Free Breaking the Rules by Suzanne Brockmann Page A

to shower before she had sex with them.
    But that was okay. Clean was fine. It was good.
    “How about we both take one after dinner?” he said, and her relief was nearly palpable.
    The kitchen was all a maddeningly cheery yellow—and again, everything freaking matched. The only thing missing was a sign saying ZANELLA, LEAVE NOW, BEFORE YOU MAKE A TERRIBLE MISTAKE .
    “That sounds … nice,” she said.
    Nice? Was she kidding? But no, she was just nervous. That made two of them.
    “So,” he said, searching for something to say. “You collect bears.”
    She smiled. “It’s silly, I know, but my cousin’s kids started sending them to me and … They get me one wherever they go.”
    “That’s nice,” he said, and God, now he was doing it, too. But itwas true. It
was
nice. This apartment was nice. Cynthia was nice. Her family was nice. Nice, nice, nice.
    “Have you lived here long?” he tried.
    “Four—no, five years now,” she told him as she handed him a glass of wine that she’d poured for him. She
was
lovely, with a body that filled the T-shirt and jeans she had on in a very satisfying way. “I was here for two years before I finally got my things out of storage. Thank God. That was hard, living out of suitcases …”
    “For me a suitcase is a luxury,” Izzy said, taking a sip. Damn, it was so sweet he nearly gagged.
    “That’s terrible,” she said. “You must get so tired of it.”
    “No, actually,” he said. “It’s the way I … like to roll.” Seriously? Had he just said
like to roll
?
    But she was giving him hero-worship eyes again, and he knew that the shower-after-dinner thing was optional. She was ready and willing to do him right here on the kitchen table.
    Of course the wine she was chugging was probably adding to her super-friendly
do me even if you’re grubby
factor. She poured herself another healthy glass and drank about half of it in one fortifying gulp as she turned to stir what looked like a mix of onions and mushrooms that were sautéing in a pan on the stove. The chicken was cooking on one of those little George Foreman grills, plugged into a power adapter to make it compatible with the German electrical system.
    Lettuce and other vegetables for a salad were out on the counter and Izzy said, “Oh, good, let me help,” mostly in an effort to put down that god-awful glass of wine.
    “Oh, thanks,” she said. “The knives are—”
    “I got it,” he said, already finding one—it had a yellow handle, natch—and reaching to take a cutting board from where it hung on the wall. He started to cut up a pepper.
    “Whenever the teddy bear count gets to ten,” she told him, “I take them over to the soldiers at the hospital. The kids send me about one a week, so it doesn’t take long.”
    “That’s nice,” Izzy said, mentally wincing at his word choice asthey fell back into an awkward silence. It was then that he noticed a framed photo of what had to be Cynthia, pre-kindergarten, with her parents. “Are you an only child?”
    “I am now,” she said. “My little brother died in Iraq, back in 2003.”
    Ah, crap. “I’m sorry,” Izzy said.
    “It’s been … hard,” she said. Understatement of the century.
    And Izzy put down the knife, because come on. There was no way he was going to have sex with this woman and walk away. Which meant there was no way he was going to have sex with her, period, the end, because walking away was a given.
    “So,” he said as he turned to face her, leaning back against the counter. “I saw the birthday cards and, um, I’m just kind of thinking, you know, turning thirty can be kind of hard for some people. Traumatic, even. Some people go a little crazy. Do things they normally wouldn’t do …”
    She laughed. “Well, that’s me. Because I never do this.” She looked up from stirring what had become a very decadent-smelling sauce to smile ruefully at him. “Never.”
    No shit, Sherlock. “I can understand you wanting