Motion for Malice Read Online Free Page A

that was going to be hard for me to forget. I knew how she felt. I could still picture every detail of the day Doug Heath had died. Some things stayed with you for life whether you wanted them to or not.
    Curt came into the room with a bag of pretzel rods and the cordless phone. "I just talked to Cam. Maizy's doing better."
    I nodded. "Good. I'm sorry, Curt. I should've known better than to take her there."
    "She wanted to get a reading." He dropped onto the couch, put his feet up on the coffee table, and tore open the pretzels. "Here. Eat."
    I didn't want anything, but I took one anyway. "What if she's scarred for life?"
    He took a swig of beer. "She's not scarred for life."
    "How do you know that? She almost saw a dead body, Curt."
    "Almost doesn't count. She didn't see it." His eyes slid down my blanket and narrowed a little. I'd like to think he was imagining me naked. In my mind, Curt seemed to imagine me naked a lot. He must have had some imagination, because I was built like the pretzel rod in my hand. A plain, salt-free pretzel rod that stood only five three and weighed ninety pounds with meh brown hair and passable blue eyes. A pretzel rod built to blend into the crowd.
    "How can you be so cavalier about this?" I asked him, ignoring the tingling in areas hidden below the blanket. It seemed wrong to be tingling when Dorcas would never tingle again.
    "I'm not cavalier." He made a move to lift the edge of the blanket. I slapped his hand away. "Cam said she's on YouTube watching Tony Bennett videos. Does that sound like traumatized to you?"
    "Tony Bennett?"
    He shrugged. "What can I say? The kid's got good taste. Here, sit forward a little."
    I shook my head. "I'd rather keep my eye on you."
    "Flattering," he said. "But it'll make it harder to rub your shoulders."
    Shoulder rubs were my second weakness, next to Butterscotch Krimpets. I sat forward. "The blanket's not going anywhere," I told him. "Just so you know."
    He snorted. "Honey, if I wanted to, I could unwrap you like a burrito."
    I gnawed on my lip, wondering if he wanted to, and guessing that he didn't, since a second later I felt his hands on my neck and shoulders, kneading away the tension. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. Maybe I wanted him to want to. I thought about that for a few minutes while he worked over my muscles, letting my mind skim across the surface of a fantasy involving dropping the blanket to reveal lacy black lingerie…
    Except, I was wearing jeans and a sweatshirt. And the sweatshirt might or might not have had a spaghetti sauce stain on its sleeve. Even my bra was boring, no underwires, no padding, no water, no wonder. Just a pattern of tiny roses on cotton that had been on sale in the Undeveloped Misses department.
    "How's that?" he asked, taking his hands away.
    "Boring," I said without thinking. My shoulders were chilly, but my face was hot with embarrassment. I sat back, rewrapping myself like a mummy. "I mean, that was great. Thanks."
    "Do you need anything?" he asked. "More hot chocolate? A sponge bath?"
    "I'm perfectly clean," I told him.
    "In body if not in mind." He flashed his dimples. "You think I don't know you're lusting after me at this very minute? It's written all over your face."
    "That's the hot chocolate. I'm a slob."
    He smirked. "Not exactly breaking news, sweetheart. Let me help you with that." And he reached out to rub his thumb along my jawline, where I was pretty sure there was no hot chocolate, not that I was about to say anything because his warmth felt so good. His eyes were steady on mine. "I'm not getting hot chocolate here," he told me.
    I wasn't about to ask what he was getting.
    "Maybe you spilled some on your neck." He leaned forward to take a look, close enough that I could feel his breath. "Nope, nothing. Maybe it's on your shoulder." And he took hold of the blanket with two fingers to peel it off of my right shoulder.
    I snatched it from him. "I'm not that big a slob."
    He grinned. "You wanna