Page 26 of Nothing to No One

“I should stick to coffee.”

“This will be better, trust me.”

By its stem, he offered a strawberry to her mouth. She caught the tip gently in her teeth and sealed her lips around it. Eyes dropping to the fruit, his throat bobbed in an obvious swallow. Something so simple. So seemingly insignificant, yet it ignited her brazenness. As he eased just a fraction away, she sucked the fruit deeper, returning him to her in a hurry.

He snatched the side of her head, fast and hard, like on instinct, jerking it upward as he came nearer, so much nearer that his arousal pressed against her.

“Yesterday,” he growled, stooping lower, still pressuring her body with his. The edge of the counter dug harshly into her waist, but, man, any pain was worth it. “Yesterday, you said—”

“Hello!” A female voice chirped from an adjoining room. As Struan turned, the beauty came into sight. A tiny brunette stopped in the ingress above the half dozen broad stairs to the next… whatever was through there. “Am I interrupting?”

“Damn, Mieux Penrose, you didn’t get enough of us already?” Struan left her to meet the little woman, who stopped her descent on the second stair to accept his kiss on her cheek. “Thought you didn’t work more than one job in a row with a client.”

“Then it’s a good thing I’m not here for Roman.”

“You’re here for…”

The woman leaned aside to smile at her. “Bambi Bennett?”

Her? “What? Me?”

“Mieux works with the Brooker Agency—”

“So do I,” she said at the same time as Mieux’s—

“So does she.”

On a double take, he backed off. “Guess I’m just in the way.” He returned to his previous place, not to her, to his fruit. “Want a smoothie, U?”

“You didn’t feed me enough on the island?”

“You enjoyed it then.”

Mieux laughed and raised a tablet and folder from her side. “Did I?”

“Yeah, why’d you come back for more if you didn’t?” A pause lingered enough that Struan looked up at the woman approaching the other side of the island. “Rox Out?”

Mieux smiled. “I might’ve got a call.”

“Woman’s persuasive.”

“Especially when she follows up with a ringer.” Mieux unlocked the tablet before she and Struan made eye contact. “Priest.”

In a silent, “ah,” he went back to his smoothie prep. “Got dirt on you?”

“That’s not the way he works.”

“Oh yeah?” he asked, smirking. “Tell me more about how he works, Mieux.”

“He’s been your best friend for a long time. You don’t need a lesson from me.”

“And now you’re here. Just in time.” He opened the blender. “Have you eaten?”

The man had an obsession with feeding people.

“If you’re making the blueberry one, no, I haven’t.” Mieux looked to her. “If he pulls out the parsnips, run.”

Another laugh from Struan. “Ignore her, we just spent a month in the Pacific, she’s grouchy we had to come back.”

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