Hot Pursuit by Lynn Raye Harris Read Free Book Online Page A

for him. No matter how much history flowed between
them.
    But he’d trotted out that returning soldier
line and she’d caved like a fallen soufflé.
    She should walk away right now, but she
couldn’t seem to make herself do so. Instead, she tried to keep
distance between them, stood stiffly in his embrace with her hands
on his shoulders until he grasped her arms and twined them around
his neck. “At least look like you’re having fun.”
    “What if I’m not?”
    He laughed. “Pretend.”
    They swayed to the music without talking. His
body was so hard, like he’d been carved from marble. He was lean
and lethal, a finely honed military machine. From the hard contours
of his shoulders to the flat planes of his abdomen, there wasn’t an
ounce of softness anywhere on him.
    His hands were in the small of her back,
caressing her as they moved. She became acutely aware of her
breasts pressing against his chest. When she tilted her head back
to look up at him, his eyes were intense. She turned away even as a
thrill shot through her.
    “I’ve missed you, Evie. I didn’t realize how
much until I saw you today.”
    “Don’t lie.”
    “I’m not lying.”
    A bead of sweat trickled between her breasts
and her skin grew hot. She’d forgotten how steamy Louisiana nights
could be. Why did these morons still party at the lake? They
weren’t teenagers anymore, and they had houses.
    “We haven’t spoken in ten years. I hardly
think you missed me that much.”
    Matt’s hands slid across her back, leaving a
trail of flame in their wake. “I said I didn’t realize it until
today. That’s the truth. You were always honest with me, Evie. I
liked that. Needed it.”
    Evie snorted, more to cover the riot of
sensations inside her than anything. “You couldn’t have liked it
that much. You used to sit on me until I cried uncle.”
    Matt laughed. “Yeah, you really knew how to
piss me off back then. But you were my best friend when we were
little.”
    “Until you left private school and started
going to Rochambeau Junior High. Then I was persona non grata.”
    “Hardly. But you were a girl, and I needed to
get in good with the guys.”
    “And the other girls.”
    He gave her that pretty grin of his. “Yeah,
that too.”
    As if he’d ever had an ounce of trouble in
that department. She remembered his first day in public school, how
thrilled she’d been to have him there where they could hang out
together—and how jealous she’d been when he’d started paying
attention to other girls.
    “We go back a long ways, don’t we?” Her arms
around his neck relaxed a little, until it felt almost natural to
be dancing with him like this.
    “Yeah. It’s kinda nice, isn’t it?”
    Her body was singing and zinging with sparks.
“It is, in a way. In other ways, it’s not so great.”
    He looked puzzled. “How do you mean?”
    Evie sighed. “Geez, Matt, you aren’t that
clueless. It was fun while we were kids. I adored you—and then it
changed as I got older and realized what boys were for. But it
didn’t change for you, and that set me up for a lot of angsty
nights discussing you endlessly with my friends.”
    “You discussed me?” He looked puzzled and she
wanted to pinch him. Men.
    “Of course. It’s what girls do. We like a boy
and we obsess about it. About what he said, what he did, how he
looked at us. Does he like us or not? Things like that. I wanted
you to like me as a girl, not as a buddy. And you never did.”
    “I did.” Her heart did a little skip that it
shouldn’t have so long after the fact. “But I tried not to. I
didn’t want to mess up what we had.”
    “We didn’t have anything by then. You’d been
ignoring me since I got breasts.”
    His gaze dropped to her chest and she
automatically stuck a finger under his chin and tilted his head up
again.
    His grin was not in the least apologetic.
“Hey, you mentioned them. They are magnificent, by the way.”
    She refused to feel an ounce of pleasure