Bedroom Eyes Read Online Free PDF

he did retreat a step or so, continuing to watch her in that assessing way he had.
    But this time Penelope refused to let his sexy eyes and her attraction to him draw her off course. “If you follow me ever again, I’m calling the police.”
    His response was a grin that infuriated her.
    “You don’t think I’ll do it?” Penelope’s purse began to dance a bit and she wished she’d never, ever gone shopping at Pottery DeLite that day. If she’d stayed home and worked on the stacks of papers stuffed in her briefcase she’d never have run into this annoying man and certainly she’d never have shoplifted a bossy and opinionated six-inch-high mystery woman.
    “You’re new in town, aren’t you?”
    “That’s the second time you’ve asked me that question.” Penelope broke free from the man’s gaze and looked around her. The sidewalk where they stood was near the end of Canal Street, a major thoroughfare that ran from the Mississippi River to parts of the city Penelope had never had time to explore, but one she’d heard ended at the cemeteries, another New Orleans curiosity.
    Around them wandered tourists in T-shirts and shorts, many swigging bottled water, just as many sipping those cherry red alcoholic Kool-Aid drinks known as hurricanes in plastic cups. New Orleans, a city of pleasures and passions, wasn’t a place she fit into naturally, but it rubbed her the wrong way that she appeared so clearly a square peg.
    “The police in this city don’t waste much time on complaints like yours,” the man said in a deliberate voice, a shadow clouding his eyes. “They have trouble enough getting to the real problems.”
    “Thanks for the civics lesson, and you’re right. You’re not a problem. You’re merely a pest. Now get lost.” She turned on her heel and walked away.
    Within the first block, sweat poured off her like the big fountain back home in Grant Park. Even Chicago summers, laden with humidity, hadn’t prepared her for the sauna effect of New Orleans. The sidewalk wavered and danced before her eyes. She clutched her purse, harder to manage both from the weight and the antics of Mrs. Merlin jumping about, and wondered if one could faint from heat.
    She didn’t have to wait long to find out. She suffered another shivery attack of heat so extreme she actually felt an icy cold wash over her body. She would have called out for help, but what with all the talking and walking and not having eaten or drunk any water for more hours than she could remember, she couldn’t act quickly enough.
    Faintly she heard a “Dear me, we’re falling!” from within her shoulder bag as the sidewalk rushed at her face.
     
    Tony hadn’t intended to follow her any more that day. The gutsy way she’d told him to get lost had affected him in a way a “Please go away” would not have, gotten to him in a way that sparked a purely male reaction.
    Spying once again an edge that belied her proper appearance, he wanted to know more about the lady thief. So when she marched away, he lingered, then shadowed her path up Canal Street.
    Which is why he saw her sway, then stumble, in time to dash forward.
    Which is why he was there to catch her before her head cracked against the sidewalk like a watermelon in a Fourth of July toss.
    She was soft and rounded in all the places that crushed against Tony’s arms as he snatched her from what would have been a nasty landing.
    And hot. Sweat dotted her face and ran in a bead across her upper lip. With one hand he stroked her damp cheek. She’d yet to open her eyes.
    “Damn fool woman,” he muttered, reaching under her chin for the top button of her blouse. He’d unfastened the first one and started on the second when her eyelids flickered, then opened.
    She stared into his face and Tony saw a vulnerability he’d not noticed before. What was this woman doing consorting with Hinson? Did she simply not recognize the evil that lurked beneath the polished surface?
    He slipped his fingers