Read Online Addicted to Love by Lori Wilde - Free Book Online

dress?”
    “I don’t have anything else to put on. I left Houston without my bags.”
    “Don’t worry,” Deana said. “We’re about the same size. I’ve probably got something you can wear.”
    “That’d be wonderful.”
    “Here.” Deana shoved the spatula into Brody’s hand. “Don’t let the hamburger meat burn.”
    He stepped to the stove to scramble the browning hamburger meat around in the pan as Deana took Rachael’s arm and led her from the kitchen, Maisy trailing in their wake.
    Fifteen minutes later, they trooped back downstairs. Brody had already set the taco meat in the middle of the dining room table along with toasted corn tortilla shells, diced tomatoes, shredded lettuce, and grated cheese.
    He looked up to see Rachael dressed in a pair of his sister’s skintight blue-jean shorts, a skimpy, navel-baring sleeveless T-shirt, and a pair of white mules that showed off her toenails, painted a racy shade of scarlet. He could tell from the way she was tugging at the hem of the shorts that she wasn’t accustomed to wearing the sort of daring clothes Deana preferred. His sister didn’t own anything conservative and Rachael was stuck with the sexy outfit. And right now, Brody was glad. Rachael had also brushed her hair and it lay in smooth, gentle curls around her shoulders.
    Wow! His libido lunged like a pit bull on a chain, desperate to be unleashed. Just looking at her was an exquisite form of torment.
    She caught his eye and her cheeks pinked. That’s when Brody realized he’d been staring. Openly. Hungrily.
    Quickly, she looked away.
    He sank down at the head of the dinner table and Rachael sat at the opposite end. He said grace, and everyone ducked their heads, except Brody. He didn’t look down and he didn’t close his eyes. Irreverently, he watched Rachael when his mind should have been on the prayer.
    In the wedding dress, she’d been safe, untouchable — a bride on her wedding day. He’d felt the first burst of sexual attraction when she’d ended up straddling him at the bottom of the ladder, but mostly his feelings had alternated between pity, amusement, and minor irritation.
    But what he was feeling now was a horse of a different color.
    Her arms were bare and her legs were bare, her creamy skin exposed. He saw too much sweet flesh. The blood surging through his body told him this was a dangerous thing.
    So was the sudden fire burning inside his groin as he watched her tilt her head, lift a taco to her mouth, and crunch into it with ladylike gusto.
    The sight of her sweet, pink tongue unraveled something inside him. Something he’d kept wound up tight for a very long time. Something he feared he might never feel again.
    Flaming hot lust.
    Brody didn’t like what he was feeling, but it was too damned strong to deny.

Chapter Four
    G iada Vito was taking her evening power walk around Valentine Lake with one-pound dumbbells clutched in her hands when a man stepped out of the shadows of a hundred-year-old pecan tree.
    “Aren’t you skinny enough?”
    She startled at the sound of the deep, threatening masculine voice that accompanied the hulking figure suddenly looming on the path in front of her. The weights could double as a weapon and she had pepper spray clipped to her belt. She’d lived in Valentine for fifteen years, but she’d been born in Rome, Italy. You’d never catch Giada leaving her doors unlocked or her keys in the car or her pepper spray in a drawer.
    Raising her left hand, she cocked the dumbbell, ready to fling it if he gave her cause. Dropping the weight in her right hand, she went for the pepper spray on her hip, like a gunslinger at the O.K. Corral going for his six-gun.
    He was the size of a bodybuilder, big and menacing, with an oversized cowboy hat tilted back on his slick, shaved head and a shark’s deadly blue-eyed stare. He was dressed in a blue seersucker suit and he stood with the arrogant air of the privileged.
    She recognized him then, but that