Page 32 of Hard Hitter
They walked back to the street. “The door can be fixed pretty easily,” O’Doul offered uselessly.
“I know,” she sighed.
He walked her through the nighttime silence to the front door, where she took out a set of keys with shaking hands. He was pleased to see that she had two dead bolts on her door. That would slow down an unwelcome visitor for sure. After the second lock clicked open, he followed her inside.
She flipped on an overhead light, her eyes darting around the room.
“Look okay?” he asked.
“So far, so good. I don’t think anyone was here.”
“Let’s just have a look.” He stepped around her into the tidy living room. If her ex had broken in here, he hadn’t left a trace. Aside from a paperback book face down on the coffee table, there was nothing out of place. He walkedtoward the back of the house, past an old-fashioned dining table, into a small kitchen. There was nobody there.
“Is there access from the basement into your apartment?”
“Yes and no. I’ll show you.” She led him over to a six-panel wooden door at the juncture between the dining room and the kitchen. It had an old-fashioned metal sliding-bolt lock on it. “This is the basement door. I never open it because there’s no light over the stairs.”
“Okay. And nobody came through here tonight. You’d know.”
“Right. I’d haveanotherbroken door. So it looks like he didn’t try to get inside the house. Or he didn’t have enough time.” She turned and walked toward the front of the house, still looking warily into every corner.
He followed her, catching up to where she stood eyeing the stairs to the second floor. “You hear anything up there?”
She shook her head.
He stepped around her and climbed the stairs, flipping on a light switch at the top. He scanned each of the two bedrooms and the generous en suite bathroom with the old claw-foot tub. Ari’s room was just as they’d left it two days ago—the board still in place at the window.
“Does it look okay?” she asked, coming up behind him.
“Sure, sweetheart.” He scanned the corners. “Except we missed this chunk of glass.” He set down both their travel bags for a second to fetch a rather large shard from against the baseboard. Then he tossed it into the same wastepaper basket they’d used to clean up the first time. The action of straightening up again gave his head a stab of pain, damn it. He scrubbed his forehead.
Ari’s face fell. “Are you all right?” She reached for his head as if on instinct, and a second later her massage-therapist’s fingers were smoothing his brow line.
I’m fine. The words didn’t quite make it out, though, because he was suddenly overwhelmed by how near Ari was, and by her big brown eyes looking right into his.
Her hand stilled, the palm warming his face.
The moment yawned open between them, and it suddenly seemed as if everything had already been decided. When he leaned toward Ari, she didn’t even look surprised. As he lowered his lips to brush against hers, he had the sensation that the first kiss had been planned sometime between his fall on the ice and the pouring of their drinks on the plane. And that the sweet little gasp she made now had been decided the minute she’d lifted her bag into the taxi they’d decided to share at the airport.
He pressed his lips against her softer ones, leaning in to deepen the kiss. She tasted like lime juice and sweetness. Her hands slid down from his achy head to the back of his neck, her body pressing closer. He parted her lips with the force of his kiss, and she opened for him immediately.
The moan she made when their tongues touched was better therapy than anything she’d ever done for him on a massage table.
TEN
Yoga was all about living in the moment, and focusing one’s attention on the body. Ari found herself suddenlyverymotivated by both the moment and the body.
Two bodies.
All the pent-up stress of the last few hours was like dry tinder for the sudden spark of Patrick’s kiss. She gripped the lapels of his jacket and dove right in. He was warm and solid against her. A sudden thunderclap of lust blossomed between the two of them. She ran a hand down his chest, over the buttons of his shirt, wishing she could touch more of him.
When her palm came to rest on Patrick’s tight stomach just over his belt buckle, he shivered. When he softened their kiss, she found herself holding her breath, waiting to find out what he’d do next. For a moment, they stared into each other’s eyes, their foreheads tipped together. Then he palmed the back of her head and began kissing a path down her jaw and onto her neck. When his tongue touched her collarbone, chills rose up on her chest. And there was nothing on earth she wanted more than his hands and his mouth on her body.
There was no doubt in her mind that they’d be naked and on her bed before she could sayimpulsive much?
Not all impulses were bad.
Patrick’s hands skimmed down her back, cupping her derrière. He yanked her hips against his body. Then his mouth was back on hers, kissing her so deeply that she tasted only him. He made a needy, hungry grunt from the back of his throat, and the sound caused her pulse to jump again.
