LITMIR.BIZ

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stepped out of the car into the street.

      “I’m hitting Burger King. I’ll see you in an hour.”

      “Anders!” Russ tried to grab the door, but Jerry was already accelerating, leaving him standing on the curb feeling like a dumb ass.

      When he trudged to the front door and rapped on it with his knuckles, he winced at his own stupidity. For hell’s sake, Laurel was deaf. She couldn’t hear him knocking. Which meant he was going to be standing on the doorstep for an hour until Anders came back reeking like a Whopper extra value meal.

      Running his fingers over the door knocker, Russ took in the engraving. The Wilkins, 1957. He felt like The Idiot, 2005.

      He rang the doorbell three times in quick succession, thinking maybe Laurel’s mother was home. Turning to observe the quiet neighborhood, he considered banging on the house next door and asking to borrow the phone. His cell phone was sitting on the seat in Anders’s truck, the bastard. Nothing stirred, no sign of life anywhere behind expensive drapes hanging in multipaned windows. He could feel the wind racing off the frozen lake, slapping him in the face.

      This was what he got for getting involved with a woman. Cold.

      That should tell him something. Run for his life before he let every body part but his brain rush him into trouble with Laurel. The door behind him swung open. He turned, prepared to deal with Mrs. Wilkins and explain how he meant no harm to her daughter and was going to save her from selfish bastards who only wanted one thing by taking that one thing for himself.

      Instead, he saw Laurel.

      She was wearing jeans that sat low on her hips and another body-hugging sweater, this one red. It was advertising, plain and simple. The clothes told a man that underneath there was a curvy and delicious body, which only went and proved his point. She was totally naive if she could put on that tight, teasing outfit and not know that it screamed sex to a guy.

      It sure in the hell was screaming to him. Take me, Russ.

      “Russ.” She smiled, did that little tongue thing, licking her bottom lip, baby blues peeking up from under her long lashes.

      Man, oh man, oh man, he was dead. There was no way he could let another guy touch her, take advantage of her generosity and innocence. He hadn’t wanted to get involved, had enough bullshit in his life to fertilize a field, but how could he let Laurel run off buying trouble?

      It sucked to have a conscience.

      And hormones.

      But if Laurel wanted an affair, he was just going to have to charm her into wanting it with him.

      “I tried to call you at work, but you don’t have TTY access. I called the main number at the station and asked to be put in contact with you, but all it did was give me your voice mail, I think.”

      “I’m sorry.” Jesus, what an ass he was. He’d given his phone number to a deaf woman. Clearly he hadn’t reached detective by his intelligence alone. “Why were you calling?”

      Maybe charming her naked wasn’t going to be so difficult, if she had been looking for him.

      “He e-mailed me. Dean.” Laurel reached out, her voice excited, and took his hand, pulling him towards her. “Come on, I’ll show you.”

      “By the way,” she added over her shoulder before he could recover from the bizarre yet intriguing sensation of holding hands, “cute shot of you in the police academy on the PD’s Web site.”

      Peeling his eyes off her ass, Russ stomped his feet on the beige rug just inside the door. “I want to have sex with you,” he told her back. “Touch you until you squirm with pleasure.”

      Laurel’s head shot around. “What did you say?”

      Oh, shit. He had never actually verified how much or how little Laurel could hear. He strove for nonchalance, shrugging his shoulders. “What makes you think I said anything?”

      She shook her head, looking puzzled. “I don’t know. I could feel it, sense it.”

      He relaxed a little. “Do you hear anything? Like could you hear the doorbell?”

      “I can hear airplanes taking off and thunder when I wear my hearing aid, but that’s about it. But I have a light that flashes to let me know there’s someone at the door.”

      Russ followed Laurel up a winding staircase, feeling the rich, smooth mahogany wood beneath his hand. He shamelessly gawked as he looked around the entryway, which was as big as his living room. Bigger. Hell, this hallway alone had three sofas in it, and he only had room for a love seat in his place.

      Houses like this made him nervous, and he shoved his hands in his pockets, afraid to touch anything and leave poor-person fingerprints on them. But he did crane his neck around, checking out the details. The ornate woodwork around the doorways, the crown molding, the massive leaded glass window halfway up the staircase. Added together, the furniture probably cost two years’ worth of his cop salary. Yet he had to admit it wasn’t ridiculous, overbearing, or Hollywood over-the-top. It was just simple good taste, expensive things in an expensive home.

      There were houses like this all up and down the road, all over the lakefront, and these people weren’t on the Forbes list, or considered filthy rich. They were what his mother would have called well-off. His father would have called them lucky bastards.

      And they were still a world away from him and his two-bedroom bungalow with the fixer-upper metal cabinet kitchen that he hadn’t quite gotten around to doing anything with yet.

      Laurel turned, went down a hall past a half-dozen doors. Turned again, went up more stairs. Good thing he’d eaten his Wheaties for breakfast.

      She paused before an open doorway and smiled. “My computer’s in here.”

      “That’s quite a hike,” he told her.

      “I guess we could have taken the elevator,” she said.

      Russ laughed.

      But she added, “We never use it, so I didn’t think about it.”

      “You have an elevator?” Was she serious?

      With a nod she pointed down the hall, and damned if he didn’t see a black wrought-iron gate for an elevator. “This house has some crazy stuff. It’s a Clarence Mack.”

      He guessed the name was supposed to mean something to him, but it went over his head.

      “He was a local architect who designed luxury homes for the new upper middle class in the twenties. The original owners were bankers and I guess out to prove they had arrived. They put a ton of upgrades in.”

      “Well, it does have three floors. I guess I can see the practicality of an elevator.” If you were a lazy slob.

      “Except the third floor was for servants, who wouldn’t have used the elevator. Now the third floor is for me. This is my room.”

      Russ could have sworn a hush fell over the house as he stepped over the threshold.

      Chapter 5

      Laurel had successfully lured Russ into her bedroom. Not bad, considering she hadn’t known he was going to show up on her doorstep before she had finished formulating her plan for throwing herself naked at his feet. Figuratively, of course.

      The e-mail from the con artist gave her an opportunity to bring up her quest for sex again. She’d try to be more subtle this time, but she was like a blind bat trying to fly through water. Seduction wasn’t her area of expertise.

      She wasn’t exactly sure what was, unless it was directing a customer to the bin of chocolate Goobers.

      That was going to be tough to eulogize someday.

      Laurel bent over her computer and clicked on her e-mail. Russ stood behind her, looking large and denim in her frilly lace, girly-girl room. A glance back

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