Big Jack Read Online Free Page A

the bottom line. Every minute counted. She and Roarke would be alone in the house, and there’d been no mention, that she remembered, of social or business engagements.
    She’d hoped to spend the evening screwing her husband’s brains out, then letting him return the favor.
    Still, working together had its points.
    She drove through the big iron gates that guarded the world that Roarke built.
    It was spectacular, with a roll of lawn as green as the grass she’d seen in Ireland, with huge leafy trees and lovely flowering shrubs. A sanctuary of elegance and peace in the heart of the city they’d both adopted as their own. The house itself was part fortress, part castle, and somehow had come to epitomize home to her. It rose and spread, jutted and spiked with its stones dignified against the deepening sky, and its countless windows flaming from the setting sun.
    As she’d come to understand him, the desperation of his childhood and his single-minded determination never to go back, she’d come to understand, even appreciate, Roarke’s need to create a home base so sumptuous—so uniquely his own.
    She’d needed her badge, and the home base of the law for exactly the same reasons.
    She left her ugly police-issue vehicle in front of the dignified entrance, jogged up the stairs through the filthy summer heat and into the glorious cool of the foyer.
    She was already itching to get to work, to put her field notes into some sort of order, to do her first runs, but she turned to the house scanner.
    “Where is Roarke?”
     
    Welcome home, darling Eve.
     
    As usual the recorded voice using that particular endearment had slivers of embarrassment pricking at her spine.
    “Yeah, yeah. Answer the question.”
    “He’s right behind you.”
    “Jesus!” She whirled, biting back another curse as she saw Roarke leaning casually in the archway to the parlor. “Why don’t you just pull a blaster and fire away?”
    “That wasn’t the welcome home I’d planned. You’ve blood on your pants.”
    She glanced down. “It’s not mine.” Rubbing at it absently, she studied him.
    It wasn’t just his greeting that spiked her heart rate. That could happen, did happen, just by looking at him. It wasn’t the face. Or not just the face, with its blinding blue eyes, with that incredible mouth curved now in an easy smile, or the miracle of planes and angles that combined into a stunning specimen of male beauty framed by a mane of silky black hair. It wasn’t just that long, rangy build, one she knew was hard with muscle under the business elegance of the dark suit he wore.
    It was all she knew of him, all she had yet to discover, that combined and blew love through her like a storm.
    It was senseless and impossible. And the most true and genuine thing she knew.
    “How did you plan to welcome me home?”
    He held out a hand, linking his fingers with hers when she crossed the marble floor to take it. Then he leaned in, leaned down, watching her as he brushed his lips over hers, watching her still as he deepened the kiss.
    “Something like that,” he murmured, with Ireland drifting through his voice. “To start.”
    “Good start. What’s next?”
    He laughed. “I thought a glass of wine in the parlor.”
    “All by ourselves, you and me, drinking wine in the parlor.”
    The glee in her voice had him lifting a brow. “Yes, I’m sure Summerset’s enjoying his holiday. How sweet of you to ask.”
    “Blah blah.” She strolled into the parlor, dropped down on one of the antique sofas and deliberately planted her boots on a priceless coffee table. “See what I’m doing? Think he just felt a sharp pain in his ass?”
    “That’s very childish, Lieutenant.”
    “What’s your point?”
    He had to laugh, and poured wine from a bottle he’d already opened. “Well then.” He gave her a glass, sat and propped his feet on the table as well. “How was your day?”
    “Uh-uh, you first.”
    “You want to hear about my various meetings,