If You Know Her: A Novel of Romantic Suspense

ears were brilliant red. She couldn’t see his face, hidden by the shaggy fall of his bangs.
    “Law?”
    “What?”
    She waited for him to look up, but he was still looking at the binder. Looking at it—but not much of anything else. She had the feeling it was there just to keep him from staring at his lap.
    Sighing, she dumped her binder on the table and grabbed his away, set it aside as well. “Will you
look
at me?”
    He blew out a breath and shot her a narrow look. “You know, you were all but breathing down my neck for the past two hours while I looked for these. Now you want to chat?”
    “I just want an answer,” she said, feeling oddly charmed. He was embarrassed, she realized.
    “An answer to what?”
    “Are you Ed O’Reilly?”
    He rolled his eyes. “Yeah. Now … the maps?”
    Pursing her lips, unable to resist, she skimmed a hand through his hair. The thick strands, golden-brown mixed with strands of lighter blond, darker brown, were cool against her fingers, and soft. “You know, I’ve read a few of Ed’s books. I always pictured him the older sort—in his fifties, maybe. Balding. With a paunch.”
    Law lifted a brow. “Your point?”
    “You don’t look like an Ed.” She leaned in and kissed him, lingering long enough to nip his lower lip. “That’s my point. You just don’t look like an Ed. And it’s kind of cool. I didn’t know I was sleeping with some hotshot crime writer.”
    He snorted. Then, with a sly smile curling his lips, he reached over and laid a hand on her inner thigh, stroking higher and higher until his fingers brushed againsther crotch. “Well, I need to do something to keep up with the sexy photojournalist, right? Hey, you got your camera? Maybe we could set it up and you could take some pictures …”
    He stifled her laugh as he slanted his mouth over hers.
    By the time he lifted his head, she was breathless and he looked pleased with himself. Having successfully distracted her, she figured.
    “So … can we look at those maps?”
    It wasn’t one of the many maps he’d picked up at stores or gas stations.
    This one was older—one that had been hand-drawn, something he’d found at an old rummage sale. It was so fragile the paper felt like it was going to disintegrate just at his touch and he could have kicked himself for not doing something to protect it.
    But it had been years since he’d picked it up and he’d been focused on another project at the time—just hadn’t been thinking.
    Law unfolded it carefully, all but holding his breath until he had it spread open over his coffee table.
    “A few hundred years ago, most of this land around here all belonged to one of two families,” he said absently.
    “Let me guess … one of them had the last name of
Jennings
,” she quipped as she bent over, peering at the faded print on the map.
    “Yeah. The other one was Ohlman. Lena lives right about where the line was drawn between their property.” He traced a line down between it, not quite touching the paper. “The house used to be right about here …”
    He indicated an area on the map. It didn’t mean jack to Nia. Then he circled the area around it, a pensive look on his face.
    “The Ohlman family had a lot of people who sympathized with the Northern states during the Civil War—helped hide runaway slaves. I was thinking about doing an alternate history story once, basing it here. Did some research—apparently the old Ohlman place had some underground areas—cellars, that sort of thing, where they’d hide the runaway slaves.”
    Cellars …
    Nia hissed out a breath and shot up off the couch.
    Good thing he’d been prepared for that. She wasn’t the type to sit and wait around, was she? But before she could take even two steps, he caught her, his hand snagging the waistband of her jeans. He set the map aside with his free hand.
    She craned her head around, glaring at him. “Let go.”
    “No.” The distant, distracted look on his face was gone, replaced by one of flat and focused determination.
    “
Let
go,” she repeated, jerking against his hold. “Don’t you get it? That could be where he did it. If I can find something—”
    “I
do
get it. And that’s why I’m not letting go.” He jerked against her jeans—jerked hard until she ended up on his lap and then he wrapped an arm around her. “If he had a place there, he’s too likely to be watching for you and you are
not
taking off into those woods by yourself,