Never Say Never Again

Bronte felt a whimper gather at the back of her throat. Who knew quiet, brooding Connor McCoy could kiss so well? And who knew that she had it in her to respond so physically to another man so soon after her last relationship had failed so miserably?

She was aware of strong fingers against her rib cage, a prelude to a more intimate, probing touch. A man’s way of letting a woman know what he had in mind. A warning that if she wanted to prevent the progression, now was the time to act.

And Bronte knew she should do just that. This kiss was so totally unexpected. But she didn’t. Instead she found herself hungrily arching her back away from the tree trunk, telling him in her own feminine way that she wanted his touch as much as he wanted to touch her.

Then he did.

Bronte shuddered as his hand seared her flesh through her dress. His fingers expertly found and lightly plucked at her protruding nipple, causing desire to pool between her thighs and her breath to freeze in her lungs. Then he dipped his finger inside the low neckline and his hot skin made contact with hers. Amazingly, she found herself on the verge of climax, and they hadn’t even done anything yet.

Yet.

The word caught and held in her mind even as she pressed her breast into his touch, straining for a more complete contact.

Yet.

No, they hadn’t really done anything…yet. But if he didn’t stop—

Connor widened his stance and pulled her into the cradle of his thighs with his other hand. The hard, solid feel of his erection against her belly nearly sent her reeling.

Just one touch, she told herself. She just wanted to see if he was as turned on as he seemed to be. Needed to verify that he was indeed as large as she suspected.

She thrust her hand down shamelessly between them, cupping the long, thick ridge in her palm. Oh, dear Lord. He was everything and more than she expected.

Connor dragged his mouth from hers, leaving her panting for air against his neck. Then she fell back against the tree, desperately clamping her hands behind her, finding support in the solidness of the trunk.

“Whoa,” Connor murmured under his breath, pacing a short ways away, then returning. She couldn’t make out his eyes in the darkness, but she didn’t doubt that they held the same shock she felt from head to heel.

“This doesn’t make any sense,” she said, closing her eyes and shaking her head. “I mean, I’m not really sure what just happened, but…”

The sound of the grass crushing under Connor’s footsteps was all she could hear over the thundering of her heart.

“But what?” he asked, startling her.

Her eyes flew open. He was standing closer than she expected. If she put her hand out, she would touch the hard wall of his chest. The same chest she’d been flush up against mere moments ago.

“But…this doesn’t make any sense.”

He made a sound similar to a quiet laugh. “You said that already.”

“Yes, well, I’m going to say it again, so prepare yourself.” She laid her head back against the uneven bark of the tree and took a deep, calming breath. Only it didn’t go very deep and it wasn’t calming. “Well, since I’m momentarily incapable of describing what happened just now, maybe you’d like a go at it.”

A nearby lamp flickered to life, illuminating the path some twenty feet away, and throwing Connor’s features into relief. “I think I’ll pass if it’s all the same to you.”

She smiled shakily. “Well, if it’s all the same to you, it isn’t all the same to me.”

The way he wiped at the side of his mouth with his thumb made her knees go weak all over again. “Are you involved with anyone?”

She shook her head. “No. You?”

He grimaced. “No. And I don’t want to be either.”

“Good, because neither do I.”

What was the matter with her? She swore after the last time that she wouldn’t leap into another intimate relationship without looking first. And she certainly hadn’t seen this coming.

So what did she do? Suggest they pretend their kiss hadn’t happened? Dumb, dumb, dumb. She’d never been one to play coy after a good, riling bout of tongue tangling. She wasn’t about to start now.

A low-frequency beep pierced her ears, followed quickly by another. She reached for her purse, then realized she’d turned her cell phone to vibrate. Nothing more irritating than someone’s phone ringing in the middle of a wedding ceremony.

Connor’s movements as he slipped his hand inside his tux jacket told her the ringing had come from his portable. He pulled it out and punched a button.

“McCoy here,” he said, turning to walk away slightly.

She appreciated the long line of his back, the way his hair lay neat against his head, exposing his neck as he bent forward. It took her a moment to realize that her purse had begun vibrating. She scrambled to take her cell phone out and prayed her voice sounded normal as she answered.

Connor swung to face her, his gaze snagging hers even as she understood that they were being contacted about the same thing. Her witness, Melissa Robbins, had just been found dead. And one Deputy U.S. Marshal Connor McCoy, the man she had just nearly devoured, was the prime suspect.

TWO DAYS LATER BRONTE wasn’t any clearer on what had happened between her and Connor McCoy than she’d been the night of Kelli and David’s wedding. Not that it mattered. She hadn’t seen him since, and likely wouldn’t for a while, what with David and Kelli being off on their honeymoon in the Poconos for the next two weeks.

And not with Connor being implicated in the death of Melissa Robbins.

Tightening the sash on her white silk kimono, she opened the door and scooped up the eight newspapers stacked haphazardly on the cement steps of her Georgetown town house. The spring morning was warm and clear. She hugged the papers to her chest and tilted her face toward the sun dappling the steps through the trees.

“Good morning, Miss Bronte.”

She opened her eyes and smiled at the elderly woman that lived two doors up. Seven o’clock and already she was digging through the spring flowers flowing from artfully placed baskets in her front window, bright yellow cloth gloves protecting her aging hands. “Morning, Miss Adele.”

The neighborhood was comprised mostly of young professionals or tenured academics and budding politicians, but Miss Adele added a little bit of the something Bronte had been looking for when she first moved to D.C.—a kind of old-world, southern charm she was coming to cherish. “Your geraniums are looking good.”

Miss Adele smiled. “Nothing like a few coffee grounds mixed into the soil to perk them right up, I always say. A little trick my grandmother taught me.”

Bronte waved, then headed back inside her town house. Padding into the kitchen, she slid the newspapers one after another onto the thick oak tabletop. She sighed, Miss Adele and her geraniums quickly forgotten. If the story about her witness and Connor McCoy’s alleged involvement in her death wasn’t on the front page, a teaser leading to it was.

When she’d first arrived on the scene at the safe house, still decked out in full maid of honor wedding regalia, she’d brushed away any possibility of Connor’s involvement in Melissa Robbins’s death. After all, hadn’t she just spent the better part of that day salivating after him, first in the church during Kelli and David’s nuptials, then later at the reception?

Then it slowly dawned on her that a good six hours had stretched between the ceremony and the reception. And it was smack dab in the middle of those six hours that Melissa’s death had been approximated.

Still, she’d been unwilling even to consider that a man so obviously a steadfast believer in the law would break it so acutely. Then little circumstantial pieces of evidence began to pile up. The fact that there was a strong history of conflict between Connor and Robbins while she was in his custody; there were several minor complaints littering her file from Robbins over the past couple months claiming Marshal McCoy had been physical with her. At the time she’d written those complaints off, simply because she’d had a difficult time dealing with the demanding woman herself. And follow-ups to the complaints had proven that the physical incidents Robbins had cited were minor events brought on by her stepping outside the boundaries set for her protection, and were completely warranted. Such as the time when Connor took the phone from Robbins’s hand and pulled the cord from the wall when she was going to order in from a swanky D.C. restaurant where she was well known. Or when she’d tried to ditch her protection during a visit to Bronte’s D.C. office so she could squeeze in a visit to a spa that had been deemed prohibited by the marshal’s office.

Separately, the occurrences could be explained away. But when combined, and coupled with no apparent outside breach of security…well, Bronte’s arguments for Connor’s innocence had lost a bit of punch.

Of course, it didn’t help that his alibi of target practice out in an abandoned stretch of countryside during the window of opportunity couldn’t be verified.

None of the circumstantial evidence was enough to issue a warrant for his arrest. But given the air around the U.S. attorney’s office, the possibility was growing more likely with each passing hour.

Bronte stuck her thumbnail between her teeth and sighed. Boy, she really knew how to pick them, didn’t she? Wasn’t it bad enough she’d gone through what she had with Thomas? Did fate have to toss one hottie in the shape of Connor McCoy into her path so soon afterward? An alleged murderer, at that?

She snatched her hand away from her mouth, then slid into a chair. “It was just a kiss, for God’s sake.”