Rescue Me Read Online Free

for him, there were plenty of easy women who liked him as much as he liked them.
    He didn’t know what that said about him. Probably a lot. Probably things he wouldn’t particularly like to admit. Good thing for him, he didn’t particularly give a shit.
    The rubber heels of his boots didn’t make a sound as he moved toward the front of the store, passing a white truck with a big dent in the rear fender. The woman who’d dropped him off was far from dumb. A dumb woman wouldn’t phone in his ID like he was a serial killer before she let him in her car. He’d actually been impressed by that, and the nonexistent stun gun had been a nice touch, too. He didn’t know if she was easy. Sometimes smart women were just as easy as dumb, but he’d guess not. Her clothes—jeans and a big gray hoodie—hadn’t given any clues, and he hadn’t been able to tell if the body matched the face. Not that it mattered. Women like Sadie always wanted a relationship. Even when they said they didn’t, and he wasn’t in any position to commit to more than a one- or two-night stand. Possibly more if all the woman wanted was great sex.
    He pulled open the front door, and the smell of popcorn, hot dogs, and Pine-Sol hit him. A cowboy stood at the counter loaded down with jerky and a twelve-pack of Lone Star, chatting it up with a woman with a pile of fine gray hair and deep wrinkles. A white “Don’t Mess with Texas” T-shirt was tucked into the belted skirt beneath her breasts. She looked a bit like a skinny Shar Pei with long, dangly earrings.
    “Hello, Aunt Luraleen.”
    “Vince!” His mother’s sister glanced up from bagging the cowboy’s jerky. “Well, aren’t you just a handsome sight.” Her blue eyes were bright as she came around the counter. She hurled herself into his chest and he dropped the pack at his feet. She wrapped her arms around as much of him as she could and squeezed him with the kind of free affection he’d never understood. His mother’s Texas relatives were natural-born huggers, like it was part of them. Like it was in their DNA, but somehow neither he nor his sister had inherited the hugging gene. He raised a hand to pat her back. How many pats was enough? One? Two. He kept it at two.
    She lifted her chin from his chest and looked up at him. It had been several years since he’d seen her, but she hadn’t changed. “You’re as big as hell and half of Texas,” she said in that deep, tobacco raspy twang that had scared the hell out of him as a kid. How she’d lived so long was a testament to stubbornness rather than clean living. He guessed he’d inherited that particular strand of DNA because he hadn’t exactly lived a clean life himself. “Good-lookin’ as original sin, too,” she added.
    “Thanks.” He smiled. “I get my looks from my Southern relatives.” Which wasn’t true. His Texas relatives were fair-skinned and redheaded. Like his sister. The only thing he’d inherited from his mother was green eyes and a penchant to roam from place to place. He got his black hair and roving eye from his father.
    Luraleen gave him one last squeeze with her skinny arms. “Bend down here so I can kiss you.”
    As a kid, he’d always cringed. As a thirty-six-year-old man, and a former Navy SEAL, he’d endured worse than his aunt’s Marlboro breath. He lowered his cheek.
    She gave him a big smack, then rocked back on the heels of her comfortable shoes as the cowboy exited the Gas and Go. “Luraleen,” he said as he passed.
    “See ya tomorrow night, Alvin.”
    The cowboy colored a deep pink as he walked out the door. “Does he have a thing for you?”
    “Of course.” The soles of Luraleen’s shoes squeaked on the linoleum as she turned and headed back behind the counter. “I’m a single woman with needs and prospects.”
    She was also in her late sixties with a bad smoker’s wheeze and had about twenty extra years on the cowboy. Twenty hard, unattractive years. He laughed. “Aunt Luraleen,