Aphrodite's Kiss Read Online Free PDF

effort not to lash out at the little slimeball. “I did what you asked. But now I’m done with you. And it’s your turn to pay me what you agreed.”
    Parker snorted and took a long drag on his cigarette. He exhaled toward Taylor, who stood his ground as noxious menthol smoke curled over his shoulders. “What I agreed? I think that bullet in your leg worked its way up to your brain.” He aimed a self-satisfied smirk toward his moronic bookends. “ ‘Cause you’re talking pure rot, Georgie-boy. You didn’t do shit for me.”
    The perpetual ache in Taylor’s thigh intensified to a dull throb. Eight years on the force, five commendations, a handful of awards, and a front-page spread in the local paper, and this was where he’d ended up. One mistake and he was reduced to spying on a perfectly chaste woman with a husband from hell.
    “She’s not cheating on you.”
    Parker took another drag on his cigarette, then ground it into the tabletop. “Maybe you oughta look a little harder.”
    “Just give me my fee,” Taylor said, measuring each word.
    He settled back into the booth, the Tweedledumdums snickering beside him. “You bring me the goods,
capicse?
You find some dirt; then you get your money.”
    Taylor rubbed his thigh, forcing himself to stay calm as every cell in his body screamed at him to beat the little worm into a pulp. He should have avoided Parker like the plague. Dammit, he knew better. But like a damn fool, he’d let the need for cash suck him into a sucker’s deal.
    He counted to ten, clenching and unclenching his fist. Just one misstep, and instead of looking at him like a hero, women like Zoë Smith thought he was lower than slime. “Forget the fee. I’m not interested in money that’s crossed your greasy palm.”
    “You think you’re hot shit? Got your name in the papers back when you was a cop? Think that hero bullshit’s gonna keep you in clients? You’re a fool, Georgie-boy. A damned gimp fool,” Parker sputtered, his prune face turning red with his rising blood pressure. “I let on that you welshed on me, and ain’t nobody else gonna darken your doorstep again. You hear me, Georgie? You hear me, boy?”
    The rubber band holding his emotions in check snapped, sending Taylor lunging forward. He plowed over the tabletop, arms out, hands ready to close around Parker’s oh-so-smug neck. He slammed on the brakes just before he touched him, his fingers hovering over Parker’s ring-around-the-collar. The Tweedle twins scrambled out of the booth and hightailed it for the kitchen.
    “I should do it, you know,” Taylor whispered, the itch in his fingers seconding his words. “But I don’t think you’re worth the effort.”
    Slowly, slowly, he backed away.
Nice, even breaths. Nothing wrong here. Nothing at all
.
    Then, with one last look at Parker cowering alone in the booth, Taylor stepped out of the diner and into the heavy Los Angeles air. For someone who’d just told his one and only client to take a flying leap, he felt remarkably calm. Uplifted, even.
    And he was absolutely certain that—if he ever saw her again—a certain elementary school librarian would be quite proud of him.

Chapter Three

    She didn’t want to think about him. She had no reason to think about him. Which was why it was particularly annoying that for the last three days, thoughts of Buster Taylor had been filling her head—the sexy scar that marred his eyebrow, the sparkle in his eyes when he smiled. The cute way he’d tried to backpedal when he’d realized how furious she was.
    And her heart had just about melted when her ears had tuned in to his gripe as he was leaving the building: “Damn. I really hate this job.”
    In fact, she’d been so preoccupied with the irritating insurance investigator that she’d inadvertently shelved
The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
with the arts-and-crafts books, and had completely blanked when a fifth grader asked if the latest Harry Potter book had made it to the