LITMIR.BIZ

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two out of the three, his lousy mood was only amplified as he started off in the direction of the highway.

      It was quiet in the neighborhood. Nothing unusual for a midweek autumn day. But, remembering Don’s words, he paid more attention than he normally would. That’s why he slowed and gave a piercing once-over of the Rodriguez place.

      “Liar,” he muttered to himself.

      The piercing once-over was all about the damn woman he wanted to be all over—Angelica Rodriguez.

      He sighed. She was so exactly not the type for him. She’d spent the summer at the house that now looked empty of life. Her mother was an infamous supermodel, now divorced from Angelica’s father, a hedge-fund manager with a Midas touch. Brett didn’t think the young woman did anything but dream up ways to torture him. When he arrived to work on the grounds, she’d come outside wearing radiant smiles and little sundresses.

      She was evil like that.

      Not to mention how she tempted him in other ways. Freshly made lemonade. Oatmeal and raisin cookies—his favorite. He didn’t know how she’d discovered that fact, but he wouldn’t put it past her to use Daddy’s money to purchase a background check of him.

      All summer he’d been completely, uncomfortably, maddeningly aware she’d had an itch to go slumming. With him.

      But looking at the huge villa-style house on the lake, dark except for a couple of dim security lights mounted on the outside, he guessed she’d gone home...or at least to some other Rodriguez-owned domicile. In Bel-Air, maybe. Malibu. For all he knew, Paris.

      Thank God. He’d been losing his will to hold out against her. Would any man blame him? She had liquid brown eyes, a wealth of silky, espresso-dark hair, a body...

       Don’t think about her body.

      She’d once told him she’d modeled for a time in childhood to early teens, until she’d gotten too “fat.” Translation: long legs, beautiful features.

      And breasts.

      Bountiful, distracting, unforgettable breasts.

      Brett closed his eyes, and he could still see them, damn it. Beneath a tank top. Under a loose-fitting shift. Once he’d seen her in a bikini.

      That day, he’d been afraid he’d lose his eyesight. Because not only had he garnered a glance at her front, but she’d turned around and he’d spied her luscious butt in bathing-suit bottoms.

      Yeah, that kind of “fat.”

      It should be against the law.

      Blowing out a breath, he opened his eyes to take a final look at the place before moving on. He could see it clearly enough through the iron bars of the wide double gate. Now that she was gone, he was going to forget all about her.

      A tiny light moved behind a window.

      Brett rubbed his eyes with his thumb and forefinger. Was he seeing things? Blinking hard, he surveyed the place once more. The light was gone—

      No, there it winked on again.

      A prickly sensation skittered down his spine.

      Putting his truck in Reverse, he slowly backed up the street and parked twenty-five yards away. There was more iron fencing at the sides of the property and it didn’t prevent him from seeing that light moving again, a firefly behind the glass and the briefest outline of a familiar figure. The hair on the back of his neck rose. All his nerve endings were awake now, and the weariness from the day’s endeavors were replaced with something else—curiosity, anticipation, maybe some dangerous combination of the two.

      Trying to be as quiet as possible, he climbed out of the truck.

      He didn’t bother pulling out his cell phone. This wasn’t a police matter. It was something else—the someone skulking about the inside of that mammoth house was none other than its mistress.

      Don’t think of the word mistress.

      His instincts were certain it was her because, since first seeing her, his body reacted in just this way when she was anywhere in his proximity. His skin would twitch, his scalp would tingle and he’d turn around and Angelica Rodriguez would be there in one of her witchy outfits—jeans, a pair of hiking shorts, a voluminous beach cover-up, it didn’t matter what she wore—and he’d have to steel his spine to be as hard as that other part of him was becoming.

       No, I don’t want lemonade. Or a cookie. Or to spend endless nights in bed with you.

      “Liar,” he muttered again. He’d wanted it all.

      But she was doing something shady, he could feel that, too, and so he made his way around the side of the house; his aim, that moving light. There was no fencing between the house and its lake access and soon he was prowling toward that window.

      Then he was right outside it. In the minuscule glow of the penlight she had in her hand, he could make out parts of her as she moved about the den. The dark pools of her eyes. The elegant line of her small nose. The dip above her bowed upper lip. Without a hesitation, he rapped on the glass.

      Jumping, she shrieked. He could see the sharp sound of surprise on her startled face, which jerked his way, feel the vibration of it in his fingers, which were pressed flat on the pane.

      She trained the light on him. He smiled at her. Toothily, he supposed, because she came toward the window at a wary pace until there was only a couple of inches between them.

      And yet they were still worlds apart.

      “Hey, baby,” he said. “Why don’t you let me in?”

      * * *

      ANGELICA RODRIGUEZ STARED through the glass into the early evening darkness and cursed fate.

      She’d been doing a lot of that lately, as the very foundation of her life had cracked and then fallen away in the past few days. Some cheery—and at times annoying—inner voice kept reminding her to see this situation as an opportunity, but it sure didn’t feel that way when the man who had disliked her at first sight was now staring her down.

      The man who, from first sight, she’d liked entirely too much.

      “Let me in,” he said again.

      Um, no. It didn’t seem wise to be too close to him when all her defenses were in this rocky state. So she smiled and waved both hands in a gesture that was supposed to communicate that she didn’t need him around or that she couldn’t exactly hear him or perhaps she was just too busy for a chat...anything that would get him moving along so she could sneak out of the house where she wasn’t supposed to be in the first place.

      She turned away from the window to scoop up the papers she’d left on the desk and he rapped again.

      Like a demand.

      Holding on to her cool, she glanced over her shoulder. There he was, thirtyish, muscled and a bit threatening-looking, even though in the darkness she could only see his bulk and not those very fascinating scars on his face. One slashed through his brow to his hairline. Another crossed the bridge of his nose.

      Angelica had never found the courage to ask him about them.

      He jerked his thumb in the direction of the back door that led to the lake-view terrace. “Open up.”

      The sounds of the words were not hampered by the glass, but she sure as heck wasn’t going to obey! Past June she would have opened up to him. She’d wanted to, and she’d been rebuffed enough times that it embarrassed her to count them. It had been amazing to her, how drawn she’d been to him then. For a woman who had a lousy history with the opposite sex—lousy enough that she was relatively inexperienced when it came to them—she was surprised to find Brett Walker brought out a different side of her.

      The idea of kissing him had consumed her instead of making her cringe. The sensation of his arms around her was something she’d wanted, not wanted to run

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