Dangerous by Diana Palmer Read Free Book Online Page A

said slowly.
    His dark eyebrows lifted. “I haven’t said that.”
    “You’re thinking it.”
    His broad chest rose and fell. “Yes. We found a small piece of paper clenched in the man’s fist. It took some work, but Alice Jones’s forensic lab was able to make out the writing. It was my cell phone number. The man was coming here to talk to me. He knew something about my daughter’s death. I’m sure of it.”
    His daughter’s death. He didn’t say, his wife and daughter. She wondered why.
    His big hands wrapped around the hot white mug. His eyes had an emptiness that Winnie recognized. She’d seen it in military veterans. They called it the thousand-yard stare. It was the look of men who’d seen violence, who dealt in it. They were never the same again.
    “What did she look like?” Winnie asked gently.
    He blinked. It wasn’t a question he’d anticipated. He smiled faintly. “Like Jon, actually, and my father,” he said, laughing. “She had jet-black hair, long, down to her waist in back, and eyes like liquid ebony. She was intelligent and sweet natured. She never met a stranger…” He stopped, looked down into the coffee cup, and forced it up to his lips to melt away the hard lump in his throat. Melly, laughing, holding her arms out to him. “I love you, Daddy! Always remember!” That picture of her, laughing, was overlaid by one of her, lifeless, a nightmare figure covered in blood…
    “Dear God!” he bit off, and his head bent.
    Winnie was wary of most men. She was shy and introverted, and never forward. But she got up out of her chair, pulled him toward her and drew his head to her breasts. “Honest emotion should never embarrass anyone,” she whispered against his hair. “It’s much worse to pretend that we don’t care than to admit we do.”
    She felt his big body shudder. She expected him to jerk away, to push her away, to refuse comfort. He was such a steely, capable man, full of fire and spirit and courage. But he didn’t resist her. Not for a minute, anyway. His arms circled her waist and almost crushed her as he gave in, momentarily, to the need for comfort. It was something he’d never done. He’d even pushed Cammy away, years ago, when she offered it to him.
    She laid her cheek against his thick, soft black hair and just stood there, holding him. But then he did pull away, abruptly, and stood up, turning away from her.
    “More coffee?” he asked in a harsh tone.
    She forced a smile. “Yes, please.” She moved to the table and picked up her own cup, deliberately giving him time to get back the control he’d briefly lost. “It’s gone cold.”
    “Liar,” he murmured when she joined him at the coffeepot and he took the cup from her. “You’d blister your lip if you sipped it.”
    She looked up at him with a grin. “I was being politically agreeable.”
    “You were lying.” He put the cup on the counter and gathered her up whole against him. “What a sweetheart you are,” he ground out as his mouth suddenly ground down into hers.
    The force of the kiss shocked her. He didn’t lead up to it. It was instant, feverish passion, so intense that the insistence of his mouth shocked her lips apart, giving him access to the heated sweetness within. She wasn’t a woman who incited passion. In fact, what she’d experienced of it had turned her cold. She didn’t like the arrogance, the pushiness, of most men she’d dated. But Kilraven was as honest in passion as he was otherwise. He enjoyed kissing her, and he didn’t pretend that he didn’t. His arms forced her into the hard curve of his body and he chuckled when he felt her melt against him, helpless and submissive, as he ground his mouth into hers.
    Her arms went under his and around him. The utility belt was uncomfortable. She felt the butt of his automatic at her ribs. His arms were bruising. But she didn’t care. She held on for all she was worth and shivered with what must have been desire. She’d never felt it.