Crazy for You Read Online Free PDF

lust? Or had I just imagined it?
    Jared nodded at Rhonda, flashing his Chiclet choppers. “Hello, Rhonda. Just happened to be driving past, saw the cars, thought I’d crash your party. You don’t mind, do you?”
    Their eyes locked, and I tried to figure out what was going on. Was Jared Rhonda’s ex-lover? Current lover? Guy she’d picked up at the gas station? Was she going to skewer me with the olive fork for talking to him?
    Rhonda pasted on a smile, revealing a smear of lipstick on her left canine, and batted her tarantula-leg lashes. “You can crash my party anytime, stud. Mazie, don’t just stand there, get him a drink.”
    He held up his hand. “I’m good.”
    “You’re supposed to mingle, not stay hidden back here with the hired help.”
    Thanks a lot, Rhonda . Nice to know I was on a level with the ice-making machine.
    Picking up the tray of canapés, I muscled my way back out to the living room. Tipsy drunks stepped on my feet. Sloppy drunks spilled drinks on me. Someone was banging out “Heart and Soul” on Rhonda’s piano. Then the front door opened, swirling in a welcome whiff of cool, fresh air, and Ben Labeck walked in to the party.
    I experienced the same kind of heart swoop as when the Six Flags roller coaster tops the first peak and starts its downward hurtle. Labeck was with Aspen Lindgren. How could I have forgotten? Aspen had mentioned Rhonda’s party yesterday, but I’d tucked it away in the Don’t Wanna Think About It compartment of my brain.
    Feeling like the little match girl with her nose pressed to the shopwindow, I gazed at Labeck. Even in a two-day beard and grubby clothes, he looked good. Tonight, clean shaven, in dress shirt, tie, and dark-gray suit, he exuded sexiness in waves nearly visible to the naked eye. He wasn’t classically handsome like the movie star. His ears were slightly too big and his nose went down where it was supposed to go up, but he had the grace of a natural athlete, he seemed completely at ease in his own skin, and there was a tantalizing spark in his dark eyes that made women think of bedrooms, boudoirs, and bondage fantasies.
    Ben’s baptized name was Bonaparte, a family name from a distant Parisian ancestor. No, not the guy with one hand stuck in his jacket and the fixation on conquering the world—this Bonaparte was French Canadian–Ojibwa, born in a small town on the Quebec side of the USA-Canada border. He’d gone to college in Wisconsin on a hockey scholarship, where his interest in photography had led to a part-time job at theuniversity’s TV station, and afterward to a full-time cameraman’s job with a Milwaukee television station.
    I dragged my eyes off him because people can feel when they were being stared at, and I didn’t want him to suddenly turn and spot me in my ugly waiter uniform. Rhonda was eyeing Labeck as though he were a big, fat, charbroiled T-bone and she had a steak knife in her hands. Somehow, she contrived to shunt Aspen aside without actually elbowing her in the kidneys, and detached Labeck like an expert roper cutting a calf out of a herd.
    Damn, she was good!
    Soon she had Labeck all to herself, trapped in an armchair by a plate of canapés, a glass of wine, and her own leg, blocking his exit like a tollbooth gate. She did that thing males of all ages seem to fall for. No, not oral sex. Get the guy talking, pretend he’s the best thing since satellite radio and go, Why you big, strong, clever thing, you! Pretty soon the guy is caught like a fly in a molasses spill.
    I went back to work, trying not to watch Labeck and Rhonda. People were getting louder and more boisterous, shouting to be heard above the din. The noise and heat were giving me a headache. My arms ached from carrying the heavy trays, and my wispy tendrils had gone from gamine to bedraggled. The piano player switched to a Billy Joel medley and was playing it badly.
    Walking out of the kitchen with a fresh tray of drinks, I skidded on something slick. Oh,