Fierce Protector: Hard to Handle trilogy, Book 1 Read Online Free PDF

didn’t say. “Does it come with benefits?” she quipped. Drug gangs tended to balk at providing health insurance for their ‘employees’.
    “I’m taking care of things,” was his reply. “I miss you, Sis.”
    Eva had gone as far as to read a book about addicts and how to deal with their crazy-making behavior. To give them money or support, or even kindness, was seen from one point of view as simply enabling their addictive tendencies. Tough love was called for, not soft-hearted pandering; that would only make things worse. The problem was that Hank was her only brother, the only one of her family who would still speak to her, even if it was to beg for money ninety percent of the time. Her tactics were carefully chosen for their balance of strict boundary-setting and the compassion necessarily shown to family.
    “Hank, I want you to call me a week from today, OK?”
    “Sure, but . . .”
    “And when you call me,” she spelled out, “I want you to give me the address of the new place you’re working at. I don’t care what it is. A burger joint, a supermarket, a goddamned cleaning service, whatever. Give me their address, the next time we talk.”
    “You got it, Sis. The thing is . . .”
    She cut him off, something she had learned to do. “You’re not going to buy any this week.”
    “I’m not, but there’s this guy and he says I owe, and I don’t really, it’s just bad accounting, and . . .”
    “I don’t want to hear it. You pay him off, and all the others, when you get the job.” Her patience was audibly wearing thin. “We talked about this, remember? No more short cuts.”
    The line was quiet. Then in a resigned tone, Hank said, “OK, Evie. You got it. Talk to you in a week.”
    Eva drove the remaining five miles to Sutherland with tears in her eyes.
    ***
    The house was quiet when she returned. She poured herself a tall glass of iced tea and settled down in her room with her notebook. Right now, she judged, there were six different ideas for a novel, all of them wildly compelling, and in her idle moments she imagined her characters, the exotic settings she had in mind, the dangers and pit-falls they would face. She discarder her sweater and jeans, and slid under the bed sheet with her notebook to scribble yet more notes.
    Her favorite theme was about two young lovers whose parents were in a centuries-old feud. It had more than a little Romeo and Juliet to its narrative, but with a modern twist; almost their whole relationship takes place via the Internet, and Eva was considering having this as the venue for their first sexual encounter. It was merely research, she told herself one night after a few drinks, to sign up to one of those sex-chat sites and see how it might work. Eva played the role of a shy, naive Juliet who had almost never uttered an f-word in her life. She had met a host of different men, many with an extremely limited vocabulary and very few with whom she felt comfortable having any kind of conversation. There were a lot of entreaties to share details of her body, her preferences, the color of her underwear, and so on, but it was difficult – to an extent which pretty well undermined her nascent arousal – to actual get something going .
    But this was going about it the wrong way, she decided after a few days’ reflection. The two lovers would already have gotten to know each other very well through phone calls, emails and actual meetings; they wouldn’t need to stagger awkwardly through the ‘asl’ and ‘lol’ phases of their relationship. One night, she decided instead, they would have an illicit Skype liaison which would be a pivotal moment in their relationship. It was time, she decided, for a little experiment.
    With her roommates both on dates for the evening, Eva was mercifully alone in her little apartment in suburban Chicago. She excitedly brought together the ingredients for her online experiment. Anonymity would be absolutely key; it was only when she