Free Together Again: Book 3 in the Second Chances series (Crimson Romance) by Peggy Bird

with dove gray walls and blonde hardwood floors. Minimal furnishings with a masculine style graced the living room: a black leather modular couch on two walls with a low glass table in front of it. In the dining area, a small table on a white and black area rug with two chairs.
    She was immediately drawn to the far side of the room where a sliding glass door opened onto a balcony that stretched across the entire length of the apartment’s outside wall with a tiny bit of the statue of Billy Penn on top of City Hall visible from one corner. Coming back into the room she said, “This is wonderful. It feels, I don’t know, serene, peaceful, almost Zen-like.”
    “That’s what Mary Ellen said I needed.”
    “I forgot, she’s an interior designer, isn’t she? She did a great job.”
    “I’ll tell her you liked it.” Gesturing toward a short hallway, he said, “Here, I’ll give you the thirty-second tour of the rest.”
    He pointed out a half-bath and a small room furnished with a desk, computer and file cabinet as well as a weight machine. Then he took her suitcase into his bedroom and put it on an armless rocking chair Margo remembered from his mother’s house. A king-size bed with half a dozen pillows and a comforter with thin stripes in shades of gray, black and white and a long double dresser half-covered in family photos with a mirror over it were the only other pieces of furniture in the room.
    With her back to him, she opened her bag and tried to decide what she should do next. It’s not like she had a ton of experience spending weekends in men’s apartments. Did you unpack? Wait for instructions? What? She picked up her toiletries bag, feeling awkward.
    He seemed to read her thoughts. “Why don’t you put that in the bathroom? You can share with me or you can have the little one to yourself, although the only shower’s in here.”
    “Sharing’s fine, thanks.”
    In the master bath, she saw that he had not only cleared space on the vanity for her but had put out an extra glass and clean towels. That and the smell of clean linen in the bedroom, as if he’d changed the sheets, too, calmed her.
    Before she could decide what to do next, he took her in his arms saying, “You’ve been a major distraction today. I kept looking at my watch, wanting the day to be over so I could see you, hoping I had a chance to do this again.” The kiss went from zero-to-sixty in two seconds flat, picking up where they left off the night before as though it was only minutes ago. It took her breath away and turned her insides all soft and wet.
    “You were pretty distracting today, too,” she said when she could breathe again.
    “Good distracting like this,” he said as he surfed his hands down her back, moving her close against him and covering her neck with kisses. “Or bad distracting like worried I was about to ditch you.”
    “Some of both. Well, maybe mostly the latter. I thought maybe you’d say it would be better to go back to the way we were before.”
    He drew her hands up onto his shoulders. “There’s no going back, sugar.”
    She started to kiss him again then stopped. “Why do you call me that? I mean, I love it but it’s so Southern and South Philly hardly counts as Southern.”
    He gently kissed her lips. “You’ve always tasted sweet when I kissed you. I thought it was some kind of lip-stuff you wore until last night.” He began to unbuckle her belt. “Now I know you taste sweet everyplace.”
    She smiled at him, knowing in advance the answer to the question she was about to ask. “What exactly are you doing, Tony?”
    Dropping the belt on the bed, he unzipped her linen pants. “It’s hot in here. Don’t you think you have too many clothes on?”

Chapter 8
    A while later, he came out of the bathroom dressed only in a pair of cutoff jeans that rode on his hips and cupped his butt almost as closely as she had recently done with her hands. She was in a T-shirt and bikini panties hanging up her