Bottom Line: Callaghan Brothers, Book 8 by Abbie Zanders Read Free Book Online Page A

worked up enough from the steamy erotic romance to start thinking about him again, or to feel the sharp pain of regret at having burned his card. 
    Then again, she had done so for exactly this reason, hadn’t she?  She knew that she would break down, and in a moment of extreme weakness (like the one she was having right now), she would have picked up the phone and called him, if for no other reason than to hear his voice, whiskey smooth and conjuring up images of body oil and silk sheets... 
    Lord, but he was a good looking man.  Probably the finest she’d ever seen, if she was totally honest with herself.  Everything about him appealed to her – his face, his hair, his voice, his scent.  Oh, and she couldn’t forget that body.  If that wasn’t created to answer a woman’s every erotic fantasy, she didn’t know what was.  Expanses of golden skin, lightly dusted with slightly darker bronze hair.  Layers of lean, hard muscle.  The man screamed of sensual, dark power just barely leashed beneath the surface.
    It wasn’t just his looks that were haunting her, though.  It was him.  She’d felt an instant connection to him the moment their eyes had met.  Bad idea or not, she just couldn’t stop thinking about the man.
    Mary fell back on the sofa and groaned.  If she closed her eyes, she could remember everything about those twelve hours.  The way his eyes seemed to look right into her soul, golden and glowing.  His strong hands as he gripped her wrists so easily, frightening and thrilling her at the same time.  The quiet but powerful timbre of his voice when he told her she had soft, warm hands.
    It was official.  She was in lust.
    Her phone rang, jolting her from her memories.  Even though she knew it couldn’t possibly be him (because, moron that she was, she’d refused to give him her number) part of her still hoped he had somehow found a way.  It wouldn’t be that hard.  He knew where she lived, after all. 
    Of course it wasn’t Aidan.  It was her mother.  Mary closed her eyes and put her hand over her forehead, angry with herself for not remembering that it was Sunday, and her mother always called on Sunday nights. 
    A sense of doom settled into her chest, displacing the lingering desire. Usually there was some mental preparation required before Mary had the strength to hold a civil conversation with her mother, and even then it was an exercise in patience.  In her weakened mental state she didn’t stand a chance. 
    “You sound off,” Catherine (Cat) Murphy said within seconds, confirming Mary’s fears.  “Are you sick?”
    “No, Mom,” Mary said, forcing more energy into her voice than she felt.  “I was just reading, and I guess I dozed off.”
    There was a moment of silence, but Mary knew it was a very brief respite while Catherine loaded her guns. 
    “You should be out living life, not reading about it,” Catherine said.  “You’re still young, Mary, but not by much.  Each year you wait, it gets harder and harder to find a decent man willing to care for a woman beyond sweating up the sheets.”
    Mary groaned inwardly, wishing that just once, her mother would give it a rest.  They rarely saw eye-to-eye on anything, but this was an especially sore topic.  Catherine Murphy lived for male attention; to her, it was the most important thing in life.  She simply could not understand how Mary could be content to be alone.
    “Happy New Year to you, too, Mom,” she said, feeling the weight of guilt upon her shoulders for not calling and wishing her so on New Year’s Eve, which would have been much smarter.  There was no way her mother would sit home on a night known for celebrating.  She could have just left a message and avoided this.  “Can we talk about something else, please?”
    “I at least had ten good years with your father,” Cat said, ignoring her.  “You barely had ten weeks before you became more of a nursemaid than a wife.”
    “Cam didn’t ask for