CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE by Elodie Chase Read Free Book Online

back and some aren't. It's like the life I
lived when I was here was a dream, and I've been awake for far too long to ever
hope to really return to it.”
    He frowned, and for the first time I
got the feeling that he was really listening to me. “She was the most gentle
woman I ever knew,” he said, “to a fault. I've seen her take in strays, cats
with injured paws, dogs that some asshole had cut the tail off of and left to
rot on the street. People too. She nursed them all back to health, and if there
ever wasn't enough to go around it was Marie that went without and no one else.
If you weren't watching for it, you wouldn't even know that she didn't make a
plate for herself, and if you asked her she'd give you some bullshit answer
about how she’d eaten earlier, or how the last time she'd made lasagna it
hadn't agreed with her so she was going to skip it, just this once.”
    “Were you one of the strays she took
in?”
    He winced, and I could tell that it
had probably been a mistake to call a rough, rugged man like him a 'stray',
regardless of how close to the truth I was. I could picture him, however long
ago it'd been before he'd crossed paths with my Grandmother. Skinnier. Dirtier.
    And even meaner.
    Cade cleared his throat, and if I
hadn't have been enthralled with is handsome face I would have missed the friendly
crinkle at the corners of his eyes when he spoke about her. “I guess you could
say that, Rachel. I came here for the voodoo, and she saw right off that I was
as useless to the world as I was to myself. I wanted the people that had hurt
me to hurt in return, and she taught me that wasn't always the way it had to
go.”
    I shook my head in disbelief. The old
anger seeped into my blood, and I tightened my hands on the table into fists,
trying to flatten them out before he noticed once I saw what I was doing.
    “Something you don't like about that?”
he asked.
    You bet your ass there
is , I wanted to
shout, but instead I bit my lip and stood up from the table. “Is it safe here?
If she was really murdered, I mean...”
    “I think so. They won’t cross me, and
if you’re planning on staying, I’ll guard you until you sell the house.”
    Was this the way it was going to be?
Had I somehow inherited a bodyguard along with the property? Maybe, but there
was too much crowding my head for me to worry about that right now. “In that
case, I'm going to bed. I think I remember the way. End of the hallway and on
the left, right? It’s probably full of crazy shit too, but I’ll make do.”
    “Yes, but-“
    Now it was my turn to cut him off. I wasn’t in the mood for any
more conversation tonight, and I was afraid if I was in the same room with him
for any longer that I’d blurt out the truth about where I’d first seen him. If
there was ever a list of ways to make a shitty first impression, telling a guy
you’d seen him in a vision was probably somewhere near the top. “Just leave the
box when you're through if you like and I'll clean up in the morning.”
    “Rachel-”
    I held up my hand to cut him off
again. He was obviously going to rush to my Grandmother’s defense again, and I
didn't need that. Neither did she, truth be told. He'd shared a kinship with
her that I never could, and no matter how much he thought he was doing the
right thing by sharing her memory with me, his words couldn't change the fact
that she'd abandoned me, only to apparently become the Voodoo matriarch of a
neighborhood just north of the Louisiana bayou.
    “You asked me to tell you what she
was like,” he reminded me. “No good getting pissed off if you don't agree with
what you hear.
    He was right, but that just made his
words get under my skin even more. “Good night, Cade. I'll get the address of
the lawyer from you when I wake up, if that's okay.”
    He didn't answer and I didn't wait
for him to say anything else. Conversation over, I spun on my heel and headed
down the hallway, toward a bed I'd never slept in and a