The Trouble With Angels Page 0,70

of everything she would never be.

Other than being strikingly beautiful, Blythe Holmes was sober faced and serious minded. One couldn't look at the woman and not speculate at her importance. She was the perfect wife and professional for an up-and-coming engineer. Ted's future was bright. Catherine had bragged about her grandson's achievements often enough for Joy to know he was considered brilliant.

"All right, we won't talk about us," Ted agreed reluctantly.

Joy wasn't sure if it was by accident or design, but they seemed to be moving closer to each other. Sitting side by side as they were, their shoulders touched. Then, without her being sure how he managed it, Ted positioned himself behind her.

It was difficult to keep her back straight, and then gradually, almost without conscious effort, she found herself using his broad chest for support.

His hands cupped her shoulders and eased her back even more. Joy closed her eyes and against her better judgment allowed herself to be drawn into the warm, welcome circle of his arms. His nose nuzzled the side of her neck, and his hot breath fanned her cool skin.

Unable to raise so much as a token resistance, Joy decided she was weak, much weaker than she ever realized. For the first time in days she felt warm and content. It was cold outside Ted's arms, cold and lonely. She knew his attention was temporary, fleeting at best, but she needed his touch and his tenderness.

Joy, a willing participant, maneuvered their positions so they faced each other. His hands framed her face, and his thumb skidded across her lips. She knew he intended to kiss her long before he brought his mouth to hers. Knew it and welcomed it.

His mouth was warm and moist when it settled over hers. Joy sighed at the simple pleasure his touch produced. They'd kissed before. This keen sense of satisfaction shouldn't have come as a surprise, yet it did.

He wove his fingers into her hair, bunching it up in his hands as his mouth glided over hers. He molded the shape of her lips with his, with a heat and a need that seared her senses.

A frightening kind of excitement took hold of Joy, and she opened her mouth to him. Ted's tongue went in search of hers, and she moaned aloud at this new level of intimacy.

Joy wasn't sure where they would have progressed from there if the lights hadn't suddenly gone back on and the elevator hadn't abruptly jolted them back into the real world.

Ted muttered something under his breath that she couldn't fully decipher. What she did manage to hear, she agreed with entirely.

"I have a dinner engagement with my grandmother," he told her. He continued to hold her, although the elevator had started to move. "Can I come see you afterward?"

"Ah." It shouldn't be this difficult to decide.

He kissed her again with a hunger that sent her world spinning off its orbit. "Okay," she agreed, sounding weak and unsure. At the moment she was both.

"Joy," he said, helping her to her feet, "you've got to trust me. I'm not going to hurt you, I promise. Trust me, all right? That's all I ask."

The elevator arrived, and Ted stepped off reluctantly. He backed out of the elevator and raised his fingers to his lips in a gesture of farewell.

"Said the spider to the fly," Joy murmured.

Trust him. That was all he'd asked. Her heart told her she should, and her head, her know-it-all head, insisted otherwise. Joy grinned and decided to believe her heart.

"What happened?" she asked the first person she saw when she stepped off the elevator.

"Happened?" questioned Justine, a library committee member.

"With the electricity."

Justine stared at her blankly. "I don't know."

"We didn't lose power?"

"No," Justine said. "What makes you ask?"

Joy barely had time to get home, shower, and change her clothes before Ted showed up outside her door.

"That was fast," she said, but in truth she was pleased. The timer on the over dinged and she padded barefoot back into her kitchen.

Ted caught her by the hand and brought her into his embrace. She wasn't given the opportunity to protest, although she wasn't certain she would have, before he kissed her.

She was breathless and witless by the time he finished.

"That was about the fastest dinner on record," he told her. "As soon as Grandma learned I was meeting you, she insisted she wasn't hungry."

"You didn't believe her, did you?"

"Not on your life."

"Good."

"But that doesn't mean I didn't take her to her favorite fast-food place,