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Mutt, of course, bounced up to the white Blazer with the state trooper’s seal on the door, generating enough energy with her tail to open a portal into the fourth dimension. Kate strolled after her, and Jim, fending off Muffs attentions with an absent pat, watched her approach with a reluctantly fascinated eye.
Kate was only five feet tall. She didn’t have enough leg to be able to stroll toward him with that much sexual menace. Nevertheless, he felt himself taking an involuntary step back, at which he was thwarted by his vehicle. He swallowed hard and, unable to do anything else, watched her come toward him.
It was true Kate Shugak was only five feet tall. It was true that taken individually her features-high, flat cheekbones, narrow hazel eyes that slanted up just a hint and that were sometimes brown and sometimes almost green and sometimes gray, a wide, full-lipped mouth, pale gold skin with an olive tint that ta
The scar, a thin rope of pale, knotted skin that bisected her throat almost literally from ear to ear, could not by any stretch of the imagination be called arousing. If anything, one look at that, one listen to the rusted voice that throat produced ought to have a sensible man beating feet in the opposite direction at once, if not sooner.
Instead, when she smiled at him, a wide, knowing smile that revealed a set of healthy white teeth whose incisors seemed to him to be noticeably longer than they had been the last time he’d seen them, he had an inexplicable desire to fall to his knees and bare his throat and let her suck right out of him the last drop of any bodily fluid he had on offer.
Maybe it was the way her hips moved beneath the denim, or the way the knit fabric outlined her breasts, or the way her hands curled slightly at her sides, as if in anticipation. Maybe it was the way she moved, a smooth, confident fusion of muscle and bone that did a good job of hiding the strength, the quickness, and the agility latent beneath.
He’d known other women who exuded sex. He’d known other women who had been able to slay men with a single smile.
Kate smiled at him now. “Hey, Jim,” she said, and the two words ran like a rasp right up his spine to the base of his skull.
He’d just never known one like this. Everything he had was at attention. He cleared his throat. Hormones. He was male, she was female. He’d react the same way to any woman. “Kate.”
He was helpless to stop the single syllable from sounding like a plea, and he watched her smile widen. Desperately, he sought for something to say. “I haven’t seen you around the Park lately.”
She laughed, a low, intimate sound in the increasing dusk. A strand of hair fell into her face and she tucked it behind an ear, holding his eyes all the while. “Is that what you came to tell me?” She took a step closer. “Have you been missing me?”
“No,” he said, “no, not at all. I’ve been too busy to miss anybody.”
“Really? What with?”
He tried to think of something noteworthy he’d accomplished over the summer. “Oh. Well. You know. Claim jumping. Fishing behind the markers. Hunting out of season. Rape, robbery, murder. The usual.”
She didn’t move. She didn’t look away from him, either. He started to sweat. It was getting harder and harder to remember why he’d walked away from her last May, why he’d a
It was something about love-he remembered that much. Well, he didn’t love her, and he wasn’t going to, wasn’t going to get anywhere near it, or her, damn it.
Joh
Kate glided another step forward, moving in a way that reminded Joh
Wimp, definitely.
An object lesson was what his teacher, Ms. Doogan, would have called it. No way was he ever going to fall into that honey trap, which was what Old Sam Dementieff called it. The irresistible force meeting the not-quite-immovable object was what Bobby Clark called it.
He shook his head, half in pity for a fellow man, half in shame, and went back inside. It was just too painful to watch.
Just for the hell of it, just because she could, just because her mere presence affected Jim Chopin in a ma
“Knock it off,” he said through clenched teeth.
She blinked i
He caught her hand before she could start messing with his belt buckle. “Damn it, Shugak, knock it off.” He shoved past her and found a safe, Kate-free place in the exact center of the clearing, free of corners into which she could back him.
No law she couldn’t stalk him, however, pacing after him with that slow, deliberate, unmistakably predatory stride. Her hair gleamed in the last rays of the setting sun like the coat of a healthy, proud animal reveling in her prime. “Hot for this time of year, isn’t it?” she said. She pulled the tail of her T-shirt free and knotted the hem beneath her breasts, leaving a good six inches of smooth, taut, golden-ski
Jim thanked God her jeans weren’t low-riders. He wasn’t sure he had a spine that would stand up to the seductive power of Kate’s belly button.
He also felt slightly shell-shocked. It wasn’t that no one had ever seduced him before, usually with his active and enthusiastic cooperation, it was just that he’d had no idea that Kate Shugak could turn it on like this. She was always so sensible, so matter-of-fact, so businesslike. Not to mention hostile, antagonistic, and downright bitchy. It had been clear from the begi
He wondered if Jack Morgan had known of this secret identity. If Jack had, it would explain his willingness to cleave only unto her, even to serve out an eighteen-month hiatus in their relationship, waiting for her to come back to him.