Read Online Off the Map (Winter Rescue #2) by Tamara Morgan - Free Book Online

them. Her thoughts were much too independent for their own good. They frolicked and remembered. They tingled to think of Scott pretending to lose the key to the handcuffs and vowing to keep her chained to his bed forever.
    He groaned, sending a jolt of desire through her. He must have been remembering, too. “Banana Nut Muffins.”
    She snickered in spite of herself. “What’s that? I couldn’t hear you.”
    “Banana. Nut. Muffins.” His words were no louder than before, and she could almost feel him tensing up through the solid walnut door.
    “Nope. I didn’t quite catch that. Once more? For old time’s sake?”
    “Banana nut muffins!” he practically roared. “There—is that better? You win. I’m a horrible person who deserves to have the door shut in his face. I’m the jerk who could stand out here yelling in your hallway for years and still not earn enough penance.” He paused, his voice sounding from a distance as he said, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Ralta, but it’s important this time. I know we promised we wouldn’t yell anymore, but this is a matter of life and death.”
    Carrie didn’t envy him at that moment. Her neighbor across the hall was scary. As the mother of three rambunctious boys who spent most of their time expelled from school, that woman could scare a full SWAT team.
    “C’mon, Carrie.” More sounds of a heated discussion in the background. “Let me in. Mrs. Ralta is threatening to use her kids’ baseball bat on me.”
    She probably would, too. Carrie was tempted to leave him out there to face Mrs. Ralta’s wrath, but she recalled the sound of Voodoo Scott hitting the wall earlier and cringed. Okay. This was starting to get really freaky. She’d been taught from a young age not to believe in magical forces—her dad had never even bothered to stick a gift from Santa under the tree—but Scott believed it, and that was enough for her. Faith via proximity.
    She pulled the door open.
    “I should just leave you out here, you know.” She didn’t miss the shadows under his eyes or the scruff of a jaw that hadn’t seen a razor since yesterday, but she forced her attention over his shoulder. If she concentrated only on how gorgeous and grumpy and miserable he looked, she’d lose this thing before it even began. “Hey, Mrs. Ralta. Sorry for the noise. I’m not sure I want to let Scott in. He dumped me last week.”
    That got the older woman’s frown to lift a little. She was raising those three boys all on her own after her husband walked out on her, so she probably loved a good woman scorned tale. “Did he now?”
    “Yep. Do you want to know why?”
    “That I do,” Mrs. Ralta said just as Scott hissed, “Carrie—can we please skip this part? Now isn’t the time.”
    Of course it wasn’t. That was because she was the one holding all the cards for a change. She held his gaze, those dormant brown-black eyes sparking to a lively wrath, as she answered her neighbor.
    “He didn’t know how to recognize a good thing when he held it in his arms,” she said, her voice clear. “Eight months of my life I gave him, and he failed to appreciate what kind of a gift that was.”
    Mrs. Ralta just clucked and turned to re-enter her apartment. “None of them do, honey. None of them do.”
    Scott grabbed her by the upper arm and practically dragged her into the apartment. She should have been outraged at being manhandled like that, especially coming so soon on the heels of what had been building up to be an apology, but it was the first time he’d initiated physical contact with her since their breakup.
    It was impossible to go from constant touching—a gentle hand on the knee or a firmer one between her thighs, an early morning tug-of-war over the blankets ending in a late-morning tug-of-war of an entirely different type—to zero contact without there being a clear measure of intent. From the moment Scott stormed out of his laundry room holding the vest aloft, so furious he could have