Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) by Amy Jo Cousins Read Free Book Online Page A

it was her. As her body surged into awareness of this man who was kissing her, who she wasn’t even sure she liked but whose touch was turning her insides into a puddle of melted wax, her brain struggled to recall how she’d gotten into this situation.
    His teeth nipped at her lower lip. He swallowed her sudden gasp. Her fingers were running themselves of their own will around his neck and dipping, touching him beneath the collar of his shirt.
    She couldn’t think. Tried harder. His hand was skating up the outside of her jean-clad thigh. He had been talking, explaining something about the will. Fingers slid under the bottom of her borrowed sweatshirt and skimmed the bare skin at her waist. There was the house and the money. His hand kneaded firmly at her hip. Something about living here for six months. His mouth was fiercer on hers now, the pressure arcing her head back and pressing her breasts into his chest. There was more, though, she was sure of it.
    She had it.
    With a near shriek of rage, she tore her mouth from Spencer’s and shoved hard at his shoulders. Scrambled to get her numbed legs out from under her and clawed her way past him and out of the chair. Standing in the evening-dark room in her stocking feet in front of the embers of a banked fire, a blanket half draped over her shoulders, she only wanted the answer to one question.
    Could she possibly have heard him correctly?
    “Did you say that I have to be married?”

Three
    “O w.”
    Spencer looked up from his plate and across the corner of the long dining room table.
    “Just pinching myself,” Addy said, sucking at the sore spot on the back of her hand. The silver fork and knife in her hands were heavy, another world from her stainless-steel utensils at home. “Thought I must have been dreaming to agree to stay here tonight.”
    He tore his eyes away from the sight of her lips pulsing against her own skin. “Look outside. It’s like the blizzard of ’76 all over again.” He pointed to the velvet-draped windows. She didn’t turn to look at the swirling clouds of white made only more opaque by the light shining out of the room into the night. “You can’t drive in that, even if we could manage to dig out your truck.”
    She glared at him. They’d already gone a few rounds about the fact that he’d let her sleep for three hours in front of the fire. He’d found it difficult to defend his decision since hewasn’t at all sure why he’d done such a thing. Being attracted to this prickly, sarcastic, hotheaded witch was one thing, but making sure she’d be stranded for the night with him was such a ridiculous strategy that he was startled to have given in to it.
    He’d watched her struggle to pay attention to his words as the first wavelets of sleep began washing over her, then seen her head nod in approval of what he was saying even as he knew she was miles away in dreamland. And at first, he’d just meant to let her nap for a few minutes.
    He had watched her sleep. Ruddy shadows and warm gold highlights had flickered over her face in the dancing light of the fire. Without her usual anger and defensiveness animating it, her face had looked like that of a teenager, the curves of her lips parted just enough for breath. Violet watercolor smudges had tinted the delicate skin around her eyes. She’d tucked her hands beneath her cheek, and the small, birdlike bones of her wrists had highlighted her aura of fragility.
    He nearly snorted out loud, catching himself in the middle of this ridiculous reverie. Addy Tyler was about as fragile as a lead pipe, and she bent as much as one, too. It had been a battle every step of the way to get her to set foot in this house. He didn’t know why it mattered so much to him that she understand what she was giving up with her obstinate refusal to have anything to do with her great-aunt’s estate. He only knew that he’d planned to drag her to the house screaming for the police all the way if necessary.
    The last