Infamous Read Online Free Page B

spent more time at the gym and less running as of late. He’d wanted to lift heavy objects, but now his wind was suffering. Of course, all the smoking he’d been doing wasn’t helping. He put his hands on his knees while the dogs sat and looked at him as if he’d lost his damn mind. He reached out and petted Bambi’s big head.
    â€œWell, this is a fine mess, isn’t it?”
    They were in the shade at least. He’d gotten as far as the nature park, which had quite a few trees and recently paved jogging paths. He sat down on the curb, coughing a little, and thought that maybe he should finally consider quitting smoking. Carl, John, and now Mary were right nags about it.
    He looked at Bambi. “And then why don’t I take up embroidery and start going to church, too?”
    She licked his face, which calmed him down a bit.
    â€œThe thing is, Bambi, my love, I do understand John.”
    The breeze kicked up, shaking the trees overhead and cooling the sweat on his skin.
    Max remembered when his uncle had finally realized how much he loved Mary’s mother, Mandy. The old man had denied it for years, denied that they were even sleeping together, because Mandy had refused to give up her fetish parties and the opportunities to play the role of dominatrix. She loved his uncle, and she had the warmest, most generous heart of anyone he knew, but she loved sex as well—loved the feel of the whip in her hand, the play of it, the thrill of it. Sex had never been something shameful for her. He’d heard her describe it once, to a patron at the bar, and he’d felt bad for his uncle, felt bad that the man loved a woman who wasn’t going to be a normal wife.
    But she’d turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to his uncle; Max had never seen him happier than he’d been in the years he’d been with Mandy. Mandy, although wild and more than a little eccentric, had been very kind.
    He’d been so pissed at her for dying and even more furious when he’d found out she’d left half his bar and her entire business to a girl she’d never even known. He’d been an ass when he’d first met Mary. He’d wanted to scare her enough so that she’d leave, and had done his best to be a complete pig, kissing her, asking to touch her tits, but to his surprise, she’d let him.
    It had taken him some time to trust her, knowing she’d let him do that and he a stranger, but she had a way about her, a heart as generous as her mother’s had been, and the curiosity of a child.
    An image of Lille, of the smooth curve of her back as she’d straddled him, flashed through his mind. He’d slept with her after knowing her for all of one day, without thinking much of her outside of her looks, and he hadn’t seen the point in trying to dig any deeper. He still didn’t see the point; the woman had avoided him for two weeks after the best sex of his life, but damned if that didn’t make her even more interesting. Drinking coffee with her in the kitchen yesterday had made him feel more alive than he had in years, as if every cell in his body had lit up. It was damn near terrifying. She was hot, sexy, irresistible. Kind she was not. He thought that if he ever did settle down and decide to have children, it would be with a kind woman, an uncomplicated woman. Never the type of woman Lille clearly seemed to be.
    So . . . why couldn’t he leave off thinking about her? He wanted to have her disappear from his life the way all the other women he’d known had done, but he couldn’t. Like it or not, she was part of the circle, part of the strange family they’d woven, and he could no more get rid of her than he could Carl. And the truth was . . . he didn’t want to. He wanted her firmly in the category of “woman I care about but don’t want to care about too much,” like one of his employees or the