Free All Night Long by Candace Schuler Page B

she kept the coffee.
    Matt's hand closed over hers on the white ceramic knob, as if he had inadvertently raised his hand at the same moment. "Can I help?" he asked innocently.
    Susannah swallowed nervously. She slipped her hand from under his and backed away a step, coming smack up against the refrigerator door. "Why don't you go and put on some music?" she suggested. "My audio system is in the armoire." She lifted a hand, gesturing toward the living area.
    Matt caught it in his. "Are you afraid of me, Susannah?"
    "No, of course not."
    "Nervous, then?"
    "No," she lied.
    He rubbed his thumb over the back of her hand, slowly, as if testing its softness—and her veracity.
    "Okay, maybe." She gave a noncommittal little shrug, trying to be blasé about the warm tingles of sensation zinging up her arm. "A little," she admitted reluctantly, then gave him a stern look. "But only because you're crowding me."
    Matt laughed softly. Triumphantly. He took a half a step back. "There's no need to be nervous," he assured her, and lifted her hand to his mouth. "Not tonight, anyway," he added, and pressed a warm kiss into her palm.
    It took all of Susannah's considerable willpower to keep from curling her hand into the heat of his kiss.
    His blue eyes gleamed wickedly, as if he knew just how much self-control it was costing her to appear unmoved. "Tonight, I'm on my best behavior."
    Susannah couldn't help but smile at that. "And I'm Mother Teresa," she said dryly. She pulled her hand out of his grasp. "Go put on some music and let me make the espresso."
    He hesitated a moment, just long enough for her to wonder if he was going to be difficult. And then he sighed, theatrically, like a small boy who had been denied a longed-for treat, and went to do as she'd bid him. Susannah was still smiling as she measured coffee into the stainless-steel filter. She'd often heard that good trial lawyers were part actor. Now she believed it.
    "What would you like to hear?" Matt asked a few moments later. "Rod Stewart, Unplugged? Frank Sinatra, The Columbia Years? Or Willie Nelson's Greatest Hits?"
    Susannah lifted two delicate demitasse cups down from the cupboard. She dropped a brown sugar cube into each one. "You choose," she said and pressed the start button on the espresso machine. It rumbled and thumped and hissed noisily, finally spewing forth a stream of thick rich coffee into the waiting cups. When the cups were full and she finally turned the machine off, her ears were filled with the sound of Ol' Blue Eyes crooning love songs from the Big Band era. Great. "Lemon peel?" she asked, raising her voice to be heard above the music.
    "Sounds good," Matt said.
    Susannah took that to be a reference to the lemon peel and not the music swirling through the room. She gave the tiny piece of lemon a deft twist and dropped it into his cup. Placing it on a tray next to her own, she took a quick breath, picked up the tray and sailed into the living area with as much aplomb as she could muster.
    "Here, let me help you with that," Matt said, standing up to take the tray from her as she rounded the corner of the sofa.
    Some of her aplomb abruptly faded away. While she'd been busy preparing the espresso, he'd been busy making himself right at home. He'd switched on the gas fireplace so that firelight flickered cheerily off the marble mantel and struck flashing shards of light off the leopard's rhinestone choker. He'd found the brandy and placed two oversize snifters side-by-side on the pale pink lacquered surface of her coffee table, with two fingers of amber liquid in each. He'd located the dimmer switch that controlled the frosted sconces and turned down the lights to a soft glow against the amethyst walls.
    He'd also found the time to take off his suit coat and tie, leaving her to stare at a broad chest and shoulders that looked at least a yard wide under the soft white cotton of his custom-made shirt. The hands that reached out for her tray were strong and tanned,