Sweet Liar Read Free Page A

wrought-iron spike-tipped fence and knocked several times, but there was no answer.
    Taking a deep breath, her fists clenched, she looked back up at her suitcases sitting safely at the top of the stairs. Beside the ground floor door was a box of red geraniums, and the sight of the flowers made her smile. At least the flowers seemed happy: They were well cared for, not a dead leaf was on them, the soil was moist but not wet, and the flowers were heavy with bloom.
    Still smiling, she started toward the stairs, but just as she rounded the corner, a football came whizzing so close over her head that she ducked. When the flying football was followed by what looked to be a couple hundred pounds of male clad in denim shorts and a sweat shirt with both armholes torn out to the waist, Samantha moved to slam herself flat against the wall of the stairs.
    At least she tried to get out of the way of the man, but she wasn’t fast enough. He caught the football as it sailed over her head, then, startled, he saw her just as he was about to land on her. At the same time that he released the ball, he reached out to catch Samantha before she fell against the spikes of the fence.
    Giving a little gasp as she nearly fell, his hands caught her and pulled her to him in a protective way.
    For a moment she stood encircled by his arms. He was taller than her five foot four, probably just at six feet, but the protective way he bent toward her made them almost eye level with each other. They were nearly isolated, with the tall stairs behind them, the next house’s stairs not far in front of them, the fence and flower box nearby. Samantha started to say thank you to the man, but as she looked at him, she forgot what she was going to say.
    He was an extraordinarily good-looking man, with black, curling hair, heavy black brows, and dark eyes with eyelashes any female would kill for, all atop a full-lipped mouth that looked as though it belonged on a sculpture by Michelangelo. He might have looked feminine if his nose hadn’t been broken a couple of times and he didn’t have three days’ growth of black whiskers on his chin and if his finely sculpted head weren’t sitting on top of a body that bulged with muscle. No, he didn’t look feminine. All the eyelashes in the world couldn’t make this man look less than one hundred percent male. In fact, maleness oozed from him, making Samantha feel small and helpless, as though she were wearing yards of lavender lace. He even smelled male, not the artificial smell that could be purchased in a store; this man smelled of pure male sweat, a little beer, and acres of bronzed skin warmed by sun and exercise.
    But it was the man’s mouth that fascinated her. He had the most beautiful mouth she’d ever seen on a human being. It was full and sculptured, looking both hard and soft at the same time, and she couldn’t take her eyes off of it. When she saw those lips moving toward her own, she didn’t move away. He placed his lips on hers, softly at first, as though asking permission. Samantha, reacting to instinct and need and to something even more basic, opened her mouth slightly under his, and he pressed closer. Had her life depended on it, she couldn’t have moved her lips away from his warm, sweet mouth, but when she put her hand up in half-hearted protest, she came in contact with his shoulder. It had been a long time since she had felt male skin near her own. And she had never felt a shoulder such as this one. Hard, firm muscle rounded over the top of his arm, and Samantha’s hand curved over the muscle, her fingers digging into the resilient flesh.
    When her hand closed over his arm, he leaned closer, his big, hard, heavy body pressing against hers, pinning her close to the wall. Samantha’s hand slipped to his back, slipped under his open-sided shirt and met with the contours of the muscle on his back.
    A moan escaping her lips, her body began to sink into