Unzipped by Lois Greiman Read Free Book Online

spoke. “And I won’t be bullied into divulging intimate details.”
    “How intimate?” he asked, crowding me a little.
    I swallowed hard. I’m not a small woman, and I like to think I’m no wimp, but this guy probably ate psychologists as appetizers. Still, who was he to come barging into my house at all hours of the day? I raised my chin and stood my ground. Our faces were inches apart. For a cop he smelled pretty good. “How would you like to be charged with harassment?” I asked. My voice hardly shook at all, but he didn’t exactly shrivel under the threat. In fact, he chuckled.
    “Lady,” he said. “I can tell you’ve never been harassed.”
    “I’ve been harassed plenty,” I snarled back. In retrospect I see that it’s kind of funny what gets my dander up.
    “Of course,” he said, and grinned.
    “You ever juggle five margaritas, two Bloody Marys, and a zombie in a mob of middle-aged perverts?”
    He gave me the old one-brow raise, and I immediately wished I hadn’t started down that road. I was standing there with an Eeyore tail on my back, for God’s sake. How much more did the man need to know?
    “Either you were a circus performer,” he guessed, “or you worked in a bar.”
    I glanced outside, but I probably couldn’t outrun him even if I got a fifty-yard head start. “I was employed in a drinking establishment for a short time, to help defray my educational expenses.”
    “What establishment?”
    I paused, but it didn’t matter if he knew; he’d never recognize the name. “The Warthog,” I said. “In Chicago.”
    “Sounds elegant. How long did you work there?”
    “I don’t think that’s pertinent information.”
    He raised a brow. “How l—”
    “Twelve years! Okay? Twelve years.” I may have sounded a little defensive, although there is nothing at all wrong with working at a bar . . . if you don’t mind having your ass groped like a Georgia peach.
    His expression was predatory at best. “And in twelve years you never met a guy who rocked your world like Bomstad?”
    “I met a thousand guys like Bomstad,” I said and did my best to stare him down. “I met even more like you.”
    “Yeah?” He crowded again. “How so?”
    “You don’t hold the patent on arrogance, Rivers.”
    “You think I’m arrogant?”
    The Irish in me bubbled. “And obdurate.”
    “Obdurate?” His lips twitched, and it was that damned suggestion of a rottweiler grin that got my back up.
    “Controlling,” I snarled, “and just fucking obnoxious.”
    Okay, my own control had slipped a bit, and in the back of my mind some tiny element of reason suggested that perhaps I should not be swearing at an officer of the law. But the words were out now.
    “Fucking obnoxious,” he repeated and moved in closer still, though I would have sworn it was impossible.
    Angry? Was he angry? I hadn’t meant to make him angry. The little voice mildly suggested that I take it back before I understood police brutality up close and personal, but my mouth wouldn’t form the necessary words. So I stood frozen in place and wished to hell I had learned to keep my mouth shut when my brother Michael had shoved my face in our neighbors’ sandbox twenty-some years before.
    “Sometimes I’m obnoxious,” Rivera said, “and if I’m lucky I’m fucking.” I nervously reminded myself that he wasn’t a huge guy, but he seemed pretty good-sized close up. His eyes had narrowed to dark slits. A muscle jumped in his lean, bristled jaw, and I found, strangely, that my lungs had somehow forgotten how to inhale. “But . . .” He leaned in. “I am never both at the same time.”
    His lips were nearly touching mine. My knees felt like Jell-O. His mouth quirked. My lungs ached. Nerve endings danced like fireflies up and down my frozen form.
    Holy shit, he was going to kiss me!
    “Don’t leave town,” he ordered and turning on his heel, left me standing on the steps like a beached trout, gasping for breath and wishing to