Read Online The Sexiest Man Alive by Juliet Rosetti - Free Book Online

Mazie was relieved when the talk turned to the newest addition to the Maguire family, Scully’s baby daughter, Annie Laurie, who was nearly two months old. Edie went into raves about the wonder baby, who was the most perfect child ever born, touching on everything from her first smile to her pooping habits, and all Mazie had to do was put in an occasional “Amazing!”
    Mazie braced herself for what was coming next: When are
you
going to get married? You’re not getting any younger, your biological clock is ticking, the risk of birth defects rises once a woman is in her thirties—her mom’s usual litany—but today, Edith surprised her. “I suppose you’ve heard about those murders in Quail Hollow?”
    Quail Hollow was Mazie’s hometown, a sleepy little burg nearly three hours from Milwaukee, so far southwest, it was nearly in Iowa. It was a farm town, where manure spreaders made an appearance in the high school homecoming parade and the suburbs were sunflower fields, but things had changed in the past few years. Drugs had crept in; there were home break-ins, kids overdosing—more crime of every type.
    “The Tatum boy was murdered. I think his name was Ricky Lee—did you know him? He was a few years younger than you. It seems he was in a motorcycle gang—”
    “You mean the Hell’s Angels kind of gang?”
    “No, but it sounds as though this gang is just as bad. Let me think—what was their name again—the Skeletons? No—the Skulls. Horrible people—thugs and drug dealers. That’s why the Tatum boy was killed—something to do with drugs.”
    “Seriously?” Quail Hollow was no Mayberry, but a cold-blooded gang shooting? Hard to believe.
    “Yes, seriously.” Edie sighed heavily. “I don’t know what the world is coming to.”
    Mazie decided it was a good time to end the conversation, before her mom worked up a head of steam and went into a tirade about the outrageous price of medical care these days. “I don’t know, either. Gotta go, Mom. Love you.”
    The rain stopped, the sun came out, and Mazie’s emotional smog lifted. Anger took the place of grief. Magenta was right, Mazie decided. Ben Labeck
had
acted like a jerk. She’d allowed him to take her for granted and look what had happened—he’d lost all respect for her.
    “He’s not even all that great,” Mazie grumped to Juju as they made microwave popcorn for their Thursday-night movie marathon at Juju’s apartment.
    “Who, Ben?” Juju raised a skeptical eyebrow.
    “Yes,
him
. The Sexiest Man who ever left his sock balls strewn like turds all over the floor, waiting for the sock fairy to pick them up.”
    “Oh, yeah—the good old sock fairy. The sister of the wet-underwear-on-the-bathroom-floor fairy.”
    “I wonder how sexy all those women would find him if they knew he eats every nacho chip in a bag except for the last flake and then puts the bag in the cupboard, so the unsuspecting next person thinks the bag is still half full. Or how he stands in front of the open fridge and moans that there’s no mustard when the jar is two inches from his nose.”
    “All guys do that,” Juju said. “It’s selective vision. It’s caused by the Y chromosome.”
    “Plus he’s too vain to get reading glasses, he needs an instruction manual to load a dishwasher, and he’s absolutely incapable of admitting when he’s wrong.”
    Thinking nasty thoughts was amazingly energizing; it was like eating a chocolate chip cupcake and washing it down with a triple espresso; it was a 5-Hour Energy Drink for the ego. And so on the sixth day after she’d told Ben Labeck she never wanted to see him again, Mazie marched into Magenta’s shop and announced, “I’m ready for that makeover.”

Chapter Ten
    “Not too short,” Mazie ordered.
    “Just three inches,” Magenta wheedled.
“Please?”
    “Don’t you dare! One and a half at the most.”
    “Two.”
    Mazie took a deep breath and nodded, although it was a bit hard to move her head at the