Awash (The Forgotten Coast Florida Suspense Series Book 6) by Dawn Lee McKenna Read Free Book Online Page B

Maggie asked.
    “Please,” Kyle said, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge.
    “He walked out there with us,” Wyatt answered as he came to stand beside her at the sink. Maggie’s kitchen was already fairly small, but it always shrank whenever Wyatt entered.
    “Where is he?”
    “Waiting for somebody to turn on the TV,” Kyle said.
    Maggie sighed and dropped a clean plate into the other side of the sink. “We might have to eat him,” she said.
    “That’s convincing,” Wyatt said.
    Kyle came up behind Maggie and gave her a one-armed hug. “Night, Mom,” he said.
    Maggie dropped the plate she was washing back into the water, wiped her hands on her jeans, and turned to wrap her arms around his shoulders. “Night, buddy,” she said, then kissed the top of his head, taking a moment to inhale his scent of Herbal Essence, sun, and boy. “See you in the morning.”
    “Night, Wyatt,” Kyle said as he headed out of the kitchen.
    “See ya, Kyle.”
    Wyatt pulled a dish towel from its hook and started drying one of the clean plates. Maggie looked up at his profile for a moment, at the deep dimples alongside his mouth, the strong chin, the eyebrows pulled together in thought.
    “Do I have a booger?” he asked her without looking up.
    Maggie smiled. “Can’t I just stare at you?”
    “I’m kinda getting to you, huh?” he asked, trying not to smile.
    “Always,” Maggie said.
    He finished drying the plate and set it in the open cupboard that was a stretch for Maggie but barely above his eye level. He picked up another plate.
    “I am tantalizing,” he said. “But what’s on your mind?”
    Maggie sighed, then starting washing again. “You could change your mind,” she said. “About stepping down.”
    It was a moment before Wyatt answered. “I probably couldn’t,” he said. “But I wouldn’t anyway.”
    “You love being the sheriff. And you’re the best one we’ve had in years. I just want it to be good enough for you,” she said. “You know, the reason that you’re doing it.”
    “It will be,” Wyatt said. “We’ve been friends, good friends, long enough to know what bugs us about each other, and what we depend on.” He looked at her as he held out a hand for another plate. “It doesn’t have to be perfect to be worth it, Maggie. It won’t be perfect.”
    Maggie tried for a laugh, but didn’t quite bring it to pass. “No, it won’t be that.”
    “We have some things to work through, but we’ll do that.”
    Maggie finished washing the plate in her hands, distracting herself with the heat of the water.
    “Boudreaux,” she said quietly.
    “That,” he said.
    They worked in silence for a moment.
    “I know it’s hard for you to get,” she said finally.
    After a moment, he put another plate on the shelf, then put the dish towel down and turned to look at her.
    “It’s really not,” he said. “I’m a guy, and even I can see the appeal. He’s smooth as satin, he’s better looking than most men half his age, he’s downright courtly, for crying out loud, and he saved your damn life. What’s not to like?”
    “It’s not sexual, Wyatt,” Maggie said with some urgency.
    “If I thought it was, I’d be drying somebody else’s dishes, Maggie.”
    She turned to look at him, a pinprick of panic in her chest.
    “Let me clarify that,” Wyatt said. “I believe it’s not sexual for you. ”
    “Or him,” she said.
    “I think you might be wrong about that, but we’ve hashed over that before,” Wyatt said. “Look, it doesn’t even matter why he’s become so…involved with you. It’s about who he is. Yeah, he killed a guy, and almost got killed, saving your life. If I had been the one to come through your door at that moment, Alessi would be just as dead. I don’t fault Boudreaux for that. But don’t forget that he also chopped a guy up and threw him in the Gulf just for watching you get raped twenty years ago. It takes a certain kind of guy to chop a person up,