Free Manhunting in Mississippi by Stephanie Bond

enough.
    He started the engine. “Have you had dinner?”
    “Uh, no. I was going to hit the drive-through on the way home.”
    “Which drive-through?”
    She grinned and pointed left. “ The drive-through.”
    Ian chuckled, then pul ed onto Main Street and fol owed her directions the short distance to the fast-food restaurant. “Think I’l get a bite myself,” he said.
    “Where are you staying?”
    “Little motel on the edge of town. Baker’s?”
    “Baxter’s.”
    He nodded. “Right.”
    “Not exactly the Holiday Inn,” she observed.
    Ian shrugged. “Clean sheets, good mattress, nice stationery.”
    She’d expected him to put down the little motor inn, to put down the whole town. Piper almost hoped he would so she could dislike him. Then she stopped—since when had
    snobs become more unlikable than flirtatious married men? She shook her head to clear it and blamed her mental lapse on the medicine she felt filtering through her body like cool menthol. Food would slow down the absorption of the painkil er—not a bad idea at this point, despite her aching ankle.
    He rol ed down the window and ordered two burgers, fries and drinks, refusing her offer to pay, but handing her the bags of food to plunder while the cashier made change.
    Stil spoiling for an argument, she said, “I can’t believe a big-city restaurateur is actual y eating fast food.”
    Unfazed, he lifted himself out of the seat slightly to return his wal et to his back pocket. “Don’t forget, I own a few fast-food franchises myself.”
    A few dozen, she corrected silently. Piper dragged her attention away from the muscles flexing beneath the fabric of his pants. “I know, but I guess I never thought you’d actual y eat at one of them.”
    He settled back into the seat and gave her a deadly grin. “You’ve been thinking about me?”
    Red flags sprang up behind her eyelids. Sirens sounded in her ears. Determined to keep her cool, Piper pursed her lips and shoved a burger into his hand. “Instead of putting words in my mouth, how about putting this in yours? ”
    He winked good-naturedly and unwrapped his burger with one hand while steering with the other. “Where to?”
    “I thought you were headed my way,” she reminded him, placing an order of French fries within reach and settling their drinks into cup holders.
    One side of his mouth jerked upward. “I am—as soon as you tel me which way that is.”
    Piper had to smile since he’d spared her from Gary Purdue’s good intentions. “Left at the light, past the tire center, right at Ms. Gardner’s house, right again at the school-bus turnaround—”
    “Um, perhaps you can tel me as we go along,” he cut in with a laugh. Ian took a sizable bite out of his burger, then pul ed onto Main Street behind an old pickup truck with a bed ful of hay and a half-dozen children. “Good burger,” he said thickly.
    She nodded slowly and exhaled in relief—disaster diverted. He felt the chemistry between them, too, but she had ultimate control, she kept tel ing herself. No matter how much he made her brain and body short-circuit, and no matter how much she needed that bonus, she would not—repeat, would not—become involved with a married man.
    Glancing at his profile out of the corner of her eye, she bit into her burger with a vengeance, then stared straight ahead.
    Lined up with their backs against the truck cab, the kids were al redheaded and obviously related. They grinned at Piper and Ian, then waved shyly. Her il mood dissolved like sugar in water.
    “Looks like a great place to raise kids,” Ian observed.
    Piper noticed he was thumbing his wedding ring while they waited for the light to turn. Did he have children? Probably, she thought, grabbing a fry.
    “I suppose,” she mumbled, feeling a little queasy. She always ate too fast—a bad habit developed in the lab.
    “Did you grow up here?”
    She shook her head as they began moving again. “No—I grew up in Westin, a few hours