BlowingitOff Read Online Free

that
realization hit her, it was too late.
    She ground her teeth. No. She wasn’t going to be foolish.
Not again. It had hurt too much getting over them the first time.
    She tilted her chin and straightened her shoulders,
swallowing the lump in her throat before licking her lips. “Is there anything I
can tell you about the fire?” she asked, shoving her hands in her hip pockets.
“Any questions you need me to answer?”
    William and Damon passed a quick glance between them. A
tension settled over Damon’s body, his jaw bunching a second before William shook
his head. “Not at the moment, Pheebs,” Will answered, turning back to her.
“We’ll have to go over this place with a fine-tooth comb, however. Is your
mobile number still the same? We can call you when we’re finished.”
    Prickling disappointment crept through her. They were asking
her to go away.
    Of course they are, Masters. Isn’t this what you wanted?
To not have anything to do with them again? What did you think they were going
to do? Ask you to strip naked and become the filling in a manwich?
    “Yes,” she blurted out.
    Her cheeks filled with heat and she blinked. Jesus, what was
she doing ?
    Both William’s and Damon’s eyebrows pulled into slight
frowns. “Phoebe?” Damon took a step toward her, his size-fourteen foot somehow
silent on the charred and littered floor. “We—”
    “Will call you when we’re done,” William finished, cutting
him off.
    For a brief moment—the time it took Phoebe’s heart to thump
twice in her chest—it looked as if Damon was going to ignore his partner. Damon
was the senior investigator after all, and three years older than Will, but
then the man nodded, his expression becoming set. “Don’t leave town,” he
uttered, the grumbled command nothing like his normal humor-laced voice.
    She laughed, a nervous little hiccup of sound. “What would
you do? Track me down and drag me back?”
    Fresh heat flooded Phoebe’s face. Her eyes widened. Had she
really said that?
    Damon’s nostrils flared, his dark eyes locking on hers.
    “Yes, Pheebs,” William’s steady voice played over her
wrought senses, “we would.”
    She jerked her stare to his, her pulse pounding.
    Then why hadn’t you before?
    The question sliced into her soul.
    With a nod, she turned and left. Eager to be gone from the
depressing remains of her burnt-out studio.
    Aching for the two men inside it who she’d sworn she never
wanted to see again.
    * * * * *
    Damon stared at his best friend. “What. The fuck. Was that?”
    “That was a train wreck,” Will answered, walking across the
blackened debris to crouch before a particularly charred pile of rubble.
    Damon shook his head, watching his partner inspect the
rubble with a keen, practiced eye. “Why didn’t we just corner her like we’d
discussed on the drive up and show her exactly what we had in mind?” He drew
his own well-studied inspection over Phoebe’s gutted studio, the sight depressing
him on a level he couldn’t indulge. When he turned his attention to a fire
scene, it had to be as an indifferent investigator, not a worried…whatever the
hell he was to Phoebe at the moment. “You saw the look in her eyes when she saw
us,” he said instead, turning back to Will. “Well, after she stopped coughing,
that was. She wants us as much as we want her.”
    Will poked at the pile of charred debris with a finger
before standing and giving Damon a nod. “I did, and you’re right. But think,
Damon. Her studio has been destroyed. She’s pretty bloody highly strung right
now. The last thing she needs is two horny blokes coming on hard and fast.” He
narrowed his eyes, his hands coming to rest on his hips. “Besides, take a
breath for me, a deep breath, and tell me what you smell.”
    Damon narrowed his own eyes, staring at his partner as he
did just that. The acrid, almost sour stench of burnt materials flowed over his
olfactory system, a distinctive odor of destruction his