Read To Die For for Free Online

awareness between us that made me feel slightly electrified.
    In retrospect, I’m sure a bug feels just the same way as it flies into a zapper.
    Our first date passed in a blur of anticipation. Our first kiss was explosive. The only thing that kept me from sleeping with him on the first date was: (A) it’s so tacky, and (B) I wasn’t on birth control pills. I hate to say it, but (A) was almost more compelling than (B), because my rioting hormones were screeching,
“Yes! I want to have his baby!”
    Stupid hormones. They should at least wait and see how things turn out before doing their mating dance.
    Our second date was even more intense. The kissing became heavy making out, with most of our clothes off. See (B) above for my reason for stopping, even though he produced a condom. I don’t trust condoms because when Jason and I were engaged, one
shredded
on him and I sweated bullets for two weeks until my period came right on schedule. My wedding gown was ready for the final fitting, and Mom would have blown a gasket if my waistline had started expanding. Normally I don’t worry about Mom’s gaskets, because she can handle just about anything, but planning a big wedding will stress out even a woman with ironclad nerves.
    So, no condoms for me, except for entertainment purposes; you know what I mean. I fully intended to go on birth control pills as soon as I got my next period, though, because I could see into my future and a naked Jefferson Wyatt Bloodsworth figured very large in it . . . very large, indeed. I just hoped I could hold out long enough for the pills to take effect.
    On our third date, it was as if he’d been taken over by the Pod people. He was inattentive, restless, constantly checking his watch as if he couldn’t get away from me fast enough. He ended the date with an obviously reluctant peck on the lips, and walked away without saying he’d call—which would have been a lie, because he didn’t—or that he’d had a good time, or
anything.
And that was the last I’d seen of him, the bastard.
    I was furious with him, and two years hadn’t done anything to dilute my fury. How
could
he have walked away from something that promised to be so special? And if he hadn’t felt the same way I did, then he’d had no business taking off my clothes. Yes, I know that’s what guys
do,
and God bless them for it, but when you get out of the teenage years, you expect something else to go along with the lust, for the shallowness of a puddle to have deepened into at least . . . a deeper puddle, I guess. If he had walked away because I’d twice stopped him from consummation, then I was better off without him. I certainly hadn’t called him later to ask what was wrong, because I was so angry I wasn’t certain I could control myself. I intended to call him when I was calmer.
    Flash forward two years. I still hadn’t called.
    That was my state of mind when he walked into my office in Great Bods, all six feet two inches of him. He was wearing his dark hair just a little longer, but his green eyes were just the same: observant, sharp with intelligence, hard with the hardness that cops have to acquire or get a different job. That hard cop gaze raked over me, and appeared to sharpen even more.
    I wasn’t happy to see him. I wanted to kick his shins, and I might have if I hadn’t been pretty sure he’d arrest me for assaulting a police officer, so I did the only thing any self-respecting woman would do: I pretended not to recognize him.
    “Blair,” he said, coming over to stand way too close. “Are you all right?”
    What did he care? I gave him a startled, faintly alarmed look, like the one women get when some strange man is getting too close and too familiar, and discreetly hitched my chair just an inch away from him. “Uh . . . yes, I’m fine,” I said warily, then subtly changed my expression to one of puzzlement as I stared at him, as if I half-recognized his face but couldn’t pull a name out of my