Past Sins (Silhouette Bombshell)

by Debra Webb

Sweat beaded on her skin.

  But the worst betrayal she suffered was the pounding in her chest. She couldn’t catch her breath. Couldn’t slow down the anticipation building with each passing second.

  “Are you enjoying your vacation in our fair city?” She almost cringed at the too high-pitched tone of her voice. No one else had ever been able to do this to her.

  “I live here.”

  Had he told her that? She surely would have remembered. “Really?” She strong-armed her gaze to her Audi and walked over to the driver’s-side door and opened it. “I guess I forgot.”

  “Right here in the Hills. We’re practically neighbors.”

  Well, he had said he’d watched her. Apparently more often than she’d suspected. How was it she’d never run into him?

  What was she saying? The guy was a master spy. He wouldn’t be seen unless he wanted to be seen. She tossed her bag inside and produced a smile for the man she could feel staring at her. “Welcome back. But, as you can see, I was just on my way home.”

  He faced her, rested his folded arms on her open door. “Actually, I was planning to take you to dinner.”

  Hope sang through her veins and she wanted to kick herself. “I’ll have to check my schedule.” With him this close she couldn’t look at him, not without getting lost in those eyes. She knew herself too well.

  “I already checked it.” He came around the door and trapped her against the car. “You’re free. So why don’t we stop playing games and say what we really mean?”

  “Games?” She manufactured an expression of innocence. “I’m not sure I know what you mean.”

  “Nes—” He stopped himself, took a breath. “Olivia, you know how I feel. I am brutally aware of how you feel. Let’s not do this.”

  Oh, now this she enjoyed. “You sound a little desperate, Landry. We really should take our time plotting our future together. We wouldn’t want to rush into anything, would we?”

  His hand went to her waist and pulled her against him. He was hard. A thrilling sensation rushed along every nerve ending.

  “I’ve waited three years to get you back. I’m not waiting a minute longer.”

  She opened her mouth to protest his high-handed tactics but he silenced her with his lips.

  Why fight it? She leaned into the kiss, let herself get lost in the taste, smell and feel of him.

  Delayed gratification was overrated anyway.

  Life was short. She knew firsthand.

  Time to start really living.

  The drive to his place didn’t take that long. He had her half undressed by the time they arrived. They stumbled out of the Audi, and on to his front door, his shirt landing on the sidewalk along the way.

  He fumbled with his key…finally managed to get the door open and then she was in his arms again. She wanted to take in his home…to see if it matched the man, but she couldn’t think of anything right now but getting naked.

  They didn’t make it up the stairs…clothes littered the first five or six steps and that was as far as they got.

  Landry braced her against the wall, then hoisted her upward as she wrapped her legs around his lean hips.

  No words were spoken…the feel of his skin meshed with hers. He completed the connection, stealing her breath and making speech impossible.

  This was where she belonged…in his arms…it was the only place she’d ever really belonged.

  Finally she was home.

  And this time, it was going to last.

  Silhouette Bombshell keeps getting hotter! Look out for more fast-paced, romantic adventures coming your way, featuring women you’d love to know and the villains and men who challenge them.

  Turn the page for a sneak peek at one of next month’s releases,

  WHAT STELLA WANTS by Nancy Bartholomew

  Available July 2006 wherever Silhouette Books are sold.

  It was about time my luck changed. In the past month I’d been beaten up, shot at, lied to and seduced. In my opinion, other than the seduction, I’d been on the short end of the karma scale. At least this stakeout and surveillance, while in the middle of winter, was indoors. Okay, so there wasn’t any heat in the garage, but I wasn’t standing outside in a blizzard, either. And our target was slow-moving and not very dangerous. She was an old lady.

  The bad news was, she was my aunt Lucy.

  My partner, Jake Carpenter, also known as the man voted most likely to get under my skin and into my bed, was crouched next to me, peering out the grimy garage window and into Aunt Lucy’s kitchen.

  “She let him in,” he said. “Why hasn’t she brought him back to the kitchen? She brings everybody to the kitchen.”

  I looked at Jake. Tall, dark, handsome and sometimes completely clueless. Not much had changed about the man since high school, since he’d left me waiting at the altar in a failed elopement that still echoed like a bad dream in my memory.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Jake. Do you think they just went straight down the hall to her bedroom, or what?”

  I guess the sarcastic tone gave me away. Jake actually managed to look hurt. “You don’t have to be so sensitive about it. I was just asking.”

  I arched an eyebrow and tried not to notice the way his eyes were traveling the length of my body, stopping at all the good parts, the parts that had so readily responded to his touch just hours before.

  “Jake, it’s my aunt, for God’s sake! She’s been widowed what, six months, and some mysterious guy from her past surfaces and she doesn’t say one word about who it is or what he wants, and you think I shouldn’t be so sensitive? He could be a con man. He could be a killer. He could be—”

  I stopped, trying to come up with more possibilities, which gave Jake the window he was looking for. “He could be looking to get laid. Aunt Lucy’s old, but she isn’t dead!”

  I punched him, and his responding grunt was loud enough to let me know I hadn’t lost my touch. Police training and conditioning is no joke and I wasn’t about to let it go by the wayside just because I was no longer a cop. Private investigators need muscles and endurance, too, maybe even more. They don’t have an entire police force ready to back them up—they just have a partner or two, if they’re lucky. Jake was solid muscle and ex–Special Forces, but he was only one guy. I was the other half of the team. I needed to retain my edge…even if we were tailing only my elderly aunt at this moment.

  As we watched, the back door flew open and my aunt Lucy came rushing down the steps, a white plastic trash bag in hand and a grim look on her face. She headed straight for the garage.

  “Hide!” I yelped and dived behind a bunch of boxes.

  Jake wasted no time joining me and together we crouched, waiting for my aunt to pull open the old wooden door and head for the trash cans that lined the far wall.

  “Nothing good comes of spying on relatives,” I muttered.

  “It was your idea,” Jake reminded me.

  I wanted to smack him but didn’t dare with Aunt Lucy mere seconds from entering the ancient garage. So I pinched his earlobe, the only readily available, exposed flesh I could reach.

  “Ouch!”

  “Shh!”

  The garage door creaked open and Aunt Lucy could be heard walking briskly across the concrete floor to the battered metal trash cans. She pulled a lid off, dumped her bag inside it, replaced the lid and started to stomp off. Without warning, she stopped parallel to our hiding place, and as we listened, she sniffed, loudly, cautiously, and I was certain she’d discovered us.

  “Hmmph!” She snorted. “Nothing worse than the smell of dead fish!”

  Then, without further comment, she left, slamming the garage door securely behind her and continuing on her way across the rectangular backyard. A moment late we heard the back-porch door slam and knew we were in the clear.

  “Damn, I thought she was going to nail us,” Jake said. “The woman’s psychic, I swear she is.”

  My cell phone rang, startling both of us.

  “I thought I h
ad it on vibrate.” I fished the offender out of my parka pocket and flipped it open. “Valocchi Investigations.”

  Jake gave me his usual and customary hard look as I said the name. For some reason the man thought that because we were partners, his name should be on the door. I wasn’t sure the partnership was permanent, so why change things before I had a feel for the potential duration of it? Look what happened the last time we tried to form a partnership…I’d wound up hurt and alone, trying to explain running away to marry Jake to my disappointed aunt Lucy and uncle Benny. No, I needed to wait this relationship out before I made another foolish commitment.

  “Stella, is that you?” The voice, female and anxious, sounded distinctly familiar.

  “Yes?”

  “Stella, it’s Bitsy Blankenship—well, it’s Margou-lies now, but it was Blankenship. Margrace Llewellen said you’d moved back home and opened a private-investigation office. I need to see you. Right now!”

  I closed my eyes. Elizabeth Blankenship. Blond, cheerleader, airhead and high-maintenance in high school. Sounded like nothing had changed, at least not in the maintenance department. I remembered hearing she’d married a junior diplomat and was now leading the high life of embassy parties and overseas assignments. Figured she’d land on her designer heels. But the demanding, “everything’s urgent and about me” tone to her voice brought out the rebellious adolescent in me.

  “Uh, sorry, Bitsy,” I said. “My first available appointment won’t be for another…” I opened my eyes and stared up at the old garage rafters, aware of Jack’s confused expression because he knew we were next to unemployment in terms of busy. “I guess I could squeeze you in tomorrow, late morning.”

  “No! I mean, please, Stella, this is an emergency! I need to see you now!”

  I signed, pushed the sleeve up on my parka and looked at my watch. It was almost noon. “Okay, I suppose I could see you at two, but I might be a few minutes late. We’re in the middle of an important surveillance.”

  “Two?” Bitsy’s anguished wail was almost satisfying, especially when I remembered that Jake had once dated Bitsy, shortly after he’d failed to show for our elopement to Maryland. “Really, Stella, you can’t see me any sooner?”

  Damn, what did the woman want, blood? “I’m sorry, Bits, two is my absolute earliest time and I’ll be pushing it at that.”

  I could hear the sound of a car’s engine in the background as Bitsy considered whether to take the appointment or not. She was driving and I wondered if she was in town yet or on her way from D.C.

  “Oh, all right! I’ll do two. I suppose I can waste a couple of hours visiting my grandmother in the nursing home or something.”

  Visiting her grandmother was a waste of time? Oh, I was so glad I was putting Mrs. High-and-Mighty on the back burner!

  “Okay. You know where the office is? It’s across from the old newsstand, off Main.”

  “I’ll find it. And, Stella, listen, it’s really important that you don’t tell anybody about this, okay? I don’t want anyone to know I’m in town or that we’re meeting. It could be a matter of life and death.”

  I rolled my eyes at Jake. What had he ever seen in this dingbat? Jake frowned and mouthed the words “Who is it?” But I just smiled and shook my head.

  “Don’t worry. I won’t tell a soul. See you at two!”

  I snapped the phone shut and smiled even bigger at Jake. “Guess what, partner? Your old girlfriend, Bitsy, is coming to town, and she wants to hire me.”

  ISBN 1-55254-485-0

  PAST SINS

  Copyright © 2006 by Debra Webb

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the editorial office, Silhouette Books, 233 Broadway, New York, NY 10279 U.S.A.

  All characters in this book have no existence outside the imagination of the author and have no relation whatsoever to anyone bearing the same name or names. They are not even distantly inspired by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all incidents are pure invention.

  This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

  ® and TM are trademarks of Harlequin Books S.A., used under license. Trademarks indicated with ® are registered in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, the Canadian Trade Marks Office and in other countries.

  www.SilhouetteBombshell.com

  About the Author

  At the age of nine, Debra began writing stories for the characters who lived in her too-vivid imagination. By 18 she had turned wife, mother, and career woman, leaving her writing behind. But those imaginary characters just wouldn’t go away.

  For the next 18 years she did everything from managing a Captain D’s seafood restaurant to holding an executive secretarial position at NASA, while the characters and their stories continued to traipse around inside her head. Eventually they just had to come out and Debra began the journey that would take her to where her heart had been all along—writing romance.

  Debra was born in Alabama, but now lives in Tennessee. Her journey, however, wasn’t a simple trek northward to the Volunteer state. First, Debra, her husband, and oldest daughter did a little traipsing of their own. From Texas to Berlin, Germany, Debra followed her husband’s military assignments. Finally landing in Tennessee, they had their second daughter and settled for the rest of their lives in a small community they fell in love with on sight.

  Write Debra with your comments at P.O. Box 64, Huntland, Tennessee, 37345.

  Coming Next Month

  If you enjoyed the e-book you just read, then you’ll love what we have for you next month!

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