White Hot by Carla Neggers Read Free Book Online Page B

understand the ups and downs of being self-employed. Griffen had simply been at it longer.
    Before she aroused her friend’s suspicions, Mollie changed the subject. Deegan came down, finally, and they were off.
    Suddenly itching to be away herself, Mollie dove into the pool, the water the perfect temperature, enveloping her as she tried to ease an unsettling sense of loneliness and fear of the future, the optimism and daredevil energy of her first months in Palm Beach gone. Seeing Jeremiah again, she knew—stirring up the past, the confusions and hopes and terror of being twenty and not quite sure of her path—had undermined her confidence, worked on her nerves. Her affair with him had been a lesson not only in the appeal and the danger of such a man, but in her own vulnerabilities. She’d never thought herself capable of falling in love almost at first sight, of throwing caution and reason to the wind.
    But of course it hadn’t been love. It had been infatuation, obsession, hormones, a dip into the kind of life she didn’t live. And chose not to live. She didn’t do torrid affairs. She wasn’t even much of a party girl, not at twenty, not at thirty. She worked hard, but she didn’t play hard. Her appearance at the Greenaway last night had been for the music and her work, her need to establish a presence and a reputation in the area—the fun of it was just a pleasant by-product.
    It was Jeremiah’s work, too, that had led him to the Greenaway. He had staked out last night’s party in case the jewel thief showed up. Which he had, the police apparently arriving not long after Mollie had headed home.
    She gasped, choking on a mouthful of pool water as she shot to the surface.
    Of course.
    She leaped out of the pool, wrapped up in her towel, slipped on her flip-flops and stalked upstairs. Before she could think, analyze, or calm down, she’d pulled out the phone book and dialed the Miami Tribune’ s number. The switchboard put her through to Jeremiah, and finally he answered. “Tabak.”
    “I don’t know anything about your jewel thief,” Mollie said, breathless from her swim, her mad dash upstairs, her indignation. “I didn’t see anything last night, I didn’t do anything last night, and I don’t know one damned thing. I don’t have access to him, I don’t have any information about him, I didn’t even know he was on the loose until twenty minutes ago.”
    “You doing anything for dinner?”
    “What?”
    “I’m in Palm Beach. The call got put through to my truck phone. The miracles of modern technology, eh? I’ll be there in two minutes.”
    He hung up.
    Mollie stared at her phone. How had that just happened? Given Leonardo’s state-of-the-art security, she didn’t have to let him in. But she didn’t think she could explain two altercations in her driveway with a man in a beat-up brown truck to her neighbors. That left her less than two minutes to get into dry clothes before he arrived on her doorstep.
    She raced down the hall, pushing back images of Jeremiah peeling off her wet bathing suit and making love to her at the same time.
    “This is not good,” she muttered. “Not good at all.”
    But like ten years ago, she couldn’t seem to stop herself.

4
    M ollie personally ushered Jeremiah through the gates and almost made him park in Leonardo’s garage. She wasn’t up to explaining him to any friends and neighbors who happened by, but decided sticking him in the garage would only encourage him to stay longer.
    “Hop in,” he said through his open window. “We’ll walk on the beach and talk.”
    “You mean you’ll talk. I have nothing to say.”
    He gave a curt nod. “Fine.”
    She eyed him suspiciously. Something had changed. The earlier cockiness and game-playing had disappeared. She wouldn’t say he looked guilty, but something was different.
    “Mollie,” he said, “get in. I’d like to say what I have to say on neutral ground.”
    “You want witnesses?”
    He wasn’t