The List Read Free Page A

holding myself hostage and am therefore a threat to myself. Using names establishes a bond. I’m smoking, and I’m sitting on a ledge two hundred feet over Park Avenue South, which means I’ve a death wish. I’m drinking, which makes it more likely I’ll go through with it because my inhibitions are lowered. You’re not too close to crowd me but you could reach me if I shifted my weight forward.”
    She didn’t pretend to do that. He’d grab her and pull her to safety, and she really wanted to keep sitting on the ledge. Her heart rate was up, and delicious little shocks gathered between her thighs. This was the most arousing thing she’d done in months, and she wasn’t ready to let it go just yet.
    “Or if you lost your balance. Which is more likely than you jumping. More people die of stupidity than suicide in this city.”
    “I’m not stupid, or suicidal.”
    “Prove it,” he said. Despite the smile in his voice, he was deadly serious. She wondered how much further she could push him before he ordered her off the ledge.
    “I’m also not very susceptible to childhood taunts turned into tactics to get me off this ledge.”
    “I’m out of tactics.”
    He sounded amused, not on edge, and his smile rendered his face into something that was charming, but more than that. He was laughing at himself, at her, at the whole situation, very much a point in his favor. She rubbed her chin on her bare shoulder, not bothering to disguise the slow up-and-down look she gave him. He stood under it, let her gaze travel the length of his legs in jeans. Strength harnessed for the purpose of endurance. A distance runner, she’d wager.
    She shot him a smile. “If you can’t beat them, join them.”
    He sat on the ledge, swung those long, long legs over as he swiveled, then sat up straight. “Je-sus.”
    The hair had lifted on his forearms. She took the last drag from her cigarette, then leaned back to stub it out in the ashtray behind her.
    “Thanks.”
    “For what?”
    “Not littering.”
    “You’re a police officer?”
    “In a manner of speaking.”
    “The blazer and jeans are an effective disguise. You look like a college professor. Or a poet,” she added, smoothing her palm over the velvet at his shoulder. Strength carefully hidden. She liked that.
    “Now that you know my official capacity, will you get off the ledge?”
    “You’re out here with me, so . . . no.”
    “Are you trying to provoke me?”
    “I’m not seventeen, nor do I have problems with authority figures.”
    “You’re not getting off the ledge.”
    “Exactly.”
    He thought about this for a minute, watching a television set flicker in an apartment across the street. Two floors up from the television set, a man swept up a small child bouncing on a bed and blew a raspberry into the boy’s tummy. Everyone lived a public life in Manhattan. “So you’re not suicidal, seventeen, rebellious, stupid, or Lady Matilda.”
    “Correct.” She offered him the bottle of beer.
    He tipped it up and swallowed, then gave it back. “Then what are you?”
    The wind caught her sleeveless top, pressing it to her breasts and belly. Her nipples stood out hard against the silk, and his gaze flicked down, then back up again. “Adventurous,” he said, answering his own question.
    “Among other things. An observant man like you can do better than that.”
    “Aroused.”
    “Very.”
    “Is it the danger? The risk?”
    She closed her eyes and inhaled slowly, taking in the smells of the city, exhaust and hot brick and dreams. He smelled like sandalwood and clean male sweat. “How do you know Louise?” she asked, curious to know whether he’d keep the conversation focused on her desire.
    He let her divert him. “We went to college together. Her brother is a friend.” He looked into the distance, his eyes flickering from lit window to lit window, letting the words linger in the air. She was so distracted by his resonant voice that it took a moment for the