LITMIR.BIZ

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just couldn’t let Laurel leave without understanding the importance of what he was saying. Letting her cruise the Internet alone talking to people would be like sending a bunny out to try and cross an eight-lane highway.

      He kind of liked bunnies.

      Especially this bunny. Laurel smiled at him. He sighed. He did not want to get involved with her and whatever she was looking for—God knows, he had enough to worry about keeping Sean out of trouble. He couldn’t be looking after this woman, too, but he had to extract some kind of promise from her that she’d be smart. He really didn’t want to read about her in a future police report.

      “Look, there’s got to be a better way to meet people. At work, someone your friends know, church or something. There are plenty of nice guys out there looking for a relationship. Just be smart, safe, use protection.” And Jesus Christ, he sounded like a squeamish father handing his car keys off to his teenager.

      Laurel’s jaw had locked, her cheeks pink. It was either from the heat since she had bundled up in her coat, or she was irritated with him.

      “I don’t want a relationship. I just want to have sex.”

      Oh, man, that wasn’t what he’d wanted her to say. “Laurel!” he blurted out, shocked in a way he hadn’t imagined was still possible.

      “What? It’s true.” She looked down at the table, the lapels of her coat swallowing the sides of her face. “My whole life I’ve done what other people have wanted me to do. I’ve been good, polite, considerate, and most of the time I don’t mind that. I mean, I don’t want to be not nice or good or considerate, but for once I want to be selfish. Wild.”

      Laurel didn’t look wild. She looked cute and fuzzy in her fleece, like the woman you’d take home to your mother, set up on a pedestal and admire from afar as an icon of female perfection. She didn’t look like a woman you should get down and dirty with.

      Which didn’t explain his hard-on.

      “Well,” he hedged. “How old are you? Twenty?”

      Laurel watched his lips intently as he spoke. He thought it was pretty amazing that she knew what he was saying just from reading his lips. But it also meant a lot of times her eyes were on his mouth, not meeting his gaze. Which gave him the sneaky ability to watch her more closely than he could anyone else, without her thinking he was staring.

      He liked looking at her, all pretty and pink, a woman very different from any he’d ever dated. Russ dated bold and brassy women because they were good at accepting what he had to offer at face value. They understood what it meant, having a little fun, and leaving it at that. He was committed to Sean first, his job second, and if a woman didn’t get that from day one, he wasn’t going to touch her with a ten-foot pole, no matter how hot her body was or how interesting she seemed.

      At his question, her nose wrinkled in indignation. “I’m twenty-five! Almost twenty-six. And except for one year at college, I’ve never lived anywhere but with my parents.” Laurel’s voice was rising, and in his peripheral vision Russ could see the coffee clerk and a plain brunette glance their way. “I don’t date, I don’t do anything even remotely exciting, I don’t have sex.”

      Whoa, hello, just grab a megaphone and announce that. “Uh, Laurel…your voice is getting kind of loud.”

      “What? Oh, sorry.” She peered around him and blushed.

      “But just because you haven’t dated in a while isn’t a good reason to latch onto the first guy you meet. Casual sex has its merits.” Hell, he lived by casual sex and its merits. “But you still have to be careful.”

      “I know that. I may be trusting, but I’m not stupid.”

      “I never said you were stupid…” And somehow he had turned this into an interrogation and had alienated her. Smooth move, Evans.

      To prove his point, she stood up and reached for her keys. “Thank you for your concern. I’m leaving.”

      “Wait a second, Laurel.” They hadn’t resolved anything. She hadn’t agreed to stay locked up in her house yet where no men could touch or hurt her. “If Trevor Dean e-mails you again, you need to call me.”

      “What’s his name again? I can’t figure out what you’re saying.”

      Russ pulled a pen out of his jacket pocket and wrote Trevor Dean on a napkin. Under that he scrawled his own name and both his work and home phone numbers. He handed it to her. “Don’t answer him and don’t let him know you’re onto him. Just call me first thing, okay?”

      “Fine.” She sighed a little, obviously not thrilled with the situation, but she was polite nonetheless. “Have a good night, Russ.”

      “Wait.” He grabbed her arm again as he stood up. She was shorter than he’d thought, stopping below his nose, and he let go of her slight wrist. “I’m sorry I keep grabbing you. I don’t know how else to get your attention.”

      “You can touch my arm, stomp on the floor, wave. I just don’t like it when people stick their hand right in my face.” Laurel didn’t sound angry, she actually looked pleased that he’d bothered to ask.

      Russ felt that something again, that indefinable feeling swirling around inside him that he couldn’t let this woman walk out of here alone. He wanted to think it was the cop in him, drawn to her vulnerability, wanting to protect her from harm. But something told him it was more than that, complex. Something that he was going to ignore until it went away, like a toothache.

      “Okay. Listen…my partner, Jerry, is outside and we have a car across the street. I would really feel better if you let me follow you home, make sure you get there alright. I don’t know why Dean didn’t show up, but it bothers me.”

      Laurel chewed her lip, readjusted her purse. “Fine, if you insist. But I only live five minutes from here.”

      “A lot can happen in five minutes.”

      Yes, she could have an orgasm just from looking at him for five minutes. But she kept her face neutral.

      “Promise me, Laurel—I’m serious here—that you won’t make plans to meet any more strange guys. That you won’t run off and have sex with someone you don’t know.”

      His concern was sweet. It also infuriated her, the straw that broke her good-girl back. “I could have sex with you.”

      Well, that felt good to say. Liberating. And she hadn’t even needed alcohol to work up the nerve to say it.

      Russ looked like he’d been liberated of his ability to speak.

      Laurel just stared at him, trying to project sassy slut, which admittedly was a stretch. Of about a hundred miles.

      “What do you mean?” he finally asked, fiddling with the bill of his baseball hat again.

      “I mean, we could have sex. You and me.”

      Russ looked stricken, and Laurel felt the moment waning. The rush of boldness evaporating, nerve skittering off to hide.

      What was she thinking? He wouldn’t want to have sex with her when he probably had exotic dancers on speed dial. And she shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that anyway, even if she had been half-serious.

      “I’m kidding,” she lied, rolling her eyes for effect. “My point is, unless you want to sleep with me, it’s really none of your business what I do or with who.”

      “I’m concerned! I don’t want to see you get hurt, or wind up dead, goddamnit.”

      That had all the makings of a parental lecture. While it was really nice of Russ to care, it wasn’t what she was looking for. Laurel’s own father had died, and she wasn’t looking to replace him. If she did, it certainly wouldn’t be with a man she wanted to strip naked and lick.

      “Thank you for the warning. But even though it may surprise you, I can take care of myself. I can even

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