Free A Soft Place to Fall by Barbara Bretton Page A

washing a silk bathrobe in her sink? Surely she could think of
something more interesting for him to do.
    Of course he wasn't really there. Good thing
he was the by-product of three glasses of extremely cheap champagne
because otherwise the fact that she was lying there naked in the
bath tub while a strange man ruined her favorite robe might
actually be something to worry about.
     
     
    #
     
    Sam was no detective but it wasn't hard to
figure out what was going on there. The empty bottle of cheap
champagne, the drained glass on the rim of the tub, candles burning
everywhere, and a tipsy naked woman who was starting to add up the
clues.
    "My robe . . . " She sounded fuzzy, like she
had a mouthful of cotton candy. "Water ruins silk."
    "Yeah?" He tried not to glance her way but he
was, after all, a man and she was naked. "Fire does a better
job."
    "Fire?"
    Talking to someone who'd made short work of a
bottle of bubbly was never easy, not even when the someone in
question was a woman with a body he'd be seeing in his dreams for
the next twenty years. "Not too hard to figure, is it? You have
enough candlepower going here to light the way to Bangor." As far
as he could tell, the belt on her robe had touched the open flame
of a candle and things went from there.
    "And you --?"
    "You're not going to remember a word of this
later, are you?" he asked, wringing out the sopping wet robe over
the sink. "For the record, you have Max to thank. He knew something
was wrong. I'm just the guy with the prehensile thumbs who did the
breaking and entering."
    She gave him a loopy, dreamy smile. "Kiss Max
for me."
    Looking at her was dangerous business. He
redirected his attention to the robe. The left side of the robe was
badly scorched. Another two or three minutes and the entire garment
would have been in flames, followed by the house. Maybe Max did
deserve a kiss.
    He held up the robe to show her. "Not much
point to saving this."
    Her eyelids fluttered open. "I love that
robe."
    "Not any more you don't."
    She sighed deeply and lifted a bare foot,
toes pointed. "New beginnings," she said. "Lots of 'em today." She
frowned slightly, as if she were trying to focus in on just one of
him. "Goodnight."
    "That's it?" He started to laugh. "No 'thanks
for saving my life' or 'who the hell are you'?"
    "Too sleepy . . . some other time." She
closed her eyes and started to slip beneath the surface of the
water.
    "C'mon, don't do that –" What choice did he
have? He dropped the robe in the sink then tried to find the least
incendiary part of her slippery wet body to grab hold of. There
wasn't one. He slid his hands under her arms and pulled her against
his chest, trying to pretend she wasn't round and soft and naked.
Her head dropped against his shoulder. He could feel her breath
against the side of his neck. Hell, he could feel it everywhere.
Her long curly hair was wet and smelled of shampoo. He wondered how
it would feel, spilling across his bare chest while she straddled
him.
    Dangerous ground. He'd never taken advantage
of a woman and he wasn't about to start now, even if his mind was
taking him places he hadn't been in a long time.
    Somehow he managed to get her to loop an arm
around his neck long enough for him to scoop her out of the
tub.
    She murmured something then nuzzled closer
and he struggled to hang on to his rapidly shredding sense of all
that was right and decent. The connection he had felt when he first
saw her leaning over her shopping cart in the parking lot was
nothing compared to the powerful desire that was wreaking havoc on
him.
    "What the hell am I going to do with you?" he
said aloud.
    He had saved her from fire and drowning. All
he had to do now was save her from himself.
    The cottage was tiny and ten steps later he
found himself in the doorway to a bedroom that seemed to be all bed
and no room. A beautiful sleigh bed, the wood smooth and unstained,
rose up from the polished floor like something from a Russian fairy
tale. Two black