Garda - Welcome to the Realm Read Online Free Page B

in a small shrug, “Don’t know, I just like to keep work…work. I don’t spend too much time socializing when I am here. I do enough of that on my days off.”
    “What do you do when you’re off?” He crossed his right foot over his left, then matched his arms that way after setting his coffee down on the hood of his car. His shoulders and chest looked wider than before as he stood there. What would his body feel like wrapped around me?
    Whoa, lady! I needed to change thinking tracks because this one was derailing me. I put the coffee cup to my lips again and took a long, slow drink. Think about what I do, that is a much better train of thought than his chest. No, it’s not, but it’s safer.
    “I spend most of my time doing charity work. I volunteer at the cancer center for children, and a couple times a week I work at the women’s shelter.” He cocked his head and contemplated me more closely. Was that even possible? I felt like I was under a microscope already. “Joe said you had the heart of an angel, I guess he was right.”
    Laughter bubbled up and released as I pictured myself with angel wings. “I’m far from being an angel.”
    “From where I stand, I think you are wrong.” His voice had taken on a sultry quality. A shiver ran down my spine.
    “You don’t know me, Mitch,” I said quietly back to him.
    He pushed off his car, “You’re right, but I’d like to, Corey.”
    We stood two feet apart, staring each other down. How badly I wanted to close the gap and touch his lips, feel his chest against mine.
    “Why?” I whispered into the air between us.
    “I can’t give you a real answer to that. All I know is that from the moment I saw you last night, I can’t get you off my mind. When I am near you, it’s like there is a rope around me pulling me closer.”
    He felt the same thing that I did. I swallowed while I thought of a response.
    “Mitch, you’re married.” There, I said it, the dinosaur in the room.
    He heaved a large sigh, “Yeah, I am. That doesn’t change what I feel right now, though.”
    “It may not change the way you feel, but it doesn’t change the fact that you are, either.” I smiled softly, trying to ease the bluntness of my comment.
    He leaned back against his car again, picking up his coffee cup. He finished what was inside. I watched him swallow, wanting to touch his throat with my mouth. I laughed at my own thoughts.
    “What’s so funny?” he smirked while he set his cup down.
    “Nothing, sorry,” I felt my cheeks warm. “Okay, maybe I feel the same thing you do, but like I said, it doesn’t change anything, and I don’t go around getting involved with married men, so we need to keep this on a friendship level, alright?”
    He studied me for a moment. “Alright.”
    We spent a few more minutes chatting about work before he got an ambulance call and needed to leave.
    The longing we both felt crossed between us like high-tension wires as he climbed into his car.
    For about four weeks we met whenever we could to share our coffee breaks in peace. The mounting pressure grew between us each time we were together. The apprehension, an almost tangible force that surrounded us, crackled in the air when we stood a few feet apart.
    We were careful not to talk about what was on our minds constantly, the need that unconsciously pulled us closer. We, instead, shared stories of our jobs, laughed about stupid things we had done growing up, and avoided any talk of his wife and my ex-husband. The more we spoke, the more we found we had a lot in common, and the closer we became emotionally.
    There was not a day that went by that I didn’t wake up with his face in my mind, or a time I fell asleep that I didn’t wish he were beside me. I longed to feel his arms, to taste his lips, but the problem remained between us: He was a married man.
    This night, just four weeks after we had met, found us, like many others, standing two feet apart, leaning against our cars, and staring