Caught by Jami Alden Page B

could get in her car, she heard Ethan call over, “Hey, Toni, wait up a sec.”
    Her spine stiffened, every instinct urging her to get away from this man, and fast. Then she reminded herself of Marcy Kramer’s order to keep an eye on him. Like it or not, until Kara was safe at home, she needed to resign herself to spending a lot more time with or near a man she couldn’t stop imagining naked. And wondering how it would feel to have him naked beside her.
    On top of her.
    Under her.
    She was going to melt like a Popsicle before he reached the car.
    “Was there something you needed?” Toni asked, keeping her tone cold even if her body was radiating more heat than the asphalt.
    It didn’t deter him one bit. If anything, his grin widened as he strode toward her. She kept her gaze pinned firmly in the middle of his face, forbidding herself to stare at the way his trousers pulled against his strong thighs as he moved.
    I really need to get out more if this is the way I’m going to react to the first remotely hot guy I see. Okay, to be fair, Ethan is more than remotely lot. He is yummy male hotness, the likes of which you rarely see, so appreciate it for what it’s worth for the next five seconds and then focus on the task at hand. Five, four, three…
    “I’m thinking this will go a lot more smoothly if we work together.” he said.
    She pulled her mind away from wondering whether he had a four-pack, six-pack, or full-fledged eight-pack under the cotton brocade of his shirtfront and replied, “Oh really, how so?”
    “No offense, but I noticed you weren’t exactly making friends in there.” He jerked his head in the direction of the Friedlands’ house, his lips still quirked in amusement.
    Her eyebrows shot up to her hairline. “Making friends isn’t part of my job description.”
    “Are you always this standoffish?”
    She folded her arms across her chest and jerked her chin up. “Just because I’m a professional and don’t hit on every member of the opposite sex I come into contact with doesn’t make me standoffish.”
    He had the gall to look mildly offended. “I wasn’t hitting on Joyce Friedland.”
    “Oh, please, like you didn’t notice the way she was practically pouring her boobs out onto your arm.”
    He gave an arrogant shrug. “Women like me.”
    “Not all women,” she lied and went to climb in her car, but stopped when he wrapped a big, long-fingered hand around her upper arm.
    “Don’t you know it’s rude to walk away when someone’s talking to you?” he said.
    “You want to tell me more about the legions of women falling at your feet?”
    He gave her another smile, one that made the lines around his eyes crinkle. “We got off on the wrong foot. There’s no reason we can’t help each other out.” He leaned one hand on her car, just to the right of her shoulder, almost but not quite boxing her in. It wasn’t exactly intimidating, but the way he made her tilt her head back a notch to look up at him was his way of establishing authority. He was good at this, taking command with his size and his charm, so subtly that most people probably didn’t even notice he was doing it.
    “Yeah? How so?”
    “I don’t know who you’ve worked with before, but people in this area are used to a certain amount of ass-kissing.”
    “At which you obviously excel,” she muttered.
    His blue eyes turned steely, and for the first time she got a glimpse of a hardness that matched his tightly honed exterior. “When necessary, yeah. Especially if it helps me find out the information I need. Now, you do ninety percent of your investigating at your keyboard. Am I right?”
    She shrugged and nodded. Jeez, the way he put it, it made her sound like some little troll slaving away in her cave. She thought of her dark, cramped home office and conceded that he wasn’t too far off the mark.
    “Come on,” he said. “Let me finish interviewing Kara’s friends while you find out what you can, and we can meet up