Traci On The Spot Read Free Page B

dark green eyes narrowed within their handsome setting. “None other.”

2
    H is mother was right, Morgan thought as he looked at Traci. Actually, she had understated the matter. She’d said that Traci had grown up to be a “pretty little thing.” But she hadn’t. Traci Richardson had grown up to be a drop-dead, teeth numbing knockout.
    Remembering the strip he’d read today, Morgan glanced down at her left hand. He wasn’t too late. Unlike her counterpart, there was no huge diamond winking and blinking on her hand. It was bare.
    It was also turning an interesting shade of pink. Red, really. The leash was wrapped around her hand and it was obviously cutting off her circulation. The creature attached to the other end of the leather strap seemed bent on dragging Traci back down to her car.
    The dog, for all its size, appeared to be cowering. Morgan couldn’t help grinning at the sight as he breathed a little easier. He nodded toward the animal. “Some watchdog you have there.”
    Traci lifted her chin defensively and took umbrage for the dog. Actually, she thought that when it came to Morgan, she probably would have taken umbrage no matter what he’d said. Their relationship had always taken on antagonistic ramifications whenever they ventured past “hello.” It was the nature of the beast, and now that she was older and could look back at her life with a more discerning eye, she had to admit that she rather liked it that way. She’d enjoyed the daily confrontations. They had kept her on her toes and kept her summers from being dull.
    Traci glanced at her pet. “Jeremiah does the trick when I need him.”
    Jeremiah didn’t look up to any sort of tricks, defensive or otherwise. What the dog did looklike was downright sleepy. Even now, his big brown eyes were shutting.
    “How?” Morgan asked. “By lying down on the intruder and smothering him to death?”
    Blue eyes with flecks of gray narrowed into gleaming slits over the bridge of a very pert nose. “Want a demonstration?”
    She’d do it, too, Morgan thought. She’d sic that four-footed monster on him. He wouldn’t put anything past her. Morgan held up his hand and laughed. “No, I’ll pass, thanks”
    Vindicated, Traci loosened her hold on the leash. “Smart move.” Eyes moving up and down the length and breadth of him, she sized up a person she’d once known as well as her own reflection. “It would be your first, I imagine.”
    Same old Traci. In a way, in an ever-changing world, that was almost comforting. Almost.
    Morgan nodded. “Seeing as how I invited you up here to look around the old place, I’m inclined to agree with you. At least as far as today goes.”
    Ready to fire back, Traci opened her mouth, then shut it again. And laughed.
    It was that same, skin-tingling, sexy, smoky laugh that he remembered. At the time, it seemed incongruous for a teenage girl to have a laugh like that. But it fit right in with the woman he saw before him. Traci had been a thin, bouncy, perky girl, and while he could still see that in the woman she’d become, there was something a hell of a lot more unsettling about the way she looked at him now than there had been then.
    And even then, the sound and the occasional look had gotten to him, although Morgan would have willingly swallowed his own tongue before admitting it to her or anyone else.
    “Well, I see you haven’t changed any,” Traci told him.
    At least, she amended silently, his attitude hadn’t. Looks-wise, well, that was a whole other story. Her mother had told her that he was good-looking, but mothers were obligated to say things like that about their best friends’ sons. It was a rule that was written in stone somewhere or other.
    Who would have thought that, for once, it was actually true?
    In response, Morgan made an exaggerated show of looking down at himself, as if to check out what she was saying. In his opinion, he’d changed a hell of a lot, and they both knew it. He had a well-worn,