Steel Lust Read Online Free PDF Page A

one of the more
normal families I know.”
    She realized she was staring when his smile faltered
slightly. She looked up and into his blue-green eyes and found they’d gone
dark.
    “I was the result of a you-don’t-know-’til-you-try
experiment between my mother and father, who met and became very good friends
in college.” His manner of speech had become distracted. “Mom wasn’t sold on
the whole men thing, but they got me out of it, so it wasn’t a total waste of
their time.”
    “Thank goodness for that,” she said, and her stomach flipped
when he smiled big.
    Joy wasn’t proud of herself for thinking it, but for a very
brief moment she was tempted to beg off the gallery opening and ask him to show
her to his bedroom.
    “We should probably hit the road if we’re going to get you
back in time,” he told her as if he’d read her mind, breaking the spell.
    She remembered to breathe.
    “You’ll come with me?” She pressed a hand to her stomach.
“You can stay the night at my place, drive home tomorrow morning.”
    Or spend the weekend fucking.
    His eyes scanned her face. What was he looking for? Did he
expect her to flinch at her own impropriety or take back her offer in a show of
false modesty?
    She stood her ground and waited for him to answer.
    “Give me a minute to pack a bag and call someone to sit with
Norma Jean.”
    She nodded. “Of course.”
    How long had it been since a man had this kind of effect on
her? She felt nervous as a naïve teenager who’d just gotten her first real
crush on the hot guy at school. Only it had been years since she’d been naïve
about anything and Leo was far from a boy.
    The night was really looking up. Throwing him into the
madness that was her family might not be fair after everything he’d done for
her in the past couple of hours, but she would make it up to him once she got
him back to her place later that night. And as much as she was looking forward
to celebrating her sister’s big night, she couldn’t deny she was looking
forward to getting Leonardo alone just a little bit more.
    Joy browsed the books on his shelves—mostly poetry and
philosophy she’d never gotten into herself—and the vast record collection that
took up an entire half of the floor-to-ceiling shelves. When Norma Jean trotted
up to her side, she crouched down and gave her a good scratch behind her ears.
    “You keep that up and she’ll want to go home with you,” he
said, setting a large duffel bag on the dining table as he came back into the
room.
    “I highly doubt that.” Joy stood and the dog wandered into the
kitchen. “Did you find someone to check in on her?”
    “Agnes was already going to come over and let her out while
I was taking you home. I sweetened the pot and convinced her to stay the
night.”
    Interesting. “How sweet does the pot need to be?”
    He took out his wallet and put a couple of twenties on the
table. “I told her I’d leave her pizza money and she could have friends over as
long as no one sleeps in my bed.”
    “And doesn’t completely clean out the liquor cabinet?”
    He gave her a half-smile. “Yeah, I don’t have one of those
anymore.”
    “Oh.” She blanched, instantly recognizing her misstep. “You
don’t drink.”
    “Not for a little more than a year now.” He picked up his
bag. “Ready?”
    They bundled up and she followed him to the garage, him
carrying both of their bags, and stopped dead in the doorway, mouth hanging
open.
    “Wait a minute, you’re telling me you own a car like this
and you walk to work?”
    When she’d heard him say he walked to work every day, she
assumed the reason he’d given about living so close was just an excuse to not
have to drive a bad car. Or a cover-up for the fact that maybe he had no car at
all. She was not expecting him to own a brand-new, gleaming black Jeep
Wrangler.
    He opened the rear door. “As you saw, the shop is three
blocks from here.”
    “Still, if I had one of these beauties I’d