It Had to Be You by Jill Shalvis Page A

frustration, and then he was slowing them down, pausing to rest his forehead against hers. “Damn,” he said, stroking the pad of his finger over her wet lower lip. “Did not see that coming.”
    “Didn’t see what coming?”
    “You.”

Chapter 8
     
    A li had no idea how it’d happened that she’d ended up trying to climb Luke’s body, but she blamed his mouth. One hundred percent. “I’m over men,” she said out loud so that she might hear it and have it sink in.
    Luke didn’t say anything to this. He just looked at her with the same intense expression on his face that he’d worn when he’d kissed her, which made her want to beg for another kiss. Instead, she bit her lips to keep them to herself. But as it turned out, she wasn’t good at holding her tongue. “It’s nothing personal,” she said, “but as a whole, men haven’t proven themselves all that reliable.” She paused. “No offense.”
    “None taken.”
    “It wasn’t going to be a hardship,” she said, “to be over men.”
    He gave her an almost smile. “Hence the vibrator?”
    She felt her face heat. “Okay, that really was a gag gift. And it’s not like sex isn’t…enjoyable or anything. It just tends to lead to bad decisions on my part.”
    “I can respect that,” he said. “But for the record, sex, when it’s done right, is a hell of a lot more than enjoyable .”
    Her body was still tingling from his kisses, so it wasn’t much of a stretch to believe that he could make sex far more than enjoyable .
    “One more thing,” he said.
    She looked into his deep blue eyes.
    “Not all men will disappoint you,” he said. “I don’t mean me. Because I will absolutely disappoint you. But we’re not all assholes, Ali. I can promise you that.”
    She held his gaze, the man who’d let her stay in his house, the man who’d come for her no questions asked, not even “are you guilty?” Which meant that already he’d done more for her than most of the men in her life. She was still staring at him when her phone rang.
    “Ohmigod, Ali,” Aubrey said. “They brought you in for questioning? Why? How? What the hell happened? ”
    “Well,” Ali said, “apparently after you let me into Teddy’s office, I stole the fifty big ones.”
    “Did you?”
    “No!”
    Luke reached over and hit END , disconnecting her call.
    Ali stared at him. “Why did you do that?”
    “You shouldn’t discuss the case with anyone,” he said. “And especially don’t joke about stealing the money.”
    “But that was Aubrey, Teddy’s assistant.”
    “I don’t care if it was the Easter Bunny.”
    “She’s nice. She’s the one who let me into his office the second time. She…” Ali broke off, her mind suddenly racing.
    “She what?”
    Ali met his gaze. “She asked me to make sure to never tell anyone that she’d let me in.”
    Luke’s eyes were sharp. “You’re friends?”
    “Not the go out and share sushi kind, but yeah. It’s more the ‘your dress is pretty, where did you get it’ sort.”
    Luke shook his head. “Was that in English?”
    “We’re friends,” she clarified.
    “You know they found a toe ring in Marshall’s couch?”
    “Yes,” she said. “The cops asked me about it, but it wasn’t mine.”
    “And it’s not Melissa’s either. So whose is it? And is the owner fifty thousand dollars richer this week?”
    She shook her head. “I don’t know.” She’d been going over and over this in her head until it spun. “I saw the money at the auction like everyone else. The next day, I cleaned up the hall and carried out all the floral arrangements. Then I remembered the pencil pot I’d made Teddy, the one sitting on his desk. For some reason, I couldn’t leave it there, so I went in to take it back. But it wasn’t on his desk.”
    “Where was it?”
    She paused, remembering how embarrassed she’d been to find it buried. “In his credenza.”
    Luke blew out a breath. “You went through his things?”
    “Yes, but