Read Online Bad Girl by Night by Lacey Alexander - Free Book Online Page B

The other cops. Guys loved to brag, after all. And God knew she’d given him something to brag about. She could almost hear the conversation already. “You know that girl Carly? Well, I met her a month ago, but she claimed her name was Desiree and she fucked my friend and me senseless in a hotel room. Yeah, both of us. Her idea. She couldn’t get enough.” She feared she might vomit.
    God, it was too damn hot out here. The sun suddenly made her woozier than she already was. She stared at the evenly spaced lines in the sidewalk as she trudged onward, trying to keep her balance.
    “Carly, you okay? You look kind of . . . freaked-out.”
    She forced her gaze upward to find Dana’s husband, Hank, a tall, burly guy who was as kind as the day was long. She blinked, her throat going dry. “I’m fine, Hank,” she lied. “Just . . . a smidge under the weather today . . . and the sun’s getting to me. I’ll be better once I get back to the shop and eat.” She held up her bag as proof she would soon be well.
    Still looking concerned, he said, “Want me to walk you?”
    “No, I’m good—really,” she said, then trundled past him, unable to concern herself right now with what he thought. She’d explain it all away later. For now, she just had to get inside, keep the door locked—screw the customers; this was an emergency—and somehow figure out how to deal with this.
    Except . . . there was no answer. She already knew that. There was no way to remedy it.
    The stranger whose cock she’d sucked to oblivion was now a resident of Turnbridge, and he knew her worst secret. She felt frantic inside, desperate to fix this somehow, to stop the inevitable outcome, but no fix existed. None.
    She imagined the horror on Frank Schubert’s face when he heard the ugly, unthinkable truth about her. Her mother, Dana, Hank, Beth Anne, the whole damn town. Every person she’d ever known, since birth.
    Maybe they wouldn’t believe him. He was a stranger, after all, and no longer the rescuing kind. And such a tale—that Carly Winters led a secret life as a world-class slut—would be hard to swallow by anyone’s standards.
    But no matter who believed what , this would be ugly.
    Ugliest most of all, she realized, because it was all true.
     
     
    J ake tried not to seem like he was rushing off as he hurriedly paid Frank Schubert for his burger and fries. He also tried not to seem weirded out. Because he was. Big-time.
    Frank was still talking about Carly. Damn—her name was Carly . Not Desiree. “Everybody loves Carly—she’s a sweetheart,” the man was saying, even as Jake climbed down off his stool and said so long.
    As he pushed through the heavy door out into the sun, he could barely process what had just happened, what he’d just seen. The same girl who’d been with him and Colt last month—but . . . not the same girl at all. She didn’t even have the same name. And he wasn’t about to let her get away.
    Talk about shell-shocked. He couldn’t remember a time in his thirty-four years when something had left him so stunned.
    The truth was, ever since that night he’d been mystified, intrigued, and a little obsessed with thoughts of her. He’d been sorry to wake up and find her gone afterward—and he’d had a hell of a time getting her off his mind. He hadn’t really succeeded, even now, even after a move and starting a new job. In fact, the very notion that he now lived closer to Traverse City had pleased him, as it increased his opportunities to party with his buddies in the area, which increased the chances that maybe he’d run into her again sometime.
    She’d been so fucking wild, more than any girl he’d ever been with, and it had aroused him more than any other experience in his life. And at the same time, she’d sported an air of sophistication that had left him intrigued.
    The girl he’d just been introduced to— Carly —didn’t seem wild or sophisticated.
    But her eyes were the same, minus all the