Read Online Danger Calls by Caridad Piñeiro - Free Book Online Page B

does your mind always have to be in the gutter?”
    Sebastian raised his hands in surrender. “Sorry, but the cliché was too much to resist.”
    â€œWell, try. This is supposed to be business.” Although she was having serious doubts about her own abilities to resist his charm and keep to the agreement.
    â€œYep, just business. So go get comfortable—” he did a Groucho Marx kind of eyebrow wiggle “—while I scan away.”
    Despite her better judgment, his actions dragged a laugh from her. She playfully jabbed him in the arm and retired to her bedroom to change.
    Quickly slipping into sweatpants and a T-shirt, she returned to Ryder’s office, where Sebastian was now three-quarters of the way through the journal. Melissa held up another diary—the next one by the second Danvers—and asked, “Mind if I keep reading this in here until you’re done?”
    Without shifting his gaze away from the monitor or breaking the rhythm of his work, Sebastian inclined his head in the direction of the couch in the office. “Make yourself at home.”
    Home . As she settled herself onto the leather couch and pulled a light throw over her legs, she did feel homey with Sebastian in the room.
    What did he think of everything that was going on? Would he be glad to be done with his end of it? Would he volunteer for something else or go his own way, much as he seemed to do with everything in his life? It saddened her to think he would leave without a second thought.
    As he lifted his gaze, it collided with hers. She guiltily shifted her attention back to the journal, telling herself to concentrate. She wasn’t sure whether she’d read the page before, so she began again.
    And again and again. She yawned, the dinner and comfort of the couch making her sleepy. She battled drowsiness, but it was a losing fight. Closing her eyes, she told herself it would only be a quick nap.
    At the speed Sebastian was going, he’d soon be done with the first of her father’s journals. She counted on him to wake her so she could get to work and find a cure for Ryder, or at least find out if she had some keeper company.

Chapter 8
    S ebastian slipped the last pages of the journal onto the bed of the scanner. With a few keystrokes, he imported the image into his program, then named, encrypted and saved the document to a disk located at a remote server.
    Done , he thought and looked in Melissa’s direction to see if she was ready for the next journal.
    She clearly was not.
    He slowly rose from Ryder’s chair and padded quietly across the room. Placing the journal he had just finished on the coffee table, he knelt by the edge of the sofa.
    She looked younger while she slept, but there were still smudges of dark circles beneath her eyes, a testament to the fact that she had not been resting well. Who could? he thought and delayed waking her, content to sit there and observe her for a moment. He was feeling decidedly guilty about having to pull her from what was probably a well-deserved rest.
    Her lips formed a smile. He itched to trace the edges of it, remembering another slumbery one the morning after their sole night together. Their amazing night together.
    Down boy, he told himself. It was just business.
    He was about to reach out and wake her when she chuckled, surprising herself out of sleep.
    Her eyes, a deep midnight highlighted with brighter bits of aquamarine, slowly opened. When she saw him there, her smile grew wider. “I was a little tired,” she said in soft husky tones.
    Sebastian brushed back a lock of hair that had fallen onto her forehead. “You laughed in your sleep. Something funny?”
    â€œVLAD.”
    He snatched his hand back, obviously surprised. “VLAD? As in—”
    â€œVampires, Lycanthropes And Demons.” Melissa sat up and stretched. “I thought it was funny.”
    Sebastian tried his best not to notice how the soft fabric