Intimate Knowledge Book 1 Part 2 (7 page)

Luke is pretty much entranced.

She doesn’t notice his looking.  Her attention is fixed elsewhere.  She is expectant, waiting, hovering.  He’s seen that look before.  His gut clenches because in this room that look never ends well.  There is someone she is hoping to see, someone who may not want to see her or who is past that capability.  He goes back to his paperwork.

Minutes pass and he looks up and she is still there.  Time passes.  He imagines it flitting around them in stop motion sequence from an indie movie or TV show.  Everyone a moving, colored blur around the two of them.  Him intent at his desk looking across at her standing with that suspended tautness, waiting for the one she needs.  Deep in the pit of his stomach, he wishes it was him just so he can erase that troubled look.  Don’t engage he tells himself.  Too late.  Already done.

He pushes away from his desk and walks over.  Her gaze never wavers.  She doesn’t seem to notice his advance or she thinks he doesn’t notice her.  He reaches her and stands beside her.  He is too close.  Too much in her private space, but she stays put, no flinching or stepping back.

“Hey.”  He asks in a soft drawl.  “Is there something I can help you with?”

She starts as if his voice reverberates from a disembodied void, instead of oozing richly out of him like honey, a sound sexy enough on its own, but when it is supported by his 6’1” 200lbs of ripped, solid masculinity is just plain sinful.  He is a man most women consider pretty fine.  A bit rough around the edges maybe, but fine.  She’s clearly not most women.  She ignores him and then when he stays she turns and says.

“Oh, you mean me.  You’re talking to me.”  Neither sentence is a question; they are statements, incredulous ones.  Like she is surprised he means her, as if she doesn’t expect to be noticed.  Like his seeing her is out of the ordinary.  It is, because he’s breaking protocol.  You’re not supposed to engage with victims or suspects that you’re not directly attached to, and those are the only non-law enforcement personnel that ever enter this room.

“Yeah, gorgeous. I mean you.”  He is already out of bounds, but he decides she’s needs shaking up.  The honey drawled endearment will either arouse or incense her.  Either way he reckons he’ll get to see those turquoise eyes catch fire.  He’s wrong.  They darken into deep, dark navy pools; it is the rosy, fleshy moistness of her parted lips that that starts the fire in him.

She is tiny.  Only comes to the middle of his chest.  A hot rush of lust invades him, along with a desperate need to pick her right up off her feet, to draw every inch of her softness hard and fast into his firm body.  To curl her securely next to his solid chest, cupping those lush buttocks tightly so that her hot pussy is flush against his hard arousal.  He will take his time, nibbling, sucking and easing in and out of the voluptuous plumpness of those blush pink lips, as he slowly conquers that soft, disbelieving, little mouth.  Then he will just as slowly conquer the rest of her, especially the wet folds of her lush, lowers lips.  He imagines parting those, slipping and thrusting his tongue full inside, sucking her clit and tasting her juices, just before he…

Get a grip, Kincaid.
 

He remembers where he is and is grudgingly grateful that he has only imagined the scene not enacted it.  What’s the matter with him?  He can’t remember ever getting this hot for a woman this fast.  Except. 
Fuck!
  That’s why she looks familiar.  They must be related.   Now he takes a real good look at her, he sees the likeness is so marked, he feels like an idiot not to have seen it right away.  It is the lighter hair and eye color that fooled him.

Luke can hardly remember a time when he didn’t lust after his training officer and ex-partner from vice, Raisa Gordon.  From the first moment, he arrived from the Academy, that convoluted combination of badass and fragile beauty floored him.  He’d given up on meeting a woman who affected him as strongly.  He figured she had ruined him and just accepted it as an unavoidable fact of life, the same way he accepted the crimes he worked on each day.

He never acted on his feelings.  She was thirteen years older than him and his superior while a rookie.  They were colleagues, eventually partners and although she flirted now and then, she showed no signs of sharing his intensity.  She made it know that she didn’t do relationships and never hooked up with anyone she might really like.  He was glad when he was promoted to homicide and it took him away from her on a daily basis.  There were other woman of course, but none that took.  Certainly none who made him want to toss her over his shoulder and carry her off every time he saw her.  None, that is, until today.

He wants to do that to her now.  Pick her up and get her out of here, away from whatever tragedy she is on a collision course towards.  Carry her off and find somewhere to enact that scene in his head for real.  Instead, he does the next best thing.  He offers to buy her a cup of coffee.

Haunted Spaces will be released in installments early 2014 as it is set slightly later and contains spoilers for the other two in the Detective & Desires Series.  It is a sexually explicit erotic romance, as well as a murder mystery with paranormal elements.

Contemporary Romance
Choices Series

The Plan – Chances & Choices Prequel  Choices Book 1   by Helen Karol

Falling in love again just isn't part of the plan.

It has been a rough year for Julian West and Claire Fitzpatrick. They are both struggling with the loss of a loved one.

When Andrea Saunders, a Los Angeles socialite, convinces Julian to escort Claire to the Spring Charity Ball, it begins an enduring friendship.  A friendship where both comfortably forget the sizzling attraction that flared between them in the first few moments of meeting.

In time, that attraction re-emerges and Julian must face emotions he has spent years repressing.  A 6000 word short story prequel to
Chances & Choices
.

Buy at Amazon

Chances & Choices Julian and Claire Book 1 Choices Series   by Helen Karol

After three years in New York and a failed relationship behind her, Claire Fitzpatrick can hardly wait to get back to L.A. to her new job as senior feature writer at
Choices L.A.
, but most of all to the security and comfort of her best friend Julian West.  To her, he is the nice guy she can turn to for advice and comfort – the uncomplicated friend she can count on.

Julian West has fooled Claire Fitzpatrick for years playing the platonic friend.  But on her first night home, he blows his cover and suddenly Claire sees him in a whole new light.  Now Julian must face emotions he has spent too long repressing.

“
The most romantic book I have ever read
.” Ibooks  5 STARS

“
Get ready for fun. Oh my this is great
   Reading Renee 5 STARS

Buy at Amazon

Coming in 2014 in the Choices Series

Hi,

Hope you enjoy the Choices Series.  I am so happy to be back in the world of Julian and Claire and
Choices
magazine that I don’t want to leave it.  I am attached to the people in it and I want to follow them some more.  I am particularly intrigued by Stella and her subtle softening.  I think she needs someone lovely, strong and sexy to help her complete that journey.  Don’t you?

Helen x

A Calculated Choice – Stella and Aidan Book 2  Choices Series

Stella Abbot has spent the past ten years clawing her way to the top.  As editor of the new L.A. edition of the magazine
Choices
, she has finally made it. When Aidan Carmichael arrives from the New York office to audit
Choices LA
’s finances, Stella finds herself both exasperated and seductively charmed by the gauche young accountant.

Small town boy Aidan soon finds himself fighting his unexpected attraction for the classy city editor.  What he can’t fight is his longing to thaw her carefully constructed icy fortress and uncover the soft centre he’s convinced she’s hiding. 

As they work together closely on the audit they find it harder and harder to ignore the heat between them.   When his financial inquiries start to uncover some unsavory concerns that put Stella’s career at risk, Aidan finds he has to make some calculated choices.

Excerpt

Chapter One

Aidan Carmichael had been warned about Stella Abbot’s legendary frosty glare, but experiencing it first hand was nothing like he’d been told.  No one mentioned those smudged chocolate brown eyes or silky, mahogany tendrils escaping from her business like twist. 

Or those moist, kissable lips. 

From his vantage point bent on one knee, he could almost feel the famous glare bore through the back of his head.  Gathering up the papers that had flown all over the floor when he did his usual klutzy act of knocking them off her desk, his gaze strayed surreptitiously upwards.  Man - she sure had a sexy set of pins.

Behind her glare, Stella tried not to give in to her sudden inexplicable desire to run her hands through the floppy mess of slightly too long auburn hair of the man who was currently at her feet.  What was the matter with her?  He was quite irritatingly dithering around with important files he had ineptly scattered around her office floor when he reached over to introduce himself.  He reminded her of a young russet hound with his silky mop and ungainly enthusiasm.  It was really quite irksome and she suspected he actually had the audacity to be eyeing up her legs while he was down there!

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, just leave them.  I’ll sort them out later!” 

Stella couldn’t believe she had just snapped at him like that.  She was never so sharp, even when provoked, and especially not at a first meeting.  Staying in command was Stella’s specialty.  A deftly, delivered, sardonic remark was much more her style, but something about Aidan Carmichael just unbalanced her.

Perhaps it was because the reason he was here at
Choices LA
was unnerving.  Audits were never trouble-free and this particular one concerned her, as it was the first since the L.A. edition was launched.   As executive editor, she was responsible for any discrepancies.  Not that she was anticipating any.  She was always scrupulous in all matters professional, particularly finances.  But the unpleasant business with Richard just over six months ago still left a bad taste and she hadn’t quite shaken off the feeling of instability created by the whole little ‘teleroman’ that had played out during that time.

The long-limbed accountant stood up in response to her exasperated command.  As he surfaced beside her, his well over 6” rangy frame dwarfed her 5’9” figure, his body brushing against her far too intimately.  Seriously, didn’t the guy have any sense of personal space!

Aidan stifled a smile at the renowned ice maiden’s undisguised irritation.  He knew he was being invasive, but he couldn’t resist taking advantage of his clumsiness to get close to her.  He could tell he was disturbing what was an otherwise perfect equilibrium and he sure was enjoying it. 

Truth be told, he was also thrown off balance by the effect she was having on him.  Expecting to be able to barely tolerate Stella Abbot, even on a professional level, he was now amazed by the overwhelming desire to sweep all the remaining files from her desk and fuck her senseless on it.  His highly improper thoughts shocked him.  Hell what was the matter with him!  His politically correct Canadian mother had raised him well.  He respected women, opening doors, paying on dates, never expecting just sex; waiting respectfully to ease into
lovemaking.
  He had never even had a one-night stand and yet here he was, small-town Kansas nice guy indecently lusting after a female colleague after only a few minutes meeting.