Authors: Aleah Barley
Tags: #detective, #rich man, #bad girl, #Romance, #Suspense, #los angeles, #car thief, #contemporary romance
Too Hot to Handle
Too Hot
to Handle
Aleah Barley
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.
Copyright © 2012 by Aleah Barley. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means. For information regarding subsidiary rights, please contact the Publisher.
Entangled Publishing, LLC
2614 South Timberline Road
Suite 109
Fort Collins, CO 80525
Visit our website at www.entangledpublishing.com.
Edited by Ruth Homrighaus
Cover design by Liz Pelletier
ISBN 978-1-62266-925-7
Manufactured in the United States of America
First Edition May 2012
The author acknowledges the copyrighted or trademarked status and trademark owners of the following wordmarks mentioned in this work of fiction: Walmart, Dodge Super Bee, Styrofoam, Rolls-Royce, Lamborghini, Aston Martin,
Goldfinger
, Volvo Sport, Advil, Snow White, Cinderella,
Baywatch, New York Times, Vogue,
Ford Mustang, Kevlar, BMW.
To Makena and Colin, with much love for your Happily Ever After.
Jack Ogden unlocked the heavy-duty dead bolt on his apartment door and pressed his muscular shoulder against swollen wood, which stuck in the summer heat. The door opened with a sharp jerk that radiated down his arm.
It hurt. Everything hurt.
He was getting old. At thirty, he’d lost the ability to bounce back from a beating. Ten years earlier, he’d been a professional boxer, making a living getting punched in the face. Scraped knuckles and bruised skin. Now all it took was one bar fight to knock him flat on his ass.
He needed a cold beer, some hot food, and about two weeks in bed.
As he stepped over the threshold, his gun slipped out of his shoulder holster into his right hand—the motion practiced, reflexive, an automatic response to some signal he couldn’t place or interpret.
“This is the police,” he called out, pushing the door closed behind him. “And I’m not in the mood.”
Pounding music came up through the floor from the dance club below. Classic rock tonight. Friday. Darkness pooled at the doorway, but light shone at the far end of the hall. Someone was in his apartment. Someone who’d heard about his injury. If they thought entering the apartment while he was injured would save them from his wrath, they were about to find out just how wrong they’d been.
Moving fast, he slipped down the length of the hallway. Common sense said he should wait outside and call for backup, but he’d left common sense behind him an hour ago when he’d checked out of the hospital against his doctors’ advice. If he called for backup, he’d spend the next six hours listening to his commanding officer chew his head off for leaving the hospital without permission. Then someone would call his sister.
He’d rather be dead.
Jack kept moving, letting a surge of adrenaline carry his bruised body into the apartment’s combination living room and kitchen, where the intruder had turned on a light. His eyes swept the room, taking in the familiar blue couch, the big picture windows, the battered kitchen table, and the open freezer door.
His gaze stopped on the panties. They were blue cotton embroidered with shiny circles, and they were wrapped around the heart-shaped ass of a woman bending down to look in his side-by-side freezer.
He’d always been a breast man, but there was something about those multicolored polka dots that made him think he’d been neglecting a vital portion of the female anatomy. Her legs were good, too—long and muscular, just the way he liked them.
She had bare feet. The sight made his breath catch in his throat. Bare feet were for the young and innocent. He really hoped she wasn’t planning to kill him.
“Put your hands up.”
The woman stood, but she didn’t turn around. Her white cotton T-shirt dropped down to skim across those polka dots.
Not polka dots. Lollipops. His heart slammed against his rib cage. Whether this was a reaction to the adrenaline still racing through his veins or the lust washing over him in waves, he couldn’t say.
“Where’s your ice cream?” she asked.
The question was simple, direct, and completely disingenuous. He wanted to ask her what the hell she was doing in his apartment, but when he opened his mouth, different words came out. “I don’t have any ice cream.”
“What kind of a man doesn’t have ice cream?” She closed the freezer door and reached up to snag the box of cookies Jack kept on top of his refrigerator. “If I gain a million pounds, it’s your fault.”
That didn’t make any sense. The blood loss was obviously affecting his mind. “Cookies make you gain weight, but ice cream doesn’t?”
“Ice cream is cold. Your body burns calories to heat it up.”
“That’s insane.” Maybe the blood loss was affecting
her
mind.
Jack stared at the woman’s back. She probably wouldn’t be talking about ice cream if she were planning to kill him. Whoever she was.
He took a few steps forward and set the gun down on the table between them. There was something about her. Standing upright, she was a slightly built thing, much shorter than his solid six foot two. And her hair…a glistening reddish-gold that shone in the flickering light from the street.
Jack knew that hair. It was bright, fiery, but cool to the touch. Always flying everywhere, getting in the way, and then she’d let out a soft sigh before putting it up in a loose ponytail.
“Honey?”
When she didn’t correct him, he let out a long breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. The woman was all kinds of trouble, but she wasn’t a killer. He’d seen her arrest record. Hell, he’d added to it.
“Honey Moore, shouldn’t you be in jail?”
A sharp laugh. “Time off for bad behavior.” She turned around to face him straight on. Wide-set emerald eyes and rosy, bee-stung lips. He remembered those lips, soft and luscious. Permanently pursed, like she was waiting for a kiss. They tasted like cherry cola—or they had the last time he’d kissed her. Cherry cola and fresh-cut fries from the concession stand at the drive-in movie theater.
He’d been sixteen years old, and she’d laughed about it afterward like kissing him was the funniest thing in the world. That night, they’d been two dumb kids who’d snuck in to watch the latest spy thriller. He couldn’t remember what the movie had been, but her hair had smelled like oranges, and her sweater had been soft to the touch.
Honey leaned against the wall, snagging a cookie from the box and devouring it in two neat bites. “Want one?” Her pose against the wall made her back arch and her plump, firm breasts strain against the plain white T-shirt. He wondered if she knew what she was doing.
Probably.
If he were feeling better, he’d take the time to think about that. To wonder what her end game was. At the moment, he just wanted her gone.
Downstairs, the music stopped. The DJ introduced a new song. Jack couldn’t understand what the man was saying, but he recognized the opening chords. Bruce Springsteen. The song took him back to late summer evenings spent listening to music down by the lake, blasting boom box speakers until the neighbors complained. Guns for hire. Dancing in the dark.
Jack swayed. With the adrenaline rush dying down, the pain was coming back. He’d be better off if Honey killed him. Then he wouldn’t have to feel the bruises developing all over his body. The doctor who’d stitched him up had told him he didn’t need a cast, but he definitely shouldn’t be carrying heavy weights with a sprained wrist. Did a gun count as a heavy weight?
He took a deep breath, wincing when the force of air in his lungs made his chest tighten. “Breaking and entering. I could arrest you. Again.”
“Go ahead. Grand theft cookie.” She took another bite. “That’s a career-making bust.”
“Sweetheart, I already have a career. I’m a decorated officer. Any more promotions, and I have to start doing fancy paperwork.” He leaned forward, bracing himself against the kitchen table to keep from toppling over. “Arresting you again would be fun.”
Honey Moore. The youngest in a long line of petty criminals, experts at boosting cars and causing riots in confined spaces. Her cousin made book. Her only uncle who wasn’t in jail or on the run was trying to make a legitimate go of things with a brewery somewhere off Valley Vista.
It had been years since he and Honey had talked, but he couldn’t imagine much had changed in her life. Once a thug, always a thug.
“I’ve got cause,” he added. “I don’t remember giving you a spare key.”
Honey snorted. “Spare keys are for little girls.”
“You want to tell me how you got in here?”
“Not really.”
Bold and brassy—that was Honey. She’d always been too loud, too headstrong, and too damn wild. A rough-and-tumble kid who’d grown up in one of the worst parts of Los Angeles, Honey had transferred to Black Palm Park Academy for high school. She’d been a scholarship student with a chip on her shoulder and too much to prove, and he’d been the reigning teen king of Black Palm Park, an exclusive Malibu enclave built around a country club and a private school.
They’d dated for a week and a half before she’d let him kiss her on the mouth. A real kiss, with tongue and hands tugging hurriedly at her sweater. He must have done something wrong, though, because the next morning at school, she’d told him to go to hell.
After that, things had gone south fast. They’d fought like cats and dogs. He’d called her a name. She’d retaliated with a well-placed quip. A few practical jokes, and someone had ended up with their hair dyed electric blue. It might have been him.
She’d always known what to say to twist the knife in his side, and he could never retaliate. Not when he was supposed to be the good one, the responsible one.
“You’re not looking so good, Jack.” Honey took one step forward, then another. She moved around the table, hips swinging, until she was standing less than a foot away. The only thing separating them was the box of cookies. Four inches of cardboard that could be crushed by one small step forward.
Reaching up, she rested her hand lightly on his cheek. Her fingers were cool from rifling through his freezer. When she spoke, he could feel her breath hot against his skin. “What happened to your face?”
“My face?”
It had been a long time since he’d been so close to a woman. For all the complex emotions she brought bubbling to the surface, Honey was warm, soft, and sexy. Her proximity made him dizzy.