The Trouble With J.J. Read Online Free PDF Page A

and arm muscles as he extracted what looked like a tire pressure gauge and came toward her with it.
    “Now, just let Dr. J.J. take care of you—”
    “You touch me with that thing and you won’thave a tool left in working order,” she snarled, face-to-face with his hard chest.
    “J.J., where are the extra potato chips?” a buxom blonde with legs up to her armpits asked on her way to the house. She wore red silk shorts and a Hawks T-shirt that gave new meaning to the word “skintight.” She was one of the Lady Hawks, the team cheerleaders.
    “In the cupboard, the third door to the left of the microwave.”
    “Think she can count that far?” Genna asked sweetly.
    Jared’s eyes glittered with dangerous amusement. “I hope so. She’s an associate professor at the University of Connecticut.”
    Genna felt about three inches tall. Her mouth dropped open. She closed it, then ventured meekly, “Phys ed?”
    “Differential calculus. Can’t judge a book by its cover, Teach. Isn’t that part of the kindergarten curriculum anymore?”
    Genna scowled and looked out at the party. She’d been bitchy and small-minded, which wasn’t at all like her. And worse yet, for some reason she cared very much that Jared Hennessy not think badly of her.
    “I learned that in kindergarten,” he went on, swilling her beer. “That and how to play doctor.”
    She slanted him a disgusted look. “Anything else?”
    He looked thoughtful a moment and nodded. “That l-m-n-o-p is not all one letter.”
    She came dangerously close to giggling at that. Damn the man! Just when she was sure she despised him, he did something to make her laugh.
    “So what do you think of the doghouse?” he asked, casting a proud smile at the canine castle.
    “I only hope no one mistakes it for a drive-in. Couldn’t you have done something a little more … colonial?” she offered, trying not to hurt his feelings. “To go with the house.”
    “Mmmm,” he said thoughtfully. “I tried scaling down Mount Vernon but the wings took up too much yard space. Besides, I don’t want Flurry getting the wrong idea and thinking he can invite overnight guests, at least not until he’s neutered.”
    “Hey, Hennessy!” The booming voice came from a teammate called Brutus, who was roughly the size of Mount McKinley. Brutus wore his hair in a Mohawk and his body encased in black leather. He looked like someone from a Mad Max movie. From halfway across the yard he flung afoaming can of beer at Jared, who snagged it inches from Genna’s head—but not before it sprayed her face and soaked the front of her plaid blouse.
    Laughing, Jared shook the can hard and fired it back at Brutus, who caught it and spiked it on the ground like a football, then went into a victory dance.
    “Touchdown!” Jared yelled, dancing around the table, “All right, Brutus!”
    Genna stood, sputtering, trying to wipe the beer off her face with her hands. She wondered if anyone had ever done any serious studies on the placement of athletes on the evolutionary scale.
    Brutus picked up the can, poured the last of the beer down his throat from an arm’s length away, then tore the can in two with his teeth.
    “That guy is missing a chromosome,” she said as Jared danced around her doing things with his hips that threatened to give her palpitations.
    “Brutus? He’s just having fun. Don’t you know anything about having fun?”
    “I know all about having fun,” she said primly. “It has nothing to do with recycling aluminum orally.”
    “It does to Brutus. I don’t know about you, but I’m not telling him any different.”
    At the edge of the patio a game of Nerf football had turned ugly. Two players were wrestling on the ground rubbing barbecue briquettes into each other’s faces. The dog ran by with a flamingo clenched in his teeth. Two perfect examples of why I shouldn’t be here, Genna thought to herself, her temper wearing thin. She tried to blow beer-damp bangs off her forehead