Read Online No Limits by Alison Kent - Free Book Online Page B

mal l where she rented her office space. Or where, in truth, Bear rented it, since the biggest part of her real estate income came from deals he sent her way.
    “Lorna, chère . Do you really want him to catch you at the window drooling like some teenage girl in heat?”
    “Oh, Baby Bear. What do you know about teenage girls?” A hint of humor in her voice, she cocked her hip and leaned forward, her palms on the window’s ledge. The way she was standing lifted her ass until it tempted him in a way he couldn’t ignore. He’d always liked sticking it to her ass. “I knew you when you were eighteen, didn’t I?”
    She fluttered her fingers in his direction but didn’t turn. “I don’t want to talk about that. I just want him to get here so I can explain what we worked out. How it’s hard keeping renters when they find they’re sharing the place with an arsonist, not to mention living in a house where a woman took her own life.
    “I mean, once he sees there’s been no reason to keep up the place, I can give him back his money, right? And then pray he doesn’t ask why I didn’t tell him all this before.” She pushed away from the window, circled the room to stand behind her desk chair, swiveling it back and forth.
    Her nerves were getting on his nerves. “You never told him before because you have no way to contact him except through his post office box. And you didn’t want to risk mailing a refund check without him knowing it was on the way.”
    She continued to rock the chair side to side. “I just don’t know that he’ll buy that. He’s not a stupid man. Won’t he want to know why I didn’t just write him and tell him I needed him to call?”
    Bear straightened the collar of the dress shirt he wore with his suit coat but without a tie. “He may have washed his hands of Bayou Allain a long time ago, but he won’t have forgotten how we do things down here. He can want to know al l manner of things. That doesn’t mean he’s going to get the answers he wants, or like the ones we give him.”
    The only one getting what he wanted here was Bear. And what he wanted was to keep everyone he could off of Le Hasard. He couldn’t do much about King Trahan, but he was a known factor, one Bear had worked around now for years. Another day or two, and he would have no need to work around anyone ever again. Two more days. Why the hell Simon Baptiste couldn’t have waited two more days to descend on Bayou Allain…First that damn Michelina Ferrer and now Harlan Baptiste’s spawn. And with everything Bear had been working for finally within reach. Lorna stepped from behind her chair, came to perch on the loveseat cushion beside him. Her office was decorated much like her home, fussy and floral, with wall-to-wall carpeting in a periwinkle blue that matched the flowers in the vase on her credenza and the oil of an English garden above.
    “I just want this day over with,” she said, her voice wistful with a lust that was going to be their undoing if she didn’t keep it in her panties, where it belonged. “I’m not going to be able to breathe or stop shaking until we’re done here and Simon goes home.”
    A quick knock sounded on the door and Lorna jumped to her feet, patted at her hair, smoothed down her clothes. Bear was used to her fussing, but this obsession she had with Simon was going to do him in.
    “ Come in, Chell e,” he call ed to Lorna’s assistant, earning himself a panicked glare as Lorna shook her head and mouthed, “I’m not ready.”
    Paschelle Sonnier pushed open the door, looked from Bear to Lorna, then glanced toward the phone ringing on her desk. She held up a finger, stepped away from the door to take the call. Air went out of Lorna like a punctured tire, bu t she puffed up again with Chell e’s return.
    “He rescheduled for tomorrow. Simon Baptiste.”
    “What?” Lorna gasped, sputtering out the word. “No. Oh, no.” She shook her head, waggled a finger like a scolding teacher.