Read Online Animal Instincts [The Andersons 2] (Siren Publishing Classic) by Marie Jermy - Free Book Online Page B

pleasure of working with,” Rex finished for Watson. “And you’re…”
    “A pain in the ass,” a soft feminine voice finished for Rex.
    “Well, actually I was going to say lucky to have someone as competent as Ramona caring for and treating your fine horses.” Smiling, Rex turned and felt his jaw drop at the woman dressed in jeans and a green and blue plaid shirt taking up position at his side. Older, the chestnut hair lightly threaded with gray, but with the same striking green eyes, Ramona sure hadn’t been kidding when she’d said she looked like her mother.
    “Bud, go and bore somebody else.”
    To Rex’s amusement, Watson did exactly that. “Mrs. Anderson, a pleasure.” He offered his hand and was surprised at the firm shake.
    “Call me Jess. Ramona said she’d introduce us, but my husband, Ross, and I got tired of waiting for her to bring you over. Will you join us?”
    He nodded and followed Jess to where three men and a woman were gathered outside the police station.
    “My husband, Ross,” Jess said, gesturing to the eldest of the three men.
    Jess’s husband, Ross, was wearing jeans, a standard wardrobe item, or so it seemed in Montana, and his full head of steel-gray hair matched that of the gray of his cotton twill shirt. Again, Rex felt his jaw drop, but managed to pick it up before anybody noticed. He shook Ross’s hand and refrained from commenting on the obvious age difference between husband and wife.
    But then again what did it matter that Ross had to be at least eighty, yet Jess didn’t look a day over sixty, maybe even fifty-five? Their linked hands and loving looks portrayed the deep affection they obviously felt for one another and cemented the kind of marriage that he and Stacey never had. He felt quite envious.
    “Welcome to Silver Creek, Rex,” Ross said.
    “Thank you, sir.” He turned to the woman. Apart from the shoulder-length hair and the more conservative attire of a pale pink 1950’s style dress with buttons down the front and a thin black belt clinched at the waist, and low-heeled black shoes, she was the replica of Ramona. No guesses who she was. But what surprised him? His cock didn’t twitch one iota. “Samantha, nice to meet you.”
    She gave him a warm, yet shy smile. “Likewise, Rex.”
    Rex felt his own smile slipping and his fingers twitching at the man clad all in denim standing next to her. Introduced as Mark Raven, the only thing he wanted to do was to curl his hand into a fist and punch the sneer from his tanned pretty-boy face. For a man who believed any kind of violence to be socially unacceptable, he found the concept unsettling. He held out and shook hands with the uniformed man with tousled blue-black hair standing just behind Raven. “You must be Matt.”
    “I am. And you have my sympathies. Working with Mona is one thing, but having to share the same john as her as well?” He cocked his head toward Samantha. “You should ask her to move in. Unlike Mona, Sammy’s so tidy, it’s a sin.”
    Rex didn’t know what to make of Matt. There was a cockiness to him, but it was a good kind of cockiness, like underneath the steel-hard exterior, and despite the gibes, lay a deep respect and love for his sisters. As an only child, he couldn’t relate to that, but he did understand it.
    “So, Rex, what part of the Deep South are you from?”
    “New Orleans, sir. But I’ve been living in Miami for the last five years,” he replied to Ross’s question. Rex then frowned. “How did you know I was from the Deep South?”
    “Always been a vet?”
    “Yes, sir.”
    “There’s your answer. Apart from the accent, you’ve got the manners of a Southern gentleman. Just like vampire Bill. Without the fangs, of course.”
    “Vampire Bill? As in True Blood ? You watch that?” Rex asked, taken completely by surprise. If he had been alive, he couldn’t imagine his own father, much less anybody else’s, tuning in to such a bloody, violent, and sexually graphic