She's No Angel. Leslie Kelly

had to close her eyes for a moment, letting only a few of the memories—good and bad—creep into her head. Much more and she’d go crazy, she surely would.

      Some would say she already had…on that day, the last time she’d seen Eddie. Or Leo. It had been a violent, bloody day on which she’d also lost her beautiful home to fire. Lost everything, everyone…maybe even her mind.

      “Enough now,” she whispered, still clutching the urn, immediately clearing her thoughts of her old life, of which Daddy would never have approved.

      Shifting on her rickety lawn chair, she sighed, wishing she’d thought to bring a nice, quiet magazine down with her. One of those ones with pictures of today’s movie stars, all bawds and cads, but entertaining just the same.

      She also wished she’d brought one of her fancy hats. The damp air was no good for her thinning hair. “Drat Ida Mae and her thick hair,” she muttered sourly, before clapping a hand over her mouth. She’d forgotten to whisper, so she kept her hand there, listening intently for any sign of life from above.

      Silence. Thank goodness.

      She’d wait another hour or two, then creep upstairs and see what she could see, not sure which she hoped for more: the girl to be gone, or Ida Mae to be wrong about something for once.

      Ida Mae had felt sure her plan would work, instead of Ivy’s. As usual, she had bullied Ivy into going along. So they’d thrown the girl’s clothes in her suitcases and dumped them outside next to her fancy car. The keys were in the ignition and the message couldn’t be clearer. So maybe she had returned to town, seen the car, gotten in it and driven away, having received the answer to her ridiculous suggestion that they move from this place.

      Or maybe she hadn’t—maybe Ida Mae had been wrong, and the girl was right now preparing to drag them from their homes.

      Ivy stroked the urn harder, pursing her lips, wishing her sister had just gone along with one of her ideas for a change. It certainly would have been more assured of success.

      After all, the girl couldn’t be plotting against them if they’d waited for her to get back, tied her up, thrown her in the trunk of her car, then pushed it off a cliff.

      “YOU KNOW, YOU REALLY don’t have to keep clutching that thing. It’s not like I can leap over and attack you while I’m trying to drive. Especially not on these windy roads.”

      Mike watched out of the corner of his eye as his reluctant passenger jerked to attention. Her fingers immediately clenched, then released, relaxing against the iron bar she’d been holding tightly since the moment he’d met her.

      The iron bar she’d thought he was afraid of a while ago.

      It almost made him laugh, her thinking she could frighten him. All hundred and twenty pounds of her, with her slim arms and slender shoulders. Mike really had nearly chuckled about it back there when she’d sought to assure him she wasn’t dangerous…to him, at least. As if he’d really had something to worry about.

      He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had made him laugh. And wasn’t sure he liked the idea that this quirky, ballsy one had already nicked a tiny chink in the armor he generally kept in place around himself with everyone but his family.

      “Sorry,” she mumbled. “I’m not usually this bloodthirsty.”

      Her self-deprecation and weariness reaffirmed that she was frustrated…not deadly. Not that he didn’t think a woman could be—he knew better. But he’d already ruled out a genuine danger factor with this one. If she had a gun, he might have been worried. But a tire iron? He could have that out of her hand almost as fast as he could slap a pair of cuffs on her wrist.

      “I guess I’m just still steaming and irritated.”

      “At the old ladies?”

      “They stranded me out there. Tricked me out of my own car and took off.”

      “How’d they get you out of your shoes?”

      “Long story.”

      “You don’t want to tell because you’re embarrassed that you were outwitted by a couple of old ladies, admit it,” he said, knowing, somehow, that it was true.

      She didn’t try to deny it. Instead she laughed, a thick, throaty chuckle that came from somewhere deep inside her. Add it to the list of things he already liked about the stranger. A list growing longer by the second. Which was really out of left field since on the rare occasions Mike had gone out with a woman lately, she’d always been more quiet…soft-spoken and sweet.

      Unchallenging, his brothers would say. And Mike wouldn’t argue it. He had enough strife in his day job; he didn’t want it after hours. Particularly not after his last serious relationship, which had blown up in his face. Violently. With him on the receiving end of a bullet meant for his girlfriend, courtesy of her own psycho friend who’d been coming on to him for months and had decided she wanted Mike for herself.

      Crazy shit that. Especially when his girlfriend had then dumped him, determined to be loyal to her “friend in need” and certain he’d led the woman on.

      “Okay. I admit it, I’m humiliated.”

      She leaned down to drop the iron bar to the floor, and as she did so, that thick, amazing hair of hers swung across and brushed the bare skin of his arm. He immediately tensed, every sense he owned heightened by that soft touch and the sweet fragrance of her shampoo. Not to mention the even sweeter fragrance of her body, so close to his.

      His hands curled tighter on the wheel, as if by their own will, and he suddenly had a mental image of sinking his fingers into those soft curls. He liked dark hair. Liked seeing it sprawled across his chest. Liked wrapping his hands in it while looking up at a woman riding him into sexual oblivion.

      Not that he’d been ridden lately. His last sexual encounter had happened sometime before he’d started working cold cases. Hell, if he was honest with himself, it had probably been sometime before the last election. Dealing with women was his brother Max’s strong point. Mike wasn’t the charming one; he didn’t have the time or the patience to play the games most females liked to play before they’d unzip their skirts.

      “Oh, boy,” she said, interrupting his mental pictures of what she’d look like wearing nothing but her long brown curls.

      “What?”

      The woman winced, then lifted one foot up over her knee, causing that flimsy, nothing-of-a-dress to slide dangerously high on her thighs. Mike shifted in his seat, the intensity building inside him again at the sight of all that creamy skin.

      Just a pair of legs, he reminded himself, tightening his jaw against his own reactions. That was all they were.

      But good legs. Definitely good.

      Though the summer breeze had pressed the dress against her body in delightful ways earlier, he hadn’t realized how incredible her legs were. Nor had he pictured the lacy pink edge of fabric at the top of them that said she was wearing those sexy, silky shorts women sometimes used as underwear. Tap pants? Something like that, he was pretty sure.

      Now he didn’t merely shift, he stretched and arched, the tightness of his jeans signaling her effect on him. He might be single by choice these days, but that sure didn’t mean he couldn’t appreciate a great pair of legs, or imagine what they’d feel like wrapped around his hips. Or his neck.

      And those shorts…Did she have to be wearing sexy lingerie, too? What was it with women, anyway, the slinky dresses, the silk undies. What was wrong with jeans and plain cotton underwear?

      Other than the fact that they would be much too rough against the silky perfection of her skin. Would mar it, redden it, and never do it justice.

      Hell. He was in trouble here. Big trouble. Part of him wanted to grab the hem of her dress and yank it back down to her knees. Another part wanted to ask her if she’d like to pull over to the nearest secluded spot and have wild, crazy sex.