Feel the Heat Read Online Free Page B

it’s ever been. I don’t know what’s so special about this incident but it’s lit a fire under everyone.”
    Troy finished his coffee and stood up. “Let’s walk through the house so I can check windows and doors and we’ll figure out what you need.”
    Lauren reached out to take the mug from him. When their fingers brushed bolts of electricity shot through her arm and into her body. Long-buried feelings of sexual awareness zinged to life, freezing her in place.
    “Lauren?” Troy’s voice broke through the fog surrounding her brain. “Are you okay?”
    “What? Oh yes. Sorry.”
    But when she looked up at him, she saw a corresponding shocked awareness in his eyes. Whatever it was, he’d felt it too.
    She nearly stumbled as she backed away from him, gathering her wits as she rinsed the mugs in the sink and put them in the dishwasher. When she turned back to face him, she felt more in control.
    “Where do you want to start?”
    “Front door’s a good place. We’ll do room by room down here, then head upstairs.”
    As they walked through the lower floor, Troy checked doors and windows, nooks and crannies and made notes on his iPhone. When they climbed the stairs to the second floor Lauren was acutely aware of Troy behind her, almost as if he was touching her. Nerves sparked beneath the surface of her skin and her pulse throbbed everywhere. They moved slowly from room to room. Whenever their bodies touched accidentally or their hands brushed, Lauren felt that same explosive reaction.
    When they came to the door of her bedroom, she stepped back to let him enter, inexplicably nervous about being in the room with him. He looked at her, one corner of his mouth twitching as if a grin was teasing at it, before he walked in and did his usual check. By the time they finished with the room, she was a nervous wreck and not sure she understood why. Still, she did her best to conceal it.
    She felt a lot better when they were back in the kitchen, a room with no beds. But when she looked at him, that sense of awareness still lurked in his eyes, the brown deepened to a rich chocolate. She had to use all her wits to focus on the conversation.
    “Faith and Mark are good friends,” she told him, leaning against the counter, arms crossed. “They wouldn’t have asked you to do this if they didn’t have some concerns. So what do you think I should do?”
    “The first thing we need to talk about,” he began, “is getting you much better electronic protection, not just for the house but the entire property. A system with a lot more bells and whistles. Living by yourself, it’s good to have one anyway.”
    Lauren shrugged. “I guess you’re right. But it’s a terrible thing to think you aren’t safe in your own home.”
    He moved closer to her, his very masculine aftershave drifting across her nose. Good lord, what was wrong with her? She had a problem and thinking about sex wasn’t going to help it.
    “All we’re doing is making your home as safe as possible,” he told her. “Unfortunately, experience tells me this probably isn’t the last time something like this will happen. Who knows how aggressive things might get in the future.”
    She shivered at the thought but nodded. “Okay then.”
    Before he could say anything else the landline rang, its sound shrill and jarring, and without thinking she lifted the receiver.
    “Hello?”
    “You’ve gone too far this time, you freak.” The voice was low and filled with venom and totally recognizable. “Someone needs to wipe you off the face of the earth before you do some real harm.”
    Nerves jittery already, Lauren dropped the phone into the cradle as if it was a hot poker.
    Troy took one of her hands, his touch grounding her as shivers raced through her body. “Tell me.”
    She wet her lips. “It was him. The stalker.”
    The muscles in Troy’s face tightened. He opened his mouth to say something when the phone rang again. “Don’t answer it,” he ordered