Read Online Body Language by Suzanne Brockmann - Free Book Online

could resist a smile that sweet. God knows
he
couldn’t.
    As McCade continued to watch, her shoulders got tighter and she stuck her hands into the front pockets of her shorts. James’s hand dropped from her arm, and she almost imperceptibly moved back, away from him. Her arms weren’t crossed in front of her, but they might as well have been. Even from McCade’s distance, he could see her tension, her discomfort, her shyness.
    James handed her something, smiled, then walked away.
    Sandy turned to look at McCade, and he quickly busied himself, loading equipment into the other van.
    It didn’t take too much longer to get the rest of the gear packed, and the vans moved out, heading back to the studio. McCade crossed the parking lot, heading toward Sandy, who slumped tiredly against her little car.
    “Want me to drive?” he said into her ear.
    She didn’t even open her eyes, she simply held out the car keys. “Now, if only you could magically get me inside the car,” she said, then gasped as he swung her up into his arms.
    “McCade!” she protested as he carried her around to the passenger side of the car. He opened the door effortlessly, still holding her in his arms, and gently set her down in the seat.
    “Not quite magic,” he said, fastening the seat belt around her. “But it did the trick.”
    He crouched next to the car, one hand on the open door, the other on the back of her seat.
    “You’re spoiling me,” Sandy said tiredly. “If you keep taking care of me like this, I’m going to go into terrible withdrawal when you leave.”
    “What if I don’t leave?”
    Sandy sat up, instantly awake. “What?”
    But he had already shut the door. As he slid in behind the wheel she nearly pounced on him. “Clint, are you thinking of staying in Phoenix for a while?”
    McCade shifted into reverse, adjusting the rearview mirror. Sandy called him Clint only when the subject was of the utmost importance to her. Since his mother had died, she was the only person who ever called him by his first name. In fact, through the years, he’d even discouraged his girlfriends from calling him anything but McCade. Clint was too vulnerable. Clint was a twelve-year-old little boy, alone and angry in a new school, outraged that his father had deserted him and his mother, forcing them to move to a tiny basement apartment in a bad part of town.
    It was Sandy, who moved into that same rundown apartment building the following September, who started calling him McCade. She’d expected him to be some sort of tough-as-nails street kid, and so that’s what he’d become. Her blatant hero worship left him no time to feel sorry for himself. She was a year younger, a skinny blonde waif, and he quickly learned to enjoy the role of her protector. An unnecessary role, McCade admitted to himself with a smile. He’d found
that
out after she’d attacked a ninth grader for making insinuations about McCade’s paternity. She gave the boy, who was nearly twice her size, a bloody nose and a bruise on his shin that he’d no doubt remembered for a
long
time. After that, McCade and Sandy’s friendship became more equal.
    As he drove through the late-afternoon traffic he could feel her watching him as she asked again, “Are you going to make Phoenix a temporary home base?”
    He glanced at her, one eyebrow raised. “Temporary? Don’t you want me in town permanently?”
    “You don’t do permanent.” Sandy pulled her sneakers off, wiggling her toes appreciatively in the coolness of the car’s air-conditioning. “At least that’s what you’ve been claiming for the past decade.”
    “Maybe I’ve changed my mind.”
    Something in his low, husky voice made Sandy look at him,
really
look at him. He looked away from the road for the briefest of instants to meet her gaze, but even in that short blink of time she could see something different in his eyes. It was more than sadness. It was a kind of desperation that she hadn’t seen before. At least