Read Melting the Ice for Free Online Page B

cops.”
    She was afraid now. This man was no stranger to attack. He moved like a black jungle cat and had the same power. Hannah swallowed, her throat tight. She tried to speak. “What do you want from me, Rex?”
    He held her, up against the wall, a brutally intimate embrace. He leaned in, placing his mouth between her fall of hair and her ear. “More than you’ll ever know, McGuire.” The hot whisper, painfully seductive, snaked through her. A serpent of unwanted desire.
    He reached up, slowly took a handful of her hair, gently twisted it through gloved fingers and let it fall back onto her shoulder. It was an achingly intimate gesture. She began to tremble inside. Emotion pricked hot behind her eyes. Damn him. Damn this man from her past. He was pulling the threads of her life apart.
    “Come.” He took her wrist, led her to a chair. She was powerless.
    “Sit.”
    He faced her, seated on the coffee table, his knees almost touching hers. “You gate crashed my party, Hannah. You play by my rules now. That means no police.”
    “I…I don’t understand. Who are you, Rex? What’s going on?”
    “I found something. Something that makes me think Amy Barnes got herself into trouble. It may have gotten her killed.”
    Confusion spiraled through her brain. “You don’t mean murder?”
    “I think she was sticking her nose where it wasn’t wanted.”
    “What…what did you find?”
    Again he sidestepped her question. “But if you take this to the cops, you’ll get nowhere. No answers. The police are not going to help you. Trust me on this.”
    Trust? She’d trusted Rex Logan once before. She thought she’d known this man. She looked at him now; he was a stranger. A dangerous one. And the cops were his Achilles’ heel. Why?
    “And if I do go the cops, what happens to you? You going to try and stop me?”
    “You’ll tie me up in bureaucratic red tape, that’s what. Then it’ll be too late.”
    “For what?”
    He dragged his hands through his hair and blew out a stream of frustration. “Christ, Hannah, why’d you have to walk into this?”
    “What, exactly, have I walked in to, Dr. Logan? Who the hell are you?”
    He stared at her, assessing.
    “Look, either you tell me what the hell is going on or I go to the RCMP detachment right now.”
    He stood up, paced, turned to face her. “I can’t tell you. It’s classified.”
    She pushed herself to her feet. “What do you mean you can’t tell me? What do you mean ‘classified’?”
    He stepped forward, taking her hands in his. “Hannah, work with me on this. Trust me.”
    “Work with you? Trust you? You won’t tell me what the hell is going on. You won’t tell me who you are, why you’re sneaking around like a thief and you expect me to work with you?”
    “You shouldn’t have come here.”
    “Screw you, Logan. I had every right to come here.” She pushed past him and stalked from the apartment, slammed the door behind her.
    Hannah stepped out onto the pedestrian walkway into the clean night air still shaking with adrenaline. She’d done it again. Fled. Damn him. She looked back up at the second floor. Amy’s apartment was once again in darkness.
    Rex lifted the blind slightly with the back of his hand and looked down into the street to watch her go. He saw her stop, turn and look back up at the window. Instinctively he shifted farther back into the dark shadows. Her hair shimmered pale gold in the lamplight, like an angel’s.
    Blast.
    Hannah was not working her way into his investigation, she had crashed slap-bang into the middle of it. So much for trying to stay out of her way while he was in White River.
    And after finding what he had in Amy’s apartment, Hannah could be at risk if she insisted on digging. If his suspicions were correct, Hannah’s curiosity may already have landed her in hot water. Very hot water.
    Oh, the bittersweet irony.
    He’d walked out of her life six years ago to keep her safe.
    Now he could not walk from her.