Calling His Bluff Read Online Free PDF

up on his isolated doorstep in the first place. “Right, you have a
     sick cat. What’s wrong with kitty?” She ducked back down to peer under the couch.
    “I can’t believe you’re a vet, by the way. You couldn’t stand the sight of a bloody
     skinned knee when we were kids.”
    “Yet another thing I got over,” she said and snapped her fingers at him. “The cat,
     J.D.?”
    “How should I know what’s wrong with the stupid thing? It’s been under the couch ever
     since it walked in off the street a few days ago. The only time it came out was when
     it got cold in here. I found it sleeping in the ashes of the fireplace, so I stoked
     up the fire, cranked the heat up to eighty, and I’ve been sweating my ass off for
     two days while it hides out.”
    Half an hour and two cans of tuna later, she had the cat in her lap, willing to trust
     her for the moment. She ran her hands over its body and looked up with a grin.
    “Congratulations, J.D. You’re gonna be a daddy.”
    Over his protests that he “couldn’t have a cat let alone kittens,” she explained that
     she’d send someone over with more food and some special vitamins the following morning.
     Meanwhile, she changed back into her suit and gathered up her things, having decided
     that it was definitely time for her to get going. She left him with some last-minute
     instructions.
    “Keep her warm. That was a good idea. Give her all the tuna she wants tonight and
     refill the dish of water I put out if she finishes it. And J.D.?” She stopped at the
     door and turned back to look at him. He was standing in the middle of the room, leaning
     on his crutches, backlit again by the glow of the fire. Even now, with muscles that
     weren’t there when he was a teenager and longer, straighter hair that was still escaping
     from the blunt ponytail, there was no mistaking the graceful and supremely controlled
     kid she’d watched and wanted for years.
    “Yes, Dr. Evil?”
    “Better find something to call her instead of ‘stupid cat.’ She’s yours now.”
    She stepped outside into the frigid March air and headed toward where her Jeep was
     parked at the curb, leaving him to muscle the door shut behind her. Plastic bags and
     old newsprint pages blew past her ankles in the winter wind.
    “Hey Sarah.”
    He was standing in the doorway, one hand outstretched as if to hand her something
     she’d left behind. She opened the car door and slung her bag into the backseat before
     jogging back up to the building.
    “What, did I forget some—”
    He grabbed the collar of her coat and yanked her up against him, his other arm a tight
     band across her lower back, pressing her hips into his. She thought she’d go cross-eyed
     as he bent down toward her, his mouth a hairsbreadth from hers. She could smell the
     cabernet on his breath and felt the warmth of it feather over her.
    “I didn’t want you to go off thinking you’d had my best effort at kissing all those
     years ago.”
    Then he lowered his mouth to hers and she closed her eyes as J.D. kissed her for the
     second time since she was twelve years old.

Chapter Two
    Two weeks later, she was still feeling that kiss. She’d nearly rear-ended a canary-yellow
     VW Bug at a stop sign because she was daydreaming about the taste of his mouth.
    It wasn’t fair.
    She’d been waiting her whole life for someone to match the slow roll and tumble in
     her stomach that she’d felt when she was twelve and her brother’s best friend kissed
     her on the lips.
    It was so unfair that the first and only person to make her feel that way again was
     that very same boy, now all grown up and far more dangerous than when he was fifteen.
    Not to mention the whole “still married” thing.
    It wasn’t like she hadn’t run into some good kissers in the years bookended by J.D.
     Damico. He wasn’t the first man to cup his hand against her cheek and slide his palm
     around to the nape of her neck, fingers tangling in her hair