Read Online Too Hot to Handle by Aleah Barley - Free Book Online Page B

girlfriends.
    Bare feet sounded out against wood floor. Honey was back, his first aid kit in hand. Somewhere along the way she’d found a clean T-shirt, and when she moved, it rode high over her bare thighs.
    The skin of her throat was still flushed pink, and Jack felt a wave of remorse. A gentleman wouldn’t have pushed her down on a kitchen countertop. He should have taken her to bed. But when she’d told him her ex-boyfriend had called her frigid, he hadn’t been able to help himself. Honey was a sexy, vibrant woman, and the fact that nobody had told her that was a travesty.
    Jack addressed her over the yammering in his ear. “I want to apologize. You deserved better. I should have taken my time.”
    “Are you kidding?” Her eyes widened in surprise. “The sex was amazing.”
    “Sweetheart, that wasn’t sex.” He grinned. “Believe me, when we have sex, you’re going to know it.”
    “Right.” Honey flushed all over again.
    After sitting down beside him, she opened the first aid kit and began to rummage through the contents. She pulled up his T-shirt and tugged at his bandage, slowly tearing it off to take a closer look at last night’s damage.
    “I’m the one who should have been more careful,” she murmured quietly. “I didn’t know.”
    Trying to hold back the rush of pain, Jack concentrated on the noise from the phone and the way Honey bit her lip when she was nervous.
    The fingers on his chest were cool, capable. The sharp sting of antiseptic made him groan, but then he was too busy listening to his messages, hearing reports from the field about one travesty after another. The world outside was falling apart, and he’d been too busy fulfilling his own primitive desires to notice.
    There’d been a fire the night before. His body stiffened when he heard the news. Not at Honey’s. Someplace else. Someplace a whole lot closer to home.
    Fresh gauze covered his cut, followed by sticky tape that would hurt like nobody’s business when he pulled it off.
    The last call was from his sister, reminding him that the hospital fund-raiser was in a week. It was going to be Jessica’s shining moment, and he would be attending if she had to stuff him into a tuxedo and nail him to the front of her car to get him there.
    Jack closed the phone, tossing it to the side in irritation. He had more important things to think about than where he’d left his tuxedo.
    “All right.” His voice was dark. “I need an answer, now.”
    “You got a question?”
    “You stole something out at Black Palm Park, didn’t you?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “Yours wasn’t the only place torched last night. The police are investigating a fire in Black Palm Park. One of the big houses near the ocean. A man almost died. Logan—”
    “Burrows.”
    “Hell, you’re not even going to bother denying it.”
    Logan Burrows. The name was enough to conjure up a wrinkled face and a forceful spirit—a crotchety old real estate developer with a bad temper and enough money to be dangerous. When he’d moved to Black Palm Park, the bluffs near Malibu had still been known simply as “the Palms.” He’d built the roads, the houses, the country club, and the private school Honey hated so much. Rumor was that he’d built the housing complex on a whim because his wife loved the view.
    These days he spent most of his time giving speeches to civic organizations and writing checks for worthy causes. Jessica loved him.
    There was no reason for Logan and Honey to be connected, but Jack didn’t believe the fires were coincidental either. Not on the same night.
    “They’ve done some interviews already,” he told her.
    The job at the Moore house had been a drive-by—fast, sudden. A crime committed by someone who knew how to blend into the background in a neighborhood where people didn’t pay attention to what was going on in their neighbors’ homes—not when it could get them hurt.
    The beach house was another matter entirely. People knew their