Whispers of Danger and Love Read Online Free

house, you know.” She guessed from the tone of his voice he was serious. He really meant it. Was this the Scot or the Irish piece he used to express his guilt?
    “She used to talk about you all the time. She kept up with your doings over the years, although she didn’t care much for your lady friends.” Cheryl glanced at him from underneath her eyelashes.
    His eyes twinkled but his face transformed into inscrutably bland nothingness. She snorted, and he flashed a broad grin. She struggled to maintain her composure albeit recognizing the memorial power of that smile. There was history between the two of them. For a moment, the years dropped away, and two naughty children sat together plotting their next wicked escapade.
    Abruptly, he dropped his feet and jerked a buzzing cell from his pocket. As he barked his name into the receiver, she watched, fascinated, while he completed a metamorphosis from her old nemeses into a cop. Hard planes appeared on his cheeks, his lips thinned, and his eyes narrowed then went flat. Belatedly she noticed the butt of a gun riding in a shoulder hostler underneath his loose jacket. His conversation consisted of one-word answers, grunts, and short questions. Cheryl could draw no conclusions, but her curiosity was alive and well. This must be the stern German part of David at work.
    “Gotta go, sweet thing.” He leaned over, grabbed the nape of her neck, and, taking advantage of her astonished mouth dropping open, kissed her hard with a quick thrust of his tongue. One rough finger tilted her chin up as he looked deep into her eyes for a nano second, and then chuckled deep in his throat. The Italian Stallion was back.
    “Yum, like honey nectar, still sweet Cher,” he murmured.
    She felt her mouth gaping like the Grand Canyon as he walked swiftly out the door. Good Lord. After all these years, you’d think she would be prepared for his outrageous behavior. But she never was. It was part of the pathology of their relationship that he could shock her senseless—every single time, over and over.
    Waiting for the tingling to stop, Cheryl sat rubbing her lips as she watched a beat-up, plain-brown-wrapper automobile, lights flashing on the dash board, peel out of the drive way next door. Drawing deep breaths in and out, she grabbed her stomach and tried to quiet her pounding pulse. She hadn’t had a reaction like that since the beastly Lily Killer had stepped in and ruined her high school prom.
    “I will not allow him to come back into my life. I swear on my best boots I will control myself. I don’t know how he manages to seduce me like that. When will I ever learn?”
    Over in the corner, her parrot squawked in a facsimile of her grandmother’s voice, “Ack! Naughty Boy!”
    “You got that right, Ganymede. He’s been a naughty boy all his life!”
    Cheryl stalked out to the garden and calmed herself by furiously weeding a perennial bed. A tiny Sphinx Moth buzzed her ear and settled in a patch of impatiens nearby. The soft sounds soothed her as the tiny humming bird look-alike drew sweet nectar from the blossoms. She settled back on her heels to watch. Bees and colorful butterflies flitted throughout the garden filled with peak July blooms. A gloriously red cardinal, almost like a flower himself, was stridently singing, warning other males to stay out of his territory. She allowed her mind to wander, her eyes unfocused while her thoughts strayed to her childhood.
    David Larkin was four years older than she. What did that make him now? Thirty-three and a half? Living all their lives next door to each other, their grandmothers had been friends. Frequently Cheryl would find David playing in the backyard when she came to spend time with her Nana. He’d fascinated a lonely little girl with no siblings with his merry grin and a winning way of presenting “the plan” for the day to little next-door Gullible Cheryl. She would fall into helping him build a tree house in his Granny’s best fruit