Free Best-Kept Lies by Lisa Jackson Page B

to the porch, managed to unlock the door and snap on the interior lights. She almost wished Kurt was inside waiting for her again. But that was crazy. Nuts! She couldn’t trust herself around that man.
    “You’re an idiot,” she muttered, seeing her reflection in the mirror mounted by the coatrack in the front hall. Her hair was damp and curly with the rain, her cheeks flushed, her eyes bright. “This is just what got you into trouble in the first place.” She dropped her computer and bag near her desk, shook herself out of her coat and heard a pickup roaring into the lot. Her silly heart leaped, but a quick glance through the kitchen window confirmed that Striker had returned. He was already out of the truck and headed toward the condo.
    She met him at the front door.
    “You don’t seem to take a hint, do you?” she teased.
    “Careful, woman, I’m not in the mood to have my chain yanked,” he warned. “Traffic was a bitch.”
    He was inside in a second and bolted the door behind him. “I don’t like it when you try to lose me.”
    “And I don’t like being manhandled.” She started unpacking groceries, stuffing a carton of milk into the near-empty refrigerator.
    “I kissed you.”
    “On the street, when I obviously didn’t want you to.”
    One of his eyebrows lifted in disbelief. “You didn’t want it?” He snorted. “I’d love to see what you were like when you did.”
    “That was last night,” she reminded him, then mentally kicked herself. Lifting a hand, she stopped any argument he might have. “Let’s not talk about last night.”
    He kicked out a bar stool and plopped himself at the counter that separated the kitchen from the living room. “Okay, but there is something we need to discuss.”
    She braced herself. “Which is?”
    “Sam Donahue.”
    “Another off-limits subject.” She pulled a loaf of bread from the wet sack.
    “I don’t think so. We’ve wasted enough time as it is and I’m getting sick of you not being straight with me.”
    “I should never have told you.”
    He shot her a condemning look. “I’d already guessed, remember?” He took a deep breath and ran stiff fingers through his hair. “You got any wood for that?” he asked, hitching his chin toward the fireplace.
    “A little. In a closet on the back deck.”
    “Get me a beer, I’ll make a fire and then, whether you like it or not, we’re going to discuss your ex-lover.”
    “Gee,” she mocked, “and who said single womendon’t have any fun? You know, Striker, you’ve got a helluva nerve to barge in here and start barking orders. Just because…because of what happened last night, you don’t have the right to start bossing me around in my own home.”
    “You’re right,” he said without a trace of regret carved into his features. “Would you please get me a beer and I’ll get the firewood.”
    “I might be out of beer. I didn’t pick any up at the store.”
    “There’s one left. In the door of the fridge. I checked earlier.” The empty bottle on the coffee table stood as testament to that very fact.
    “When you practiced breaking and entering,” she muttered as he kicked back the stool and made his way to the deck. She opened the refrigerator again and saw the single long-neck in the door. The guy was observant. But still a bully who had barged unwelcome into her life. A sexy bully at that. Her worst nightmare.
    She yanked out the last beer, twisted off the top and, as he carried in a couple of chunks of oak to the fire, took a long swallow. The least he could do was share, she decided, watching as he bent on the tiled hearth, his jacket and shirt riding up over his belt and jeans, offering her the view of a slice of his taut, muscular back. Her throat was suddenly dry as dust and she took another pull from the long-neck. What the hell was she going to do with him? She’d already bared her soul and her body, then, after insisting that she wasn’t interested in him, kissed him on the