Read Online The Care and Feeding of Unmarried Men by Christie Ridgway - Free Book Online Page A

Who’s this Chili, Eve?”
    Still keeping her distance, she turned. Shrugged. “Nino Farelle. He’s an…associate, I guess we’ll say, of my grandfather.”
    â€œCosimo Caruso. Don of the California Mafia.”
    Her mouth curved. “You’ve been doing your homework. I wasn’t sure you believed me.”
    Nash strode closer to confront her toe-to-toe. “Are you seeing this Nino? Is that it?” He’d asked her earlier that day if there was a man in her life, and now he realized she’d never answered. “Christ, Eve, did you use me to make him jealous?”
    The thought churned like acid in his gut, but he ignored the burn and focused on keeping his hands relaxed at his sides. What did he care about her games, anyway? The answer: He didn’t care about them.
    She brushed her hair off her forehead. “You really don’t have a very high opinion of me, do you?”
    â€œThe truth is not going to get you out of answering the question.”
    She laughed, and damn it, he liked it. Despite himself and everything he could tell about her by just looking at that perfect face and bombshell figure, there were these moments when he actually liked her, too.
    â€œHere’s the deal with Nino,” she finally answered. “If I was alone or didn’t look…involved, he would have come over to the bar and made it difficult for me to leave.”
    Nash wasn’t sure she was being honest with him. “You could have just said so. I would have been happy to escort you out of there without all the dramatics.”
    â€œAh, but then it would have been much more like rescuing me, wouldn’t it?” She smiled, full-on and sexy. “And we would have missed out on this. ”
    Then the delectable witch twined her arms around his neck, again. Then she kissed him, again.
    She was trying to distract him from his questions. He knew that. He should put a stop to this.
    For God’s sake, he was bigger, stronger, meaner than she was, but she was so damn wily, with those soft breasts and soft mouth and sweet scent. They overpowered his caution, sucker-punched his common sense, made him forget his own damn name. She tried to stick her tongue between his lips again, but he didn’t want to make it easy for her, so he cupped her face in his palms and slid his mouth over her chin and down her neck. There were a few things he didn’t want to miss out on either.
    â€œNash—” she started to protest, but it petered out when he found the scented spot behind her ear. The oversized gold hoop in her lobe brushed coolly against his cheek, but her skin was hot beneath his lips. He traced her ear with his tongue and savored the little shimmy she made against his chest.
    Once again, he cupped that incredible ass and tucked her hips more firmly to his. She’d already commented on his “equipment,” so there was no reason to think he’d scare her off with his raging erection.
    He figured nothing could scare this woman.
    When he made it back to her mouth, she proved to him that a beauty contest wasn’t the only place she could come up a winner. She slid her tongue along the insides of his lips as if she wanted to taste him. Her mouth opened to welcome his heavy return thrust. You could tell that some women objected to the intimacy of a soul kiss—and wasn’t that a big ol’ hint as to what other pleasures they’d object to—but Eve Caruso was born to French. He settled in for the long haul, sliding his fingers into her back pockets as he sucked gently on her bottom lip.
    He was going to take his time. She didn’t appear to realize that, because she tried taking over, her handssliding from around his neck to head south. He warned her off by taking a little nip of that plump lower lip, at the same time tugging upward on those skintight jeans. Eve gasped and he smiled to himself, knowing just where he’d caused the