Dying to Please by Linda Howard Read Free Book Online Page A

remember your name.”
    “Cahill.”
    “That's right. I'm sorry,” she said again, and didn't offer an excuse about being distracted that night. She had been—by him more than the night's events and all the phone calls she had been making—but she certainly wasn't going to tell him that.
    He was dressed pretty much as he had been then, minus the jacket but in boots and jeans and a T-shirt; today's choice was blue. The clingy knit of the T-shirt clung to broad shoulders, thick biceps, and the hard slabs of his pectorals. She hadn't been wrong in her assessment: the man was ripped, without in any way being muscle-bound.
    She was going to have a difficult time looking him in the eye, because her own gaze didn't want to go that far north. From the neck down, he was the definition of eye candy.
    The target, on the automatic line, had reached them. He reached out and pulled it from the clip, studied the pattern. “I've been watching you since you got here. You're pretty good.”
    “Thanks.” She began reloading. “What are you doing here? Cops usually use their own range.”
    “I'm here with a friend. Today's an off day, so I'm just bumming around.”
    Oh, dear. She didn't want to know that his day off coincided with hers. He seemed a tad friendlier today, though she had yet to see his face relax into anything close to a smile. She glanced at him in quick assessment. Seen in daylight, his face still looked rough, as if he had been hewn with a chain saw instead of the precision chisel of a sculptor. At least he was freshly shaved, but that more clearly revealed the granite lines of chin and jaw. He definitely wasn't a pretty boy. In fact, there wasn't anything the least boyish about him, pretty or otherwise.
    “Are you off every Wednesday?” Damn, she wished she hadn't asked that. She didn't need to know.
    “No, I swapped with another investigator. He had something special going on.”
    Thank you, Lord, she thought. She had never yet called a man for a date, but in his case she might give in to temptation and do it, even though he seemed to have the personality of a rock. She knew she wouldn't like it if a man dated her only for her body, so she didn't intend to let herself be guilty of the same offense.
    “You could have shot them.”
    The growled statement was accompanied by a sudden direct look, and she almost blinked in shock. His eyes were blue, and the expression in them was hard and sharp. Cop's eyes, eyes that missed nothing. He was watching her, studying her reaction. She was so bemused that it took her a minute to realize he was talking about the robbers.
    “I could have,” she agreed.
    “Why didn't you?”
    “I didn't think the situation called for lethal force.”
    “They were both armed with knives.”
    “I didn't know that, and even if I had, they hadn't threatened the Judge or me; they hadn't even gone upstairs. If the situation had developed into one where I thought our lives were in danger, I would have shot.” She paused. “By the way, thank you for not putting anything in the report about my training.”
    “It wasn't relevant. And I didn't do the report; it wasn't my case.”
    “Thank you anyway.” The reports were a matter of public record; the television reporter would have picked up in a heartbeat on the bodyguard aspect of her employment. But no questions of that type had been asked during the interview, and she and Judge Roberts certainly hadn't brought it up. Being his butler was high-profile enough without the general public knowing she was also a bodyguard. Not only would that knowledge take away her edge, but it would likely attract some of the very attention they both wanted to avoid.
    “Your speech,” he said, that hard gaze still locked on her face. “Law-enforcement background?”
    Was following his conversation always like following a jackrabbit? Still, she knew exactly what he meant. Cops spoke a special language, with certain terms and phrasing, that was similar to the