Free The Lawman's Nanny Op by Carla Cassidy Page A

him.
    He got up from the table, as well, and for a moment he forgot why he was here in her house in the middle of the night. He forgot that he’d come here to protect her from some unknown assailant.
    All he could think about was how shiny her hair was in the artificial light overhead and how no other woman’s kisses had ever stirred him the way hers had done. His head filled with the memories of the slide of his hands across her breasts, the throaty moans that had issued from her as she’d helped him with a condom on that night so long ago.
    He’d had an older friend rent the motel room for them and for that single night it hadn’t been a seedy, rented room, but rather a love nest for the two of them to explore the desire that raged out of control between them.
    “Maybe we don’t need the magic. I mean we aren’t kids anymore,” he said as he stepped closer to her. “Aren’t you curious, Portia?” He took another step toward her, close enough now to see the flecks of gold in her eyes, feel her quickened breath on his face.
    He reached out and swept a strand of her silky hair away from her face, then ran his index finger across her lower lip. Fire leaped into her eyes and emboldened him and he didn’t give himself a chance to change his mind, didn’t give her a chance to protest, but rather took her mouth with his in a searing kiss of hunger.
    She stiffened against him, but didn’t step back, didn’t withdraw. As his tongue touched her upper lip and then slid into her mouth, the tenseness left her body and she seemed to melt against him.
    He wrapped his arms around her, his heart crashing wildly in his chest as she entwined her arms around his neck. The kiss grew wilder, hotter, as it continued and she pressed her body against his.
    Kissing her was the same…and yet different than it had been years ago. She felt sweetly familiar in his arms and yet it wasn’t a boy’s desire that swelled up inside him, but rather that of a man.
    His hand slid up her back, reveling in the feel of the cool silk and the radiating heat of her body beneath. His mouth left hers and slid down the length of her neck as he remembered the sensitive spot just behind her ears.
    Her breath caught as he kissed her there and then continued down the length of her throat. She tossed her head back in a familiar gesture from so long ago, and in that moment Caleb knew he’d been mistaken when he’d told himself he’d rarely thought about her over the years, that he’d stopped wanting her long ago.
    She’d never moved completely out of his blood, out of his heart, and at the moment the resentment he’d felt toward her seemed distant and impossible to summon.
    It wasn’t until his hand slid around to cup her breast that she released a small gasp and jumped back from him. Her breasts rose and fell with rapid breaths and her eyes were dark and turbulent.
    “Is this why you came here tonight? You’ve gone through all the other women in town and have now decided to start all over again?”
    Any desire that Caleb felt was doused by the surge of old resentment that sprang alive inside him. He stepped back from her and shoved his hands in his pockets. “You never did understand the kind of man I was…I am.”
    “I’m sorry, Caleb. That was uncalled for,” she said, obviously contrite. “I’m tired and it’s late. Maybe it would be best if we just called it a night.”
    “You go to bed. I’ll just bunk on the sofa for the rest of the night,” he said.
    She nodded and without another word she left the kitchen. Caleb watched her go, his emotions a curious battle between anger and want.
    Had he come here tonight following a need to protect her, or a need for something else altogether? Curiosity, that’s all it had been, he told himself as he left the kitchen. He’d just wondered if that crazy, hot magic they’d once shared would be there again with her.
    And it had…for just a moment as he’d held her in his arms, tasted the sweet