Sultry Sunset Read Online Free PDF

to make sides, but I need to know what you want.”
    “Kebabs,” I answered, turning to actually look at him and not simply have a conversation as we walked.
    “Why am I being scrutinized?”
    “I just realized something.”
    “Which is?”
    “Since I met you, we’ve only had two dinners apart.”
    Mike stopped moving. “Is that right?”
    “Yeah. Once when your parents came to visit and once when I went out on that date with Coz,” I recounted.
    “You can’t count that as a date,” he instructed me quickly. “You were home like a half an hour later.”
    True. I had returned and was making myself a roast beef sandwich when Mike came through the back door and into my kitchen. He helped himself to a beer and then took a seat on one of my barstools and waited for me to explain.
    “Coz and Kelly finally got their shit together.”
    He smiled as he sipped the Corona in his hand. “That’s good.”
    “So it won’t be me and the officer.”
    Mike snorted out a laugh. “It was never going to be.”
    And he was right; I had just needed the diversion and had hoped to get laid. “Hey, did you see there’s a new lawyer in town?”
    He waggled his eyebrows before he asked me to make him a sandwich too.
    “Which?”
    I came back to the present and gave him all my attention. “What?”
    “I said, you should make either basmati rice or we can cook potatoes on the grill. Which one do you want?”
    “Potatoes,” I told him.
    He pointed. “Go to Produce and pick them up. I’ll be home around five thirty; I have to stop by and see Mia Renaldi about my wife’s life insurance policy.”
    I instantly took hold of his shoulder. “Is everything okay?”
    “Oh yeah, fine,” he said softly, his copper-colored gaze meeting mine. “My wife had taken out a policy that I didn’t know about because she used a different lawyer than our regular one. Her folks want the money, but I want to give it in Janey’s name to the hospital where they did everything they could to save her.”
    “I don’t understand. Aren’t you the beneficiary?”
    He nodded. “I am unless I can be proven unfit, and they think that traveling around for two years after Janey died shows that I’m a nut job.”
    “Are you serious?” I asked hotly, suddenly angry. “How dare they question your grief for their daughter? That’s sick!”
    Mike shrugged.
    “No, really! How long did they grieve?” I yelled.
    Taking hold of my bicep, he tugged me close and put his hand on the side of my neck. “You never get upset.”
    He was right. I was normally very steady, but that was more a product of not caring about a lot of things than of being meditative. He was the difference here, and about Mike Rojas, I cared a great deal. He had become very important to me, very quickly. Even though we’d known each other only a year, it felt as though it had been a lifetime. I would find myself talking to him about things I was sure he knew about, only to have him remark that whatever it was had happened two years ago or ten or even longer. I recounted talking to other people and I’d be certain we’d both heard the same conversation. Mike would smile, shake his head, and prod me to tell him the story.
    “They—shouldn’t question your love,” I said, suddenly breathless.
    His gaze was warm as he looked at me before he pulled me into a hug. I inhaled deeply because he always smelled so good. There was mint in the soap he used, and somehow the mix on him, his skin specifically, clean, male, always caused the same reaction—I wanted to breathe him in.
    As usual, the second I felt the now-familiar yearning to keep him, I squashed down the feeling as fast as I could. Not only was he my friend, but he was my very straight friend, and that half second when my heart stopped because he was holding me was time I spent first scolding myself and then doing the gentle reminding of the gaping hole he’d leave behind in my life if I did anything to push him away. I’d