The Hotter You Burn Read Free Page A

and just how you’re going to make it up to me. Or two—I call Sheriff Lintz.”
    Dang it! He had her by the lady balls, and he knew it. “Look. You could waterboard me, but I still won’t confess—”
    â€œGood to know I have your permission to waterboard.”
    â€œâ€”to a crime, so why don’t I say I’m sorry for interrupting your evening, and we call it good?”
    â€œDoes that sorry come with a side of pie?”
    â€œNo,” she said through gritted teeth.
    â€œThen we won’t be good.”
    Figured. “So...what? You expect me to bake you another one?”
    â€œYes, ma’am, I surely do.”
    â€œAre you going to ask me a thousand questions about how I did what I allegedly did, or why I did what I allegedly did?”
    â€œDo I look like a guy who cares about how and why?”
    No. No, he didn’t. He looked like a guy who didn’t care about much of anything—except pleasure. “Okay. All right.” Anything to (1) continue to keep him away from her camp, (2) speed up their parting and (3) appease him so the matter stayed between the two of them. But he was in for an unpleasant surprise. Her mother hadn’t given her the title of Worst Chef in History for nothing. “You win.”
    Head high, she marched past him. He didn’t lag behind for long, was soon keeping pace beside her, his hand light on her lower back. The action was meant to ensure she stayed the course, but the heat of him pricked at her, made her itch for...something.
    â€œYou do know baking a pie takes several hours, right?” At least, it had for her mother. “Are you going to trust me in the kitchen, alone, while you and Tawny conclude
your
business?”
    â€œTawny will have to wait.
 
In a contest between sex and pie, sex will lose every time.”
    â€œWow,” she said, rolling her eyes. “No wonder panties drop in your presence. Your words are poetry.”
    â€œAre you trying to tell me your panties have already dropped?”
    She peered up at him, incredulous, then stunned. Waning sunlight hit him just right, stroking him with muted golden rays, making him almost inhumanly beautiful. Definitely otherworldly. The ache returned to her chest.
    â€œThe day my panties drop for you,” she said without any sharpness, “is the day I want to be taken behind one of the sheds and shot.”
    â€œBecause you’ll know you’ll never have me again and you won’t be able to live with the pain?”
    She snorted, oddly charmed by his warped sense of humor.
    No. Not oddly. He knew what he was doing.
    â€œYeah,” she said drily. “Something like that.”
    Mirth glittered in those golden eyes, the corners of his mouth twitching. “Very well. I promise to make it as quick and painless as possible.”
    How kind. “Let’s backtrack. Earlier you looked at me as if you knew me. You also hinted you’d searched for me. Why?”
    His amusement drained in a snap. “Perhaps you’re mistaking shock for familiarity.”
    She wasn’t the greatest at reading people, but she wasn’t the worst, either. “The two aren’t even close to similar.”
    â€œYou find the thought of meeting me and forgetting me more plausible?”
    Well. That was certainly a good point, wasn’t it?
    As they passed the line of trees, Tawny came into view. The girl waited on the porch, her hands braced on the railing where the initials
H.G.
were carved, her upper arms pushing her breasts together. As if she really needed the help. She was short and curvy, a real live pinup compared to Harlow’s too-slender frame.
    Eyes of the coldest steel narrowed, and Tawny hissed like a rattler about to strike. “I was hoping I’d had a waking nightmare.” A gust of wind lifted strands of her punk-rock hair as she flew down the steps to meet them at the railing. “But nope. Here you