The Drowning Pool by Jacqueline Seewald

definitely not easy.”
    “Tell me about it. Okay, I’ll give you a nutshell summary of my day.”
    She listened attentively as he described the questioning of Cheryl McNeill, April Nevins and Sonny Blake.
    “So what do you think? Any flashes of intuition as to who might have killed Bradshaw?”
    Kim was pensive. “I don’t have those kinds of powers. Sometimes I see things other people don’t, just like you do. Mostly, I just put things together. Ms. McNeill sounds like she might have a motive. A woman scorned. Yet she claimed he intended to marry her and had apologized for his infidelities. This April Nevins…she sounds like a troubled individual. But if she dropped your victim as she claimed, then she really wouldn’t have any motive either. Sonny Blake. Obviously he was physically able to move a body on his own and he would have had the opportunity, but what possible motive would he have? This is frankly perplexing.”
    “Maybe I can manage to arrange for you to meet the people who were directly involved with the vic. Are you willing?”
    Kim worried her lower lip. “Won’t Detective St. Croix object? She might resent my interference.”
    “We’ll see. In the meantime, I don’t want to waste the time we have together talking shop. I plan to champion my cause.”
    “Which is?”
    There was a wicked gleam in his eye. “I intend to persuade you how much you want to be the significant lady in my life.”
    “Do I?”
    He rubbed his thumb erotically across her palm. “I’m convinced you do.” He kissed each finger of her right hand, playfully nipped her thumb, then licked it.
    She laughed. “Are you going to try to seduce me?”
    “Good thinking.”
    He kissed her on the lips, and the earth went out of orbit. Being close to him was the definition of spontaneous combustion. Mike slipped his hand around the back of her neck, angled her head, his mouth returning to hers. His tongue outlined her lips, then provocatively urged her mouth open. Their tongues touched, dueled and joined. His mouth was hard and soft at the same time. She heard the pounding of his heart as he pressed himself against her. She buried her hands in the waves of his hair. As the kiss became deeper and more passionate, desire burned in her body. She ached for him.
    He pulled back. “Let’s continue this upstairs,” he urged in a husky voice. “Stay over tonight.” He kissed her again as if to seal the deal and counter any possible argument on her part.
    “With the girls upstairs, I don’t think I’d feel comfortable. I’d feel depraved.”
    “Well, I’m feeling deprived.” He leaned over and kissed the nape of her neck.
    “I have to think about it.”
    “You’re too uptight. Let me give you a massage,” Mike said.
    “I’ve never had one,” she admitted.
    He gave her a heavy-lidded smile. “I’m not the only one who’s been deprived. And a little depravity wouldn’t hurt you either. Let’s go upstairs. I’ve got magic hands.”
    “I’ll just bet.” She put her arms around him and held tight for dear life. Mike Gardner did have quite a way about him; she had to concede that. His raw, masculine essence was hard to resist. When they were together like this, she stopped thinking, lost in passionate feeling.
    And then her cell phone started to ring. She tried her best to ignore it.
    “Damn all phones to perdition.”
    “I’ll just shut it off.”
    “And have you worry about who was calling? No, Kim, you answer it. Then shut it off for the night.”
    She clicked the phone on as the third ring vibrated.
    “Hello, Kim. How are you?”
    “Don?”
    “The one and only. I was reading Byron and immediately thought of you. ‘She walks in beauty like the night/Of cloudless climes and starry skies;/And all that’s best of dark and bright/Meet in her aspect and her eyes.’ See what I mean?” Don’s melodic baritone was seductive. He certainly did justice to the poet, and then some.
    “I’m flattered,” she said.