Read Online Stranger on Raven's Ridge by Jenna Ryan - Free Book Online

tense. Some people can and often do disappoint their loved ones. I can’t change what I did any more than George can take back the call we both know he made. We make our choices and whatever the fallout might be, that’s what we’re left to face. Forced to face, in my case and in yours.”
    The faintest trace of Irish left over from his early childhood slipped through as he leaned in on his forearms to make his point. He wanted her to believe him, desperately wanted it. But she couldn’t.
    Bubbles rose and burst in her cloudy glass. Watching them, she said, “The guy who served us just now has a goiter. It’s making his neck swell. His voice could be hoarse from all the smoke in here, but I doubt it. His face is puffy, and his skin looks dry. I saw him for less than thirty seconds, Aidan, and I’d stake my medical reputation on the fact that he’s hypothyroid.”
    Aidan’s dark brows came together. “That’s not fatal, is it?”
    “Only if there’s a tumor involved, which in most cases, there isn’t. Point is, the server needs medical treatment, and you need a big reality check if you think I’m going to believe, even for a minute, that you’re afraid of Johnny Demars.”
    Sitting back, he took a drink of the greenish beer. “I’d be a fool if I wasn’t.”
    “You’d be a fool to underestimate him, but you’ve never been afraid of risking your life.”
    “If you believe that, maybe you don’t know me as well as you think.” He cast her a sideways look. “You want to make me into a superhero, and that’s not what I am. I’m sorry if that disappoints you, but it’s the truth. Johnny Demars scares the hell out of me. There’s no walking away from a man like that. Screw with him, whether intentionally or not, and you’re going to die. At some point, and in whatever manner he dictates—usually long and painful—you will die.”
    “But you’ll go after him now,” Raven countered. “Take out his hit man and set your sights on him now.” The crowd noise swelled a little as the dim lights of the waterfront bar flickered. “What you’re saying isn’t you, Aidan. What I said before, that’s you.”
    He rolled the unappealing contents of his mug. “I have no choice now. Two years ago, I did. Simple as that.”
    Nothing about him had ever been simple, she reflected. As for her feelings? Someday, someone might invent a word to describe them. Or him.
    Long and lean, a little haunted, a lot more haunting, Aidan possessed a rather frightening ability to captivate. One look at his face and she’d tumbled—over the edge and straight down the slippery slope into love. Even after he’d “died,” she hadn’t climbed out.
    Sighing, she tucked a leg underneath her on the bench. “Gaitor said you were the best he’d ever worked with.”
    “You haven’t met his former partners.”
    She studied his unrevealing features before asking softly, “Why are you doing this? Trying so hard to downplay your abilities and disillusion me?”
    “I’m not,” he began, then raised his eyes as the lights winked off and on.
    Unsure, Raven copied the move. “What? Electrical storms cause power flutters everywhere.”
    “Still a positive thinker, huh?”
    Another double zap, and the crowd murmurs grew. Ignoring the shiver that chased itself over her skin, Raven glanced at the dusty bird next to her head. “They probably think Hezekiah’s parasitic evil spirit is behind this.”
    Aidan smiled. “That’s what they’d like to think, but Steven figures most of them are actually quite well educated.”
    “Mmm. Like people who hunt for vampires in graveyards.”
    “You’re never going to buy in, are you?”
    “To the man-transforms-into-bird thing, not all the way in, no. To the suggestion that you’re a coward, not at all.”
    “Raven, being stubborn about this won’t change—”
    A sizzling snap cut him off and sent a collective gasp through the suddenly pitch-black room.
    “Hang on to your feathers,”