Unchained Read Online Free PDF Page A

she groaned into the phone.
    “Oh, and Angel? Be touching yourself when I get there.”
    Heavy breathing was all he heard—hers and his.
    “Angel kitten—over and out.”
    The call disconnected, and he leaned forward to access the intercom and contact his secretary.
    “Marsha? I’m heading out. Reschedule, cancel, whatever it takes. Work your magic, please.”

“M Y GOD, IT’S stifling. How do you manage in this heat? Can’t that husband of yours install some friggin’ air conditioning down here?”
    Lacey chuckled before sitting down across the table from an out-of-sorts and visibly grumpy Tori St. John. Pushing a sports bottle filled with iced water at her friend, she tsk’d a time or two and shook her head.
    “Aw, come on,” she joshed, “it’s not that bad. The ceiling fan keeps the air moving.” Following up a shrug with a hefty gulp of delicious coldness, Lacey reminded her friend why she preferred her little office shed to be without a lot of extras and embellishments. Could Cameron install some A/C? Of course, he could and had all but begged her to let him. But she liked her space this way for a reason.
    “I love the dry heat. You know that. This is where we live,” she pointed out. “Fighting the desert doesn’t sound like a workable plan. And I don’t want Dylan to be one of those hothouse flower kids who run from one temperature-controlled space to another.”
    “I get that, Mrs. Cameron, but holy fuckballz, lady.”
    They both laughed.
    “Besides,” Lacey added, “I grew up in a hot and steamy hellhole. Believe me; my uncle did not have anything as modern or helpful as A/C.”
    She grimaced slightly as memories of those awful years when she’d been abandoned by her father and left in the clutches of her uncle—a man she’d never met before being dumped on his doorstep—who had clear mental problems and lived in a smelly swamp in Florida where he wrangled alligators for a living.
    Refusing to let the flood of painful reminders take her under, she did what she always did. Looked for the half-full counterpunch to the half-empty narrative.
    “And besides, this dry heat? My hair loves it. So, so, so much better than year-round cloying humidity.”
    Her pithy observation got Tori laughing. “Well, there you have it then!” her bestest of best friends hooted with sarcastic amusement. “As long as you look ah-mazing, what’s to complain about, right?”
    Noise coming from the other side of the room caught their attention. Dylan was sitting in his corral, a special part of her office cordoned off by a clever knee wall that created a large playpen. Watching them through the baby gate, he rocked on his chubby butt and gurgled playfully. Her son didn’t mind the heat. Not at all.
    Wistfully, she murmured, “I cannot believe he’s almost one.”
    They tapped water bottles as Tori drawled, “Word.”
    “Cameron wants to throw a party.” She tried to sound matter-of-fact, but even she heard the tinge of snarky. An uncomfortable frown made her squint.
    “I should hope so. No one feels all that family stuff more than Cam.”
    “Ugh, Tori, I know. But what he’s got going on in his mind is more like a carnival than a baby’s first birthday celebration.”
    Her concern was real. She was being serious but leave it to Victoria to fall over laughing. “It’s a competition. Didn’t you know? Draegyn burbled out something about getting characters in costume for Daniel’s big day.”
    Lacey groaned. “Oh, god. Really?”
    “Wait,” she drily sniped, “it gets worse.”
    Dylan giggled and crawled to the gate where he pulled to stand and gazed at them as he chewed on the barrier’s rubber top.
    “He made Desirée swear she’d come with the kids. Next thing I knew, he was planning an event rivaling the Queen’s Jubilee. And you know him—something simple like a Southwest Christmas theme wasn’t good enough for the son of Draegyn St. John. Nope, nope.”
    Yanking on and separating her