He nodded. “Sure.”
She was silent during the drive back to her place. Dusk was falling, and it seemed to have thrown a dark shadow over her. Over them.
As they neared her apartment, she said, “You can just drop me off in front.”
“Not in this lifetime,” he told her.
“There’s a doorman on duty.”
“Not good enough,” he said.
“Joe, I…don’t want or need to be protected.”
“And I won’t work this case unless you’re careful and take every precaution.”
She lifted her hands in a gesture of futility.
He parked the car, and walked with her past the doorman and the security guard on duty downstairs, and then up to her apartment.
When she opened her door, he just stood in the hallway, inhaling the scent of her perfume, light and evocative of summer breezes somewhere far from Manhattan.
Like the scent of her hair. Clean and inviting…
“You have to stop sleeping with her, you know,” she told him softly, turning to face him.
“What?”
“Leslie.”
“I never slept with Leslie,” he heard himself say, and his words were far more curt than he had intended.
“But she’s haunting you anyway,” she said.
“Leslie is dead. Like Matt,” he said.
“And I’m alive because of her,” she said.
He shook his head. “I’m not sleeping with Leslie, even in my dreams,” he said.
He was surprised when a slight smile curved her lips. “No?”
“No.”
“You’re sure?”
He frowned. “Gen…this is awkward.”
“It shouldn’t be,” she whispered, something he couldn’t define in her tone.
He shook his head, feeling lost, a little bit confused and more than a little bit dazed by the scent of her perfume, her hair…her nearness.
What was there not to like about Genevieve?
What was there not to want about Genevieve?
Blue eyes, intelligent, direct, seductive, alluring…That hair, like dark auburn fire, as soft as silk. Her height, her shape, slim and perfectly curved. She was erotic and enticing, everything God had intended for a woman to be, but he had somehow kept his distance in the past because…
Because of everything she had been through.
He suddenly felt as if he couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, but he tried. “I…I cared about Leslie, yes. Very much. But she was still in love with Matt. And now…I like to think that they’re together now.” He hadn’t realized that he was touching her, but he was. His hands were on her shoulders. And she was close, actually leaning against him. He could feel the warmth of her. Every breath he took was filled with the scent of her.
“So you’re really not sleeping with her in your dreams?” she whispered.
“No.”
“Then maybe you want to sleep with me. In the flesh.”
Oh, Lord.
“Genevieve…”
He felt alive in a way he hadn’t felt in what seemed like eons. Fire was racing through his veins. He could feel her heartbeat. Her every breath.
“Gen…after everything you’ve been through…”
She clutched his hand, bringing it to her heart, her breast. “I’m alive, Joe. I’m not broken, not dead and I need to feel alive. Please…” She winced, almost backing away from him, but he wouldn’t let her. “Talk about awkward. Here I am, throwing myself at you, and you’re turning me down. I’m sorry. You don’t have to—”
Enough.
He bent and kissed her. At first she was surprised. Then his mouth softened over hers, and she responded, rising on her toes, pressing against his body. Each cell in his body seemed to feel her slightest touch. Her mouth parted beneath his, wide, wet, deliciously decadent. She kissed with her tongue, erotic and sweet, the kind of thing that made a man forget everything in the world except her kiss. And she was still holding his hand against her breast. He kept kissing her, tasting her lips, playing with her tongue, seductive, suggestive….
He picked her up. She was tall for a woman, but small against his size. He knew the layout of her apartment and carried her to her bedroom, where he simply placed her on the bed, before lying down beside her.