Born to Be Wild by Catherine Coulter Read Free Book Online

later. He nearly hyperventilated before she finally got him off the phone.
    Lou Lou said, “Why didn’t he call you sooner?”
    Mary Lisa flopped back down. “He said he was afraid to, said Bernie finally managed to convince him that I was okay. You know Clyde’s got spies everywhere. I’ll lay you a five he’s even got spies in the women’s room at Taco Bell. I had to swear to him on the head of my father that I’d be okay to shoot on Monday. That gives me a day and a half to get myself back together.”
    â€œYeah, you lucked out, it being a Saturday and all.”
    â€œThat was sarcasm I heard, but I guess I am lucky. I don’t have a day off until Thursday, but then it’ll be a long weekend for me.”
    â€œElizabeth and I will stick to you like gumballs until Thursday. Then why don’t you get out of here? Like maybe home to Goddard Bay? You haven’t seen your folks for a while, and maybe it’s time, don’t you think?”
    â€œI miss my dad. Okay, I’ll think about it.”
    At nine o’clock that evening, Elizabeth Fargas burst through the front door, a bottle of champagne under her arm, still wearing TV makeup, and a gorgeous pale yellow suit, and the three-inch heels she always wore even though she was seated behind the TV news desk. “Oh my, look at you, smiling and okay, right? I’ve been worried out of my mind. Goodness, do I ever need a drink!”

SIX
    Goddard Bay, Oregon
    No way I can do this. No way. I’m an idiot.
    There, good, he finally had a functioning brain again. He’d finally admitted it to himself. He didn’t love her. Actually, now that he examined it, he really didn’t like her all that much either.
    He smiled as the crushing weight toppled right off his head. He was ready to yell with relief when, in the next instant, the weight jumped back on.
    Wonderful, just wonderful. I’ve got to tell her before her mother books the Methodist church and it’s all over town . He pulled the velvet box out of his inside jacket pocket, flipped it open, and looked with fear and loathing at the three-carat diamond winking up at him. It was the direct result of an early morning towering inferno of sex, a shake-the-rafters event that had cannonballed him onto his back when it was over, grinning like a loon, his brain waltzing in the ether. Surely, he thought, sex like that could get a man to do more than torture ever could. He’d have been willing to say anything, do anything for her after that brain-deadening, camel-humping sex, state secrets be damned.
    And to prove it, by the time he’d finally talked his brain into crawling back inside his skull, he’d already bought the ring.
    Thank God he had to focus on the mayor’s daughter this morning—she’d been arrested for drunk driving the night before—so he hadn’t been able to run right over to her house, a marriage proposal ready to pop out of his mouth.
    But she was expecting him to propose, probably tonight when he took her to dinner at Le Fleur de Beijing. It was a new Asian/French restaurant in town that had the word fusion on every page of the menu, which meant, his father had told him, that you could get snails with sweet and sour sauce. It was expensive, though, and to quite a few folks in Goddard Bay and the environs, that meant it had class.
    He’d been sleeping with her for close to four months now, at least four times a week. What had made that last time different? Didn’t matter. He’d presented himself that morning at the jewelry store when the doors opened.
    He happened to glance at himself in the mirror. He could still see the residue of wild fear in his eyes. He looked down again at the engagement ring, and thought he’d be better off without sex like that ever again in his life. It was too dangerous.
    John McInnis Goddard, the great-great-great-grandson of Joshua Barrington Goddard, founder of