Convincing Alex by Nora Roberts Read Free Book Online Page A

that frustration…” Considering, she tapped her pencil against the pad. “See, I think of people as pressure cookers.”
    â€œSure you do.”
    â€œNo, really.” That quick smile, the flash of the single dimple. “Whatever’s inside, good or bad, has to have some means of release, or the lids blows.” She shifted again, and her fingers nearly brushed his neck. She talked with them, he’d noted. With her hands, her eyes, her whole body. The woman simply didn’t know how to be still. “What do you use to keep the lid on, Alexi?”
    â€œI make sure I kick a couple of small dogs every morning.”
    She smiled with entirely too much understanding. “Too personal? Okay, we’ll come back to it later.”
    â€œIt’s not personal.” Damn it, she made him uncomfortable. As if he had an itch in the small of his back that he couldn’t quite scratch. “I use the gym. Beat the crap out of a punching bag a few days a week. Lift too many weights. Sweat it out.”
    â€œThat’s great. Perfect.” Grinning now, she cupped a hand over his biceps and squeezed. “Not too shabby. I guess it works.” She flexed her own arm, inviting him to test the muscle. It was the gesture of a small boy on a playground, but Alex couldn’t quite think of her that way. “I work out myself,” she told him. “I’m addicted to it. But I can’t seem to develop any upper-body strength.”
    He watched her eyes as he curled a hand over her arm and found a tough little muscle. “Your upper body looks fine.”
    â€œA compliment.” Surprised that a reaction had leapt straight into her gut at the casual touch, she started to move her arm. He held on. It took some work to keep her smile from faltering. “What? You want to arm-wrestle, Detective?”
    Her skin was like rose petals—smooth, fragrant. Experimenting, he skimmed his hand down to the curve of her elbow. She was smiling, he noted, and her eyes were lit with humor, but her pulse was racing. “A few years back I arm-wrestled my brother for his wife. I lost.”
    The idea was just absurd enough to catch her imagination. “Really? Is that how the Stanislaskis win their women?”
    â€œWhatever works.” Because he was tempted to explore more of that silky, exposed skin, he rose. He reminded himself that the uncomplicated Bonnie was more his style than the overinquisitive, oddly packaged Bess McNee. “I have to go.”
    Whatever had been humming between them was fading now. As Bess walked him to the door, she debated with herself whether shewanted to let those echoes fade or pump up the volume until she recognized the tune. “Stanislaski. Is that Polish, Russian, what?”
    â€œWe’re Ukrainian.”
    â€œUkrainian?” Intrigued, she watched him pull his jacket on. “From the southwest of the European Soviet Union, with the Carpathian Mountains in the west.”
    â€œYeah.” And through those mountains his family had escaped when he was no more than a baby. He felt a tug, a small one, as he often did when he thought of the country of his blood. “You’ve been there?”
    â€œOnly in spirit.” Smiling, she straightened his jacket for him. “I minored in geography in college. I like reading about exotic places.” She kept her hands on the front of his jacket, enjoying the feel of leather, the scent of it, and of him. Their bodies were close, more casual than intimate, but close. Looking into his eyes, those dark, uncannily focused eyes, she discovered she wanted to hear that tune again after all.
    â€œAre you going to talk to me again?” she asked him.
    His fingers itched to roam along that tantalizingly bare skin on her back. For reasons he couldn’t have named, he kept his hands at his sides. “You know where to find me. If I’ve got the time and the answers, we’ll