Lured In Read Online Free PDF Page A

drowned out her denial until she finally conceded with a shrug, blushing a soft pink all the while.
    “What
ever,
” she laughed. “Sometimes they just need to be yelled at.”
    After a second, Liam looked over at Finn and tipped his head in question, but Finn waved him on. There wasn’t a hope he’d be able to speak coherently until Jess stopped blushing like that.
    “Okay, let’s see.” Liam leaned back in his chair, wrapped his arm around Kate’s shoulders, and squeezed as he tipped his head in Jess’s direction. “
This one
stepped off a float plane thirteen years ago, green around the gills and shaking like a leaf, and then flat out refused to leave, even though Da insisted the Buoys was no place for a skinny little girl like her.”
    “I was neither skinny nor little,” Jess interjected.
    “How old were you?” Olivia asked.
    “Seventeen.”
    “Yeah,” Liam chuckled. “And I bet she weighed all of about a buck fifteen when she got here.”
    If that,
Finn mused. She’d put on weight since then, but it was all muscle and curves.
    “Ro had been gone a couple years by that time,” Liam went on. “And I’d just been drafted, so I was on my way out of here, too, which meant we were going to be shorthanded. But
this
one
jumped right in and worked her skinny little ass off. The way Da spoke, it sounded like the place would have collapsed into the ocean if not for her, eh, Finn?”
    Finn nodded slowly as memories of that summer flooded his mind. They hadn’t had a female at the Buoys full-time since Ma left, and the last thing Finn or the old man expected was to find out this skinny little girl worked harder than most of their male employees. She’d started out doing housekeeping and helping in the kitchen, but by the end of that summer, she pretty much had her hands in everything except for going out on the boats.
    Jess had hardly spared Finn a glance that whole summer, but he’d sure watched her. Hell, she was the reason he’d blown off that other girl, the one from school…the one with the long blond hair who’d kept phoning him…what was her name?
    Andrea.
    No, that wasn’t it. Amanda, maybe? Angela?
    Whoever she was, he’d liked her, but not enough to ask her out. And from the second Jess stepped off that plane he didn’t give the blond girl another thought that whole summer. Not exactly one of the most considerate or chivalrous times of his life, but Blondie hadn’t wasted any time moving on, so…
    What the hell was her name?
    “You stayed?” Olivia asked, turning to Jess. “Weren’t you still in school?”
    “Sort of.” Jess grinned guiltily as she ducked her head a little. “I kind of lied and told Jimmy I’d finished high school when I still had to get through my senior year. So I had my mom hook me up through a correspondence school.”
    “But…” Olivia hesitated, tipping her head a bit, as if she was trying to gauge whether or not she should ask. “No offense to anyone here, but what did your folks think about you living out here alone with Finn and Mr. O’Donnell when you were so young?”
    “I don’t know, I never asked.” Jess lifted her glass, then shrugged slowly before drinking.
    “Oh.” Olivia didn’t seem to know what to do with that information.
    Finn had met Jess’s folks a couple of times over the years, and while they seemed nice enough, there was something odd about them. It was as if their eyes were…vacant…or something. But when he’d asked Jess about it, she shut him down flat and refused to talk about it.
    “Okay.” Olivia drew the word out slowly, as though she wasn’t sure what else to say about that, and then decided to change tacks instead. “So tell me this. You and Finn are about the same age, no? So why didn’t you go to school with him instead of doing everything by correspondence?”
    “Because.” Jess’s brown eyes flashed over to Finn, her shoulders stiffening slightly as they always did when things like this came up. “He