All Smoke No Fire Read Online Free Page A

bathroom, past the kitchenette, past the lounge seating area, and back toward her bedroom with its private seating area and en suite bathroom.
    Dax appeared in the doorway, rubbing his head. “Low bridge.” He laughed.
    Beth’s smirk grew…smirkier and she slid out of the bench seat. “We have a stowaway.” She walked past Marilou to the front of the bus, kissed her husband’s cheek, and disappeared into the soundproof sleeping room, closing the door.
    “We’re rolling.” Joe shifted and the bus eased forward.
    Marilou could almost cry right now as relief and excitement flooded her. “Hi, smokey.” She set her bags on the table.
    From the front of the bus, Joe’s ubiquitous talk radio rolled from his speakers.
    Dax placed his hand on the wall to steady himself as the bus picked up speed. “If you’re gonna call me smokey, I think I might just bail at the next stop.”
    She walked up to him and squeezed his forearm for a couple seconds, it was so big and muscled, it made her giddy. Giddier. “You don’t know how glad I am to see you here.”
    He looked down at her, his face unreadable. “I tried to talk myself out of it, but to be honest, I wanted to be on this bus more than I’ve wanted anything in my life.”
    Marilou could fall in love with his habit of total openness. Gesturing to the seating group with a low table and four leather chairs, she gave him a nudge. “Sit. Let’s talk a bit.” She yawned. “Before I crash for a few hours.”
    “Sure.” He folded his big body into one of the chairs. “Joe and Beth explained the shift driving. Even with regular shift-change stops, it’ll only take us twenty-four hours to get to New Orleans.”
    “And we can sleep through a lot of those hours.” Marilou opened the tall, narrow fridge and pulled out two bottles of beer. “This okay?”
    He nodded. “Why don’t you fly?”
    She used an opener on the tops then set the beer on the table and sat across from him. “Scared to death.” There weren’t many things that frightened her, but this one she wasn’t interested in letting go of. “Since the turbulence on my first flight when I was eighteen, I’ve never gotten on another plane.”
    “Bad, huh?” He watched her with those beautiful eyes.
    “Yeah, I got hit on the head with something and threw up.”
    Dax frowned. “Sounds horrible.” He drank from his bottle. “But it could have been worse.”
    “Yep.” She lifted her beer in a toast. “To being alive and having the opportunity to start something new in our lives.”
    He tapped his bottle to hers, then drank.
    Tonight they’d be sharing a bedroom. It’d be strange for her, not sure if the zing of awareness she felt for him was reciprocated. She wouldn’t push it, though, and if something happened, all the better. She’d been in a dry spell for more months than she cared to admit. “You saw the bedroom?”
    He opened his mouth and worked his jaw a few seconds. “You have two beds in there. Are we…” He swallowed. “Is one of them for me, or do I sleep out here?”
    She just wanted to hug him, squeeze him tight. Such a gentleman. “Yep, one of the beds is for you. There’s a thick curtain that pulls between them so it’ll give a little privacy. I have a niece who likes to travel with me when she’s not in school—she’s a junior in high school and thinks she wants to be a singer.”
    Dax grinned. “Did you talk her into that the same way you talked me into it?”
    With a laugh, Marilou crossed her legs and her skirt rode up, showing some leg.
    His eyes followed the movement, almost a caress from her calves up her thighs. Was he interested? His gaze shot to hers with narrowed lids, sexy, hungry. He shifted in his seat. Was there a bigger bulge behind his fly now?
    It would be so easy for her to let him seduce her, let him peel off her clothes and kiss her tingling skin, use those big hands to please her, then lie completely naked next to him as he slid his hard shaft deep