All the Right Places (RILEY O'BRIEN & CO #1) by Jenna Sutton Read Free Book Online

Amelia’s mother hadn’t been a prostitute, she had used her body instead of her brain to survive, and she had paid for that decision.
    Amelia’s phone chirped again, this time notifying her that she’d received a text message. With a sigh, she tossed down the pencil and picked up the phone. Only a handful of people had her mobile number, and she didn’t want to ignore an important message.
    The two-line text was from Ava Grace. “Home soon. Be ready to talk.”
    Amelia grinned at the screen. Ava Grace’s bossiness was a big part of her charm.
    She checked the time on her phone before returning it to the table. It was a little after one p.m., so she’d been working for nearly four hours. She picked up the pencil again and resumed sketching.
    When she had woken this morning, bleary-eyed and cranky, she’d been relieved to see Ava Grace had already left the house. She had needed time to decide how much of her trip to San Francisco she planned to share with her best friend.
    Without a doubt, she knew Ava Grace would have compelled her to spill every humiliating and disturbing detail of her meeting with Quinn within minutes, if not seconds. If Ava Grace hadn’t found fame as a country music singer, she could have been a huge success in law enforcement.
    She was persistent, observant, and downright relentless when it came to ferreting information from even the most recalcitrant sources. Amelia had been on the receiving end of Ava Grace’s interrogations many times.
    The two of them had grown up together in a little burg that didn’t even have a Walmart. Ava Grace’s family situation had been better than her own, although not by much. Her mother had died when she was a toddler, and shortly thereafter, her father, Chuck, had dumped his only child with his mother. June had been a cold woman who’d been less than thrilled to raise another child, especially one as precocious as Ava Grace.
    Now that she was an adult, Amelia had a better understanding of Chuck’s decision. He’d been a roughneck, and his work on offshore oil wells had taken him away from home for months at a time.
    As little girls, Amelia and Ava Grace had been linked by poverty and neglect. Hungry for love and attention, they’d become each other’s family. They had tackled life as if it were the two of them against the world, and they’d lived together since Ava Grace’s grandmother had died just days after Ava Grace’s fifteenth birthday.
    By God’s grace, June had owned the house she and Ava Grace shared, so Ava Grace hadn’t been homeless. Knowing the horror of Amelia’s own living situation, her best friend had demanded that she move in with her. They’d managed to stay in school and had kept themselves afloat by working nights, Amelia serving greasy food at a twenty-four-hour diner and Ava Grace pressing clothes for the local dry cleaner.
    Amelia heard the crunch of gravel as a car drove into the driveway, and she quickly tidied up her worktable. She met Ava Grace as the tall blonde stepped out of her car, a flashy red Camaro she’d splurged on when her song “I’m Not Your Anything” had hit number one.
    Ava Grace’s short black dress showed off her long, tan legs, and her hot pink cropped jacket matched her cowboy boots. Her platinum-colored hair was in a long braid down her back, and long silver earrings dangled from her lobes. If Amelia didn’t love her so much, she would have hated her for being so beautiful.
    “Hey, girl,” Ava Grace said, pushing the door to her Camaro shut with her hip since her hands were filled with her big purse and a white paper sack. “I figured you hadn’t had lunch yet, so I brought us some soup and sandwiches from Main Street Deli.”
    “Yum,” she replied, just now realizing how hungry she was.
    Ava Grace hummed her agreement. “And I had Beth toss in a couple of caramel brownies,” she added, chuckling as Amelia licked her lips hungrily. “They’re a bribe for you to tell me
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