Free Hideaway by Rochelle Alers Page A

to marry her,” he repeated with emphasis. “But I need to know what happened between her and Owen Lawson.”
    “There’s not much to tell,” she whispered. “Parris met him when she was eighteen. Her car blew a tire one night and he came along and helped her fix it. He was off-duty so she didn’t know he was a police officer. He took down her plate number and got her address through DMV. As a cop he had his ways of securing her unlisted telephone number and he called the next day. They dated a few times that summer and I thought it was over when we went back to Savannah for the fall semester.
    “But whenever he had time off he drove up to see her. He was a lot older than she was and even I had to admit that he was very, very charming. He asked her to marry him and a few months after she graduated they were married. I felt she should’ve waited to marry him because she still was very broken up over losing her mother in a horrible car crash. But Owen didn’t want to wait so they married and a month later it was over. She had to grieve twice, Martin. The breakup of her marriage and her mother’s death.”
    “You don’t have to worry about her anymore, Brittany. I’ll take care of her and make her very, very happy.”
    She stared at him as if he’d grown two heads. “Those were the exact words Owen said the day he married her.”
    Martin’s jaw hardened. Taking care of someone was not the same as trying to kill them, he thought.
    He released Brittany’s hand and smiled over her head at Jon. Jon’s dark blue eyes were sparkling with excitement and his face was flushed from several glasses of champagne.
    Raising his own glass of champagne, Martin saluted Jon before he drained the glass. He couldn’t wait for the wedding reception to end so he could take Parris home.

Chapter 7
     
    P arris danced through the front door, curtsying deeply to Martin. “You owe me a dance, Mr. Cole.”
    Martin closed the door, took her in his arms and waltzed her over the living room floor, humming.
    “You hum nicely, but how about putting on some music?” she suggested, staring at the waning sunlight coming through the windows.
    He noted the dreamy expression on her face. “What’s your pleasure?” Martin spun her around and around until she begged him to stop. Grasping her hand firmly, he led her over to the shelves of compact discs and cassettes. “Something slow, fast or a little salsa?”
    “Salsa.”
    He retrieved a cassette and inserted it in a tape deck, then removed the jacket to his tuxedo before he pushed the play button. Tossing the jacket across the room, he swung Parris against his body, molding her breasts to his chest.
    “You’ve chosen the dance of passion and fire,” he whispered, lowering his head until his warm breath swept over her mouth. “Are you familiar with passion, Parris?”
    Staring up at him, she nodded mutely. She had glimpsed passion the few times he’d kissed her.
    “How about the fire?”
    “No. Not the fire,” she admitted breathlessly.
    The slow rhythmic pounding of conga drums filled the living room and Martin moved fluidly to the beat as she followed his expert lead.
    She felt the muscles in his thighs flexing and unflexing with each step. Closing her eyes, she floated with him as their bodies were joined, chest to knees, swaying and calling to each other.
    The two glasses of champagne simmered in her blood and she felt the rising inferno coming from Martin and spreading to her until she wilted in the heat.
    Her slender arms moved from his shoulders to his strong neck and she held onto him like a straw tossed on an ocean wave.
    Registering her feminine heat and the rising scent of her body, Martin pulled her closer, trying to absorb her into himself. He was certain she could hear his increased respiration and feel the hardness he was helpless to control. His fire and passion were raging and spreading—out of control, and he did to her what he didn’t do the first time he tasted