Fury’s Kiss Read Online Free PDF

station with Nora—preferably in handcuffs. The man could glower like nobody’s business.
    He started to shut the door on me.
    “Wait!” I put the toe of my sneaker in the door to stop it from closing in my face. He didn’t notice in time to keep from shutting my foot in the door. Or maybe he did and just didn’t care. Either way —ow . I tried to pass my grimace off as a winsome smile.
    He crossed his arms over his broad, well-defined chest when it became clear I wasn’t going away. “What do you want?”
    God. What a question. What did I want? I wanted to convince him and Nora not to tell the cops I’d been at the bar the night before. I wanted to go back in time and fix things so none of it had ever happened. I wanted to find the words to explain everything so they’d believe me.
    Instead, I just blurted out the first thing that came to mind. “I’m not really like that, you know. I don’t just go around making out with strange men in bars.” Shut up, shut up. But my mouth kept going. “I mean, I don’t usually do things like that at all. With men.”
    His forehead wrinkled as he stared, studying me like I was some kind of bizarre specimen outside the realm of normal understanding. “I’m more of a don’t ask, don’t tell kind of guy,” he said after a while.
    “Oh! No!” I realized what he meant. “I don’t mean that I don’t do…things…with men. I’m not gay. Not that I have a problem with that. My roommate, Alex, is actually bisexual. I just mean that I’m not. Gay, that is.”
    He kept staring and I fidgeted miserably on the doorstep. My mission had been a dismal failure so far. I was disgusted with myself for blurting out Alex’s name like she was my token gay friend and I had something to prove. And then there was the fact that I’d made a complete fool of myself in front of Jackson Byrne—again—but I couldn’t leave. Not with so much on the line.
    I had to find a way to convince Jackson and Nora to help me, or die trying. Likely of embarrassment.
    Humiliation sloshed inside of me, and it took actual, physical effort not to spew more word vomit into the air between us. Why hadn’t I just hauled the body into the tall grass at the edge of the lot, where it might not have been discovered for a few days? But no, I had to leave it crumpled in a heap next to Nora’s truck, where she was guaranteed to trip over it.
    Luckily, my thought of Nora seemed to summon her, and she pulled into the driveway with a rattle and wheeze from her rusty old pickup, rescuing me from my stalemate with Jackson. When she swung down from the truck, her daughter came bouncing down the front steps toward her. Nora hefted her up onto her hip and introduced me while Jackson continued to glower.
    “Tara, meet Ruby. Ruby, Tara.”
    My heart pounded. What was her angle here? If she was introducing me to her daughter, she couldn’t think I had anything to do with the body. Right?
    “You must be here because you’re wondering how much I told the cops about what you did to that guy.”
    Or not.My mouth went dry and I had to grab the porch railing for support. This was not good. This was so far from good, it wasn’t even in the same hemisphere as good.
    “It’s OK,” she said, taking in the look on my face. “I told them you were there, but left long before he ever showed up.”
    “Why?” I croaked. I’d expected it to take a hell of a lot more persuading—not to mention lying—to convince her not to incriminate me.
    She shrugged. “I think I have a pretty good idea what happened.”
    “You…do?” I wheezed. I doubted very much that she had any idea.
    Nora straightened up and set Ruby down. “Why don’t you and Uncle Jackson go back in the house and start making lunch?” she told the little girl. “You can set the table. One extra place for our guest, please.”
    Uncle Jackson?I leaned closer, not sure I’d heard correctly. That sounded much better than, say, Daddy. Not that I had a shot with