A Crazy Kind of Love by Maureen Child Read Free Book Online Page B

himself off from memories that tore at him, he’d forced himself to stop looking back. To look only at the future that would, if he and a few other dedicated scientists could pull this off, be changed forever.
    “Change is good,” he muttered and sat down on the top step. Leaning back on his elbows, he stretched his long, jean-clad legs out in front of him and crossed hisfeet at the ankles. The wind battered him, fast and cold, tugging at his hair, pushing at him, as if trying to get him to go back inside.
    But as clouds rushed toward him and the last rosy streaks of color faded into black, Lucas stayed where he was. Thinking. Always thinking.
    Three months ago, he’d been a solitary man with a mission.
    Now, he still had the mission, but he was far from solitary. Mike Marconi had pushed her way into his world and then left her boot prints stamped all over the damn place.
    Hell, he even had brass parrots in his kitchen because he’d looked into her sky-blue eyes and seen hurt there. Hurt he’d caused by laughing at her stupid parrots. Scowling into the wind, he told himself that it didn’t mean anything. That of course he wouldn’t want to deliberately hurt her.
    He didn’t want to deliberately hurt anyone.
    Except for Justin. He wouldn’t mind planting his fist in his twin’s face—although for that to happen, he’d have to actually
see
Justin again and Lucas wasn’t interested in that happening anytime soon.
    But he didn’t want to think about his twin at the moment. Hell, even thinking about Mike was preferable. And she was making him insane.
    He hated like hell to admit that the plain truth was, the only person he’d have taken brass parrots from was Mike.
    And for the first time in his scientifically inclined life, he didn’t much care for the truth.

4
    There was just nothing better than a whole Saturday off. Sure, they didn’t work on Sundays but that didn’t really count.
    Not that Mike went to mass on Sundays, but she was still Catholic enough to feel guilt about choosing sleeping in over a sermon—and that sort of ruined the feel of a day off.
    Today, though, was a gift. A gorgeous Saturday—deep blue sky, lots of white clouds muting the heat of the sun, and a great sea breeze whipping in off the ocean. A perfect September day, just warm enough to remind you of summer, but cool enough to convince you that fall was headed right at you.
    By rights, the Marconis should have been working, or at least getting started, over at Cash Hunter’s place. But yesterday at the family meeting, Jo had brushed right over the suggestion of getting a jump on things over there. In fact, she hadn’t wanted to talk about Cash at all. No big surprise there, since the man had a talent for pushing every one of Jo’s buttons. And God knew, she had plenty of ’em.
    “Seriously,” Mike muttered as she parked her truckat the end of Main Street and unlatched her seat belt. “Jo so needs a man.” A second later, though, she was whispering, “But there’s a lot of that going on.”
    She herself hadn’t had a date in so long that Frank Pezzini was starting to look good to her. Which just went to show that a lack of sex killed brain cells. Because Fabulous Frank, as Carla Candellano Wyatt liked to call him, was forty, with a comb-over he’d been perfecting for the last ten years, a potbelly, and a propensity for shiny white shoes.
    She shuddered, shook her head, and climbed out of the truck. A freshening wind rushed at her, lifting her long blond hair, freed from its usual braid, until the thick, wavy mass danced around her head. Smiling to herself, she slung her black purse over her shoulder, slammed the truck door, and hit the sidewalk.
    Up and down Main Street, shop doors were propped open in silent invitation. Old-fashioned globe street-lights stood in splendor, with wildly blooming chrysanthemums planted at their feet in bright splotches of color. Tourists wandered, neighbors stopped to chat, and traffic crawled