Blue Dahlia

on his chest. Maybe they’d wrecked each other. She’d just made wild love with a man in broad daylight, outside in the yard.
    “This is insane,” she murmured, but couldn’t quite convince herself to move. “What if someone had come by?”
    “People come by without an invitation have to take potluck.”
    There was a lazy drawl to his voice in direct opposition to his grip on her. She lifted her head to study. His eyes were closed. “So this is potluck?”
    The corners of his mouth turned up a little. “Seems to me this pot was plenty lucky.”
    “I feel sixteen. Hell, I never did anything like this when I was sixteen. I need my sanity. I need my clothes.”
    “Hold on.” He nudged her aside, then rose.
    Obviously, she thought, it doesn’t bother him to walk around outside naked as a deer. “I came here to talk to you, Logan. Seriously.”
    “You came here to kick my ass,” he corrected. “Seriously. You were doing a pretty good job of it.”
    “I hadn’t finished.” She turned slightly, reached out for her hairband. “But I will, as soon as I’m dressed and—”
    She screamed, the way a woman screams when she’s being murdered with a kitchen knife.
    Then she gurgled, as the water he’d drenched her with from the hose ran into her astonished mouth.
    “Figured we could both use some cooling off.”
    It simply wasn’t in her, even under the circumstances, to run bare-assed over the grass. Instead, she curled herself up, knees to breast, arms around knees, and cursed him with vehemence and creativity.
    He laughed until he thought his ribs would crack. “Where’d a nice girl like you learn words like that? How am I supposed to kiss that kind of mouth?”
    She seared him with a look even when he held the hose over his own head and took an impromptu shower. “Feels pretty good. Want a beer?”
    “No, I don’t want a beer. I certainly don’t want a damn beer. I want a damn towel. You insane idiot, now my clothes are wet.”
    “We’ll toss ’em into the dryer.” He dropped the hose, scooped them up. “Come on inside, I’ll get you a towel.”
    Since he sauntered across the patio to the door, still unconcerned and naked, she had no choice but to follow.
    “Do you have a robe?” she asked in cold and vicious tones.
    “What would I do with a robe? Hang on, Red.”
    He left her, dripping and beginning to shiver in his kitchen.
    He came back a few minutes later, wearing ratty gym pants and carrying two huge bath sheets. “These ought to do the trick. Dry off, I’ll toss these in for you.”
    He carried her clothes through a door. Laundry room, she assumed as she wrapped one of the towels around her. She used the other to rub at her hair—which would be hopeless, absolutely hopeless now—while she heard the dryer click on.
    “Want some wine instead?” he asked as he stepped back in. “Coffee or something.”
    “Now you listen to me—”
    “Red, I swear I’ve had to listen to you more than any woman I can remember in the whole of my life. It beats the living hell out of me why I seem to be falling in love with you.”
    “I don’t like being ... Excuse me?”
    “It was the hair that started it.” He opened the refrigerator, took out a beer. “But that’s just attraction. Then the voice.” He popped the top and took a long drink from the bottle. “But that’s just orneriness on my part. It’s a whole bunch of little things, a lot of big ones tossed in. I don’t know just what it is, but every time I’m around you I get closer to the edge.”
    “I—you—you think you’re falling in love with me, and your way of showing it is to toss me on the ground and carry on like some sex addict, and when you’re done to drench me with a hose?”
    He took another sip, slower, more contemplative, rubbed a hand over his bare chest. “Seemed like the thing to do at the time.”
    “Well, that’s very charming.”
    “Wasn’t thinking about charm. I didn’t say I wanted to be in love with you. In fact, thinking about it put me in a lousy mood most of the day.”
    Her eyes narrowed until the blue of them was a hot, intense light. “Oh, really?”
    “Feel better now, though.”
    “Oh, that’s fine. That’s lovely. Get me my clothes.”
    “They’re not dry yet.”
    “I don’t care.”
    “People from up north are always in a hurry.” He leaned back comfortably on the counter. “There’s this other thing I thought today.”
    “I don’t care about that