Free The Eligible Suspect by Jennifer Morey

time to realize what was happening. What was about to happen.
    She stiffened as Korbin stepped back, the gray of his eyes drilling her with a fevered stare. He was leaving the choice up to her.
    Except she couldn’t decide what to do next. She was too confused.
    It was enough to cool her passion. She slid off the countertop. How could she have no control when he kissed her? Why couldn’t she stop him?
    Because she didn’t want him to stop....
    When she gathered her wits, she asked, “What happened between you and your wife?” She had to know.
    As she anticipated, that stiffened him and he stepped back, his passion calming with hers. Was it guilt she saw take him over?
    But he seemed to understand why she asked. If this intimacy continued between them, she needed to arm herself with what she was up against.
    “She died. A year ago.”
    Died.
    Not divorced. He’d suffered a terrible loss. Just the look in his eyes convinced her. He’d loved her. Disappointment crushed her. That and self-reproach. She had to learn to listen to her reasoning and be disciplined enough to follow that reasoning. The best way to accomplish that was to arm herself with knowledge. The more evidence she had on his state, and how that state made him a bad choice, the more empowered she’d be to control her feelings.
    “What was her name?” she asked.
    “Niya. I met her in college, when I started my PhD.”
    He had a PhD? She followed his rugged form over to the wood-burning stove, sexy and masculine and made for the outdoors. Sitting on the sofa, she watched him add more wood to the fire.
    “She graduated with a degree in English and got a job teaching middle-school kids,” he said. “I always thought she was too normal for me.”
    “Why too normal?”
    After closing the stove door, he turned to her, still crouched. He didn’t have to reply. He’d helped his friend steal. His wife was an innocent schoolteacher.
    “How long were you married?”
    “Eight years.”
    That was a long time. “Did she get sick?”
    Korbin stood and came over to the sofa, sitting down beside her with a heavy sigh. “No.”
    “How did she die?”
    He stared ahead without answering. She doubted he’d spoken to anyone about this. But if she hadn’t been sick, how had she died?
    “Was it an accident?” she asked, trying to help him in what must be a painful thing to talk about.
    After several seconds he finally said in a low, pained voice, “Yes. She shouldn’t have died. She had so much life in her.”
    Grief racked him. Instead of reaffirming her need to keep a distance, she felt great empathy for him. His loss. After a year he hadn’t made much progress.
    “You must have loved her,” she said, needing to hear him say it, to prove to her that he was too broken for a new relationship, one with her, another person who was too broken for one.
    He gave a brief nod. “I would have spent the rest of my life with her.”
    There it was. He couldn’t have chosen more convincing words. Although grief had a way of elevating the deceased to divine heights, Korbin had loved his wife as fully as a man could.
    She averted her gaze, finding the glow of fire through the glass of the stove comforting.
    “She was nothing like you,” he said.
    Both that he continued to talk and what he’d said surprised her. She turned back to him.
    “Oh?”
    “She depended on me for a lot of things and never wanted to be left alone.”
    Savanna depended on no one and loved being alone. “Maybe that’s why men never stick around.”
    “It would take a strong one.”
    Like him.
    Thinking that her fiancé had ruined their engagement because he wasn’t strong enough to handle her independence was a lot better than feeling unloved. She’d loved her fiancé and she’d loved someone else after him. Neither had loved her.
    “Being alone doesn’t bother me, but I could be alone with a man.” The way they were right now. She couldn’t stop these thoughts. He was strong enough