Hot and Bothered by Linda Cajio Read Free Book Online

the gap.
    Judith squeaked in fright as she realized a male leg had shifted its stance just outside the shower door. “Who’s there?”
    “Me,” the object of her drifting sensuality replied.
    “Paul!” She grabbed her towel and wrapped it around her, heedless of the soap still on her body and the water still trickling from the showerhead. “What are you doing?”
    “Standing guard.”
    His words took the wind right out of her shock. “What?”
    “Standing guard,” he repeated. “Every time a woman takes a shower, all the males under thirty hang around the shower stall. I’m surprised they’re not standing on each other’s shoulders to look in the windows. Usually the women bring someone to stop them. I thought I better play bodyguard for you, since you’re alone.”
    He was no Kevin Costner, she mused. He was better. Yet the idea of being a peep show chilled her. Rather like, she thought ruefully, the end of her diving aspirations. A cousin had teased her into diving off the Acapulco cliffs. One look at the churning water and rocks, so different from a safe, still pool, and she had chickened out, jumping instead. Her ambitions had jumped along with her. Was she in for another plunge like that with Paul?
    She forced that useless speculation away and said, “There’s a gap at the bottom of the door that won’t quite close all the way.”
    “That explains why everyone seems to have a great interest in the earth,” he said. “I’ve wondered about that upon occasion. Some ingenious lech probably bent the metal. I’ll look at it afteryou’re done. Go ahead and take your time. I promise I won’t peek.”
    Taking a shower with Paul Murphy just outside was like having a lion sharing your campfire. She was positive the peep show would be easier to get through.
    Judith swallowed back her anxiety and forced her shaking hands to set the towel back down on the bench. She still had soap on half her body, after all. The stream turned into a trickle, making it harder to hurry through the shower. She cursed under her breath before finally managing to get the last of the soap off her skin and hair. She dried in record time and yanked on her clothes. Giving herself a last inspection, she made a face at the cheap shorts and top she was wearing. If they looked bad, the rest of her, with her naked face and uncombed, dripping hair, must look like hell on wheels.
    Maybe that wouldn’t be such an awful thing, she decided. If Paul was repulsed, her currently heightened senses should deflate to proper levels. She hoped. Shoving her feet into her flipflops, she emerged from the dark shed.
    Paul glanced at her and grinned. “I never would have expected you to wear that one.”
    She looked down at her chest, then flushed pink at the legend. IT’S NOT PMS, IT’S YOU .
    “I guess it is a bit tacky.”
    “Well into rude. That must have been someshopping you did at the Calimax. I just hope you didn’t wear that shirt for my benefit.”
    “Oh, no. No.” She smiled. “I guess I was just in an outrageous mood that day.”
    More than that, she thought. She had been expressing her complete freedom to do whatever she pleased for once in her life. At home she always had to think about what kind of image her clothes would create. Her lack of enthusiasm for the family business greatly disappointed her parents, and she consciously tried to please them in other ways. She lived at home and at least looked the part of a Collier. Those concessions mollified her parents and decreased the pressure on her to join the family business. One bucked the Collier system only so far.
    Here, though, she wasn’t a Collier. She was just Judith and could experiment. She could become someone different for a time.
    “I can’t wait to see what else you got,” Paul said.
    That sounded very suggestive. She didn’t want him to sound suggestive. She took a deep breath. “Thanks for playing guard dog.”
    He practically purred the words, “My