Free Who Do You Trust? by Melissa James Page A

of seeing how badly adults can behave from their mother, and Jenny was just starting to warm to him, seeing him as a friend of the family. If he blew it now, family harmony could be ruined for the next decade—that was, if Lissa ever let her barriers down enough to show him what the hell was going on to make her back off from his proposal as if he was the devil incarnate.
    “I booked the table at Bob’s for you.”
    The cool, gentle voice turned the refreshing water around him to a seething cauldron, scalding him from the inside out. He turned to her, hoping the instant fire in his body from just hearing her voice didn’t show in his eyes. He had enough to do, fighting her current demons without adding more to it.
    But she’d brushed her hair, falling over her shoulders in a cascade of sun-kissed honey; and the simple sundress she wore, with spaghetti-thin straps and gently molded bodice, fanned flame to bushfire as wild and unstoppable as the statewide burn he’d helped fight in ’94. Dumping fifty choppers full of water had barely touched ’em—and the coldest of showers wouldn’t douse the heat blazing through him now.
    Keep it cool and friendly. You can do it. You always did before. “Thanks.” He barely managed not to croak. “What time?”
    He watched Lissa’s tension fade with his prosaic remark. “Six. Jenny’s usually in bed by seven-thirty.”
    “Sounds good.” He hauled himself out of the pool and reached for a towel. “C’mon, kids. Better start getting ready. I need to iron my clothes, if that’s okay
    “Uh, yeah. Um, fine. I…”
    Her voice had a strangled tone to it—the suffocated sound of a woman in sexual thrall. He looked up from toweling himself to find Lissa’s gaze fixed on his bare chest. Then it traveled over every part of his bare skin, slow and dazed, her lips parted, her eyes a dark, stormy gray. She seemed mesmerized by him, head to foot. The delicate flush from the line of her bodice to her cheek told him exactly where her thoughts were.
    Same place his were, every time he looked at her, or even thought about her.
    The pool. The bed. Hell, the floor or the paddock where they’d talked so often as kids. Cool, slippery loving, heated sex in tangled sheets…the untamed mating of mustangs in the wild. Any or all of the above, so long as it was just them: Mitch and Lissa and nothing between.
    “Yeah.” He moved the towel, opening it a little wider to reveal more of his body, reveling in her fascinated stare, the rushes of air he could hear moving in and out of her sweet lips. As her eyes caressed his swim trunks—and the obvious arousal beneath—her tongue delicately moistened her mouth, slow and sensual, and he struggled to hold in the groan of painful glory. She was so aroused, so lost in wonder just looking at him, she was all but unconscious of it—and reminding her now would only send her running again. “Where should I do it?” he asked softly.
    “In my room,” she whispered, then blinked, as if thinking, What am I saying? But she didn’t retract it—and hope soared inside him. He wanted her so much he was in pain.
    Would she come silently to him in the night, bring him to her bed? Or take his hand and lead him out to make love in a warm summer night, in a paddock lit with a million stars?
    “Silly Mummy,” Jenny giggled. “Why would he put the iron in your room? It wouldn’t fit in with the bed there!”
    He watched Lissa shake herself. “Oh. Of course. Silly me.” Dull color replaced the sweet, sensual flush of moments before. She clapped her hands, reverting to the in-control mother. “Go in and get ready kids, or we’ll be late for our pizza.”
    “Yeah! Pizza!” All three bolted to their rooms.
    She turned to him, with the first genuine smile she’d given him all day. “We have a spare room. It’s next to mine. I’m in Mum and Dad’s old room. Yours is my old room. You remember. Take your bags and change in there. You’ll stay with us