My Very Best Friend Read Online Free PDF Page A

will aim for your face with the mace and for your balls with a swift kick.”
    He had brown curls, I think. He had mile-long shoulders. He stood straight. I think I saw him smiling. Could be a premurder-ous expression.
    “Your grin is odd. Get back in your truck.” I took the mace out of my waistband. It had gotten stuck on a hole and I had to tug on it, three times, and mutter “Damn!” aloud before it came loose.
    I held it in front of me, arm outstretched. If only my vision wasn’t fuzzy and lopsided. Should I take off my glasses and give them a quick swipe to clean off the fog? Would that show weakness? I could feel my knees starting to shake, my heart pounding. Biologically normal, a physical reaction to stress.
    “I apologize, lass, for my odd grin,” he said, his voice deep, amused. So Scottish. Then I stopped myself. So Scottish? I was in Scotland. He would speak with a Scottish accent. “I’ll stop grinning straight away.”
    “I appreciate your acquiescence.” I waited. I blinked as stinging sweat ran into my eyes. “You are still grinning in an inexplicable manner. Please get back inside your truck and leave.”
    “I’ll do that,” he said. “But first I have a question for you.”
    “I am under no obligation to answer any of your questions, as you are trespassing on my property.” I wished I had my handcuffs. Next time I would have them out of my bag and in a pocket for pesky personal problems such as this.
    “You are surely not obligated at all,” he said. “I appeal to your sense of neighborliness.”
    “I am not neighborly. I prefer my own company. What is your question?”
    He grinned again, I think, and rocked back on his heels. He was wearing jeans, a long-sleeved blue shirt, and work boots. He was a towering crane. Six five, I’d put him at. A hulking Scotsman.
    “My question,” he said, “is simple. Are you Charlotte Mackintosh?”
    I hesitated, lowering the mace ever so slightly. “Yes, I am. Who are you?”
    He didn’t answer for long seconds, then took a step forward.
    “Do not risk it,” I told him, my mace arm straight out once again. “Unless you want mace in your face and your balls squished to pancakes.”
    “No, thank you. I don’t want mace in my face and I certainly don’t want my balls squished to pancakes. That would be painful, especially for a Scotsman, we of the better endowed species.”
    “Yes, indeed.” I stopped. Yes indeed to his balls being better endowed? “Indeed not! How do you know my name?”
    “Do you not know mine?”
    “If I knew yours I wouldn’t be threatening to mace you, now, would I—” And then I stopped. I took off my glasses and cleaned them on my shirt, wiped my forehead with my arm so the sweat wouldn’t blind me, and put them back on. I peered up at him. He had laughing blue eyes. He was still smiling, but it wasn’t an odd smile at all.
    He was gorgeous. Huge. Confident.
    The years fell away. Twenty of them, to be precise.
    “Toran Ramsay,” I said, stunned. Then I realized how ridiculous it was for me to be stunned. Toran lived a couple miles down the road, across the stream, and around a curve. I had told him I was coming. He had offered to come to the airport, but I had declined. Sometimes my lack of common sense processing is surprising.
    “Indeed, lass, it is.”
    He was one hunk of a man. McKenzie Rae Dean would be with a man like this in a millisecond. She would know what to do, what to say, how to act in bed. She would be saucy and sassy and sexy.
    I, however, am not McKenzie Rae Dean.
    “You’ve grown tall,” I managed to utter. I tucked the mace back in the band of my skirt. It fell to the ground. I picked it up. Put it back in. I pushed too hard. The mace fell through my skirt and onto the ground again. I picked it up and put it in the left pocket of my shirt.
    “You’ve grown too, Charlotte. In a pretty way.”
    “Thank you.” I heated right on up. “I see that you still have that annoying habit of