“That I want to see more of you.”

“Are you sure you’re ready?”

He pulled back far enough to look into her eyes. “Why wouldn’t I be ready?”

“Because you might still be grieving for Millie. I like you. A lot. I do, but I don’t want to get involved with someone who might be looking to replace his wife.” She thought he might get angry or hurt. Instead he smiled as if he found the whole idea amusing.

“I’m not looking for a woman to replace Millie.” He reached for one of her hands and slid it up his chest to the back of his neck. “I want to be with you.” He straightened and brought her up against his chest. “I like being with you,” he continued. “When I’m not with you, I’m thinking about you. No one else. Just you.”

Lucy ran her free palm up his arm to his shoulder and brought his mouth down to hers. She kissed him lightly at first. A slow brush of lips and light touch of tongues. She recognized the scent of his skin and the wet texture of his mouth. She felt his hands and fingers in her hair, and he whispered her name.

“Lucy,” he said, “this is what keeps me up at night.” The kiss turned hotter. Like liquid sunlight, it spread across her skin. Deeper, so deep that it touched her heart and made her feel light-headed. So light-headed that she thought she heard bells, and when Quinn lifted his mouth from hers, she realized she did hear bells.

“Pizza’s here,” he said as her doorbell rang once more. “We could ignore it.”

Lucy dropped her hands from the back of Quinn’s neck and sighed. “No. I order from them all the time. The delivery guys know to keep knocking until I answer.” Occasionally, if she was really into her work, they had to call to tell her they were at her front door.

Quinn took a step back and ran his fingers through the sides of his hair. Frustration burned from his hooded gaze, and Lucy wondered how far things would have gone before one of them would have stopped. She liked to think not far, but she wouldn’t have staked her life on it.

Quinn watched Lucy stand and move across her office when what he really wanted to do was put her back on that desk and crawl on top of her. His gaze moved from the top of her blonde head, down her back and narrow hips, to her round behind. He dropped his hands to his sides and let out a deep breath. He felt like a kid again, living day in and out with a constant hard-on. It was enough to drive him insane. “I’m going to use your bathroom and be right down,” he told her.

She looked over her shoulder at him. “Okay,” she said and walked through the doorway. Quinn listened for her footsteps descending the stairs before he turned his attention to the hutch on her desk filled with crime reference books. Homicide investigation checklists and field guides. Books on investigators’ tactics, procedures, and a whole slew of books on forensics. He noticed studies of clinical disorders and criminal behavior in her shelves. Her reading covered everything from poisons and weaponry to material on the most infamous serial killers in history.

Perfectly understandable reading for a mystery writer. The more he knew Lucy, the more he was convinced she wasn’t a killer. Of course, his brain reminded his groin, that could be because he was attracted to her and didn’t want to believe he could get hard for a psychotic nutball.

Her cat wove itself like an orange Slinky between his feet. He didn’t particularly like cats. Especially cats named Snookums. Christ, even thinking the cat’s name made his sac shrivel. He reached for her mouse and enlarged the document she’d reduced when he’d first walked into her office. He didn’t expect to see anything incriminating, but he placed his hands on the desk and read anyway.

Within the clear plastic, his blue eyes stared into hers, wild, pleading, filled with terror. He struggled for breath, but the more he struggled, the more thin plastic he sucked down his throat. He thrashed about on the bed, pulling and kicking. The strain of the flexi-cuffs was turning his hands white. Fighting was useless.

She sat back on her heels and waited. It wouldn’t take long now. His cuffed hands curled into fists and his back arched. Then he stilled, his muscles relaxed, and she counted. Five…ten…fifteen seconds. His body jerked and convulsed. He wet himself, then went lifeless. She leaned in close and stared into his eyes. Her blood pounded in her ears and she held her breath. She watched his blue eyes fix, his pupils enlarged. She waited…waited for the exact moment when life left his body. Her lungs felt like they were going to explode…but nothing. She leaned back and crossed her arms beneath her bare breasts. That was it? Where was his soul? She thought for sure she’d see it this time. Disappointment settled between her brows. The last guy had given her more of a glimpse into his passing from one world into the next. This one had been a dud.

She gave him a look filled with contempt and scooted across the bed. It had taken her a month to find this guy. It would probably take her a month to find the next one too. But there would be others. There were always others. It was so easy. Some men would do anything if they thought it led to sex.

She grabbed her panties off the floor. Men were so pathetic.

Quinn straightened, and everything within him got real still. He stared at the screen and the blinking cursor. Then he leaned his head back and closed his eyes.

“Fuck,” he whispered to the empty room.

Chapter 8

Hugsnkisses: Seeks Hotlips…

Lucy stood behind the pulpit in the community room of Barnes and Noble and turned to the next page of notes she’d prepared for the Women of Mystery meeting. Cynthia Pool, Barnes and Noble employee and Women of Mystery member, handed Lucy the iced coffee she’d ordered earlier.

“Thank you,” Lucy said and took a sip.

“I hope it isn’t too strong. I told them a triple shot, but I think they might have gotten it too strong.”

Lucy looked into Cynthia’s light green eyes and smiled. She didn’t know Cynthia well, only that the woman was kind of fussy. “It’s perfect.”

For the meeting, Lucy had decided to wear something bright and fun. She’d dressed in a cable-knit sweater the color of a tangerine, a black leather skirt, black hose, and spiky calf boots. She’d curled her hair, then pulled it up into a loose ponytail. The afternoon sunlight sliced through the windows to her left and created long rectangles on the carpet.

With the exception of a few new faces, she’d met all these ladies before. She was well acquainted with them, and she knew they were a real mix of serious writers and dabblers. Their personalities ranged from down-to-earth normal to truly bizarre, but they all had one thing in common: They loved mystery novels. They knew the genre inside and out and had great fun talking about every aspect of it.

For an hour, Lucy spoke about the importance of weaving a good, believable plot, then she opened the rest of the time up for questions. In the front row, a woman she didn’t recognize raised her hand. Lucy took a drink of her coffee and pointed to the lady.

She stood, consulted her notes, then asked, “Where do you get your ideas?”

Lucy groaned silently and lowered her cup. It was the question she was asked most often, and the one she could never truly answer. “I don’t know,” she answered as best she could. “A snippet of conversation enters my head, or I’ll get a flash of a scene, and I know that’s the next book. I have to figure out what it means, but I never know where it comes from. I just thank God it keeps coming. The day it doesn’t, I’m in trouble.”

Next she pointed to an older woman whom she recognized from past meetings. “Yes,” the older woman began as she stood. “Do you have an agent? And do you recommend getting one?”

Okay. That one is easy. “Yes I do, and yes I would.”

A third woman stood. “In your talk, you mentioned the use of red herrings or false clues as important in order to keep the reader guessing. In the book I’m writing, I have one of the townspeople kill a dog. Everyone in town then thinks he must be the killer, and that’s what readers are led to believe also. But he isn’t. Would you say that’s a good red herring?”

Lucy swallowed. The woman was serious and expected a serious answer. “Well, without reading your story and knowing the context in which the dog was killed, nor the mind-set of the townspeople, I’m not sure I can answer that for you. But I would say that you’re the writer, and if you feel it works, then I’m sure it does.” That answer seemed to satisfy the woman, and she sat down.

The next woman to stand was Jan Bright, president of the Women of Mystery and also a Barnes and Noble employee. “When you talked to us last year, you mentioned that the next idea you had for a book involved erotic asphyxiation and Internet dating. Is that what you’re working on now?”

Lucy hadn’t recalled talking about the book at a writers meeting, but she obviously had at some point. “Yes, that’s the book I’m working on right now.”

“Can you tell us how it’s going?”

Hmm. How did one describe bouts of muse-induced euphoria sandwiched between thoughts of ramming your head through the wall? “Great.” She smiled and raised her coffee. “I’ve killed off three men, and I’m about to kill a fourth.”

The ladies laughed, and Lucy glanced up from the group seated in front of her to the store beyond. Like a magnet, her gaze was immediately drawn to a tall man leaning one hip into the “local interest” book rack a few feet beyond the last row of chairs. He had dark hair, and, like the first time she’d met him, he pinned her with his intense brown eyes. He wore a black long-sleeved Moosejaw T-shirt tucked into a pair of jeans. One corner of his mouth slid up, and her heart pinched and swelled at the same time. Quinn was the last person she’d expected to see at the Women of Mystery meeting-although technically he wasn’t standing close enough to be considered in the meeting.