License to Thrill

the best he could manage, then he pulled the door shut and escaped into his own room.

Chapter Eight

    KAT AWOKE BEFORE DAWN, still achy and fatigued from the restless night. The shadow of her friend's possible betrayal had weighed heavily on her mind, and James's abrupt departure had only heightened the prickly, coming-out-of-her-skin feeling. She'd lain awake and stared at the digital clock radio, listening to the couple in the next room make wall-thumping, hair-raising love until the wee hours of the morning.
    And now it appeared from the frantic sounds coming from the other side of the wall, they were also early risers—if indeed they had ever closed their eyes.
    She lay still, watching the first fingers of light caress the ceiling, and tried not to think about the flimsy door that stood between James's room and hers.
    Tried not to think about the passions he'd torched in her last night before ruthlessly tearing out of their embrace and leaving her smoldering with a lukewarm goodnight.
    Tried not to think about the fact that she'd slept in the buff, half because she didn't have a gown, half be cause she had a virginal yearning for him to crash through the connecting door and claim her with as few delays as possible.
    Her logical side told her to be eternally grateful for whatever had prompted his timely exit—she had been disappointed before by the change in a man's demeanor the "morning after." Hindsight had taught her the zenith of a man's affection crested just before the first night of sex, then moved into a gradual but steady state of decline shortly thereafter. Currently, she needed James's friendship and expertise more than she needed his carnal attention.
    The woman's muffled moans of " more, more, more " floated through the wall. Kat clamped the extra pillow on her face and pressed the ends over her ears. Okay, at the moment, she needed his carnal attention more, but the feeling would abate with the harsh reality of daylight...she hoped.
    By the time the couple had spent themselves, the clock read ten minutes before six and Kat felt as if she needed a cigarette. That brought her father's humidor to mind, and she breathed a prayer of thanks as she swung her feet to the floor that James had been able to remove it. She hadn't thought to ask him where he'd stashed it, but she assumed it was in his car or in his hotel room. Kat sighed—all roads led back to his room.
    She pulled herself to her feet and stumbled to the shower, glad for the mind-clearing blast of water. Mixed feelings about the case pressed upon her—relief that she was no longer the only suspect, along with anguish that her best friend had been fingered. Had she simply done it for the money? The idea that Denise would frame her still flabbergasted Kat, but she couldn't deny that the evidence was convincing.
    But then again, the evidence against herself had been convincing, too.
    Her mind strayed as her hands traveled over her lathered shoulders, arms, and breasts. She could see her naked image through the frosty shower door reflected back in the mirror over the vanity. She couldn't resist wondering if James would have been pleased. Her curves were generous, and her waist trim—her body wasn't exactly coin-bouncing firm, but not too shabby, either, she decided as the water beaded on her oiled skin. A warm flush climbed her neck when she thought of James's admiring glances the first night he'd come to her apartment door. So much had changed since then.
    At least in her mind. And heart, she admitted with a resigned sigh.
    So she was hung up on him, so what? He would pass on and so would her feelings and she would live through it, she decided as she turned off the faucet. She wrapped a large towel around her body and a smaller one around her hair, turban-style.
    Well, at least she'd had the good sense not to sleep with him. Kat ignored the voice that questioned how far she would've gone if he hadn't pulled back.
    She switched on the morning news for noise, tensing through the thirty-second update on the break-in at the gallery. "The police have charged Katherine McKray, a longtime employee, with stealing the love letter that King George III wrote to a mistress over two hundred years ago."
    "Allegedly wrote," Kat corrected the announcer. "And I didn't take the letter." She cursed and hoped that news of her innocence would garner the same amount of coverage. At least they hadn't shown her picture.
    With one leg propped on the unmade bed, she