Friends and Lovers Read Online Free PDF Page B

what?” he prodded. “Your next murder victim?”
    It was the first sign of melting in the glacier he’d drawn around himself, and she met his look with a shy smile.
    “Not quite,” she assured him. “Only the vile tools I’m going to need and the grisly details.”
    He laughed softly, bending his head to light a cigarette. “Who’s going to get the ax this time?” he asked.
    She peeked up at him. “I thought I’d kill off the detective-hero.”
    “Your fans would hang you from the nearest tree,” he commented. He glanced down at her, his eyes taking in the long, waving disarray of her red gold hair in the early-morning light, the flush of her cheeks, the sparkle in her green eyes. They narrowed. “A more unlikely murderess…” he murmured.
    She smiled pertly. “I’ve always loved detective fiction,” she said with a sigh. “Solving crimes. I wanted to be a policewoman, but I was too busy covering news.”
    “Ever miss it?” he asked with genuine curiosity.
    “Reporting, you mean?” She thought back to those days. It seemed so long ago, when she was sole reporter and photographer for a small-town weekly newspaper. “I’m not sure. Sometimes I think I’d give anything to go back to it. It was so uncomplicated, compared to what I do now, so cut and dried. I didn’t have to create the news, only report it.”
    “I shouldn’t think it was so hard finding new ways to kill people,” he said with a teasing glance.
    She laughed. “You’d be surprised. Competition is fierce, you know, and I’m the new kid on the block. I’ve got to be the best I can be, or I’ll go on unemployment in no time.”
    “I liked
The Grinding Tower
,” he remarked.
    “Thank you.”
    He grinned. “The hero had some…familiar characteristics.”
    She felt herself flushing as she recalled her detective: tall, broad-shouldered, with a mustache, a taste for Scotch whiskey and a habit of forcing his equipment to go more than the last mile. Yes, she’d patterned him after John, but she hadn’t expected…
    “Want to sue me?” she asked with a shy glance.
    “I’m too flattered to sue you.” He tilted his hat lower across his eyes. They narrowed, running down the length of her body and back up again. “The heroine sounded a little like you,” he remarked.
    She met his eyes and felt her pulse leap wildly. She hadn’t realized that. “Did she?” she murmured.
    The dark, intent look on his face made her nervous. “Why did you run away from me, just before those tourists showed up? Was it what I said about being without sleep? Did you think I’d spent the night with Melody?”
    Her breath caught in her throat. How well he read her! She swallowed. “I…I just wanted to ride a little faster, that’s all.”
    “Was it?” He reached out, tucking a careless finger into the V-neck of her blouse to tug her gently toward him. But he didn’t release his hold on her. That long, maddening finger slowly traced the beginning slope of her breasts under the thin fabric. She was suddenly and shyly aware that she wasn’t wearing a bra. And judging by the look on his dark, taut face, he’d just discovered that as well.
    The effect of the light, disturbing caress was beginning to be very visible, especially to the silver eyes that dropped pointedly to the thrust of her high, small breasts against the thin cotton.
    His eyes moved back up to capture hers, to watch the nervous excitement sparkle in them. She tried to back away from that tantalizing finger, but he slid a rough hand around to her back and caught her, forcing her slender body against the long, powerful lines of his own.
    “Oh, no, you don’t, honey,” he murmured, and his hand spread out at her throat, so big that it almost covered the tops of her breasts in a contact that wasn’t really intimate but had the full effect of intimacy.
    “John, what are you doing?” she squeaked, her fingers clutching at his big arms to push him away.
    “What do you think I’m