She shrugged. “I like to try different recipes.”
“The next time you’re at it, invite me over. I’ll try most anything at least once.”
Lexie gave him a long look before laughing at what should have been, but somehow was not, an innocent remark. “That’s something to think about, isn’t it?”
“Mrs. Morgan told me you have no one special in your life.”
“She told me the same about you.”
“Do you think she’s trying to set us up?” he asked.
“Probably,” she said with a nod and smiled as he pulled the cork out of the bottle. “Once you’re here for awhile, you’ll come to know there’s a whole group of seniors who don’t have anything better to do than garden, knit blankets and socks for the VA hospital and butt into other people’s lives. They’ve made it their mission to see me married. Most of them are worse than my mother. There’s no telling what they might have in store for you.”
Jim’s low, wicked chuckle sent chills down her spine. “I’m not afraid of them. Are you looking to get married?”
“Someday, I guess,” she returned with a casual shrug. “I’ve a got a few things to do first.”
“Like what?”
“For one thing, I’d like to live in Italy for a bit.”
“Would you? Can you speak Italian?”
She shrugged. “I understand it more than speak it.”
He smiled. “You want to go out to dinner Friday?”
“Yes,” she answered as she watched him pour the wine. “If we leave and return separately.”
He laughed as he handed her a glass and sipped from his own. “So, you’re afraid of them?”
She shrugged and looked into dark brown eyes. “Well, they can’t actually make me marry you, can they? So I suppose I’m only a little afraid.”
He smiled. “Are you? Why?”
She sighed in despair. “You might as well know it would be a mistake to get involved with me. They’ll never give you a minute’s peace.”
“I’ll take my chances. Instead of going out to dinner why not come over here, Friday. I broil a mean steak.”
She shook her head. “Oh my God, you don’t want to know the gossip that would cause.” By the time I leave here, they’ll have a list of catering halls and menus prepared.”
“For what?”
“Our wedding, of course.”
He chuckled a low warm sound that did something to Lexie’s stomach.
She brushed aside the sensation and forced herself to remember what they were talking about. “For all I know, they’ve already made the lists.”
She and Jim sipped their wine, leaning against the kitchen counter, standing close. He smelled clean with an added trace of a woodsy scent. She liked it and found herself leaning just a little closer.
“We could call the fire department,” he suggested. “They’d all have to run outside if they thought the place was on fire. Then no one would see you walk down the hall.”
“We could do that, but you work for the DA’s office and should know it’s against the law to report a false alarm.”
“I do know,” he said with a grin. He shrugged. “Thanks for reminding me. Maybe, we’ll save the fire alarm for an emergency.”
“I hate to do it, because I really love my apartment, but I just might have to move.”
“Why?”
She nodded over her shoulder toward his door and any eavesdroppers than might lurk thereabout.
He shrugged, unconcerned, “Ignore them.”
“I’ve tried that. It doesn’t work. Mr. Burton called the cops last week because he saw me with a bank bag and that bank,” she shrugged, “different branch, got robbed the week before. Of course, I’ve no proof that he did it, but I’m almost positive it was him. Then there’s Mrs. Dietz who thinks I’m a call girl because she saw me in a short skirt and high heels once.”
He raised and lowered his brows in quick succession. “That sounds interesting.”
Lexie smiled. “And Mrs. Morgan and her knitting circle are immersed in nothing less than a crusade to see me walk down the aisle. You don’t know how many nephews and grandsons I’ve met. They don’t think anything of dragging one along as they ring my bell, pretending they need my recipe for shrimp scampi again. Finally, I put it on my Facebook page.” She gave a weary sigh. “I love them all, but sometimes, I don’t think I can take any more.”
“You know how to make shrimp scampi?”
“Give me your email, and I’ll send you the recipe.”
“What happened with the cops?”
She hesitated for a moment, his question forcing her to rethink what she’d said. “Oh, I had to show them the bag. It held change for the restaurant. I take it home when I have to open the next day. Then they asked if they could look around. Just to be sure, they said. So I told them go ahead.”
“And?” he asked even as he struggled to hold back his laughter.
She sighed her disgust. “Go ahead and laugh. I had cops looking into everything. One of them took his sweet time pawing through my underwear drawer. I don’t know what he expected to find there. I thought they were going to pull up the floorboards before they got a call and had to leave.”
He frowned. “Did they have a search warrant?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t think of it at the time, but I guess they didn’t.”
“You don’t have to let anyone in without a search warrant. I’ll talk to a few people. It won’t happen again.” As he spoke, he moved closer, one hand held his glass, while the fingertips of the other brushed against her cheek and jaw, finally her throat and shoulder. Lexie’s heart pounded as his fingers slid down her arm and dropped to her waist.
A shiver of electricity spread up her spine at his touch, and she took a deep trembling breath as he inched her closer to where he stood.
“Did he ask you out?”
She frowned, “What?” Then blinked as she realized his question, “Oh you mean…” The cop. A frown creased her smooth brow. “How did you know?”
“I know because I asked you out, and I haven’t even seen your underwear drawer.”
She smiled. “But you expect you might?”
His hand moved to her lower back, and he shrugged. “I might, but I think it would be a lot better to watch you wearing something from that drawer.”
“But suppose I’m not.”
“Not what?’
“Wearing anything but these shorts.”
“Damn,” he said on a heavy breath while closing his eyes. Clearly, until she’d mentioned it, he hadn’t given that possibility a thought.
She laughed. The effect she had on him was obvious, and she loved it.
“You smell delicious,” he said, his hand at her lower back. He exerted no pressure but gently held her in place as he stepped a fraction closer.
The movement was slow, barely noticeable, but deliberate. So subtle, she might not have realized it except that their hips finally made contact. There was no way for Lexie to miss that, especially since the closer he came the better he smelled. The pleasure of his hard length against her only added to his scent.
“This feels good,” she said as he rubbed his hips against her belly.
“If you come closer, you could feel more.” As he said it, his hips again rubbed enticingly against her. She hadn’t noticed he no longer held his glass, hadn’t noticed her glass sat next to his on the counter.
“If I come closer, I’ll be behind you.”
He smiled. “Would you like to sit?”
“I think my knees would be grateful.”
A second later, he stood between her legs as she sat upon his counter. Her surprise was obvious. “I thought you meant your living room.” Though their hips had just been touching, this position seemed far more intimate. Oddly enough she found she had to concentrate on her breathing. It took a deliberate effort to get to the bottom of each breath.
“You’re adorable.”
“Thank you.”
“I like your hair, the way it curls, and your eyes.”
“Thank you, but my eyes don’t curl,” she teased, pretending to misunderstand.
He grinned. “They don’t? Are you sure? Then I must have meant I like the color of your eyes.”
“You might as well know I enjoy compliments.”
He chuckled at her wise-ass attitude. “All right,” he said with a shrug. “Dirty, sort of dishwater-gray eyes have always been my favorite, especially when one is slightly higher and a bit smaller than the other.”
She laughed. “Blue, they’re blue. The same size and perfectly even, thank you.”
“Oh they are,” he said in feigned amazement. “I’ve always wanted a woman with dark hair and perfectly even blue eyes.”
“You’re lucky I’m here then.”
In this position, their mouths were almost even. He moved closer. As he did, his body pushed her legs wider apart and her breathing grew even more choppy and shallow, especially since she wore shorts and his hands were on her naked thighs.
She felt bombarded with sensation as he leaned toward her, and she absorbed the deliciously heated scent of him. She closed her eyes as his warm, wine-tinged breath brushed against her jaw, her cheek, her mouth.
Just before their lips touched, her heart seemed to stumble then somehow remembered to beat again. Her pulse pounded wildly in her brain, her ears and her throat. Lord, but this man was gorgeous. Especially when his dark eyes twinkled with laughter and his smile flashed white, even teeth. She’d known that from the first, but sitting here, talking, with only inches separating them, he looked even better.
“You got that right,” he said, just before his mouth claimed hers in a delicious kiss. She couldn’t hold back a low whimper of pleasure and shivered as his lips pulled away only to return and brush lightly against hers again.
He tasted clean, laced with wine, his breath was deliciously warm. She felt as if he were somehow absorbing her entire being. Dizzy, breathless, she’d never known anything like it. As light as a summer breeze, his mouth held the promise of exquisite tenderness. Lexie fought against the need to climb all over his gorgeous body. Her heartbeat quickened, and her lips parted to his gently questing tongue. She groaned as the kiss changed, and his tongue delved deeply, hungrily into her mouth.
After pulling apart for the moment it took to fill their lungs, their mouths came together again, and Jim made a sound deep in his throat as she sucked his tongue. He growled and crushed her willing form against him.
With a ravenous swipe, he took in her flavor and scent, pulled back and gasped. “God, you taste amazing.” An instant later, his mouth was on hers again. Another quick sample caused him a low moan, as if he silently begged for more. He seemed starved for her. He sucked her bottom lip. For endless moments, he licked every inch of it. Gently, he worried it between his teeth, and they both groaned their pleasure.
They parted and came together again and yet again each time with lips opened wider, angled and hungry, eager to attain more taste, more texture and heat. Greedy for all they could reach, their hands moved over flesh, only to return and touch again. Her fingers slid up his chest and inside his opened shirt to his shoulders, stopping at the back of his neck just before they slipped up into thick, dark hair.
He brought her to the edge of the counter and shuddered. “God, I can’t tell you how much I need this.” He pulled her close to the counter’s edge and rubbed his hips against her. “I’m harder than I can ever remember.” Gathering her more firmly against him, he groaned in obvious delight at the feel of her generous curves against him. “I love this,” he murmured between heavy gasps of breath. “You’re soft and full where a woman should be. Damn, this is good.” Slowly, his hands moved from her back and waist, under her shirt, up her flat stomach and narrow midriff toward her breasts.
Just below her breasts, he stopped, dragging out the pleasure. He sensed her anticipation, felt her shiver of longing, the pounding of her heart as she waited for him to touch her. She arched her back, offering him her softness, and he knew she wanted this as much as he did.
He groaned again in delight to find her breasts unconfined. She wore no bra. Soft yet perfectly firm, they filled his hands, and he couldn’t have asked for more, unless it was to see what he touched.
“God, you feel good,” he managed on a breathless gasp as he tore his mouth from hers and sucked in a lungful of air. “Wait,” he said breathlessly, heavily, his forehead against hers. “I’ve got to go slower, or I’ll be finished before we really start.”
Lexie groaned. “I can’t believe how good this feels.” She pressed, mindlessly toward him. “I think something was in the wine.”
He chuckled at her remark, while taking in the subtle insistence for more. “You like that?” he asked as he nuzzled her neck where it met her shoulder and listened to her soft moan of pleasure.
“No.”
He laughed at what could only be an outright lie. “If you don’t like it, I must be Mother Theresa. Maybe I should kiss you somewhere else then.”
“No,” she managed on a low groan. “You can kiss me there.” She gasped, nearly drunk on pleasure, and teased, “I’m stronger than I look. I’ll get used to it.”
He chuckled. It was obvious she loved everything he was doing. “Are you dizzy?”
“Maybe a little.”
Her blouse lay open at last, and for a long moment, he obviously admired what he’d felt a moment ago. “God, these are beautiful. I love it. Did anyone ever tell you—?” He cut off his own question as he latched to one breast with a strangled growl, apparently unable to resist her any longer.
She shuddered as the heat of him engulfed not only her flesh, but her mind. It was a mistake to think this man could bring her anything but pleasure. Every touch, every whispered word, every movement brought her closer to the waiting ecstasy. As if there were a direct line from her nipple to her pussy, he awakened her need as he sucked her. It seemed to exaggerate the pleasure and dragged her closer to the edge of madness.
“I could do this for hours.”
“And I could let you.”
He pulled away, looked into her face, smiled then sucked her again. Once more, he released her nipple. “Do you think you could always come over here like this?”
She blinked in surprise. “You mean stand at your doorway with my blouse open?”
“God, I’d love it.” A moment later, his frown matched hers. “Yeah, I see what you mean. That wouldn’t be any good. Suppose you open your shirt the moment you step inside?”