Read Online Complete Abandon by Julia Kent - Free Book Online Page A

cry harder. “Are you guys having a hard time?”
    “You told them to read my eReader?” Laura asked quietly, wiping her tears with a piece of lavender-scented tissue from the box built into the log-cabin wall.
    “I...shit.” Josie blew out a long sigh that gave Laura a chance to blow her own nose. “Yes, I’ll own that. I did.”
    “Why?”
    “Because Mike and Dylan told me and Alex you have only had sex twice in six months.”
    The hand holding the piece of tissue curled into a tight fist. “They WHAT?” she hissed. The distinct sound of a champagne cork popped in the distance, and Laura heard Dylan’s muffled voice say something with urgency.
    “And they said the only thing you seemed interested in were your books, so...” Josie’s voice faded. A sharp inhale came through the phone. “I never realized how good a baby’s head can smell,” Josie said, as if naming an embarrassed confession.
    Snorting, laughing, and fuming all at once, Laura felt like a vortex of too many emotions crammed into one body. What a mess. Her two amazing men were out in the living room of this gorgeous cabin, getting champagne ready, with hundreds of candles lit and an assortment of pleasure-driven sex toys purchased based on her deepest desires, and here she sat sniffling into the phone and berating her best friend, who was watching her precious baby.
    Could she be any more screwed up?
    “She’s really OK? No problems?” Please say yes.  
    “Laura,” Josie ventured, “don’t ever tell Alex I said this, but I think I like this whole baby thing. Jillian is adorable and even when she cries—”
    “She cried? Why?”
    “Because she’s a baby.” Josie snorted. “But don’t worry Alex just stripped his shirt off and latched her on.”
    “Ha ha.” Even that cut through Laura’s malaise.
    “I swear the man would lactate if he could,” Josie joked.
    “You like the whole domestic thing?” Laura wasn’t surprised. She knew Josie had it in her.
    “I like the baby thing more than I want Alex to know. Yet.”
    “OK. Shhhh. I won’t spill your secrets.”
    “ Touch é . I’m sorry.”
    “So why did you call?” Now Laura was flushed and mussed, confused and overwhelmed.
    “We couldn’t remember whether you said to use the butt cream on her rash or to just let it air out.”
    “You called me for that?” Laura said through gritted teeth.
    “The way you gave us instructions made it seem like we’d have nuclear bombs shoved up our asses and your foot would trigger the explosion if we didn’t do exactly what you said,” Josie replied in a sing-songy voice.
    “Is Jillian awake?”
    “No. But your angry voice made her stir.”
    “Air first. Butt cream second.”
    “M’kay.”
    Silence. But Josie didn’t hang up.
    “Anything else?”
    “Yes.” Pause. A quiet, softer side of Josie came out in her words. “Laura, what are you doing to those guys? But most of all, to yourself, honey?” Josie didn’t use words like “honey.” That was the second time in one conversation. Either her niece, Darla, was rubbing off on her or Laura was in worse shape than she ever possibly realized.
    More tears. “You’re the one who called,” she sniffed.
    “And you’re—what? Sitting in the bathroom talking to me?”
    “How could you tell?”
    “The echo.”
    Laura looked around the bathroom and laughed. “I don’t know what I’m doing, Josie. It’s not that I don’t want Mike and Dylan. It’s just that—” she choked on her next words, but forced them out anyhow—“what if they don’t want me?”
    “Why wouldn’t they?” Josie whispered. “According to both of them, they’re slobbering all over themselves to get you in bed, but you’re not interested.”
    Gah . Even more tears. “Because...” Her mind rushed with excuses and reasons why she wasn’t interested, and then—like a wrist flicking away a gnat—she shooed her own flimsy rationalizations away. “Because I don’t know. Because I don’t