Love in the Air by Nan Ryan Read Free Book Online Page A

They’d been the golden couple, effortlessly charming their listening audience from that dim control room that was their stage.
    Kay smiled wistfully as she lathered her slender arms. How many times had she and Sul sat behind the control board teasing, touching, even kissing. It had been a game to try to make the other lose composure. Kay’s smile broadened. What fun they’d had then, what pure, undiluted joy with each other and the work they loved doing.
    Kay turned around, lifted her face to the watery needles, finished her shower and stepped out of the marble stall. Drying her body on a thirsty blue towel, she padded back into the bedroom. She drew a pair of pantyhose from the top drawer of the bureau, leaned over to inhale the still-fresh roses and walked back to the unmade bed.
    She sat down on its edge and she wondered. Was Sullivan now stepping from his shower in his penthouse apartment across town? Was that tall, spare body glistening wet and smelling of soap? Was the ebony hair damp and shiny? Was that crisp mat of hair on his broad, dark chest beaded with water?
    Kay shivered and stepped into her pantyhose, frantically jerking them up over her hips and quivering stomach. Hose in place, she almost ran to the dresser to seek a bra, eager to cover naked, swelling breasts whose nipples were becoming taut.
    Kay arrived at the studios of Q102 half an hour early. Dressed sensibly in an attractive cowl-necked cotton dress of gold and blue stripes, a wide blue leather belt and matching shoes, she used her key to let herself into the dim reception area. It was eerily quiet, as were the empty sales offices opening into it.
    Kay’s heels made no sound as she crossed the lobby and headed down the long corridor toward her office. Suddenly the hair stood up on the back of her neck. She could sense someone behind her. She whirled around so abruptly she bumped into the hard chest of Sullivan Ward.
    Kay let out a little gasp of surprise. Sullivan’s hands were on her upper arms, steadying her. Eyes on the level of his throat, Kay’s senses were assailed with the dizzyingly irresistible scent of his clean, warm skin. Instinctively, she inhaled deeply, loving the familiar yet strange male essence that was Sul. Her Sul.
    Abruptly, his long fingers encircling her arms, Sullivan set her away from him. Kay looked up at his face. In his eyes was an enigmatic expression. It fled immediately and a look of impatience replaced it.
    “I—I didn’t hurt you, did I?” she asked, as his hands left her.
    A mocking grin lifted the corners of his lips. “What do you think?” he said flatly. He turned and walked away from her. Kay stood rooted to the spot, dumbly watching him head for his office. The way the linen trousers he wore clung to his slim hips commanded her attention briefly, then her eyes slid upward to those wide, chiseled shoulders and the white cotton shirt stretching across them. His shoulder blades were sliding upward a little as though he were shrugging about something.
    Kay bit her bottom lip. This was not going to work. Not at all. An unhappy Sullivan was going to make this first show a disaster. She just knew it. They could no longer work together. She should never have returned.
    At two minutes before six, Kay left her small office. At the opposite end of the hall, Sullivan did the same. They met at the door to the control room. Wordlessly, Sullivan put a palm to the door and pushed it inward, inclining his dark head.
    Just as silently, Kay nodded and stepped past him into the room where bleary-eyed Dale Kitrell was signing off his show. Nodding to the pair, the tired disc jockey said into the microphone, “So that’s it for the night people. Be listening again when yours truly, Dale of Darkness, comes back your way in the dead of night.” The weary man turned up the volume, letting the last record lead into the 6 o’clock news.
    “Hi folks.” He rose, yawned and stretched long arms over his head.
    “Good morning,