Extreme Exposure (9 page)

Abruptly, he broke off the kiss and ran his thumb across the swollen wetness of her bottom lip. “I told you I was going to kiss you good-night and nothing more. If I’m going to hold to that, we’d better stop now.” He sat back in his seat, and Kara heard a click as he unlatched her seat belt. “I’ll get your door.”

As he walked around the front of the Jeep to her side of the vehicle, Kara tried to still her trembling. She shook from head to toe, her body quaking with raw need. But no matter how she tried, she couldn’t stop shivering.

Get a grip, McMillan!

He opened her door, helped her to the ground, and held her before him. “You’re cold.”

Unable to meet his gaze, Kara spoke without thinking. “N-no, it’s not that.”

His brow furrowed for a moment and then he seemed to understand. He grinned, a sexy know-it-all grin, and ran a finger down her cheek. “I’m glad I was able to provoke a reaction.”

Her sexual frustration became irritation. She glowered at him. “How is it you remain so unaffected?”

His eyebrows rose, and he gave a snort. “Unaffected?”

Without warning, he cupped her bottom, pulled her hard against him, and she felt the unmistakable evidence of his arousal. He was rock-hard, huge.

Her inner muscles clenched—hard—and the air rushed out of her lungs. “Oh!”

He thrust against her, his eyes dark with obvious male hunger. His voice was deep and husky. “Nothing about you leaves me unaffected, Kara.”

Then he released her, slipped his arm through hers, and walked with her to the doorstep, where they stood for a moment in silence.

“Thanks, Reece. I—”

He pressed a finger against her lips to silence her. “Next Friday night—dinner at my place? I’m a good cook.”

He was standing so close to her, his nearness, his scent
playing havoc with her ability to think, to breathe. If only he would shut up and go away. If only he would kiss her again! “Okay.”

Then he ducked his head and brushed his lips lightly over hers. “Good night, Kara. Sleep tight.”

And then he was gone.

“T
HE TROUBLE
is that they’re lumping all senators’ expenses into one sum. We can’t tell one senator’s legitimate claim from another’s dry-cleaning bill.” The audit was in its first day and already Carol was facing resistance.

Reece switched the phone to his other ear and pulled on his other jacket sleeve. “Do you mean to say there are no individual records? Nothing at all?”

Stanfield stood in the doorway to Reece’s office with Galen Prentice and glanced impatiently at his watch.

“That’s right. Nothing.”

“What about the payroll system? Surely the state has records of compensation paid to each senator. Could we get at it that way?”

Stanfield glared at him, tapped the face of his watch, and mouthed the word, “Now!”

Reece deliberately turned his back on the man. He didn’t dance to TexaMent’s tune. The tire-burning bill wasn’t the only issue on his plate today, nor was it the most important bill he was carrying. He’d be damned before he’d let any corporate CEO treat him like he’d been bought and paid for.

“Probably, but you know most of the senators will put up a fight. Paychecks aren’t public records.”

“Of course not, but the Legislative Audit Committee isn’t a public body. See what you can do, and get back to me. I’ve got to go. Press conference. And Carol—thanks.”

Reece hung up the phone and reached for his notes with deliberate calmness.

“Couldn’t you handle that later?” Prentice scolded. “The press is waiting!”

Reece pretended to glance through his note cards. “They’ll wait. They won’t want to leave without getting the story.”

Would Kara be there?

His stomach tightened with anticipation at the thought. It had taken every ounce of willpower he possessed not to call her over the weekend. He didn’t want to tip his hand, to scare her away. He had a feeling that if she knew how badly he wanted her she’d never go out with him again. So he’d resolved to call her mid-week and had tried to put her out of his mind.

He’d worked out hard at the gym on Saturday, lifting weights until his muscles felt like linguine and running ten miles on the treadmill. He’d come in to the Capitol and tried to read through a few dozen of the bills he was expected to vote on in the coming weeks. On Sunday, he’d driven up to his cabin in the mountains and split firewood. He’d even taken his snowboard to Eldora and carved some turns on the double-black-diamond runs.

But never once had she left his thoughts.

He wanted to see her again.

See her? Hell, he wanted to get her into bed. It was that simple.

Then again, forget the bed. The floor would work. A couch. The kitchen table. The bathtub. The bare ground.

He’d known she was fiery, but he hadn’t realized what it would do to him when she finally let that fire loose. They’d shared only one kiss, and yet in those few minutes, her responsiveness had driven him to the brink. She’d actually begun to writhe in her seat.

One kiss had done that.

He couldn’t fathom what she’d be like stripped naked with his head between her thighs. But he intended to find out.

Stanfield’s angry voice jerked him back to the present. “We have a lot riding on this bill, Sheridan, and we’re not going to tolerate a less than fully committed effort from you!”

This was the opening Reece needed. He looked up from his notes, met the older man’s soulless gaze, and allowed an angry edge to creep into his voice. “Let’s get one thing straight, Stanfield. I agreed to carry this bill for my own reasons. I don’t work for you. I don’t report to you. I report to the taxpayers. I decide what my priorities are, not you. Is that clear?”

Stanfield’s face turned crimson. “Of course, Senator. I didn’t mean to imply—”

“Good.” Reece interrupted him and strode past him toward the pressroom, only one thing on his mind.

Would Kara be there?

N
OTHING ABOUT
you leaves me unaffected, Kara.

If she tried, Kara could still feel his lips against hers. She could feel the roughness of his five-o’clock shadow, the slick glide of his tongue, the surprising hardness of his chest and his—.

She pulled to the side of the highway, slammed on her brakes, and realized it was too late. She’d missed her turn.

She swore, scolded herself. “Quit thinking about
him,
McMillan!”

She’d been thinking about
him
all weekend. When she’d burned Saturday’s dinner. When she’d put her line-dry-only rayon shirt in the dryer. When she’d gone to the grocery story and remembered to buy batteries but not milk or bread or eggs. When she’d lain awake last night, every nerve in her body alive and wanting.

Wanting him.

But life was not about what she wanted. She’d learned that lesson a long time ago.

She waited for traffic to pass, made what was probably an illegal U-turn, and headed back the other direction, passing the entrance to Northrup Mining on her left, resolved to think no more about Reece Sheridan.

Okay, so Reece was an incredible kisser. She’d give him
that. He kissed her the way she’d only ever dreamed of being kissed. My God, the man had what felt like prehensile lips—to say nothing of his tongue! But did that mean she had to go witless over him?

That question was drowned out by another: if that’s how he kissed, what would it be like to have sex with him?

“Stop it, McMillan! Stop it now!” She spied the little dirt road on her right, flicked on her turn signal, and made the turn.

She forced her mind back to her work. The state health department had faxed a response to her open-records request, asking for another week to organize the requested documents, some of which were supposedly in storage. Legally, they could get away with it. Colorado law required only that they respond within three days. They didn’t have to fork over the actual documents in three days. Now she had a week to wait.

She’d decided to do some footwork. She’d come out here to interview Northrup’s neighbors, hoping to make good use of her day. If the plant truly had been polluting the air and water for the past few years, surely the neighbors would have noticed something by now. Perhaps some of them had witnessed strange activities at or around the plant.

She came to the first farmhouse, a little white house flanked by enormous cottonwood trees. She parked, gathered her notebook and a pen, and slipped her digital recorder into her pocket. Then she stepped out into the chilly morning air.

The house looked run down, its paint worn thin. A flower garden in full hibernation took up most of what would have been the front lawn, the dried remains of sunflowers jutting up from the still-frozen earth. A wooden plaque on a little wooden fence surrounding the flowerbed proclaimed “Grandma’s Garden.”

Kara made her way up the sidewalk, climbed the front steps, and knocked.

After what seemed a very long time, a thin, elderly woman
with short white hair—probably Grandma herself—opened the door. “Yes?”

“Hi, I’m Kara McMillan from the
Denver Independent
. I’m investigating Northrup Mining Corporation, and I wondered if you might have a few minutes to talk with me.”

“You’re a reporter?” Grandma opened the door a bit wider.

“Yes, ma’am.” Kara held up her press card. “I’m working on an article about your neighbor, Northrup.”

“I wish they weren’t our neighbor.” The woman opened the door. “Come on in.”

Kara stepped into a small entryway that opened into a little kitchen. There was the heavy scent of bacon and coffee in the air. Immaculately clean, the kitchen held a small table with four chairs, an old stove, and a refrigerator. The appliances and countertops were the same shade of golden yellow that had been so popular in the ’70s. On the wall was a clock shaped like a cat, its swinging tail and moving eyes ticking off the passing seconds.

“Have a seat, dear. I’ll fetch my husband.” She shuffled off in a pair of slippers and a floral housedress, the bare white of her spindly calves laced with purplish varicose veins.

In a moment, she returned and motioned Kara down the hallway into the living room—a small, homey room with an overstuffed sofa decorated with white, hand-crocheted doilies. An elderly man, presumably Grandpa, sat in an armchair, an oxygen tube running beneath his nostrils. His cheeks were sunken, his mouth open, and a shock of thin gray hair fell over his forehead. But his eyes were keen. He gave her a toothless grin and pointed to the sofa.

“This is Kara McMillan, dear. She’s a reporter come to talk about Northrup.”

“Hi, Mr.—”

“Farnsworth. I’m Moira. That’s Ed.”

Kara shook Mr. Farnsworth’s thin hand and sat on the sofa. “I’m investigating claims that Northrup is polluting the
air and water around its plant. I decided to come out and talk with those of you who live around the facility to find out what you’ve seen. How long have you lived here?”

It was Moira who answered the question. “We’ve lived here all our married life, nigh on fifty years. Raised five kids in this house. As for Northrup, they can go to hell.”

Moira spent the next hour telling Kara exactly why Northrup could go to hell. Although the plant had been a decent neighbor for most of its thirty years in existence, the past decade had been rough with night blasting at its mine and a big increase in the clouds of dust that wafted across their yard and fields. It had gotten so bad that they’d quit opening their windows, Moira said.

“If we leave them open, everything in the house gets coated in the stuff. Isn’t that so, Ed?”

Ed nodded and spoke in a raspy, wheezy voice. “It plum near stripped the paint off my Ford.”

“Stripped the paint off your truck?” Kara took notes, knowing also that the entire conversation was being recorded digitally. State law allowed her to record any conversation she was a participant in without notifying those she was recording. She didn’t do it to be sneaky, but rather to enable her to double-check her notes later. Sometimes even she couldn’t read her handwriting.

“Stripped the finish off,” Moira corrected her husband. “Took away the shine. It did the same thing to the paint on our house.”

Kara remembered the dull, chipping paint job and wondered if the harsh Colorado sunshine and the extreme shifts in temperature weren’t to blame rather than dust. “Do you mind if I ask why you’re on oxygen, Mr. Farnsworth?”

He started to speak, was cut off by his wife. “Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease, isn’t that right, Ed?”

Ed nodded.

“My Ed was a two-pack-a-day man when he was younger. He quit about twenty years back, but it caught up with him anyway, I guess.”

Kara met Ed’s gaze. “I’m sorry. I don’t suppose the dust helps much.”

Ed grinned and shook his head. “No, I reckon it don’t.”

“If you want to know more about Northrup, you should talk to the Perkinses two houses down. They’ve been complaining to the county health department for years about the dust. Hasn’t done them one bit of good, though.”

Kara thanked Moira and Ed and gave them a copy of her business card. “Please call me if you think of anything else. And thanks for being so generous with your time.”

She headed farther down the road to the Perkinses’ home and knocked on the door.

A middle-aged man with long hair and a beard opened the door, a growling wolf-hybrid at his side. “Who are you, and what do you want?”

In his hands he held a rifle, and it was aimed at her stomach.

CHAPTER 7

K
ARA TRIED
not to roll her eyes and held up her press card. “I’m Kara McMillan with the
Denver Independent.
I’m investigating Northrup and was told by some of your neighbors that you might have something to say.”

Mr. Perkins lowered the rifle, pushed the wolf-dog back with his leg, opened the door a crack, and took the ID card from her hand. After reading it closely, he opened the door and handed it back. “Sorry about the gun. We get some weird people out here. You never can be too careful.”