Free Lucky Charm by Valerie Douglas Page B

that intrigued him. Darrin would be his barometer, his temperature check, as he was in so many ways. There was a reason he was the boss, he had impeccable instincts. Darrin had been a cop before he’d opened his detective agency and he hadn’t lost his edge.
    It was still frustrating. Bill’s death, the break-in afterwards, the security Marathon used, all indicated the company was up to something they shouldn’t be but the only place to find out for certain was in Marathon’s offices. Except that he couldn’t get in.
    With sunglasses to cover some of the bruising on his face, he watched the building from across the square.
    There had to be a way around the problem of getting inside those offices. A deliveryman he could impersonate or something. Some way inside.
    In the midst of the lunch crowd, something familiar caught his eye, a flash of dark gleaming hair and pale skin. Then the people stepped clear enough for him to see clearly.
    Ariel.
    So she worked in the building? That explained what she’d been doing there but not why she’d been there at that time of night. She certainly hadn’t been dressed like cleaning staff.
    Nor did it explain why she was staying in a cheap motel. Maybe she’d transferred or something but hadn’t been able to find a place yet?
    There wasn’t enough information for him to speculate. Had she said anything about what had happened, he wondered? He didn’t think so, somehow he thought she’d respect his secrets and would want to keep it to herself. Certainly after what happened that morning.
    His eyes took her in as he remembered the morning. A heated curl of desire moved deeply through him. She’d been so sweet, so responsive, giving back as much as she’d taken.
    The sun glowed on the waves of her shining black hair, casting blue highlights from it, as her brilliant eyes went to one of her companions and she smiled. It was a pretty smile, warm and friendly.
    Somehow, though, she seemed set apart from the others.
    She did catch the eye, though, with both her face and figure. She moved gracefully, hips swaying. Not a lot of women walked like that anymore. The memory of those hips, rising up to take him in, the way she responded, the feel of her, rolled through him again sending a bolt of heat deep into his groin.
    For the first time he realized he hadn’t thought of Jeannine in days, not while making love to Ariel and not since.
    Jeannine. Tall, blonde, cool and lovely Jeannine. The original ice princess.
    Matt had thought he’d loved her and he’d certainly wanted her to love him. Her distance only seemed to stoke his need, she’d always been just that little bit remote and unreachable as if she were somehow just beyond his grasp. He didn’t know what she’d seen in him – although part of him guessed, whether he admitted it to himself or not.
    To his surprise it was hard to call her face to mind and for the first time doing it didn’t cause him pain. Maybe he was finally getting past it. He’d dated since their breakup but nothing serious, nothing that gelled, as least partly because Jeannine had always been there in the back of his mind. Why couldn’t she have loved him?
    Now, for the first time, he wondered if he hadn’t been in love with the image of her.
    Coolly beautiful, with long straight ash-blonde hair falling smoothly down her back, Jeannine had been slender, her eyes a nearly a cat-like yellow. As tall as she was she’d been nearly eye-to-eye with him. For some reason, though, Matt had always felt slightly off balance with her. A part of him had been aware somehow that she was always looking at other men, always assessing. She’d always been conscious of things and rarely enthused unless he bought her an expensive gift. That was difficult with his responsibilities. Small-breasted and thin-hipped, she’d professed to like sex but never seemed to enjoy it much. At least, not with him. It just seemed to serve her purposes.
    Ariel? Her cries of pleasure, the