Free Too Hot to Handle by Aleah Barley

neighbors in Black Palm Park, and they paid attention. How else would they get to be the first with a juicy piece of gossip down at the country club? The police should have been able to compile a rough sketch, but so far, they’d come up dry.
    “You stole something, didn’t you?”
    “I didn’t steal something. I took something.”
    She was splitting hairs, and they both knew it. “You stole something important. From Logan Burrows.”
    Honey flinched like she’d been slapped. “I don’t steal things. Not anymore. How could you even think that? I took it, and I never took anything from Logan Burrows.”
    “Was it a car?” It had to have been a car to catch Honey’s interest after so many years. Grand theft auto was the first of her sins. She had an addiction to speed and mayhem that she’d never be able to break.
    He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to block out the pounding in his head. “I can’t believe I’m sitting here with a criminal. I thought you were the victim. I can’t believe—”
    He couldn’t believe he’d practically had sex with her, or that he still wanted to. Even knowing she was up to no good.
    “I am the victim,” she insisted. “My house burned down. Anyway, I didn’t steal anything. It was already stolen.”
    “What the hell are you talking about?”
    “Last week, Logan came to me. Someone had stolen a car from him, and he didn’t have the skills he needed to retrieve it. I tracked her down to a chop shop in West Hollywood.”
    “Her?” Leave it to Honey to give a car a gender. The damn thing probably had a name, too.
    “Cars like that are always female.” Honey began to put the first aid kit away. One leg was curled under her body, the other dangled in front of her. “Temperamental, unpredictable, and sexy.”
    “Uh-huh.”
    Honey’s brow furrowed slightly. Her lips pulled up into a silent snarl.
    Her free leg swung idly. All that skin stretching smooth and golden from her neatly turned ankle to her borrowed T-shirt.
    Jack was finding it hard to focus.
    “So you found out where the car was being stored. You snuck in, and you took it.”
    “I told you, I don’t steal anymore, and I don’t sneak. I asked. Nicely.” Back and forth, her leg moved in time with the rhythm of her words. “A little sweet talk, a case of beer, and the owner handed me the keys. Easiest job I ever pulled.”
    “Wait, some greaser just gave you the keys? And all you did was flirt?”
    But it made sense. Honey could flirt like nobody’s business. If she asked him for his keys—staring up at him with those big green eyes and fluttering ginger lashes—he’d probably hand them over without a fight, too.
    But she’d never ask. She didn’t need car keys. Not for the Super Bee.
    “Why didn’t you hot-wire the car?”
    “Because the keys belonged with the car. Because I was paid twenty thousand dollars to find her and get her back to Logan without a scratch. I didn’t even drive the damn thing. I loaded her onto the back of my truck and brought her home. Without a scratch.”
    Twenty thousand dollars wasn’t a fortune, not in Black Palm Park, but it was a lot of money in Honey’s part of the city. Enough to keep her in spark plugs, funky T-shirts, and ice cream for years. Even so, he didn’t believe there was enough money in the world to keep her from driving a car—especially the kind of car that earned a twenty-thousand-dollar retrieval fee.
    “Twenty thousand bucks? What was it, a Rolls-Royce? A Lamborghini? The actual Aston Martin used in the filming of Goldfinger ?”
    “A Volvo.”
    “A Volvo?” Jack couldn’t keep the laughter from pouring out of him, though it hurt to laugh. All this trouble for a car that any soccer mom would be happy to drive.
    “What was so special about it? Was it made out of solid gold?”
    “Fiberglass and polyester. Baby blue finish. Leather interior.”
    “That’s a lot of money for a Volvo. You didn’t think anything was hinky?”
    “It’s not