Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) by Jennifer Skully Page A

the teaser on her
website. A massage scene involving only neck and shoulders, its
sensuality still managed to evoke a purely male reaction. It also
impaired his manners. That could be the only excuse for what he’d
said. Brax had to admit he’d been imagining ice-cream cones, which
was not a bad thing in and of itself. But sex complicated matters,
especially when he was in Goldstone for only two weeks. He
shouldn’t have given voice to the image.
    She smiled that perfect smile of hers, the
one that made him weak in the knees. The dazzle smile. “Shall we
get started?”
    God, yes.
    Beautiful eyes wide, she bit her lip. “With
the movie, I mean.”
    He knew that. “Sure.” It was the slickest
dialogue he could muster when he felt as tongue-tied as a teenage
boy.
    He really shouldn’t have read that
teaser. Snippets of it muddled his main goal. Which was...it
was...oh yeah, to determine if she could lie without the telling
body language that clued a cop into when he was being snookered by
a suspect. Yes, that was his goal in coming over tonight.
    That and giving Maggie time alone to talk
things out with Carl.
    He hadn’t picked up the movie because he
wanted to watch it with her in a darkened room, sitting close on
that big sofa, drinking in the citrus fragrance of her hair and the
sweet scent of her skin. Nope, he’d intended to do a little subtle
interrogating.
    And that’s what he’d do.
    “Don’t look at me like that,” she said
suddenly.
    “Like what?”
    “Like you can’t decide whether to cart me off
to jail for being an axe murderess or...” Her voice trailed off and
she bit her lip again. Her nip plumped the flesh to a lush,
inviting fullness.
    A cop had to be good at schooling his
features, keeping his true thoughts off his face and out of his
eyes. Brax was usually damn good at it, too, but Simone saw right
through him.
    Maybe he shouldn’t salivate quite so much
when looking at her hair tumbling over her shoulders in artful
disarray almost as if she’d been in bed when he’d shown up at her
door. But then he’d started remembering that slow sensual
massage.
    He picked up her hand and placed the DVD in
it. “Why don’t you put the movie in?” That should get his mind off creamy shoulders and a bare nape begging to be
kissed.
    She backed up a step, stopped only by the
edge of the coffee table. “Popcorn. I should make some
popcorn.”
    He pulled a packet from his back pocket and
tossed it on the table. “I brought licorice.” Why the hell he’d
picked out the candy while waiting in line for the video, he
couldn’t say. “Start the movie,” he whispered, as if he were
talking about something far different. Her scent teased his
nose.
    The goal, he repeated to himself as she
slipped from between him and the table to kneel in front of the
TV.
    She fumbled opening the DVD, then again
trying to get the disk out. Those damn disks could be tricky.
Pushing a button, the player flashed on and a tray slid out. She
plopped the disk in, closed the tray, then hopped to her feet and
skittered across the living room to the couch. Grabbing a remote,
she flopped down on a cushion in the corner and pointed.
    Nothing happened.
    “Darn it,” she whispered and poked at the
remote a couple of times.
    He held out his hand. “Here.”
    She clutched the gadget to her chest. “I know
how to work my own remote.”
    He glanced at the blank TV. “I don’t see
anything.”
    She pursed her lips, narrowed her eyes, and
pointed again. Still nothing. She pushed a series of buttons in
sequence, with the same result. Nothing.
    “You’re a jinx. It always worked before.” She
tossed it to him.
    He looked at it, pushed one button, and the
TV came to life.
    “How’d you do that?”
    He beamed the way Whitey had last night in
the Flood’s End mirror when she told him he should have been a
writer. “Remotes are man’s work.”
    He pushed a series of buttons and magically
the opening credits began to