Close Up Read Online Free Page B

“Oh, hello!”
    He was moving forward still, forcing her to back up until she was against the far wall under an exterior window, trying to keep a few feet of space between them. She laughed, meaning to sound cavalier, but it came out as nervous as she felt. She was far too aware of Sean and how close his mouth was to hers. He gave a sly smile, as if her nervousness amused him. With one hand, he reached behind him and closed the closet door.
    Not good. A closed space, an old lover... She couldn’t remain professional under those circumstances. Unless it was a professional whimperer. “Sean. We should talk, but I don’t think this is the time or the place. Let’s finish up here and go for coffee.” In a public place. With a table between them.
    “I don’t want to talk.” His voice was slow and sensual, and she saw the burn of desire in his eyes as he ate up the space between them.
    “No?” Damn it. She knew that look. He was going to kiss her.
    Sean touched a stray strand of her hair trailing down her neck, and she shivered, the urge to close her eyes and sink into his embrace overwhelming. He smelled different than she remembered, but the sensation of being close to him was familiar, tantalizing.
    Then he tugged her hair, playful, yet bordering on harder than necessary. “You darkened your hair color.”
    “I was having a dark moment,” she whispered.
    “I like it. Much more than those divorce papers you sent me.” He turned back to the doorknob, twisted it and pushed the door. “Did you hear that? It sounded like the door was just locked.”
    Nothing happened. To the door, that is.
    But Kristine saw spots in front of her eyes. “What divorce papers?”
    “What the hell?” He shoved the door harder, ramming his shoulder against it in irritation. “Does this door stick?”
    “No. Not that I’m aware of.” And she hadn’t heard anything over the sound of her own mortification. But if she was locked in this room with Sean it was going to be the definition of awkward, because she was pretty sure he was saying he had received divorce papers from her, which was not supposed to happen. Not until she’d had a chance to talk to him first. “What divorce papers?”
    “The ones that dropped on my desk this morning.”
    Oops. Why did that not surprise her? Nothing ever went the way she intended.
    Sean rattled the door again. He shoved. He kicked. Turning, he gave her a seductive and somewhat angry smile. “We’re locked in.”
    Locked in? Alone with Sean?
    Kristine could have sworn she felt an egg drop down her fallopian tube in excited feminine anticipation.
    It occurred to her that perhaps she wasn’t as over Sean as she had thought.

3
    “ H OW CAN IT BE LOCKED? ” Kristine brushed him aside to check the knob herself.
    Sean shrugged, wondering why he wasn’t more concerned. He had a meeting in an hour, a million emails to answer, and yet he wasn’t panicking. In fact, he was rather enjoying the thought of spending time with Kristine. A few moments to study the woman she had become before they both went on with the rest of their lives. “It’s locked. The dead bolt has been thrown on the other side. I can see it.”
    “What? How could that happen?” She turned and looked at him, licking her lips and shifting to the left.
    “My assumption would be that unless the building has a precocious ghost, someone shot the door bolt closed.”
    “But why?” Kristine stuck her face to the door, trying to peer through the sliver between the frame and the door.
    Her actions caused her backside to rise enticingly toward him, black fabric stretched tight over her perky ass. He tried not to get distracted, and failed. The chemistry between them had been off the charts when they’d been married, with many a weekend lost to satisfying sex. So it didn’t surprise him that he immediately had a hard-on. But he managed to focus on the problem at hand. They were trapped. Right. “I’m assuming that’s a rhetorical