Convincing Alex by Nora Roberts Page B

before we got started. And both better off.”
    â€œUndoubtedly you’re right.”
    â€œI know I’m right. We’d always be coming at things from different angles. Hers is cross-eyed. She doesn’t see anything the way she should.”
    â€œA difficult woman.”
    â€œDifficult.” Alex held out his hands so that Mikhail could unlace his gloves. “That doesn’t begin to describe her. She acts so mild and relaxed, you wouldn’t think you could rile her with a cattle prod. Then you point out an obvious mistake, for her own good, and she jumps on you with both feet. Kicks you out of the house.”
    Mikhail tucked his tongue in his cheek. “You’re better off without her.”
    â€œYou’re telling me.” Alex tossed his gloves aside and flexed his hands. “Who needs unreasonable women?”
    â€œMen.”
    â€œYeah.” With a sigh, Alex sent his brother a miserable look. “I want her so much I can’t breathe.”
    â€œI know the feeling.” He punched his brother’s sweaty shoulder. “So go get her.”
    â€œGo get her,” Alex repeated.
    â€œPut her in her place.”
    A dangerous light, one Mikhail recognized, flickered in Alex’s eyes. “Her place. Right.”
    â€œHey!” Mikhail called out when his brother strode off. “The showers are that way.”
    â€œI’ll catch one at the station. See you later.”
    â€œLater,” Mikhail agreed. He wandered off to find his son, wondering how soon he would meet this unique, unreasonable woman without common sense.
    She sounded perfect for his baby brother.
    Â 
    Bess was never at her best in the morning, and she suspected anyone who was. Her alarm was buzzing when she heard the pounding on her door. She’d been ignoring the first for nearly ten minutes, but the incessant knocking had her dragging herself out of bed.
    Bleary-eyed, pulling a skimpy silk robe over an equally skimpy nightshirt, she stumbled to the door. “What the hell?” she demanded. “Is it a fire or what?”
    â€œOr what,” Alex told her when she yanked open the door.
    Struggling to focus, she dragged a hand through her hair. The robe drooped off one shoulder. “How’d you get up here?”
    â€œFlashed my badge for the security guard.” After closing the door behind him, he looked his fill. There was a great deal to be said for a sleepy woman in rumpled white silk. “Get you up, McNee?”
    â€œWhat time is it?” She turned away, following the scent from her coffeemaker, which was set to brew at 7:20 each morning. “What day is it?”
    â€œThursday.” He followed her weaving progress through the living area and into a big white-and-navy kitchen. There was a huge arrangement of fresh orchids on the center island. Orchids in the kitchen, he thought. Only Bess. “About 7:30.”
    â€œIn the morning?” Blindly she groped for a mug. “What are you doing here at 7:30 on a Thursday morning?”
    â€œThis.” He spun her around. The taste of her mouth, warm and soft from sleep, had him groaning. Before she could think—he didn’t want either of them to think—he slipped his tongue between her lips to seduce hers. Her body went stiff, then melted, softening against his like candle wax touched by a flame.
    Through the roaring of his blood, he heard the crash as the china mug she’d held slipped from her fingers and smashed on the tiles.
    Was she still dreaming? Bess wondered. Her dreams had always been very vivid, but this… It wouldn’t be possible to feel so much, need so desperately, in a dream.
    And she could taste him. Really taste him. A mingling of man and desire and salty sweat. Delicious. His mouth was so hot, so unyielding, just as his hands were through the thin silk she wore.
    She could feel the cool tiles beneath her feet, a shivery contrast to the heat roaring