The Marine Next Door Read Online Free PDF Page B

lady in two when she was climbing out.”
    “Oh, Lord,” came the maternal gasp from behind.
    John cringed at the boy’s enthusiastic but ill-timed observation and pushed him on through the opening. “Not the time to be talking movies, kid.”
    As Travis crawled several feet beyond the opening and retrieved his things, John turned to the redhead clinging to the back railing. Without the freckles, there’d be no color to her skin at all. He reached out a hand to her. “Your turn, Sarge.”
    She clung to the railing. “Joe says he’ll wait until I call him again.”
    “Good, but we’re not going to wait. I don’t think you want to be stuck in here with me any longer than you have to be.”
    “You know, it’s not really you,” she insisted.
    “If you say so.” But scared was scared, whatever the cause. John’s hand never wavered. “Come on, Maggie.”
    With her eyes locked onto his, her shaky fingers revealing the same distrust, she finally reached out and slid her palm into his. She took a step toward him. “It’s been a stressful day. Normally, I’m not a basket case like this. I just…really do have a thing about elevators.”
    “Fair enough.” John pulled her up beside him, then stooped down to create the same step-up with his fingers. “I’ve decided I’ve got a thing about this particular elevator myself. There’s something wrong with the wiring for parts of it to work and parts of it to stop cold like this. I think I’ll be calling KCFD to make an inspection of the place. In the meantime, I say let’s get out of here.”
    “Okay.”
    She braced one hand on John’s shoulder and he lifted her. As she crawled out onto the carpeted floor, she started to slide back and John’s hands automatically latched on to…those curves. The flare of her hips and rounded arc of her bottom were an easy grab. And a nice, firm fit.
    John swallowed hard and shook his head. He had no grounds to fault the boy for bad timing.
    “Sorry,” he apologized, giving her a second boost. His hands and eyes had already lingered longer than an impersonal firefighter’s should. But the lady cop broke the contact just about as soon as the nerve endings in the tips of his fingers sparked to life at the warmth and suppleness they detected beneath her crisp navy blue trousers.
    The view was over and gone within another second, and Sergeant Maggie rolled to safety on the floor above him. John eased a tight breath out between his lips. Something dormant inside him had unexpectantly awakened. Was it just the fact that he hadn’t touched a woman for two years? Hugs with his sister and handshakes with doctors and therapists hadn’t zinged through him and thrown him off-kilter like this. And prickly redheads had never been his type.
    He supposed he should be pleased to discover that life-threatening injuries and months of recovery hadn’t destroyed the baser urges heating his blood right now. But he was just beginning to get comfortable with being closed-off and antisocial. Just a few minutes ago, working his way up to normal civility had been a stretch. And now he was wondering if that whole sexual lightning bolt had been a fluke or if he was going to have to curb his natural instincts to maintain a “just friends” relationship with his new neighbor.
    Busy sorting through his observations and emotions, and putting them away in various mental compartments, he was startled to see the long, freckled arm poking back into the elevator. “Come on,” Sergeant Maggie ordered. “Your turn.”
    Her tone was much more authoritative and coplike coming from the free air of the seventh floor than it had been in the tight confines of the elevator. Intriguing. Maybe he ought to latch onto that chilly timbre instead of remembering how she’d filled up his hands if he wanted to keep a polite distance from her.
    He chinned himself up on the edge of the outside door track, then reached for her hand. With a surprisingly firm grip, she gave