Page 55 of The Girl Who Knew Too Much

She smiled. “Which makes it even more interesting that you and he are friends.”

Oliver watched her intently. “Some would say that the fact that my closest friend in Burning Cove has underworld connections is not a particularly good character reference.”

“I work for a newspaper that specializes in celebrity scandals and sordid gossip. I’m a little short on sterling references, too. Does that worry you?”

“No,” he said. “No, it doesn’t.”

He did not say anything else but she was intensely aware of the electric tension in the atmosphere between them. She was almost certain that he was going to kiss her. She did not know if that was a very good idea or a very bad one. She only knew that she wanted to find out what it would be like to kiss Oliver Ward.

“Irene,” he said.

She touched her fingertips to his mouth.

“Probably best not to talk about it,” she said. “Just do it.”

Heat flared in his eyes. His hand tightened around the back of her neck, and then his mouth was on hers.

It was a long, slow burn of a kiss. She went into it with no particular expectations, just a compelling curiosity. That, she concluded, was probably why she was blindsided by the sheer force of the desire that swept through her.

She had never been kissed like this. Oliver crushed her mouth under his as if he had been thirsting for the taste of her for a very long time, perhaps forever. He kissed her as if nothing else in the world was more important than that moment and the embrace, as if he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.

If it was an illusion crafted by a skilled lover, it was a completely convincing one. She did not want to know the secret behind the trick. She wanted only to savor the magic.

A thrilling excitement made her head spin. She wound her arms around his neck and returned the kiss with a sensual abandon that stunned her. If she had been asked, she would have said she wasn’t physically capable of such a response. A small voice in her head whispered that Bradley Thorpe would have concurred with that opinion. But, then, Bradley Thorpe was a lying, cheating bastard, she reminded herself, and, in hindsight, a boring lover.

The kiss made her giddy, downright euphoric. She felt as if she had accidentally opened a long-forgotten closet and discovered some bright, shiny dreams that had been locked away since she was fourteen years old.

The illusion ended with the honking of a horn. A car pulled off the road and stopped next to Oliver’s car. The vehicle overflowed with a pack of young people in their teens, male and female. Someone had borrowed his father’s car for the day, Irene thought.

The kids waved and laughed as they bailed out of the front and back seats. They opened the trunk and hauled out blankets and a large picnic basket.

The driver grinned at Oliver as the teens made their way to the beach.

“Say, you’re the magician who owns the big hotel in town, right?” he said enthusiastically. “You were in the paper this morning, sir.” Thekid switched his attention to Irene. “Are you the reporter who found the body in the spa?”

“Time to go,” Oliver said.

He tucked Irene’s hand in his. Together they made their way up the short beach path. The teens followed, clustering around and pelting them with questions. The girls wanted to know more about the dead woman in the spa but the boys soon switched their attention to Oliver’s car.

“Is it true it’s the fastest car in California?”

“How fast does it go?”

“What does it have under the hood, sir?”

“Say, would you mind if I took your car for a spin, Mr. Ward?”

“Not today,” Oliver said.

One of the girls studied Oliver’s cane.

“Daddy took me to see you perform once,” she said. “I loved the part where you made the woman vanish in the mirror.”

Oliver got the passenger side door open and bundled Irene into the seat.

“Glad you enjoyed the act,” he said to the young woman.

He rounded the front of the car and got behind the wheel.