Read Online 03 Solar Flare - Spark Series by Autumn Dawn - Free Book Online Page A

and pushed it aside. It had no
place in reality.
    “Think it over. I’ll pay for your return
trip, if you like.”
    Hm. Round trip, it would be sixteen months
travel time. If she stayed for a month, maybe two, it would make it
closer to eighteen months before she returned. It might make things
easier, after the trial, at least. It would certainly be easier on
Gem if Brandy weren’t around to provoke the gossips. Would that
make it worthwhile? She wasn’t sure. “I’ll consider it.” She heard
a baby’s faint cry. “You’d better deal with that.”
    “I already am. Take care of yourself, sis. I
would enjoy a visit.”
    “You, too. Love ya. Bye.” She looked
thoughtfully at the com, then shook her head and went back to
watching her show. She didn’t need to go all the way to another
star system to fix her troubles, not when she had a remote. Booze
wasn’t the only way to numb a brain.
    She couldn’t concentrate on the program,
though. Xera had made her think, made her worry. Her sisters must
think things were pretty dire if they were tag teaming her. Brandy
had to admit it looked pretty grim. Just the thought of living down
a second scandal—though not of her making—was enough to exhaust
her. It had been hard enough the first time. She was looking at
years of work ahead of her.
    She didn’t want to think about it, so she
deliberately stopped, turned her thoughts to the pleasant mystery
of her smitten young stripper. A smile quirked at her lips as she
considered the absurdity. He was too young, too wild, for a woman
who was interested in respectably. Not for the first time, she felt
the bite of rebellion at the thought. Maybe she didn’t care about
respectability anymore. Maybe she’d gone too far to worry about
it.
    She examined the thought, savored it. She
wanted to talk to him again. He made her feel better about herself.
He’d made her smile. She looked at her com and checked the menu.
She found his number listed under recent calls and hit the dial
button. She got a recording:
    “This is Azure. Leave a message and I’ll get
back to you.”
    She sighed and disconnected without leaving a
message. At least now she knew his name. Strange that she hadn’t
wondered what it was before. Maybe it was because he’d seemed so
easy, so familiar. It made her want to talk to him even more.
    She sat back and considered what a
relationship with him would be like. He must be interested, or he’d
never have called. Gem would dislike him on the spot, and Blue
would be suspicious. They’d hover.
    On the plus side, he was refreshing. If he
was a stripper, he had to be at least passably attractive, right?
And maybe it was shallow of her, but he had to be interested in the
physical side of a relationship. After M’acht, that mattered.
    Thinking of her failed marriage made her
wonder—this Azure wasn’t Kiuyian, was he? She felt a stab of
anxiety, but told herself sternly that it was unlikely. Azure
wasn’t a Kiuyian name. Of course, he was stripper. He probably
didn't go by his birth name.
    She bit her lip. She’d ask him the next time
he called…if he called. Her experience with M’acht had been too
painful to repeat.
    They’d only tried to make love twice. Each
time had been a disaster. The first time she’d been too tense to
relax. It wasn’t what she’d expected and he’d been…fumbling.
Between her nervousness and his failure to remain hard, they’d
gotten nowhere. He hadn’t been enthusiastic when she’d wanted to
try again a week later. He’d managed to break her maidenhead, but
had gone soft almost instantly afterward. She was so ignorant, she
wouldn’t have known it wasn’t supposed to be that way if she hadn’t
talked to her sister…after it was too late.
    She closed her eyes. It had taken weeks, but
M’acht had finally admitted he just wasn’t attracted to her in that
way. Apparently he’d been okay with a Kiuyian woman he’d been with
once; a hooker. He told her it wasn’t her fault