Full Exposure: A Loveswept Contemporary Erotic Romance by Tracy Wolff

She entered the room only to re-emerge seconds later, her plain gray suitcase clutched in her hand.
    “Let me take that for you.” He strode down the hall, relieving her of her burden before she could protest.
    “I can get it.”
    He smiled, his teeth gleaming warningly in the afternoon light. “I know you can,
cher
. But where I come from, a gentleman doesn’t stand by and watch a woman struggle with a bag that weighs almost as much as she does.” He headed outside before she could stop him.
    “I didn’t realize you were a gentleman,” she shot at him, as she pushed the trunk release on her key chain.
    His smile was predatory and sexy as hell. “I most definitely am. Look up the origin of the word sometimes. It’s a real eye-opener.”
    She dropped her keys. Grinning like a loon, he hid his face behind the open trunk lid as he loaded her bag. He closed the trunk to find her studying him, an uncharacteristically anxious expression on her face. Shoving his hands into his back pockets, he leaned back on his heels and waited for her to speak.
    “I’ll be back in a few days,” she said, her teeth worrying her lower lip.
    He shrugged. “I’ll be here.”
    She nodded, climbed into the car and shut the door. But he couldn’t let her leave like that—she was biting her lip so hard he was afraid she’d draw blood. He knocked onthe driver’s window and waited patiently as she rolled it down. “Drive carefully,
bebe
.”
    Her smile was reserved. “I will.”
    “Good.” He stepped back and winked. “I haven’t got the patience to break in two photographers in a week.”
    Serena gasped, outrage in every line of her face, before slamming the car into gear and heading down the driveway as fast as safety allowed. Kevin stood watching her gray Volvo until it reached the end of the very long driveway.
Gray
clothes,
gray
suitcase,
gray
car. The woman definitely needed some color in her life. Wasn’t it lucky he had more than enough to share? Whistling, he headed toward his studio to get to work.

Chapter Four
    The metal gates of Angola Penitentiary clanged as Serena passed through them. She gazed straight ahead, afraid to speak, afraid to think, afraid to even blink. If she did—if she so much as moved the wrong way—she would shatter. So she concentrated on taking deep, even breaths. On swallowing the lump in her throat and keeping the tears at bay.
    She had done all this for nothing. Left Kevin and the book. Dragged up a past she would much rather leave buried. Faced her sister’s murderer. And for what? To see him paroled after ten lousy years? Louisiana sucked and the corruption that ran rampant in the state sucked even more.
    As the prison doors shut behind her, the heat struck her like a fist. It was brutal, much like the parole hearing she had just left. And like the hearing, the hundred-degree humidity threatened to bring her to her knees.
    Serena stopped, struggling for breath in the dense air. Her legs were shaky, threatening to revolt if she pushed them to continue. Her heart raced and pain exploded through her chest—was it possible to have a heart attack at twenty-eight? She pressed a hand between her breasts, fought the blackness that crept up on her a little more with each passing second.
    “Serena! Are you all right?”
    She looked into the face of Jack Rawlins, new Assistant District Attorney for Baton Rouge and the man who had been reassigned her sister’s case as the parole date crept closer. It hadn’t been required that he attend the parole hearing, but he had known how well connected Damien was. He’d been afraid things would go sour and he’d been right.
    She put up a hand to ward him off, even as she struggled to suck air into her burning lungs. She’d lose it if he touched her. She knew it as well as she knew that Damien LaFleur, murderer and son of old Louisiana royalty, would be walking through these doors to freedom sometime very soon.
    She wanted to scream, to claw Jack bloody.