Page 41 of No Offense

Hallelujah.Would you like to come upstairs after all?That’s what he was hoping she’d ask, anyway. “What is it?”

“There isn’t any chance—I mean, you don’t think, do you, that the High School Thief could actuallybein high school, do you?”

What?That was not what he’d been expecting—or hoping—she would ask. “Excuse me?”

“I know it sounds nuts, but one of my patrons was bragging the other day about being the High School Thief. The crazy part of it is, he’s in high school himself. I think he was only saying it to get attention—”

“He was,” John said shortly.

“Do you think so?” Her expression was worried. “It’s just that tonight, at Mrs. Tifton’s—well, he wears a hoodie just like that and nearly drowns himself every day in cologne—”

“It’s not him,” John said. He was beginning to realize why she’d seemed so worried in the car. She hadn’t felt frightened at all about what had happened at Mrs. Tifton’s. She was scared of who he was going to arrest for it. “I’m fairly certain after tonight that I know who it is, and it isn’ta high school kid. And it certainly isn’t a high school kid who goes to the library and tries to impress you by bragging that he’s the High School Thief.”

Even in the wavy blue light of the pool, he could see that she was blushing. “Oh, I don’t think he’s trying to impress me. I think he’s just going through a hard time. His parents are divorcing, and he doesn’t have many friends, and—”

“Can we go back?” he asked abruptly.

She stared up at him, confused. “Go back to what?”

“To earlier this evening, when you were teaching me to dance.”

Now she looked even more confused. “You want to dance? Now?”

“No,” he said, and took her in his arms. “I want to kiss you.”

“Oh.” She smiled up at him, the confusion gone, and dropped her overnight bag. “Well, that would be fine with me.”

The next thing he knew, her arms were around his neck, her body melded against his, and she was kissing him. It took less than a second for him to realize she’d shed her bra upstairs when she’d gone to pack and change. He could feel her firm nipples pressing against his heart.

A heart that was slamming hard against the inside of his rib cage.

The night was taking a sudden turn for the better.

He forgot all about his troubles with Katie and the mother-daughter dance, the abandoned baby and Tabitha, and even the High School Thief and Larry Beckwith III (who seemed likely to be one and the same) as he held Molly close. Herbody, so warm and alive, felt like heaven in his arms, her lips like paradise. For a few seconds, he lost his head, forgetting that they were standing by the pool in the courtyard of the Lazy Parrot where anyone could look out from their room and see them at any moment, and feeling instead that they were somehow in their own private utopia.

Maybe that’s why he did what he did next—something he’d never have done under other circumstances, but he was simply too swept away by the feel of her lips on his and the smell of the night-blooming jasmine and the tiny sounds she was making, little gasps of desire—

It was no wonder, really, that one of his hands slipped beneath the soft material of her shirt, then cupped the even softer skin of one of her breasts. She reared her head back to look up at him in surprise—then a slow, sly smile spread across her lips, and she pulled him even closer by his shirtfront.

It all would have been perfect if a cell phone—hers, this time—hadn’t gone off.

“Darn it,” she said, and released him with such abruptness that he felt wind rush to cool all the places where her body had been pressed to his—and the temperature outside was in the seventies. They’d really been heating up the place. “That has to be someone in my family,” she said as she reached inside her bag for her phone. “Only they’d call so late. They all live in a different time zone. I’m so sorry—”

But it wasn’t anyone in her family.

“Oh, Mrs. Tifton,” Molly said, giving John a comical look of mock horror as she answered the call. “No, I’m sorry, we’re on our way back now. It just took me a little longer than I—yes, I can certainly pick that up on my way. No, it’s no trouble at all. Of course, I understand. No, we’ll be happy to. We’ll be right there. Okay. Bye.”

She hung up and gave John an owl-eyed look. “Mrs. Tifton wants to know if we can bring her some whiskey. She’s all out and she thinks a little of it in her tea will help calm her nerves after what’s happened.”

John took a steadying breath. He felt as if he could use a little whiskey himself. “We can certainly accommodate her.”

“Yes.” Molly tucked a wayward strand of dark hair behind one ear. “We have plenty of whiskey here at the bar, as a matter of fact. I can borrow a bottle and replace it in the morning. I doubt there’s any place open where I can buy some now.”

“No.” John didn’t want to correct her, because he most certainly didn’t think it appropriate to take the town’s children’s librarian to Ron’s Place, a bar that was open twenty-two hours a day and also sold liquor, and at which he had broken up more than a few fights and even several attempted murders.

“I’ll just go grab a bottle,” Molly said. She was looking flushed in the light from the kidney-shaped pool—flushed, and more beautiful than any woman he’d ever seen. “Then we should probably—”

“Go,” he finished for her, though the thought of having to say good-bye to this woman was killing him.