A Few Good Men Read Online Free PDF Page B

laughing, his blue eyes crinkling in the corners.
    Peter might be the bitchiest man she knew, but there was no doubt he was handsome, which was probably why he got away with it. It didn’t make her face any less red at his comment though.
    He waved a hand in her direction, looking as if he enjoyed her embarrassment. “Don’t worry about it, sweetie. You should see what’s in my bedside table.”
    She definitely did not want to see that. “We better not even go there.”
    “You’re right. Your virgin ears can’t take it.” He rolled his eyes and sounded sarcastic.
    “I will be a virgin again soon if I go much longer without sex.” Maureen let out a huff. Maybe that explained why she was so skilled at writing sex scenes for her novels. Wishful thinking. At least she put all that pent-up sexual energy to good use.
    “Again, an obsession with gay men and men seven thousand miles away doesn’t bode so well for sex. And tell me this, Miss Closet Author, if gay men are so wonderful in your opinion, when are you going to write a gay character into one of your novels? A devastatingly handsome, rich and successful gay man who sexy hotties are fighting over? You can base him on me.” Peter watched her expectantly.
    “Careful what you wish for,” she warned.
    One brow shot up to his hairline. “I could say the same to you, missy.”
    “What’s that supposed to mean?”
    “It means, let’s say you get yourself a soldier to fall in love with. What then? He’ll be over there and you will be here.”
    “I’m not falling for a soldier. But even if I did, they do come home eventually, you know. Deployments don’t last forever.”
    “Yes, he could come home—if he doesn’t get killed first—and then you’ll still be here in the city and he’ll be wherever. Are you going to quit your job, give up your rent-controlled apartment in a neighborhood that actually has parking and pick up and move to whatever godforsaken place he is?”
    “I don’t know. Maybe. What would be wrong with that? I hate my job. And this rent-controlled apartment is barely big enough for me and the cockroaches that live here.”
    Peter let out a loud frustrated breath. “And then what? Live in cookie-cutter base housing on military pay? Ugh, he’d probably be from the South too. Before you knew it you’d be bleaching your hair blonde and having it set and teased at the local beauty parlor by Mabel, the town gossip. God, you’ll probably stop wearing designer labels and start buying all your clothes at a store with ‘mart’ in the name.”
    “I would not.” There must be decent shopping malls in the South, she was sure of it. And she wouldn’t look good blonde with her dark eyebrows anyway, so that was not even an option.
    He continued on, undaunted. “You’ll become a devoted little military wife baking cookies to ship overseas with the other wives while he gets shipped off again to God knows where for a year at a time.”
    Maureen considered. It might be nice to have a woman friend or two, and who didn’t like fresh-baked cookies?
    Arms crossed, Peter watched her as he silently challenged her to argue with his logic. At least he appeared to be finished with the tirade.
    “None of this matters because I am not looking for a soldier to fall in love with.” She stifled the urge to stamp her foot to emphasize the point.
    “Then why are they all you talk about, and why haven’t you been out on a date in weeks?”
    Because all the decent straight men she knew were in the military. She kept that to herself. Dammit, there had to be a few good men left in the world who were non-gay, single civilians. She just had no idea where they were all hiding.
    Back against the wall, Maureen went on the offensive. “You want me to date so badly, you find me a decent guy to go out with. A straight guy,” she quickly added when she remembered Peter plucked his fish from a different dating pond than she.
    Peter rolled his eyes. “As if I would