Now You See Her Linda Howard(11)

"Edward, turn on the heat, please. Sweeney is cold."

"Of course, sir."

"I'm not really cold," Sweeney denied, without knowing why. Her constant coldness was somehow embarrassing, a weakness she didn't want to acknowledge. "Listening to the rain gave me goose bumps."

"You were shivering. Do you want to put my coat around you?"

There it was again, shaking her insides as if the San Andreas Fault ran right through her. He had been watching her closely enough to notice a small shiver. She didn't know which was more disturbing, that realization or the flood of warmth she felt at the thought of being draped in his coat, his body heat being transferred to her, his scent surrounding her. The warmth was welcome, but the reason behind it wasn't. At least her fascination with the commercial had ended when the ad was over. This strange awareness would end, surely, as soon as she got out of the car and away from Richard, but until then she had to guard against doing something stupid, like throwing herself into his arms. Wouldn't that raise Edward's eyebrows! It would probably raise her own, because if anything was out of character for her, throwing herself at a man ranked at the top of the list.

"Sweeney?" Richard prompted, waving his hand in front of her again. He was smiling again, too. She wished he would stop doing both. One was annoying, and the other was downright disturbing.

"What?"

"Do you want my coat?" He was already shrugging out of it. "Oh-no, thank you. I'm sorry, my thoughts wandered."

"I noticed." He smiled again, his dark eyes slightly heavylidded. Despite her refusal, he draped the coat over her.

She almost moaned in delight. it was just as she had imagined, so toasty warm she thought she might melt. She snuggled into the coat, pulling the fabric high around her face and unconsciously inhaling, drawing his scent into her lungs like a smoker taking the morning's first drag.

"I had to do something to cover up that sweater," he said by way of explanation, his tone amused.

"It's cursed. I'm going to burn it when I get home."



"Don't bother. it's what's underneath that's doing the damage."

Oh, God. He felt it, too.

The realization was like a punch in the stomach. She froze, unable to look at him, afraid of what she would see in his eyes. This wasn't just an aberration inspired by the red sweater. This wasn't a strange moon cycle. She couldn't say how she knew; it certainly couldn't be experience telling her, because she had made it a point through the years to avoid letting messy relationships clutter her life. Richard was the third man in an hour to look at her with appreciation-well, the fourth, if she counted the senator, but his look had been more insulting than appreciative-but in Richard's case, it was something more. Not even Kai's knee-jerk attempt at casual seduction had been like this, but then Kai was a lightweight, and Richard… Richard was not.

Still, she would have been tempted, if he hadn't been embroiled in a divorce; a divorce, moreover, from a woman very much involved in Sweeney's career. No, be honest. She was tempted, beyond a doubt, and against every grain of common sense in her body. But being tempted didn't mean she had to act on that temptation; a woman who could see ghosts and make traffic lights change when she approached sure didn't need a man in her life to complicate things. She could handle the ghosts; she couldn't handle a man, especially not Richard. Just why she thought he was more trouble than any other man was an issue she didn't want to explore.

Still, the urge to look at him, watch him, study him, was almost overpowering. To keep her gaze away from those intense, knowing dark eyes, she looked down, and found herself staring at his hands. They were rather elegant hands, she thought in surprise, in a rough way. She had always thought of him as an expensively dressed dockworker, but she had never before noticed his hands, and now she wondered why. Their shape was beautiful, with the beauty of strength, like Michelangelo's David, longfingered and sinewy. She saw the roughness of calluses, a few scars, manicured nails. Senator McMillan had been a fool to pit his strength against this man's.

She chuckled at the memory. "I'll bet the senator won't try to squeeze your hand again," she said with relish.

Bold dark eyebrows slanted upward. "You saw that juvenile stunt?"

"Um. It was fun. His knuckles turned white, then yours did, and he broke out in a sweat. I almost cheered."

He laughed. "You wear your civilization very lightly, don't you? I never noticed before."

"I wasn't the one in the pissing contest," she pointed out, a little irritated that he obviously thought she was a savage. She considered herself a very civilized person. She'd never squeezed anyone's hand, because she was afraid of hurting her own hands. Maybe that wasn't the same as not wanting to hurt someone else, but the outcome was the same, so surely she got points for that.

"No, you weren't." He was smiling again, very faintly. Glancing up, he saw that they were almost at her apartment building. "The trip didn't take very long," he noted, and didn't sound pleased.



She didn't tell him why all the traffic lights had turned green or traffic mysteriously detoured out of their way.

"Will you have dinner with me tonight?" He turned back to her, and somehow he was closer than he had been before, his shoulder touching hers, his left leg against her right one. She felt his body heat like a lodestone all down her right side, triggering an insane impulse to get closer and see just how warm he could get her. Plenty warm, she bet. On fire. Melting.