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

suit.
    As he walked past, she waylaid him with a smile. “This guy I used to go down the shore with wore cutoffs like that. I always thought he was trying to show off his body.”
    “Maybe he thought it would put the idea in your head to show off yours.”
    “I was in a bikini. What more could he want?”
    He fake-leered at her. “By now you’ve figured it out, I assume.”
    She combed her fingers through the cloud of dark fur on his chest and down the line of hair to his navel, which she tickled before hooking her fingers under the waistband of his cutoffs.
    Dropping a kiss on her head, he took both her hands in his. “If you want dinner you better not go any further. You’re distracting me. Seriously.”
    She squinted at him, as if thinking hard. “And it smells wonderful, like I remember your mother’s kitchen smelled. But you offer me a difficult choice. Do I want to eat pasta cooked by a good Italian cook or do I want to distract a hunky guy. I can’t decide. I want both.”
    “You can have both, but first I think I should feed you. You get cranky when you’re hungry. And is that how you describe me to your friends? A hunky guy?”
    “No, I say you’re an old friend.”
    “I like hunky guy better.”
    “I’ll think about it. Although all they’d have to do is see you like this and words wouldn’t be necessary.”
    He looked behind her, diverted by something. “You don’t wear this under those lawyer suits of yours, do you?” He reached around and came back with a black lace demi-bra dangling from one finger.
    She snatched it back from him. “Yes, sometimes.”
    “Jesus, I’m sorry I know that. If I was ever a witness for you in court, I wouldn’t be able to get my testimony straight thinking about what you had on underneath your jacket.”
    “No one in their right mind would let me prosecute a case you were involved in, detective. Not after this weekend. I think you’re safe.”
    “Thank God.” He pulled on a T-shirt and started for the kitchen. “Ten minutes to dinner. You might want to put some clothes on.” And he disappeared from the bedroom.
    After she donned jeans, she followed and was assigned the job of finding music to accompany their meal. She perused his CD collection finding the Springsteen, U2 and Italian opera she expected and some of the same jazz she had, but it was Andrea Bocelli she put on. He approved, but took the fifth when she asked if it was the music he used to seduce women.
    After a dinner of pasta with his mother’s marinara sauce, a tossed salad and bread, they moved to the couch. They sat for several hours finishing up a bottle of Chianti Classico talking comfortably, like Tony and Margo, the friends of a thousand years, not awkwardly like lovers of only one day.
    Until he said, “Okay, there’s something else I need to say to you,” and she felt tension return to her shoulders. He must have seen it because he said, “It’s nothing bad. It’s more like a confession.”
    “Doesn’t that require a priest?”
    “If I started with a priest tonight, I might still be with him the next time you came back to Philly. No, this is something I have to confess to you.” He took a sip of wine. “It … ah … wasn’t your mom’s idea to sign you up for the reunion. It was mine.”
    “Yours? Why?”
    “Mary Ellen’s wedding reception. Our unfinished business.”
    She looked down into the wine glass. “I half expected you to call or email me after that.”
    “When I went back to the room and you weren’t there, I figured you’d changed your mind. I wasn’t sure you wanted to hear from me. I decided I’d start over the next time you were in town, maybe cook dinner for you, like tonight. But I was in D.C. when you were here in April. Then the announcement about the reunion arrived. I told Dolores about it and she said … ”
    “She always wants me to do something other than take care of things for her when I come to Philly but I never do.”
    “Heard that