No Limits by Alison Kent Read Free Book Online Page B

plates, digging into his box of grub for sugar and powdered cream. Concentrating on what was simple kept him from facing the complications that came attached like baggage to Michelina Ferrer. It was a different sort of baggage than what he’d been dealing with the last few weeks, but her being here was still going to weigh heavy on his mind.
    Dealing with Bear and Lorna and the property would be enough to try any saint. Add King to the mix, and, well, Simon’s patience wouldn’t pass the first test. And now he had a mystery on his hands, a crime that needed more explanation before it would begin to make sense.
    That was the only reason he finally turned around, the only reason he lifted his gaze from the food he carried to the woman standing in the frame of the kitchen doorway toweling dry her dark hair.
    Her face was the same one he’d seen on “Page Six,” on magazine covers, on TV. The same one from his billboard. The same one…but not.
    Her skin was scrubbed clean. She wore nothing glossy on her lips, nothing colored and glittery on her eyes, nothing to smooth out her cool ivory skin. She had freckles on her nose, two smal l red zits on her chin.
    And her eyes were sad and scared, not sassy or sultry or seductive. A big problem, her eyes. An equally big one, her unbound breasts beneath his gray T-shirt, the curve of her hips and thighs in his long-legged briefs.
    He set the food on the table, cleared his throat, went back for the Styrofoam cups filled with coffee and for plastic-ware. He didn’t turn back toward her until he heard her sit, the chair legs scraping across the worn linoleum, the creak of the wood beneath her weight. The table hid most of her body. He could still make out the shape of her breasts, the fullness, the upper slope that made him wonder about the weight he’d feel beneath. But there wasn’t a damn thing he could do to avoid her face, so bare and exposed, or her eyes. He had to look at her to get her story. He had to watch her expression, see the truth, her fear, find out how much she knew or had guessed or thought about what had happened. This is what he did—gathered information, ferreted out intel, zoned in on the pertinent details, used it all to come up with a plan of action. He needed one. Desperately. One that had nothing to do with her body being naked under his clothes, one that addressed the fact that she was Michelina Ferrer. And she was miserable, frightened, and lost.
    He couldn’t help it. He feared that juxtaposition—what he knew about the celebrity versus what he sensed about this woman with her armor washed away and fearing for her life—was going to make it hard to keep this job from turning personal.
    “Let’s start at the beginning.” He stopped, scooped up a bite of eggs. “You are Michelina Ferrer.”
    “Micky. Michelina is what my father calls me to make sure I know I’m in trouble.”
    “How old are you?”
    She arched one of those famous dark brows. “My age is relevant how?”
    “I wasn’t sure if the being-in-trouble-with-your-father thing was past tense or present.”
    Then again, he’d seen her antics reported in the press. The parties. The other women. The drinking. The men.
    She looked down at her plate, piled eggs onto her toast as if she hadn’t eaten in weeks.
    “I’ll no doubt be in trouble with my father over something until one of us buries the other.”
    She said it matter-of-factly, and he wondered what her father would think about the trouble she was in now. If he would worry more about the reputation of Ferrer Fragrances or his daughter’s safety should news get out about the danger she’d stumbled into.
    “Micky, then. What could possibly bring you to Bayou Allain?” If he knew why she was here, he might be able to figure out why someone would run her off the road. Then he wondered if whoever it was had fled once the car hit the water, or if they’d stuck around to see if she climbed free of the wreckage and followed her