Legally Hot by Leigh, Lora (smart ebook reader TXT) 📗

Or maybe never?

Maybe he’s not happy, genius. Invasion of personal space and all that.

She frowned. Well, had he not left the door practically open? A hardass detective like him, always leaving home on the rush, never locking up—was that even logical? Protect-the-others-while-I-happily-get-myself-killed was probably Cody Nordstrom’s motto.

She sighed drearily and then readjusted herself along the length of the mattress, plumped up his pillow behind her head and tried to relax.

Cody was far from perfect—under every joke lay a troubled man.

But her troubled little body just adored her troubled man, and she’d like to think that she understood him better than most.

He felt responsible for what his brother did all those years ago, and because of that, Cody didn’t know that he was a higher caliber man than most.

He was one of the best homicide detectives the force had ever seen, but when it came to his personal life, he could stare at something and just not see what stood before him. Now, Megan would do anything to finally be seen. Even strip.

Be sexy, she thought as she stretched out over the bed in a way she hoped would flatter what she considered her plain, none-too-curvy figure.

She was dying for him to get up here and let her put his rough-hewn, pretty-boy, Armani-ad face between her hands and kiss those lips she dreamed about for the first time, when she heard squeeeeeach from the closet door.

Frowning, Megan raised her head and sat up straighter, when a flash of movement in the shadowed interior caught her eye.

Her heart stopped. The fear was so overwhelming that it paralyzed her. Ice started to build, chilling her skin, her hands, her feet, her brain. Once again, she became statuesque as a shockingly familiar face materialized.

Lungs burning for air that could not make it past her throat, Megan stared into the darkness, a part of her numbed mind screaming at her to move, do something, because someone was staring back at her.

She had been so wound up in her plan, she had not realized she was not alone. Something was inside Cody’s room. Something, some monster, seemed to have been waiting, had been watching her, intent on doing—what?

An image of fifteen years ago, of Cody’s brother standing over his parents’ dead bodies, assailed her, and like she had back then, she remained frozen with fear as the figure stepped out of the shadows.

Panic gripped her by the throat, blocking out the commands of her mind for her to run run run, overpowering her so that she could do nothing, think nothing, only see him coming …

“No,” she croaked helplessly, starting to scramble back against the headboard.

“Shhhhh,” he said, and the fact that he was speaking to her only alarmed her further.

She’d never been so scared in her life. Not even that time long ago, because that time she’d been a girl, and at first she’d thought that what she’d witnessed was a dream. Now she knew for a fact that some little boys did kill their parents.

She knew that the man she had grown to love spent his days hunting down the scum of the earth, all of whom had taken someone’s life, just like his brother.

Life was not pink anymore in her eyes, and it had not been pink for a long, long time … this shadow … this criminal … coming toward her was REAL. He was real and he was closer and he was talking to her!

Her every nightmare, her nightmare of being murdered, of dying a stupid virgin, was real.

Suddenly fear kicked instinct into action. She opened her mouth wide, panic and fear tangling together for a voice, tumbling to form a big, loud “HEELP MEEE!!!” that the entire world would be able to hear, or at the very least, Cody, her hero, but a black rag came over her nose, and she had no time to scream.

  TWO

  “Meg?”

Cody rubbed the tension in the back of his neck as he waited for the microwave to ping, then he scanned the staircase, expecting Megan to appear, her clover-green eyes bright and excited as she came up with an explanation—and it had to be a good one—for breaking and entering into his home.

He knew himself well enough to know that he’d glower at her only for a minute—or perhaps a couple of minutes more because, dammit, she could’ve gotten hurt! Plus where the hell did she learn how to pick locks? Especially his state-of-the-art locks?

Then again, Megan Banks was the kind of woman who always surprised a man, and he knew that even if he glowered for a whole damned hour, as soon as she flashed one of those pearly white smiles, he’d be done for.

Heck, he might as well just give her a key so she could come in and make herself at home whenever she’d like to. You wish, don’t you, asshole? Come home to her for a nice warm meal, a long, wet kiss, and then it’s upstairs together to make a couple of babies.

His treacherous blood began to boil at the thought. Yeah, Megan was the kind of girl any man would kill for. Would travel worlds just to be able to come home to. The kind of girl for whom any man would spend a lifetime doing hero work, putting scumbags in jail, just so a girl like her could sleep at night.

The kind of girl Cody would never, ever, touch with his callused, bloodied hands.

Since the night of his parents’ murder, Cody knew that he would never get married. He would never get the girl, the kids, the dog, or the happily ever after.

He would get the killers.

There were always casualties in a story, and his personal life would be one of them.

It seemed a small sacrifice at the time, in exchange