Out of Eden Read Online Free

given away and decided she must’ve gone out on the town straight from work. “And I don’t need a ride home. From you, I mean. Max lives out my way.”
    “Max plays cards from six until eight,” Faye said as she scurried to the driver’s side. “He’s got another forty-five minutes to go. He’s not going to break away early for anything other than a four-alarm fire.”
    “I’ll wait.” Shoeless, Kylie strode unsteadily toward Boone’s Bar and Grill.
    “Stop where you are. Hello? Splinters! Broken glass!” Faye snapped, clearly in mother mode. “Jack?”
    “Yes, ma’am.” He stepped in and hauled Kylie over his shoulder. “Drive safe, Faye. Best to Stan.”
    She saluted and pulled away from the curb.
    Kylie kicked like a swimmer on speed. “Put me down, darn you!”
    He pressed the lock release on his key fob as he reached his Chrysler Aspen. The new SUV would serve as his personal and professional wheels. Though he didn’t have a weak stomach like Stan, he hoped Kylie didn’t hurl on his new leather seats.
    “I’m serious, Jack. Don’t make me hurt you.”
    He quirked an amused brow. “You wouldn’t assault an officer of the law, would you, Miss McGraw?”
    “Would you throw me in jail?”
    “No.”
    “Dang. What’s a girl gotta do to get tossed in the clink?” she asked as he poured her into the passenger seat.
    “Why are you determined to spend the night in jail?”
    “Because it would set this birthday apart from all the others.”
    “I can think of more pleasurable distinctions,” he said while buckling her in.
    She nabbed his shirt collar and got in his face. Her hair tumbled free of the ponytail, overwhelming her delicate face and ramping her sexuality ten points. “You offering up a distinctive pleasure, Jack?”
    Kylie, flirting? The kid who got tongue-tied when Spense teased her about boys?
    Only she isn’t a kid anymore.
    Jack held her sultry gaze, breathed in her flowery scent and cursed an unexpected boner.
    “Touch her,” he could hear Spenser saying, “and I’ll kick your ass.”
    He wouldn’t blame his friend for trying. He’d threatened to do the same to Ashe Davis, a serial womanizer. This was Kylie, for Christ’s sake. Sweet. Naive. Drunk.
    She licked her lush lower lip. “Well?”
    “Let’s not go there, Tiger.”
    “Too bad for you. I’m a yoga geek.” She raised one brow. “You know what that means.”
    “Flexible?”
    “Like Gumby.”
    The retro green guy that could bend every which way and back.
    Christ.
    He shut her door, rounded the Aspen and claimed the driver’s seat. “Where am I headed?”
    “Route 50, a half a mile past Max’s place. Do you remember where Max lives?”
    Flicking on his headlights, he eased onto Adams Street and headed north. “The boonies.” A twenty-minute drive from town, midway between Eden and Kokomo. Corn and soybean fields. Patches of woods. Pig farms. Pastures of grazing cows and horses. Sporadic century-old farmhouses and the occasional contemporary modular home. A wide-open area where the nearest neighbor lived a mile or a half mile away. He shot her a look. “You live alone out there?”
    She smirked. “I’m single, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “I’m asking if you live alone. No roommate?”
    “I like my privacy.”
    “You could live alone here in town.”
    “I like the solitude.”
    He couldn’t argue with that. He’d rented a home on the outskirts of town, an old two-story brick house on two acres of land. He, too, liked the idea of solitude. Peace and quiet. The exact opposite of what he’d had when he’d lived in the high-rise in Brooklyn. Difference was he was a trained cop, capable of handling a crisis in any form. She was…Kylie. Kylie all grown up, he thought, raking his gaze over her body.
    “I didn’t used to live alone. I used to be almost engaged. Are you shocked?”
    “That you were almost engaged? Or that you were living in sin?” he teased.
    “Either,