Sinful Read Online Free PDF Page A

back and watched her as covertly as he could manage, and luckily, Marielle’s boys and husband, Tom, who was one of his best friends, made sure that the conversation around the dinner table was lively, and thus he was able to keep a relatively close eye on her with no one being the wiser.
    Except, perhaps, Lita, who could feel those coal black eyes settling on her every single time, which only made her that much more nervous than she already was. Having been as cloistered as she was, she wasn’t used to going places by herself, or being in the company of unmarried men without the protective ranks of her older brothers – to say nothing of her overprotective parents – acting as a buffer and filter between them.
    “You’re very quiet there, Lita,” Tom commented, making her blush and stare down at the tender pot roast on her plate.
    But then Brandt watched her straighten her spine, lift her head and tease back, “Well, I can hardly get a word in edgewise, anyway.”
    The surprise at her response was palpable until everyone laughed. Marielle’s eldest son patted Lita on the shoulder – which had an astonished Brandt wanting to reach across the table and deck the kid for some unknown reason – saying, “That’s it! We don’t bite, but we do tease, but we don’t mean anything by it. You gotta give as good as you get around here, or we’ll trample you.”
    The kid was in love with Lita; Brandt could recognize the signs, having had a crush on his own mother’s friend years and years ago. Of course, Kent was much too young, but Brandt wasn’t, and the jealousy he felt at his nephew’s gestures had him chomping at the bit to spend more time with the fey, elusive Miss Lita Johnson.
    That didn’t happen for some time. He was too busy trying to get his life rearranged and get back into the swing of things after coming home from his last tour, his divorce, and the loss of his job due to the closure of the plant where he had been working. He had decided to enroll in the Albuquerque Police Department, and his classes – and studying – kept him busy from dawn to dusk, to say nothing of exhausted. He was in pretty good physical shape, but he knew it could be better, so not only was he going through the physical rigors of training to become a police officer, but he was also challenging himself physically on his own, knowing that it could only help his chances to get on the force.
    They finally had a three day weekend coming up, and he was determined to somehow wrangle a date with Lita. It took him two full days of near begging to get her phone number from his sister. He didn’t think she’d ever made him work so hard for any of her friends’ numbers over the years, and she had been exceedingly reluctant when she’d given him Lita’s. He’d had to endure long speeches that sounded like blatant lectures about how he should behave with her, and ended with the caveat that, if he hurt her, he would have her to deal with.
    He had scoffed at her concerns. He wasn’t out to hurt the girl, just date her. But, once he got to know Lita, he realized that Marielle’s concerns were not at all unfounded. If he hadn’t been the man he was, he could easily have taken advantage of her babe in the woods innocence.
    Their first date – which was really her first date, he was amazed to find out – was a simple one, at Marielle’s suggestion. It wasn’t at night or to a big fancy restaurant, it was, instead, to one of the bigger flea markets in the area, where they strolled through the booths – not even hand in hand because she seemed to be so blasted uncomfortable with him – and he bought her the first thing she showed any interest in, which was a beautiful old oil lamp done in soft pink glass.
    She was so effusive in her thanks that he nearly became embarrassed himself, which seemed to be the state in which she lived. Her round cheeks were perpetually rosy around him, and he knew that he would love to have the chance to