“You do know he wanted you.”
“You mean to join the team so he could keep me on a leash?”
“Come on, Heat, I saw the way he looked at you. You didn’t pick up on it?”
Nikki had done enough interrogations to smell bait being cast in the pond. She played it down. “I never bought it. I mean, none of what he said ever really felt romantic.”
Yardley said, “Maybe you just weren’t receptive.”
Heat paused then looked Rook’s ex in the eyes. “Count on it.”
Rook unlocked the door to Heat’s apartment and dropped his carry-on by the umbrella stand. And he waited. “Hello? Back from the coast. No greeting?”
“In here,” she called.
He draped his jacket on a chair back and made his way to the living room, where he found Nikki reclining on the floor atop a tropical-patterned beach blanket. She held a rum punch in one hand, and in the other a copy of Sizzling Sixteen. “So, this what you had in mind?”
“Sort of.” He sat on the blanket beside her. “You’re naked.”
“As can be.”
“I see.” He looked around the room. “Just what kind of island is this?”
“Fantasy.”
She set the drink and book down and reached her arms out to him. Rook got on his knees, hovering over her, and they kissed softly. He lowered himself to her and she drew him close, feeling his weight drape over her skin, the warmth of their bodies melting them into each other, even through his clothes. Soon the heat of their connection filled them with an urgency that grew into a powerful need. They teased and touched each other, and they joined each other deeply. The release from responsibility, the closeness of their bodies, and the hunger each brought to that moment cast them aswirl, into the heart-pounding, frenzied dimension created by their passion.
Later, enfolded in a lazy tangle of limbs in her bed, they dozed, skin to soul. Nikki’s fingers caressed his two-day beard, and her breast rose and fell in rhythm with his placid breathing. Her cell phone double-pulsed and she dutifully checked the text, then put the phone back on the nightstand.
Without opening his eyes, Rook said, “Please, not another murder.”
“Worse. Yardley Bell wants to have lunch tomorrow.”
He blinked open. “You going to go?”
“I don’t need a new best friend.”
“You should go.”
“I don’t like her.”
“You don’t know her.”
“I know all I want,” said Heat. “And I know what I like.”
“So do I.”
“Show me.”
And he did.