Kindred Spirits by Mark Anthony

Author:Mark Anthony [Anthony, Mark]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-7869-6321-8
Publisher: Wizards of the Coast Publishing
Published: 2012-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

RUFUS SLOUCHED IN the back seat of Mick’s car, exhausted. Too exhausted to listen to Izzy.

“He’s too old. I’m young. Vibrant. Sexy.” Izzy, sitting up front, shifted to face him, her bobbed hair fluttering in the wind from the open window. “Don’t you think so?”

He could only nod.

She smiled winningly, then turned back to Mick. “What could Daddy possibly be thinking? Roy Tadmucker. He’s not a lover. He’s a babysitter.”

Mick sighed as he sped his Caddy toward Atlantic City. “Maybe he—”

“You agree with Daddy? You think I need someone to take care of me?”

Mick closed his mouth and shook his head.

“I just want to be loved, Mick.” She said it on a long, wistful breath. She slid her gaze to Rufus. “I could learn to cook. Get a job. Money means nothing without love.”

Rufus looked at Mick. It wasn’t even noon and he’d flirted twice with death. The first time by choice. The second . . . well, if not for Grace and Izzy, would Mick have pulled his gun and shot him?

“This isn’t over.”

He understood Mick’s throwing a punch. If he’d caught a strange man ravaging the woman he loved, he, too, would’ve started swinging. But he wouldn’t resort to murder. Maybe a shot to the kneecap.

That didn’t make him feel much better.

Mahoney obviously loved Grace. Was that why other men didn’t pursue her? He knew she tried to throw men off her scent, acting brash and dragging her boots, but he couldn’t be the only one who’d seen past her smoke and mirrors. Did dangerous rumors about Mahoney and his thug friends and his possessiveness follow Grace while she traveled the air circuit, frightening away potential suitors? Surely, not many locals would dare make a play for her. Was it simply that, as an outsider, he hadn’t known better?

Would he have behaved any differently if he’d had?

No. Mick had eyed him last night, death in a glance. Jimmy had warned him. Still, he’d kissed Grace.

The big question was, of course, did she love Mick? Izzy claimed Grace had kissed him last night to make Mick jealous. Grace said she’d done it to prove her lack of interest in marrying Mahoney. But then why had she kissed him again today? She could’ve pushed him away, told him to go to hell. Instead, she’d bested his fire. Singed him with a heat that must’ve been stoking for years. To feel the potency of all that pent-up passion . . . He’d thought of her as animalistic, a creature prompted by her senses and instinct. The way she’d responded to his kisses strengthened that theory. Yet any time he tried to picture her in bed, it always turned into soft down pillows and lazy sunshine.

And that, he realized, was the real crux of his problem. Grace was the genuine article.

A string of past girlfriends paraded through his mind. A blur of beautiful, smart, sexy women. He actually did consider stimulating conversation a part of foreplay, but all of the women he recalled had been, as he had, basically out for a good time and a night of hot sex.

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