Midnight Kiss Read Online Free PDF Page A

found out what had happened. Thank God, no one was hurt. Irresponsible and dim-witted were some of the nicest things he had shouted at her. “You can smile about it now?”
    “It’s taken me three months, but yes, I can smile about it. No one was hurt, and it did end up being the biggest bash this town had ever seen. I never knew firemen could put away that much food.”
    “Or that the mayor played a mean saxophone.” When some of the families of the residents showed up concerned, only to find everything was fine, an impromptu celebration was called. “I especially liked the wheelchair races.”
    “You would.”
    Autumn remembered Thane leaving the party and returning with his date, whom he had abandoned when his beeper had gone off. Chic, top- heavy, and highly put out at having to spend the remainder of their date at the nursing home, the blonde maintained a possessive grip on Thane that night. Autumn was sure their evening didn’t end with a good-night kiss.
    Thane watched as Autumn bit her lower lip. Was talking about the Fourth of July upsetting her? He vaguely remembered hollering at her after checking out Herman, but he couldn’t recall what he had said. “It wasn’t your fault about the fire. The nurse on duty could have warned you about Herman, and I shouldn’t have called you names.”
    “I deserved some of those names. Next time I’ll know to keep anything that ignites away from the residents.”
    Thane shuddered. “I heard a ‘next’ in there.”
    Their waiter approached with a dessert menu, and with Autumn’s permission Thane ordered cherry cheesecake. When they were alone once more, he asked, “Didn’t you meet any real criminals?”
    “You don’t consider a flasher on a freezing January morning passing out pictures of himself instead of whipping open his topcoat a criminal?”
    “I was referring to drug dealers, con artists, and burglars?”
    Autumn quickly turned and looked out the window next to her. There was nothing but darkness, just like the alley six months ago. Sure she had met the usual lowlifes of the inner city, but she had the luck of the Irish until six months before. Tears pooled in her eyes as she continued to stare outside. It had been a star-studded April night in New York when she’d entered the smelly, litter-filled alley and met her fate. It came in the form of a scared sixteen-year-old boy named Tyler with a stolen VCR under one arm and a quivering Saturday-night special pointed at the third button on her uniform shirt. Her revolver already drawn, she knew it was either him or her, but she couldn’t pull the trigger. He was only a kid; hell, he probably didn’t have all his adult teeth yet. With all her training and police work and the blood of generations of policemen in her veins, she still couldn’t bring herself to shoot that wide-eyed kid. Autumn O’Neil was a coward and a disgrace to the family name. As if in slow motion, she had watched his finger tighten on the trigger. Her eyes slammed shut as the explosion of gunfire echoed off the brick walls of the alley. Incredibly she felt no pain. She opened her eyes and saw her partner, who had entered the alley from the other direction, standing over the dead boy and the smashed VCR. Autumn had turned in her badge later that star-studded April night.
    “Autumn?”
    She jumped slightly as the waiter placed her dessert in front of her. Rapidly blinking, she glanced at a concerned Thane. “Yes, I met drug dealers, con artists, and burglars.” She smiled weakly and picked up her fork. “My, doesn’t this look delicious?”
    He didn’t buy one minute of her act. Something was wrong. “Autumn?”
    Forcing a wider smile to her lips, she asked, “Did you always want to be a doctor?”
    Thane allowed the change in subject only because he couldn’t stand to see the distress on her face. “Yes, even before my mother bought me a practice dummy.”
    “Practice dummy?”
    “By the time I was four, I had bandaged