Read Online Melting the Ice by Loreth Anne White - Free Book Online Page A

start, Rex?” Where did one start after six years?
    He turned to face her. He was so close. She could feel her heart rate increase, her breathing become more shallow. His glacial gaze held her. She couldn’t look away. She watched as the light in them shifted from crystal to dark, the center starburst of indigo radiating out with the heat of his gaze. It knocked her completely off guard. She felt herself being drawn in, being physically pulled, her body leaning imperceptibly toward his.
    She swallowed.
    He turned and looked back at the screen, clearing his throat. “So, where are Amy’s files stored?”
    Hannah felt overwhelmingly relieved to have a clear task. A defined road. “This was her terminal,” she told Rex. She needed to refocus. “It’s basically what I inherited when she went missing. It’s a Macintosh system. Most small newspapers use Macs.” She was babbling.
    Hannah clicked open a file and showed him where Amy’s work had been stored. “This is not the morgue. This is…was, her personal working stuff. I didn’t delete anything, just filed it here. Amy’s notes are in here.” She clicked. “Her interviews, contacts and stories.” Hannah moved the mouse. She could feel the heat emanating from the body almost touching hers.
    “Um, once Amy completed a story she would have filed it here.” She clicked on network folder that was shared by all the computers in the office. “This is where Al would have picked it up for editing before dumping it into another folder where production would access it for layout.”
    His fingers brushed over hers as he gently took the mouse from her hand. Her breath caught in her throat. Those long, gently tapered fingers that had once stroked slowly up the inside of her thigh touched hers. Hannah felt warmth pool, unwanted, delicious in her belly.
    Her hands were trembling.
    This was ridiculous.
    She jerked off her chair, stalked over to the large newsroom windows. There were tufts of white cloud over the granite peaks. She could see the lift lines, chairs winking as metal caught sun, and she could see Grizzly Bowl, where Amy had lost her life.
    Hannah turned back to face him. “Take a look and see what you can find in there, Rex. If you have any questions, I’ll be in the next office.”
    His blue gaze bored into her. “Don’t go anywhere, Hannah, I might need you.” The timbre of his voice was low, rough.
    She stared at him, a battle of emotions raging in her brain and in her heart. And where were you, Rex, all those years ago when I needed you? Where were you when I went into labor with your child? Where were you when he got his first tooth? Where were you, Rex, when he asked if he had a daddy?
    She wanted to shake him. Strike him. She wanted to ask him why he deserted her that night. Why he’d left the warmth of their sleeping bag and stalked off into the African veldt. She wanted the touch of those hands on her skin. Heaven help her. She wanted him. And she hated him.
    “Fine. I won’t go anywhere.”
    From where she stood she could see the small muscle pulsing on the right side of his jaw, just near his ear as he watched her. She knew by the look in his dark-rimmed sky-blue eyes that he felt it, too. That unspoken frisson, that undeniable seductive pull. It was that same sensual vortex that had sucked them down together in Marumba.
    Silence stretched thick and elastic between them. She could think of no words to break the spell that held them.
    The light from behind her played unforgivingly on his features but did nothing to diminish them. God he was striking. More rugged than beautiful. And hard, as hard as this unforgiving terrain, this mountain playground she called home. She watched the white sunlight catch in his eyes.
    They made her think of a pool. An ice-cool pool that lay still as glass under summer heat. But when a swimmer plunged with breathless delight into its cold depths, the surface would shatter into refracted, laughing light and dancing