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“Why did you say it was a choice between my chair and my sofa?”
“The sofa is just a little more dangerous,” he murmured as he stared into her eyes for so long that she felt hot all over.
“Dangerous . . . how?” she asked huskily because the feel of all that warm strength and the closeness of that wide, chiseled mouth to her own was giving her some problems.
“Well, honey, I can’t very well lay you down in the chair, now can I?” he whispered against her mouth.
The endearment and the kiss melted her. She knew without asking that he rarely if ever used endearments, and she was grateful that he hadn’t chosen the sofa, because she wasn’t sure if she could survive the temptation he would present, stretched out on her couch.
“Deep thoughts?” he mused as his mouth teased her lips in the silence of the living room, unbroken except for the crackling sound that came from burning wood in the fireplace, and the hard, heavy beat of her own heart.
“I’m not . . . like this,” she tried to get enough breath to explain.
He just smiled. “You don’t encourage men to do what I’m doing,” he translated.
“Well, yes,” she replied huskily.
“It’s okay. You’re just overwhelmed by an unexpected attraction,” he whispered.
She nodded. “Yes.”
His teeth nipped her lower lip. His tongue slid sensuously under her top lip and his own lips caught it and caressed it slowly. “And now you aren’t sure if you should stay here with me or lock yourself in the bedroom.”
She laughed. “Yes.”
His nose nuzzled hers. “You’re only twenty-six,” he whispered into her mouth. “I’ll be thirty-seven soon. And this is just an interlude. I’m not a marrying man. But you’re a marrying woman, and you’re too honorable to cheat your husband by sleeping around.”
Her breath caught. She drew back so that she could see his eyes. “How do you know that about me?”
He traced her mouth with a big finger. “Making quick assessments about people is part of my job,” he said simply. “I’ve learned how to do it fairly well over the years.” He studied her. “You’d race after somebody who dropped a dollar bill so that you could give it back,” he said gently. “You’d stop and help an injured animal on the side of the road. You’d put yourself in danger to save someone you cared about.” He smiled at her surprise. “I told you. I can read people.”
She let out a breath. “Well, you’ve got me pegged pretty good.”
He drew her close, so that her cheek was resting on his broad chest. Under her ear she could hear his heartbeat, hard and heavy.
“This is nice,” she whispered, closing her eyes.
“It is nice,” he replied, surprised. He laid his cheek on top of her blond hair. She smelled of roses.
“People don’t hug anymore,” she mused sleepily. “They even stay away from people they love and they’d rather text than talk.”
“I text, but it goes with my job,” he said.
“I sort of figured that. And this is Friday night, so the hospital is going to be full of people with injuries.” She shook her head. “Snow is in the forecast, which guarantees that a handful of idiots will drive and run into other idiots, all of whom should have stayed home.”
“I guess you stay busy.”
“I’ll bet you do, too.”
“Pretty much. Crime is crime. We have shootings with injuries every weekend.”
“But you stay and do the job,” she remarked.
“Somebody has to,” he said simply. “If we don’t do our jobs, people die. It’s a hell of a responsibility.”
“One that I know something about,” she said, and smiled. She yawned and curled her hands into the soft fabric of his shirt. “If I stay here much longer, I’ll fall asleep.”
He chuckled. “And if I stay here much longer, we’ll be tastier gossip than the local news.”
