LITMIR.BIZ

      1

      IF IT WEREN’T FOR THE RED tap pants, Eve Cantoro never would have known that she had problems.

      Of course, problems—like underwear—came in all shapes and sizes. And one thing Eve knew was underwear.

      Men, especially relationships involving men, were another thing. Take the man standing next to her.

      “You say they were here?” Detective Carter Moran pointed his index finger dangerously close to the hairless, triangular juncture of the model’s legs. He hesitated, then dropped his hand abruptly. “I mean, there?”

      Eve nodded. “Yes, there.” She looked at the stylized, gray mannequin and sighed.

      Why was it that when confronted with women’s lingerie, men inevitably fell into two categories? The first were the sniggering lechers who sounded off about “some women always wanting it,” implying they could easily supply the “it.” The second were the embarrassed types who, in contrast, seemed incapable of saying or doing anything beyond spouting beads of sweat along their upper lips and getting a petrified look in their eyes.

      Detective Moran stood there—on the verge of jumping into one or the other category. He stared at the model in the store window and rubbed his jaw. A very nice, square jaw, Eve noted. “Give me a second, will you?” he said slowly. “I’m trying to be cool here—not make some tasteless comment or drool out of the side of my mouth. Either would, I’m sure, be totally offensive to you and—at least in terms of my fragile male ego—absolutely mortifying. I’d be forced to find the nearest brick wall and bang my head against it repeatedly.”

      My God, the detective was different after all. What a surprise.

      Eve didn’t normally like surprises. They tended to mean extra work, extra time, even extra pain. The one and only time she had submitted to getting her legs waxed was in the throes of an unrequited infatuation with her car mechanic. Well, the man did know his way around her carburetor.

      But it wasn’t very often that a surprise came so neatly packaged, and rarely had a male specimen done so much to promote a positive image of law and order. At least, not in Eve’s thirty years of experience. At well over six feet, Detective Moran’s broad shoulders very nicely filled out the jacket of his charcoal-gray suit. And while fine tailoring seemed to be the order of the day, Detective Moran didn’t appear to need any added padding, thank you. If it weren’t for the high price tag—presumably beyond a cop’s salary—she would have sworn the glad rags had the definite look of Paul Stewart, traditional but definitely more stylish than Brooks Brothers. Just look at the trousers.

      Yes, look at them, Eve thought. Most conservative trousers were usually cut so generously that there was enough material to fashion a spinnaker for a forty-foot yacht. But Detective Moran’s trousers, on the other hand—or on his particular legs, to be more precise—discreetly highlighted the well-developed muscles of his thighs.

      But she was digressing. Eve crossed her arms. “Not your typical stolen property case, is it?” Eve was the owner of Sweet Nothings, the only lingerie shop in town. It was a recent addition to the high-end clothing stores, stock brokerages, independent bookstores and designer coffee shops.

      Detective Moran slipped a hand in a vent pocket of his pants. “Frankly, we don’t get many robberies in these parts. Thefts of mountain bikes are more the norm. Sometimes purses left in unlocked cars. Occasionally,

Скачать книгу