If You Could Read My Mind...

TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

To my very own hero—always.

Happy anniversary, honey!

Prologue

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

About the Author

Coming Next Month

When the trouble first started

EXACTLYwhy had she fallen in love with this man again? Right now, Jillian Landry honestly couldn’t remember, which was saying something since this man was her husband of seven years. Before marriage she’d dated him for five years and, before that, tagged after him for the better part of her life. Ever since the day her older brother had returned from kindergarten to proclaim Michael Landry as his new best friend.

But at the moment…after being restrained in said husband’s dental chair, Jillian couldn’t remember what she’d ever seen in a man who’d obviously lost his mind between the time he’d locked up the clinic after the staff’s departure and his return trip.

“Michael, what are you doing?”

Flipping off the overhead fluorescent lights, he shot her a smile that dazzled in the suddenly dim room. “I’m creating a fantasy for you. You said you wanted a fantasy, remember?”

Oh, she remembered all right. The whole idea of fantasies had come up during a conversation at a recent Main Street Rehabilitation fund-raiser. She and Michael had been chatting with the Prestons during cocktail hour, when Amelia Preston—a society matron with enough money to discuss whatever was on her mind—began an interrogation about how to keep the romance alive in a marriage.

Jillian hadn’t been sure whether Amelia had been grilling guests for tidbits to spice up her own decades-old marriage or the dull pre-dinner party. Whatever the motivation, she’d succeeded in getting Jillian to consider the question in the car on the way home.

No denying that after seven years of marriage, there’d been some trade-off of excitement for predictability. Not necessarily a bad thing, she’d been quick to point out. Orgasms were better than ever because practice made perfect. After so much practice, Michael was a locksmith with all the right keys.

But she’d admitted to seeing the appeal of a little fantasy now and then to keep the romance alive.

Apparently now was then.

The best Michael could come up with was handcuffs?

“Are you open for something different tonight, Jilly?” Michael shrugged off his white lab coat to reveal the shirt and pants she’d just picked up from the cleaners yesterday.

“Dare I ask how different?”

He strode purposefully toward her, his smile promising a satisfying answer to her question. “How about you just stick around to find out?”

Stick around?

Testing the steel restraining her to his dental chair, the very one his last patient had vacated not a half hour earlier, Jillian had to wonder where he thought she could go.

She wouldn’t ask where he’d gotten the handcuffs. Michael cared for the smiles of over half the police force in their hometown of Natchez, Mississippi. And those spit-polished good old boys—most of whom were lifelong friends—would be smiling if they knew why Michael wanted restraints. Just the thought was enough to make her wince.

Or maybe the crick in her neck was to blame.

Or her numb arm and tingling fingers.

“How about you just relax and trust me to show you a good time?” Michael loomed over her, blue eyes glinting with sexy innuendo, and slipped his hands beneath her uniform smock.

His warm fingers caressed her skin with tantalizing slowness as he eased the hem up, up, up, until he bared her bra to his gaze.

With that smile still playing around his lips, he descended, his mouth making contact with her skin to trail moist kisses in the wake of his hands.

“That feels nice.”

“You just wait.” His words broke against her skin in breathy bursts then, in one skilled move, he popped open the fastener on her bra.

Her breasts tumbled free, nipples puckering at contact with the climate-controlled air. Michael was there instantly, dragging his warm tongue over one peak in an arousing stroke, easing his fingers around the other and weighing her in his warm palm.

Willing herself to relax, Jillian forced her focus onto her husband’s sexy ministrations and not the dull throb of her shoulder. She supposed there’d been no other place to attach the handcuffs besides the mechanism under the chair arm. She might have suggested something more user-friendly had Michael not taken her by surprise by cuffing her here in the first place.

Now, she didn’t want to say anything he might perceive as a lack of enthusiasm. He wanted to create a fantasy tonight, and as she’d been the one to pursue Amelia Preston’s conversation…

But Jillian couldn’t help wondering if Michael had taken action on that conversation because he’d noticed the trade-off between excitement and predictability, too.

Surely all the passion couldn’t have gone after only seven years of marriage?