BACK in the plush swivel chair and wondered when exactly he’d become a voyeur. His job had forced him to sit through many a stakeout but somehow this one seemed…wrong.

      Arousing as hell…but damn it, wrong.

      He’d been a DEA agent for ten years, had put dozens of criminals behind bars, gotten shot twice in his career—and yet this one little stakeout was killing him. It should’ve been easy, a wait-and-grab he could’ve done in his sleep. The location was perfect, the electronic equipment was sweet, and his target, despite the irregular hours she worked, didn’t leave the house much.

      Yep, in theory, this stakeout should’ve been a piece of cake.

      But none of his theories had taken into consideration the powerful allure of Marley Kincaid.

      Caleb shifted in the chair, hoping to ease the ache in his groin. A sip of the cold soda sitting on the desk in front of him helped cool his throat, but did nothing to snuff out the fire in his lower body.

      A quick glance at the screens displaying Marley’s front and back doors showed no movement. Not that he had to be so vigilant; the motion detectors they’d set up caused the monitors to release a loud buzz every time anyone walked by them. There was plenty of movement at the side of the house, however.

      Marley was up on a ladder, wearing faded cut-off shorts, a red tank top and yellow rubber gloves, and she was cleaning out the eaves using a long brush. Wet leaves and mud went sailing down to the grass ten feet below, remnants of last night’s thunderstorm.

      Damn, she was cute up there on the ladder, her blond ponytail swishing back and forth as she worked. When he’d taken the case, he’d seen pictures of Marley, sure, but seeing her in person was a different story altogether. It had been a week since he’d hunkered down next door to her, and already he’d memorized every detail of her face—her golden-brown eyes set over a pair of unbelievably high cheekbones, her cute upturned nose, her full sensual lips. God, those lips. She had a mouth made for sin. Not to mention a body that could cause a man to forget his own name.

      For seven days now he’d wondered what she looked like naked. But they only had clearance to install cameras outside the house. And she always closed her drapes when she undressed, СКАЧАТЬ