Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle, Pauline Jones [top 100 novels of all time .txt] 📗

girl just had to trust her heart, even if the heart had taken to beating too fast. Thanks to these cogitations and despite my near death experience, I was light of fast beating heart when I made my shoeless way home and found a yummy looking white Porsche occupying my spot in front of the house.

I shut off my car and opened the door. That’s when I heard the category five din emanating from Rosemary’s house. In the backyard I could also hear Addison barking furiously.

When I looked at the new suits, they looked away.

My heroes.

Dog first. I found him in the backyard with Rosemary’s baby. Dom was perched on the fence in full pirate regalia, brandishing his plastic hook hand.

“What’s with the noise, Blackbeard?”

“Ar, Candy’s on the phone,” Dom growled.

“Oh. Right.” Of course, that would explain the noise level, wouldn’t it? “Why’s Addison barking like that?”

“There’s a scalawag up our tree. I’m going to give him a peg leg when he comes down.”

“Really?”

With his plastic sword, he gave me one instead. I mock-limped my way round the corner to the tree Addison had staked out. It was a fine cherry tree, despite being winter bare. Dom hadn’t imagined it. There was a man up there.

Kelvin Kapone.

He looked fine sitting up a tree.

He looked even better out of the tree. His soft dark chocolate tee shirt was tucked into khakis that fit smoothly across romance hero thighs. His brown leather jacket gave him a relaxed, rakish aura. The sunlight filtering through the bare branches of the tree found each strand of gold in his light brown hair and his eyes were both sheepish and amused.

“Sorry about that,” I said.

He was remarkably poised for a man who’d been treed by a dog, then given a coup de peg leg by a small pirate. Perhaps Kel recognized his own kind in Dom. He smiled, the dimple came into play, igniting lust. My heart started this tom-toming in my chest. Between fear and lust, the old ticker was getting quite the workout.

“So, what were you doing up my sister’s tree?”

“I came to see if you have a license for that glue gun.”

Repeated exposure to his charm was giving me, if not immunity, at least the ability to be reasonably coherent while basking in it. I grinned. “You going to arrest me if I don’t?”

His smile widened into wicked. “No, but I might have to search you.”

“Well,” I plucked a twig from his hair, “my mother taught me to be law abiding, so I guess I’d have to let you.” My mother hadn’t taught me to play with fire, but she probably knew that came naturally. My words put a satisfying blaze in his blues eyes.

It was like believing I was the rabbit and finding out I was really the magician.

“Never let it be said,” his mouth curved dangerously, “that I didn’t do my duty.”

The hand he held out to me had a slight tremor in it. I felt an echoing one rattle my knees. At this rate, I wouldn’t have a solid bone left in my body. When his palm made contact with my skin, we both sighed. His fingers spread, then slid around to the back of my neck, starting fires on the way. His head bent toward my mouth. My mouth parted, eager for tutoring in the delights of the flesh.

In the background, the pounding music kept time with my heart.

He took his time, was very thorough. As a taxpayer, I was pleased and felt entitled to some searching of my own. I spread my hands over the tee shirt and the chest underneath, felt his heart pound into my palms. Felt it pound for me. I was careful to keep my hands above the bandage, but that left plenty to be explored and enjoyed. The wonder of it spread down to my toes. I went up on them to get closer. He helped, wrapping his arms around me and deepening his search.

“Stan? What are you doing?”

Dazed, and not a little annoyed, I peered around Kel’s shoulder. Joelle and Justine were staring solemnly up at us. I could have ignored them. They’d seen worse on television. But what I couldn’t ignore was the stump on the left side of each small head where a braid used to be.

The noise was worse inside. Everything that could be turned on had been turned on. At the epicenter, I found Candice lying on the floor with her feet propped up on the wall, talking on the phone as if she were in the sound proof booth of a TV game show. I unplugged the telephone, her mouth forming a protest I couldn’t hear, and sent the twins off on a quest to restore quiet. Conversation was impossible until they succeeded. Candice came after me, trailing the dismembered telephone and an inaudible whine, until silence spread through the house. She caught sight of Kel leaning against the counter next to me and stared at him with cow eyes.

“Whoa, who’s this?”

I performed introductions, then stood back and watched Kel give her his dimpled smile. She melted. Did I look like that, I wondered. Did I care? The twins returned from their quest for silence and leaned against Kel’s legs, gazing up at him with adoring expressions. Lucky little brats. Kel looked at me, inquiry in his eyes, and I shrugged back. Hey, children attaching themselves to your legs is just one of the many hazards of the suburbs. I turned towards another one. The teenager.

“So, where are your mother and grandmother?”

“There was this shoe sale.”

I didn’t need further explanation. My mother and my sister suffer from Imelda Marcos Syndrome, an incurable addiction to shoes.

“And they left you in charge of the asylum?”

She looked sulky. “Yes.”

I turned Joelle’s and Justice’s heads so she could see the ragged stumps of hair. “Perhaps you can tell me what happened to the braids that used to right here?”

“Ar, I like it,” Dom said. Addison gave a big woof,