Read Online Wild Child by Molly O'Keefe - Free Book Online Page A

Gave her a fresh lime. Maybe whenhe left town he’d go to Mexico, get a job on a beach somewhere as a bartender. He had a knack.
    “Sure.” She tucked her chin, her fingers tracing the grain on the wood. Her fingers were long, pretty. The nails were naked, but pink and short. Looking at them felt intimate, as if he were seeing something he shouldn’t through the crack in a door.
    Everything about her felt that way. Illicit and naughty. Forbidden.
    “Do you like being mayor?”
    He laughed once, and it burned in his chest. “No. I don’t.” Surprised at his honesty, he took a sip of beer to keep his mouth busy so he didn’t go spilling any more of his secrets.
    “Then why do it?”
    “A man’s gotta eat.” Not at all the real answer, but he’d already been more honest than he’d intended. “Why are you writing a book you aren’t excited about?” As soon as he said it, he remembered once, when he was a kid, daring Sean to touch the electrified fence around the railroad switch south of town. Sean didn’t do it; he was dumb, but not stupid. But the two of them had stood close enough to feel the current, the energy coming off the wires.
    That was how she seemed now; it was as if he’d stepped too close to the wires around her.
    “That’s hardly any of your business,” she snapped.
    “I disagree,” he snapped right back. This wasn’t what he wanted; he wanted to look at her naked fingers, try to see down her shirt, but he couldn’t stop this terrible energy. “This is my town and you’re about to go yanking our skeletons out of their closets.”
    “Why don’t you want me to write this book?” she asked, leaning in, sending his equilibrium spinning. He took another sip of beer. It was as if his friends were onthe far side of the moon; it was just him and Monica. And the language of her body.
    “It’s the past,” he said, wiping his mouth. “We’re looking toward the future.”
    “We?”
    “Bishop.” Me. Me most of all. The wide-open future .
    “Right,” she said, her expression close to a sneer. “The TV show. The yard work.”
    Now he stiffened, everything set alight by her disdain. Her sarcasm fed his doubts, watered his worry.
    “What’s wrong with that?”
    “It’s very …” she pretended to mull it over “… polite.” She dropped her voice, leaned in close. “And you know how I feel about polite.”
    There was something about her smart mouth, her irreverence, that made him want to bite her. It was a fire in his blood—a swift and sudden obsession. He’d start with that small, delicate cup of skin supported by bone and sinew right there under her ear. He wanted that flesh in his mouth, the heat and softness of her. And then he’d move on to the fat center of her bottom lip, so lush, so erotic. He wanted to suck that.
    “You think it’s bullshit,” he said.
    She touched her nose, smiling.
    “You know what I think is bullshit?”
    “I can hardly wait to hear.”
    “Writing a book about a man who nearly killed his wife with his bare hands, a woman you clearly don’t like, and a past you put yourself in jeopardy to run from.”
    Like water draining slowly out of a sink, her smile faded. The color in her cheeks went white, her eyes diamond hard. Sensing the change in Monica, Reba, under the chair, started to growl. A partly bald guard dog in rhinestones.
    She pushed away from the bar and got to her feet with a little hop. “Gentlemen,” she said. “Have a good pokernight.” She glanced at Sean and then back at Jackson, her eyes the kind of hard that should have taken all the heat out of his blood, yet it didn’t.
    This is what happens when you don’t have sex. Ever. You get excited by a woman who you can’t stop offending. A woman who loathes you .
    Cooler night air blew in the door as she left, and he pushed away his beer.
    “What the hell did you say?” Sean asked.
    “I’ll apologize.” He ran a hand through his hair, over his eyes. Again. Again . It’s