Free Hot Schemes by Sherryl Woods Page B

thought ruefully, as she examined the odd patches of space here and there on the king-size bed. He’d taken his side of the bed in the middle. She stood for a long time, just drinking in the sight of all that leanly-muscled masculinity. The perfection had been seriously marred by the explosion. Stitched gashes and bright bruises were stark testimony to his close call.
    Sighing, she finally plucked up the alarm clock from beside the bed, quietly closed the door, and crept back downstairs for her own desperately needed nap.
    She set the clock for two thirty. It was barely more than twenty-four hours since she and Michael had begun worrying that something had happened to Tío Miguel. It seemed like a lifetime ago, a lifetime crammed with emotional extremes.
    As she curled up on Michael’s oversize cream-colored sofa with its plump pillows, she realized there was no way of knowing how long it might be before either of them slept again.

CHAPTER
SEVEN
    Molly was awakened not by the alarm clock, but by the sound of voices. No, not
voices
. One very loud, angry voice. Michael’s.
    She glanced at the clock and saw that it was just after two o’clock. Groaning, she turned off the alarm before its shrill could join the commotion from upstairs and buried her face in a pillow. She indulged in a moment’s regret that it had been the clock, not the phone she had removed from his room. She felt dull and headachy, not rested at all. Michael, on the other hand, seemed to have found the energy to yell. His voice carried through the townhouse.
    “What the hell do you mean, they’re calling off the search? My uncle could be dying out there.”
    There was a brief lull, then, “Thunder storms? Who gives a shit? I don’t care if a goddamned hurricane is brewing, I want those planes to cover every square inch of water in the straits.”
    Molly dragged herself off the sofa. Obviously she needed to get upstairs and explain the concept of winning friends and influencing people to Michael before he alienated the only people actually searching for his uncle.
    She found him sitting on the side of his bed, clothed only in those brightly patterned boxer shorts, lines of exhaustion still etched on his face. He barely even glanced at her as she sat down next to him.
    Acting instinctively, she put her hand on his bare shoulder in a gesture meant to soothe. It might not have soothed, but it definitely got his attention. Obviously, a woman’s hand on his naked flesh was to Michael what a red cape was to a bull—the start of something. Heat flared in his eyes.
    “Yeah, yeah, I understand,” he muttered distractedly.
    His gaze locked with Molly’s. She burned under the intensity of his scrutiny. She decided that just maybe he’d gotten the wrong idea.
    Or the right idea at the wrong time, to be perfectly honest about it.
    He hung up, his gaze still so hot it could melt icier resolve than Molly’s.
    “What brings you upstairs,
amiga?”
    “The call of the wild,” she replied.
    He looked absolutely fascinated. A spark of purely provocative devilment lit his eyes. “Oh, really?”
    “You were shouting insults at the top of your lungs. I decided drastic measures were called for to mellow you out.”
    “How drastic?”
    She stood up and backed away from temptation. “Well, much as I’d like to stay and demonstrate, isn’t it time we got back to our investigation?”
    “Our investigation?”
    Heady from earlier successful negotiations with the likes of Vince Gates and Hal DeWitt, she decided to test Michael’s limits. “Right. We’re a team. Partners. Remember?”
    His gaze slid over her. “That’s not what I remember. What I remember was inviting you to share my bed.”
    “Michael, has it occurred to you that you have picked a very odd time to decide you want to seduce me?” She actually thought it was a pretty good show of indignation coming from a woman only one heartbeat away from flinging herself into that bed with him.
    He shook