Sweet Stuff Read Online Free Page B

Arabesque, perfect for sunsets—to place on the rack above the keys, but intended to keep the key cover down, so hopefully no one would actually touch it. Marty was one of her better contacts, and she didn’t plan to do anything to change that.
    By the time it was all said and done and she’d signed the paperwork stating she’d personally be responsible for any damage done to the piece before its return, Quinn was no longer in the immediate area. Assuming he’d gone off to look at the rest of the place, Riley took a moment, after ushering the men out the front door, to duck into the bathroom off the foyer.
    “Yet another bad idea.” She sighed as she catalogued the damages in the beveled vanity mirror positioned over the transparent glass pedestal sink. She hadn’t thought it possible to look worse than she’d imagined, but she’d managed to pull that off. Making a stab at cooling off her face with cold water, she cleaned up the worst of the scrapes on her arms and hands. The dirt smears on her plaid camp shirt were beyond repair, but since it was still damp and rumpled from her sweaty Jog Master marathon, there was no point in trying to salvage it.
    She smoothed her hair and rewound it back into the knobby bun she’d previously been sporting—before the palmetto fronds had yanked it down and to the side, like a drunken harlot’s. She addressed her reflection as she snapped the puffy, sky blue braided elastic back into place. “This is your life, Riley Brown.” Smirking at herself, she squared her shoulders and took one last inventory of the cuts and scrapes. It was either laugh, or cry. And she’d learned one thing for certain in her year on Sugarberry Island. “Laughing is a hell of a lot more fun.”

Chapter 2
    Q uinn was standing on the back deck, with snapped-in-half pieces of a pretty decent size tree limb in either hand, when the curly-headed blonde found him. Well, them, really. “I didn’t get your name, before.”
    “Riley,” she responded as she crossed the deck. “Riley Brown.”
    “Quinn Brannigan,” he offered in return, well aware she already knew his name, but being polite nonetheless.
    That dry smile tugged at the corners of her outrageously compelling mouth. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, though perhaps I’d have chosen a different way to greet you, had I to do it again.”
    “You do know how to make a lasting first impression,” he said, hopefully appealing to her dry sense of humor.
    The wry hint of a smile remained as she inclined her head and performed a quick curtsy, but it was the rather lovely shade of pink that suffused her freckled cheeks that ended up captivating him. “I’m quite the master of all-eyes-on-me entrances,” she replied gamely, “just not always executed in the most preferable manner.”
    He chuckled at that, but not wanting to cause her further embarrassment, he shifted his gaze back to the beast. “He’s not much for fetch, is he?”
    “Search and destroy is more his idea of a rousing sport.”
    Quinn hefted the weight of the longer chunk of tree limb in his palm and looked to the far end of the property, past the small pool, toward the gardens and the dunes that lined up beyond it. “Yep. I’d say he’s got scholarship potential in that department. What’s his name?”
    “Brutus.” She held up a hand when he choked out a laugh. “I didn’t name him. It really doesn’t suit him at all.”
    “If you say so. Here you go, big fella.” Quinn gripped the limb, pulled it back, then launched it like a javelin, in a high arc, over the pergola and the organic sea gardens, to the more sparsely designed pine-needle-carpeted rear of the property. Scrub-covered dunes formed the rear fence line, somewhere behind which, from what he could hear, was the ocean.
    “Impressive.” She followed the trajectory of the lofted limb with one hand framing her forehead to block out the sunlight. “High school quarterback, right? College, too,