Force of Attraction by D. D. Ayres

laugh. Your whole face lights up.”
    Cole sent him a sidelong glance. “Don’t make too much of it.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œBecause, just don’t.”
    Their gazes met, hers turned a deeper blue than usual, as if something had disturbed those depths and brought up shadows of things past. Maybe she was remembering how much they once laughed together, often in bed. In bed, nothing mattered but them. In bed they were perfect.
    One glorious second his dick sprang to life along with the sudden urge to capture her laughter in his mouth. He longed to scoop her up, slam and lock the door, and carry her to the nearest horizontal surface where he could screw his wife until they were both too exhausted to move.
    My ex-wife. And I can’t touch her. Can’t do any of the sexy nasty things streaming though my mind.
    A man who lived his professional life observing and making split-second judgments about the emotional status of others, Scott clocked the exact moment she began to read his thoughts. Her eyes widened and her lips parted in a soft expression of alarm mingled with resistance.
    He looked away first, not because she intimidated him. The exact opposite. If she saw more deeply into the dark dangerous desires swirling through him, she would refuse to continue to work with him. And who could blame her?
    So, he slammed the door on his libido and put his emotions on lockdown before he put his hands on her.
    All he had left was a jittery anxiety he channeled into the most useful emotion he could find. Anger.
    â€œThis is not a game.” He gestured toward Hugo. “How the hell do you expect Hugo to accept me when hostility rolls off you as regularly as waves on the shore?” Lust to anger in less than three seconds. A new record for him.
    She didn’t back down. She crossed her arms. “I’m not hostile.”
    He took a few steps toward her. “You hate my guts. Admit it. Stands to reason Hugo isn’t going to cuddle up to me.”
    Cole bit the inside of her lip. He was pushing harder than the moment seemed to call for. “Are you finished?”
    â€œI haven’t begun.”
    â€œThen this isn’t going to work.”
    â€œOh, it will work.” He paused before her, reaching out to tug the end of the ponytail slung forward over her shoulder. “But you’re going to have to warm up to me. For the sake of the operation.”
    Cole jerked her gaze away. Warm up? She was much too hot already with him just standing so close.
    The deep dark secret that had kept her awake for hours each night since Scott had reentered her life was that the connection between them hadn’t eroded during the past two years. She might resent him, blame him for ruining everything, have every sane reason to distrust him. Yet their bodies still knew each other. The attraction held. Easy for him to make light of it. Impossible for her.
    When she looked up again he had moved away from her. Was, in fact, peering into the grocery bag she’d brought in. “You can stay for dinner.”
    He looked up with the delight of Christmas morning. “Great. What are we having?”
    She unhooked Hugo’s leash from around her waist. “Whatever you make. There’s an hour of daylight left and I need to give Hugo all the time I can fit in on that Agility course.” She was out the door before he could reply.
    Scott unstrapped his watch and washed his hands before unbagging the groceries. There was a whole raw chicken. Sweet potatoes. Kale. “Beets? Seriously?”
    He held up the plastic bag to inspect them. Damn. Some of them were orange. He was all for healthy eating. But beets? He set them aside. Nikki never cooked beets when they were together.
    Scott turned and glanced at the door Nikki—Cole, the door that Cole had left through. Yardley’s comment about how Cole had changed skimmed his thoughts. Maybe Cole liked beets. So just maybe there was a way to do