Wilde Nights in Paradise (A Wilde Security Novel) (Entangled Brazen) Read Online Free PDF Page B

noisy engine whipped past in a flash of blue and a squeal of tires as it fishtailed out of the lot.
    “Damn,” Jude breathed and helped her to her feet again. Her knees wobbled. He steadied her with a hand on her shoulder. “You okay, Libs?”
    “Yes,” she said, eying him up and down. He had a tear in the thigh of his jeans and seemed to be favoring his right side. “Are you? Did it hit you?”
    “No. Landed hard, but I’m fine.” He grinned. “Better than fine. This is the most fun I’ve had in weeks. Feels good to get the adrenaline going. Wanna have sex?”
    Libby huffed out a breath in disbelief. “You’re insane.”
    “Depends on your definition. So is that a no?”
    “Yes.”
    His eyes danced. “Yes?”
    “No! I meant yes as in yes, it’s a no. I mean—” She threw up her hands. She never got tongue-tied, and yet she couldn’t seem to string two coherent sentences together around him. But at least she could stand on her own two feet now without wobbling, and she had a sneaky suspicion he’d put her on the defensive for just for that reason. “I’m going home.”
    “Good.” All the laughter faded from his expression. “Nobody can try to run you over there.”
    “What?” She stared up the street where the car had disappeared. “You think that was on purpose?”
    “Yeah, I do. Did you recognize the car? It was meant for you because as far as I know, nobody’s out to kill me.”
    “If they knew you, they would be,” she said between her teeth. “It was just an accident, Jude. I’ve never seen that car before. It wasn’t aiming for me.”
    “Twenty dollars says you’re wrong.”
    “All right.”
    He pointed to something over her shoulder. Dread turned her stomach sour as she spun and stared at the windshield of her Subaru Impreza.
    WATCH OUT.
    The words screamed at her in blood-red paint, and a nude paper doll had been stuck to the trailing line off the T like an obscene exclamation point.
    “No.” She swayed again, and Jude slid an arm around her waist to steady her.
    His expression hardened, and he all but dragged her toward a black truck parked three spaces down from her car. He opened the passenger-side door and lifted her into the seat. Numb, she stared at the dashboard, barely noticing when he climbed into the driver’s side and started the engine.
    Someone was actually trying to kill her.
    Holy hell.
    “We got a problem,” Jude said.
    She glanced over to lash out with a derisive, “No shit, Sherlock.” Not very original as far as comebacks went, but she wasn’t exactly at the top of her game.
    Except he wasn’t speaking to her. He held a phone to his ear.
    “An attack,” he added. “There was another message on her car. Yeah, another doll, too. Then someone tried to run us down with a blue four-door sedan, possibly a late-model Ford Taurus. I got a partial plate number.” After that, whoever was on the other end of the line did most of the talking. He nodded once, then again, then said, “Okay,” before hanging up.
    “Who was that?”
    He slid the phone back into his coat pocket. “Your father. He’s going to meet us at your place.”
    “Oh. Great.” Here she’d thought this day couldn’t possibly get any worse, and now she had to deal with Jude and her overbearing, overprotective father at the same time. “I thought you two hated each other.”
    “We’re Marines. Personal feelings don’t factor into missions.”
    “Missions. Right. I’m just another mission.” She told herself not to let that hurt and failed miserably. The dispassionate tone he’d used burrowed under her skin and tweaked at her nerves. She angled her head at him. “Personal feelings don’t factor into anything for you, do they? You avoid emotion like leprosy.”
    “Pretty much. Emotion is messy.”
    She slumped in back in her seat. The jabs she kept taking at him weren’t wholly deserved, especially after he saved her from becoming a road pancake, but she just couldn’t seem