Read Online Walk on the Wild Side by Natalie Anderson - Free Book Online Page B

reserved and not looking him in the eyes and keeping her distance. A new thing for him.
    Still, what had he expected? He hadn’t, of course—he’d been indulging in the wicked side of fantasy, not the realistic. To buy time he stared around her little flat. There was a lot to take in—it was completely crammed with stuff. Books were a main feature, all lined up along a wall. He skimmed the spines. Many he’d read but he didn’t keep them as she did. He passed them on, left them somewhere. But Kelsi was definitely a ‘keeper’ kind of person. Every inch of her apartment was filled—reflecting eclectic tastes and a very busy mind. There was enough confusion to cause a headache. The walls closed in on him—he didn’t keep ‘things’, he liked to travel so he could move fast and free.
    He blinked at the visual cacophony, but slowly began to see some order in the chaos. Things weren’t tossed wherever, they were placed. And there was also the completely crazy. Like the Lilliputian-sized curling staircase in one corner of the lounge leading up to—the wall. Painted on the wall was not a doorway, as you’d expect, but a Japanese fan spread open.
    â€˜Why?’ He pointed at it and looked at her.
    She glanced at the mini-stairs. ‘Why not?’
    OK, he grinned. He should have known. And, oh, man, her coolness was a temptation. He turned away from her,needing to get distracted again, else he’d just haul her to him caveman style and he really wanted to know he could be more controlled than a caveman. And her lack of super-obvious signals maybe meant she had some regrets. He hoped not—all he regretted was that he’d left. He should have taken her to his hotel until he’d blown her from his system completely.
    So now he stopped by the wall where there was a giant picture frame hanging. A huge gilt number—it would be the focal point if he were sitting on the sofa. But it was empty—not even a blank canvas inside it, just the bare white wall. ‘Tell me about this.’
    â€˜Watch.’ She flicked a switch and an image suddenly appeared in the frame.
    He looked up—clamped to the ceiling was an old slide projector. He looked back to the frame and watched as she clicked through a series of slides—mostly modern paintings. Frankly weird ones.
    â€˜You studied art,’ he said.
    â€˜Art history, yes.’
    â€˜But you did some yourself?’
    She frowned. ‘Not formally, no. But I like to play around.’ She clicked through another couple of eyesore slides.
    â€˜You don’t have any landscapes?’ he couldn’t help asking.
    â€˜What, like mountain scenes?’
    â€˜Yeah.’ He grinned.
    â€˜No,’ she said flatly and put the remote down.
    He chuckled and wandered around the room. On the table was a single flower—some big, beautiful bloom that looked delicate, as if the petals would fall if you so much as brushed it. Yet she’d put it in an antique glass bottle that had a worn ‘poison’ sticker on it. He grinned at thejuxtaposition. He looked again at the stairway to nowhere, the paintings, the vases, the collection of kitsch knickknacks overflowing on one shelf while the shelf beside that one was completely bare. ‘You have a lot of weird things.’
    â€˜Things that don’t readily make sense,’ she agreed. ‘It’s a way of freeing up my imagination. To encourage creativity.’
    OK—by having a collection of plastic animals walking up the wall? He lifted his brow at the rhino that had a miniature bottle opener hanging from its horn.
    â€˜Mystery is always present,’ she said softly. ‘That’s the point.’
    He looked at her. Yeah, the mystery was right in front of him. Adrenaline rushed, the precursor to fight, to drive for success. In that instant he wanted her more than he wanted his next breath.
    Â 
    Jack was staring at