A Guilty Affair Read Online Free PDF Page B

that you’re back. He’s gonna be so excited.”
    Riley didn’t bother telling the young officer that she’d already seen Noah, which was the reason she’d been flying down the highway in the first place. She also didn’t bother correcting him about Noah’s anything-but-excited reaction to her return.
    As Mario backed away from the car, he called out playfully, “Don’t go rear-ending any cops!”
    Riley couldn’t help but laugh as she pulled off.
    The tale of how she’d met Noah five years ago had become a long-standing joke at the downtown precinct where he and Trevor had worked, a story that had been shared over drinks at the local bar and passed down to new recruits like oral tradition. By all accounts, Riley shouldn’t have been welcomed into the brotherhood of blue the way she had. Not only was she a member of the despised press—who’d always maintained a somewhat adversarial relationship with the police department—but then she’d had the audacity to rear-end a beloved detective. In the parking lot of the police station, at that.
    But she’d been Trevor’s girl, and by virtue of him being Noah’s partner and best friend, she’d been given the benefit of the doubt. It wasn’t long before she was receiving invitations to cookouts, departmental softball games, kids’ birthday parties, weddings, retirement dinners—you name it. She’d been eagerly embraced by the men and women of the Central Substation on South Frio Street, and she, in turn, had regarded all of them as extended family members. When Trevor died, the outpouring of sympathy and support she’d received had been overwhelming. Which was what made Noah’s strange, distant behavior during that time even more devastating.
    But she was over that, she told herself firmly. It hadn’t been easy, but she’d gotten over the feeling of betrayal, the sense of desertion and…loss. Yes, loss. She’d worked especially hard on that one. After all, she and Noah had never been very close. She couldn’t lose something she’d never really had.
    So, just as she’d worked through those painful issues, she would also get over her unwanted attraction to Noah. Attraction, that’s all it was. Nothing deeper than that. And, as inconvenient and embarrassing as it was, what she felt was perfectly normal. She hadn’t been with another man since losing Trevor. After enjoying a healthy physical relationship with her fiancé, three years was a long time to go without having sex. So, yeah, maybe she was a little horny. And it didn’t help that the object of her attraction was even finer than she remembered, with those dark, piercing eyes and that sinfully sexy mouth. Not to mention a body to rival any classic Grecian statue. And that was based on the parts she had seen.
    Riley groaned loudly and banged her fist against the steering wheel. She was behaving as if scales had just fallen from her eyes and she was seeing Noah for the first time. And that wasn’t the case. She’d always been aware, on some unconscious level, that he was handsome. She’d have to be blind not to have noticed the way women stared at him wherever he went. Even some of the females he’d worked with at the police station had sat up like show dogs whenever he strolled past, and had flirted shamelessly with him every chance they got. At cookouts and fund-raiser dinners, they’d huddled in groups to gossip and speculate about his love life, and to place bets on the kind of woman who would be lucky enough to someday win his heart.
    Riley frowned and shook her head, turning into the gated community where her parents lived. This couldn’t be happening to her—not now, and not with Noah. Being attracted to him wasn’t normal, and it wasn’t acceptable. He’d been Trevor’s best friend and partner on the police force, and if all had gone