Joker's Wild Read Online Free PDF

psyche. Beast? He wasn’t a beast. He was just a man who was larger than life, who’d declared himself a part of hers.
    Tomorrow she’d check with her grandmother about this red-haired Viking who’d appointed himself her protector—and friend.
    “Oh, Allison,” she heard him call out, “if you need me, just yell out the window. I’ll hear you. And don’t worry. You don’t have to see anybody you don’t want to. I know a back way to the nursing home.”
    Allison locked her bedroom door and leaned against it. She was going to bed even though there was a strange man on her property. Yet, curiously enough, she wasn’t afraid. Joker. What a unique man he seemed to be, a man who seemed to care about her. Dare she believe him?
    She’d believed Mark when he’d said he loved her. And he’d let her down. For him she’d skated when she shouldn’t have, and now her career was over. Could she trust this man she barely knew? She shouldn’t. But she did.
    Allison unlocked her door and swung herself around to the window.
    From the foot of the stairs, Joker heard the lock snap closed. Moments later he heard her unlock it again. He smiled and let himself out into the star-studded night. He stretched his taut muscles andbreathed in the summer smells from the garden as he thought of Allison asleep upstairs in her brass bed with the pink print spread. His arms felt empty without her.
    Standing in the courtyard, he could almost hear the night music, sweet and romantic, played by an imaginary string quartet in the gazebo. Yes, they would have walked there, those romantic couples from the past.
    Through the window above the courtyard Allison watched the tall, muscular man take a deep bow and lift his hand. He began to waltz lithely around the garden, holding his imaginary partner gracefully in his arms. As he reached the steps leading up to the carriage house, he stopped, gave a second deep bow, and moved away into the darkness. Allison felt a pang of regret that the woman he’d held hadn’t been she.
    At the top of the stairs Joker paused. Like the town crier on his appointed rounds, he pealed out his evening report. “Ten o’clock and all’s well. Or it will be,” he whispered to the lady in the upstairs window.
    He didn’t turn on the lights as he walked through the moonlight into the bedroom. His quarters were old and comfortable. Only his bed was new. It had just been delivered. He looked down at it in the darkness. Massive, with four great oak posts and a square canopy over it, it was a bed made for sharing. There was a woman in the house he wanted to share it with. But she was wary of him, holding back, afraid to trust him. That was all right. Trust would come. He’d move slowly, as if he were taming a wildfawn or healing an injured plant. She’d come to him. He was convinced of it. Soon.
    Through the open bedroom windows came the call of a night bird. Joker took off his clothes and lay on the bed. A wonderful, warm, peaceful silence settled over the estate. The moon went behind a cloud and the night folded itself around him.
    The woman was beautiful. He rubbed his calloused hand across his beard. Fairy tale time? Maybe she was more right than she knew. “What we have here,” he whispered out loud, “are Beauty and the Beast.” And if he remembered the story correctly, she’d come just at the appointed time. So what if the tale had taken a different direction in real life? So what if the person in need was the Beauty and not the Beast? There was nothing wrong with taking a little literary license, he decided, and closed his eyes.

Three

    The next morning Allison found her crutches propped against the table by her bed. She glanced around and spotted the suitcase she’d packed so hastily. It had been placed by her closet door. Pulling herself upright, she hobbled to the closet and opened the door. All her clothes were hanging neatly inside.
    The work of the jolly red giant, no doubt, she thought. What was she