Hot As Sin by Debra Dixon Page A

the pool table. The bed was only four strides away, but that was too damn far. He was hard and the only thing on his mind was burying himself inside Emma.
    And that was the moment Marsha Jean Petit banged on the door at the bottom of the stairs. “Gabe! You home?” she hollered. “The bar’s a wreck! I told you I should have stayed. What happened to the window?”
    Gabe would have ignored Marsha Jean if he hadn’t given her a
complete
set of keys to the bar, including the one for the apartment door. With a frustrated groan he dropped his hands and found Emma’s mouth for one more quick kiss before she pulled away completely. God, she was made to be kissed. Right now her eyes still glittered from interrupted passion. Her lips were swollen, especially the bottom one, and the stubble of his beard had reddened the edge of her mouth.
    Rubbing his chin, he decided he was going to have to shave today. He also decided that if she didn’t close that mouth, he was going to have to close it for her with another kiss. Unfortunately he had only three seconds left before Marsha Jean unlocked the door and startedup the stairs. So Gabe put a finger across Emma’s lips and finished the conversation they’d been having before he kissed her.
    “Darlin’, that’s what being alive feels like. The next time you’re not sure whether being alive is all that matters, you think again. Because it’s the only thing between you and an eternity of nothing.”
    She didn’t argue. Right now she couldn’t form a complete sentence, much less debate philosophy.
    “Gabe!” Marsha Jean’s southern accent boomed up the stairwell. “I let myself in. You decent?”
    If Marsha Jean hadn’t been the sole support of two innocent children, Gabe would have cursed her. Instead, without taking his gaze off of Emma, he hollered back, “As decent as I’m going to get. Come on up.”
    You will anyway
, he added silently.
    Emily saw her chance and retreated across the room, ostensibly to check on her clothes in the dryer. In reality she simply wanted to put as much distance between her hormones and Christian Gabriel as possible. The man was deadly all right, and she had no intention of presenting an easy target. To him that kiss was simply a way of proving his point—a way to win.
    He probably didn’t have the faintest idea what he did to her on the inside, and she wanted to keep it that way. She wanted no regrets when she walked out his front door with a brand-new identity. And she didn’t want emotions getting in the way of the secret she kept. She didn’t need any more guilt.
    “I was worried about you,” Marsha Jean said as she crossed the threshold carrying a casserole dish in one hand and a wooden baseball bat in the other. She had ona serviceable but worn down-filled coat with a cinched waist and big pockets. “I saw you holding your ribcage last night. How are you?”
    “I’ve been better.”
    “I can see that,” she agreed, casting an eye over him and the clothes that had obviously been slept in. “Is your razor broke, or are you planning on growing that beard out?”
    “As a matter of fact, I was just thinking about shaving.”
    “Thinking. That’d be a novel idea for you.” She held out the baseball bat. “I told little Jeffie that you got into another fight, and he said to give you this to use until spring training.”
    Gabe grinned as he visualized her son Jeffie, who was an eight-year-old towhead but older than Job emotionally. He’d been the man of the family for too many years already. Gabe accepted the bat and gave it a mock swing. “Nice one.”
    “He’s gotta have it back by March the twenty-first.” Marsha Jean giggled. “God, love him. He’s convinced that major league scouts come to Little League games, and they won’t take him seriously if he uses his old aluminum bat.”
    “I can see his point,” Gabe said with a grin as he laid the bat on the pool table behind him. “Thank him for me. I’ll take