Going Too Far

“Oh?”

Jena waved her hand and continued walking down the hall, forcing Marie to turn to face her. “Shouldn’t impact your big corporate case. Something to do with new DNA procedures.”

“Good. I’d just as soon have this case over with as not.”

“Difficult run?”

“No. Just boring.”

Jena laughed. “That’s the first time I’ve heard you say that.”

“This is the first time I’ve ever felt this way.”

“You know, your mother wouldn’t get to you so much if you weren’t so picky about men yourself,” Jena said.

Marie made a strangled sound.

“What?”

“I can’t believe you just said that.” Marie glanced around the hall. Another attorney she was vaguely familiar with grinned as he moved past them. “And in front of so many other people.”

Jena crossed to stand in front of her. “I can’t believe you haven’t gotten laid in over a year.” She poked her perfectly manicured finger against Marie’s blue suit jacket. “And you pay entirely too much attention to what other people think.”

“I’m not picky.”

Jena smiled. “Yes, you are. Why else aren’t you dating anyone?”

“Because I’ve been busy helping get a law practice going.”

“So have Dulcy and I, but that hasn’t stopped us.”

If Marie thought her day was bad before, it had very definitely just taken a deep nosedive.

Jena started walking backward toward the door. “Take my advice, Marie. The next guy you see? Grab him and don’t let him go until he wipes that ever-present grimace from your face.”

“I don’t grimace.”

Jena began to turn around, the distance between them lengthening. “I’ll see you back at the office later then?”

“Office. Yeah.”

Marie stood for long a moment staring after her friend’s retreating back. Oh, sure, to be Jena’s friend was to be in a perpetual state of mortification. If Jena wasn’t sharing details on her orgasms and the frequency of them, she was commenting in a very open way about others’ sex lives.

Marie just wished Jena hadn’t picked that moment to aim a very sharp arrow at Marie’s sex life.

She absently raised her fingers to her lips. Did she grimace? She suddenly realized that, yes, she did. Quite frequently. In fact, she couldn’t remember the last time she’d smiled. Really smiled. Was it a week ago? A month?

What was she thinking? Of course she smiled. She smiled all the time. Just this morning she’d smiled at the guy at the coffee shop. Hadn’t she?

She directed a frustrated wave down the hall to dismiss her friend and her unwelcome advice. Of course, Jena was right in that it had been awhile since she’d dated. Heck, she’d even caught herself eyeing Play-Doh nose’s powerful thighs last week for a brief second. The moment of insanity had, of course, been followed quickly by the overpowering urge to vomit.

Grab the next man she met, indeed…

She turned the corner and ran smack dab into the last man she should grab. But she’d be damned if she didn’t want to grab him anyway.

ONE MINUTE, IAN KILBORN had been thinking about the perfectly good proposition the pretty court reporter had just thrown his way. The next, he was running into the woman he’d spent a good portion of his adult life thinking about having sex with again without a chance in hell of its coming to pass.

Ian caught Marie Bertelli by the arms and stared down into her flushed face. At one time a quirky eye-catching little girl down the street, now she was a sexy-as-all-get-out full-grown woman. It didn’t seem to matter that years had passed since anything intimate had passed between them, or that they were both attorneys now, or that he’d had countless women since Marie. No matter what else was going on in his life, he’d inevitably find his thoughts beginning and ending with the good girl/wild child that had crawled under his skin a long time ago and he had never been able to rid himself of.

Ian’s gaze skimmed her features. Damn, but she was stunning as hell up this close and personal. And that she had no idea just how sexy she was only lent to her appeal. But what got to him was that no matter how much time passed, the thundering desire that ignited in him for the fiery redhead was still immediate, complete, and more than a tad uncomfortable. Red-hot memories of cramped spaces and soft moans and great sex made him one very horny adult for this woman he’d always had the hots for, and probably always would.

“You can let go now.”

While he watched the words exit Marie’s provocative little mouth, it took a moment for them to register in Ian’s brain.

He cocked a grin at her. “Are you sure? Looks to me like you still need a little propping up.”

The color in her cheeks deepened as she batted at his hands, nearly dropping her briefcase in the process. She glanced around, only there was no one around to witness their collision. While the main corridor was always busy, the side halls were usually pretty quiet, allowing for a privacy Ian hadn’t had with Marie for nearly eight years. And his body was letting him know that it had been much too long.

He chuckled quietly as he let her go, mildly amused by her fussing with her suit.

She blew out a long, shaky breath. “God, will you ever change, Ian Kilborn? I swear, when you wake up in the morning, the first thing on your mind must be sex. And it’s probably the last thing you think about every night before going to bed…”

He scanned her features, only half hearing what she was saying. He’d learned a long time ago about that if you wanted to hear what Marie had to say, you didn’t listen to her words, but rather her body language. And the shaky breath she’d just exhaled, the way she slowly smoothed her free hand over her hip, and the quiet tone of her voice combined to tell him that not much had changed since their tryst in her parents’ pantry. He had the feeling that, if he asked, she’d hand him her panties right there and then. And, oh, how tempting it was to do just that.

He grimaced. Of course this fortuitous meeting would have to come on the heels of the phone call he’d received from her father yesterday. And for that reason alone the last thing on his mind right now, or at any time in the immediate future, should be Marie’s panties.

It dawned on him that she had stopped speaking. He tugged his gaze away from the way her jacket draped over her soft breasts then blinked up into her eyes.

And he froze.

There, in the depths of her blue, blue eyes, lurked a curious and suspicious determination.

Ian squinted at her. Uh-oh. He knew that look only too well. She’d worn it only one other time. And while that one other time had led to his finally stroking her sweet, slick flesh, it had also held the potential for disaster if her family found out what had gone on in the tiny room off the kitchen.

An aroused Marie was a breathtaking sight. A rebellious Marie scared the living hell out of him, no matter how much he wished they were back in that pantry right then.

Ian smoothed down his tie to keep from reaching out and touching her, then cleared his throat.

But Marie spoke first. “You have a case this morning?”

Ian raised his brows at her softly spoken words. “Filing a motion.”

She smiled at that. “The caped crusader for criminals is hard at work, huh?”

He took a physical step backward. “Something like that.”

When was the last time he’d seen her aside from down the hall of the courthouse? Three months? No, two. Judge Bullock’s Christmas party. She’d been friendly then as well. But he suspected it was because she’d been as sorry to be at the party as he had been and was grateful for a familiar face. He’d spent a few minutes talking to her about the weather, noting how she’d scratched at her dress as if she couldn’t stand the material against her skin.