Sugar Read Online Free

exactly what he didn’t want to hear. “You didn’t make the call, did you? Why the fuck not?”
    “I don’t want any pub . . . any police .”
    Sucking on his split knuckles, he shook his head. “Why? Are you in the Witness Protection Program?”
    She folded her free arm about herself as if suddenly feeling the chill. “Of course not.”
    A cigarette would be really great right now. He pulled the crushed packet from his pocket and threw it to the ground. “Fuck!”
    She eyed him, her slightly superior attitude doing nothing to buoy his mood. “Maybe you should consider it a sign.”
    He jerked his head up. “I’ll probably regret asking, but a sign of what?”
    A shimmy of slender shoulders answered. “A sign you should quit. In case you missed the memo, cigarettes are bad for you.” She smiled, but her eyes stayed serious.
    Cole snorted, not sure how he felt about being preached to by a pretty but so far nameless woman. “You work for the Surgeon General or something?”
    In Iraq, smoking had gotten him and the other guys through the tedium and the homesickness. Being the team leader for an elite three-man explosive ordnance disposal had brought hair-raising moments and split second decisions juxtaposed with long periods of downtime. Unlike most of his fellow soldiers, he’d drunk little. A bomb, any bomb, wasn’t something you wanted to face hungover, and the makeshift ones were a lot harder to detect than the military models. These days most IEDs (Improvised Explosive Devices) were made without metal and electronic parts, rendering standard monitoring equipment next to useless—and the clever fuckers who made them were getting better at it all the time.
    “Not . . . exactly.” Her voice called him back to the present— the United States of America, New York City, April 2014. The thief he’d wrestled to the ground was only that, not an insurgent and not a terrorist.
    “Not exactly, huh?” he repeated, taking a moment to regulate his breathing. Pounding the piss out of the punk had felt good, too good. “Tonight my smoking habit turned out to be damned lucky for one of us— you .”
    As if chastened, she nodded. “You’re absolutely right. Thank you for smoking.”
    Another smile, this one bordering on a grin, lit her face, igniting the sexual spark Cole had felt from the moment he’d set eyes on her inside the store. Where had he met her before? The curiosity was damn near killing him.
    Wiping his palms on the tops of his pants, he said, “Look, as we’ve established, I’m kind of drunk. I need to eat something. You wanna grab—”
    “Thanks, but no.”
    Another refusal, seriously! Cole couldn’t recall the last time a woman had turned him down, let alone twice in twenty minutes. His damsel in distress was turning into something even more irresistible—a challenge.
    He folded his arms across his chest. “I haven’t even asked you yet.” “Sorry, it’s just that I don’t . . .” Her voice trailed off. For the first time since being knocked to her knees, she seemed less than one hundred percent together.
    Seeking out chinks in armor, sniffing out weaknesses, was Cole’s specialty, or at least it had been. Pressing his advantage, he said, “Did you or did you not come out tonight for ice cream?”
    “Yes, but—”
    “No buts. Washington Square Diner makes a hell of a walnut sundae. Their banana splits don’t suck either.”
    She hesitated. “It’s late. I should get home.”
    He stared pointedly at the purse she held by its severed strap. “I just saved your life—or at least your credit history—and ruined my penguin suit in the process. The least you can do is to buy me a greasy breakfast in thanks.”
    “B-but—”
    “No buts,” he broke in, unfolding his arms. “It’s your karma on the line. We’ll negotiate the dry cleaning bill once I’ve fed the machine.” He patted his gut, which was seriously empty of anything but booze, and gave her a deliberately huge