to himself. We were just passing pleasantries about having all these old buildings inspected before someone gets hurt. We seldom agree on anything, but we agreed on that much."
"Well, I should think so." Maya shook off his hand and stalked down the alley next to the building, clinging to her cat. "Maybe they should tear down the whole damned town. But right now, I want inside that building. Those are my things. He doesn't have any right to take them away."
"He has every right, if there's a danger to human life. That doesn't mean he's right, and that there is a danger."
She stopped and swirled to look at him. "What does that mean?"
Clean-shaven and garbed in his version of casual wear—blue linen short-sleeved shirt and crisply creased khakis—Axell raised his hand over his eyes and inspected the roof of the building, then studied the remaining brick walls. "I think we can find an inspector who will say the remainder of the building is safe enough to enter to remove the contents. The brick facade may be weak, but the underlying structure should be sound."
Maya thought she would kiss him. If her belly weren't in the way, she'd throw her arms around this enigmatic Norse god and plant a smacker square in the middle of his chiseled jaw. That ought to shake him straight down to his steadfast toes. Instead, she beamed and patted Axell's tanned arm. The warmth of his skin startled her, and she hastily withdrew the gesture. The expression in his eyes was shuttered as he warily lowered his hand and glanced down at her. Even bigger than she'd ever been in her life, she felt dainty and fragile in his solid presence.
"Where do we find an inspector?" she asked.
The we she had so ingenuously uttered knelled as loud as church bells between them. All the multifarious implications of we winged through Maya's mind in the face of his silence. She didn't think Axell's astute businessman's mind had missed them either.
"It's Saturday," he slowly responded, tearing his gaze from her to study the building. "I won't be able to locate an inspector until Monday, at best. And then there's the question of where you'll transport the items once you're free to move them."
Maya could feel the shark's teeth closing over her silly little Pisces head. She should have known better than to play in dangerous currents instead of placid little ponds. Biting her bottom lip, she let the tide sweep her straight into the deep blue sea.
"Any suggestions?" she asked gaily, as if that we hadn't already tolled her doom.
Axell's eyes narrowed as he caught her elbow again and steered her around a pile of crumbling brick. "Let's go to the bar and talk about it."
Every time someone in authority wanted to "talk" about something, it meant being uprooted again. Abandoning all hope, Maya floated downstream, hopelessly hooked on Axell's bait.
Fish weren't supposed to have nests anyway.
December, 1945
I don't remember who seduced whom, but I remember the night you carried me back to my bed and stayed until daybreak. Don't you ever tell me that was just a young man getting his jollies off. It was more than that, for both of us. We made the birds sing at midnight and the doves cry at dawn. No one ever made me feel like that before. No one ever can again. Does she wrap her legs around you until you roar with hunger? If she's got breasts beneath all that binding, I bet you haven't touched them yet.
Chapter 8
If it's dangerous to talk to yourself, it's probably even dicier to listen.
Axell knew better than to get involved. He especially knew better than to get involved with a female with trouble written all over her. Some people lived from one disaster to another, and Maya Alyssum struck him as that kind of person. Her vulnerability would eventually expose his deficiencies, and nothing good could come of either.
He sat Maya down in a booth at the back of the restaurant and signaled his bartender to bring them sweet tea. Matty and Constance were occupying themselves in the employee break room, well looked after by his doting staff. He could safely concentrate on bending this tear-stained waif of a woman to his will.
"If I hire an inspector," Axell paused to let the implication of her obligation sink in, "and he allows you to move your things, where will you move them?"
She twisted a red paper napkin between her fingers and didn't look