All the Possibilities Read Online Free PDF Page A

stretched a little under his hand. All the twinges in her muscles had vanished. "I told you mine last night."
    " Mmm-hmm ." How slender her neck was, he thought. And the skin there was soft enough to give him a hint how she would feel under that apron and T-shirt.
    "Well then, there shouldn't be a problem." He must do something physical with his hands, she thought fleetingly. His weren't the palms of a paper-pusher. The edge in her voice was calculated to combat the attraction and the vulnerability that went with it.
    "You strike me as too intelligent a man to require repetition." With the slightest pressure, he inched Shelby toward him. "It's standard procedure to review policies from time to time."
    "When I do, I'll
    " To stop her own forward progress, Shelby pushed a hand against his
    —
    chest. Both of them remembered the state of her hands at the same time and looked down. Her gurgle of laughter had his eyes lifting back to hers. "You had it coming," she told him, smiling. Her eyes lightened as humor replaced the prickles of tension. His shirt had a fairly clear imprint of her hand, dead center.
    "This," she said, studying the stain, "might just be the next rage. We should patent it quick. Got any connections?"
    "A few." He looked down at his shirt, then back into her face. He didn't mind a bit of dirt when the job called for it. "It'd be an awful lot of paperwork."
    "You're right. And since I refuse to fill out any more forms than I already have to, we'd better forget it." Turning away, she began to scrub her hands and arms in a large double sink. "Here, strip that off," she told him as she let the water continue to run. "You'd better get the clay out." Without waiting for an answer, Shelby grabbed a towel and, drying her hands, went to check her kiln.
    He wondered, because of the ease of her order, if she made a habit of entertaining halfnaked men in her shop. "Did you make everything in the shop?" Alan scanned the shelves after he tugged the shirt over his head. "Everything in here?"
    " Mmm-hmm ." "How did you get started?"
    "Probably with the modeling clay my governess gave me to keep me out of trouble. I still got into trouble," she added as she checked the vents. "But I really liked poking at the clay. I never had the same feeling for wood or stone." She bent to make an adjustment. Alan turned his head in time to see the denim strain dangerously across her hips. Desire thudded with unexpected force in the pit of his stomach. "How's the shirt?" Distracted, Alan looked back to where water pounded against cotton. It surprised him that his heartbeat wasn't quite steady. He was going to have to do something about this, he decided. Quite a bit of thinking and reassessing
    tomorrow. "It's fine." After
    —
    switching off the tap, he squeezed the excess water out of the material. "Walking home's going to be
    -dressed," Alan mused as he dropped the shirt over the lip
    f
    l
    a
    h

    g
    n
    i
    t
    s
    e
    r
    e
    t
    n
    i

    …
    of the sink.
    Shelby shot a look over her shoulder, but the retort she had in mind slipped away from her. He was lean enough so she could have counted his ribs, but there was a sense of power and endurance in the breadth of his chest and shoulders, the streamlined waist. His body made her forget any other man she'd ever seen.
    It had been he, she realized all at once, whom she'd been thinking of when she'd thrown the clay into that clean-lined bowl.
    Shelby let the first flow of arousal rush through her because it was as sweet as it was sharp. Then she tensed against it, rendering it a distant throb she could control.
    "You're in excellent shape," she commented lightly. "You should be able to make it to P
    Street in under three minutes at a steady jog."
    "Shelby, that's downright unfriendly."
    "I thought is was more rude," she corrected as she struggled against a grin. "I suppose I could be a nice guy and throw it in the dryer for you."
    "It was your clay."
    "It was your move," she reminded him, but snatched