Crazy Hot by Tara Janzen Read Free Book Online Page B

got him, but all Quinn and Hawkins had found so far was a lot of dirty money, a little stolen jewelry, and a few kilos of Colombian cartel cocaine. It was enough to put Roper away, yeah, but not what Uncle Sam wanted. If there were exotic guns running through Denver, so far they hadn't been Roper Jones's guns.
    There hadn't been any guns in the rail yard crates either, not unless they'd been packed inside plaster casts. The only other time Quinn had seen so much plaster had been the summer he'd spent jacketing dinosaur bones for Doc McKinney at Rabbit Valley. He could see right now that he was going to have to ask Dylan again what in the hell had been in those crates that was important enough to have almost gotten him killed. Dylan's original answer of “Nothing we're looking for” was starting to look bogus.
    He glanced at the woman in the seat beside him. Dealing in hot dinosaur bones was hardly up Roper Jones's alley. In fact, it didn't make any sense at all, but Regan McKinney had ended up on his doorstep, looking for Wilson. Hell, something was going on.
    He slanted Regan another glance. He'd been thinking about lace bras and sex before he'd gotten sidetracked by hit lists and guns, his body reminded him. Reminded him also of what a pleasant diversion it all could be. Of course, actually having sex with the grown-up version of a man's most treasured adolescent fantasy shot things way past diversion.
    God, she was pretty, and soft, and still wondrously wet.
    He shifted uneasily in his seat and forced his eyes back to the road.
    “So, are you still married?” he asked. He was beginning to think not, but he had to ask. He had to know. Married women normally didn't live with their sister and their grandfather, and usually they took their husband's name, and just about all the time, they wore a ring. Regan was looking good on all counts.
    Her silence gave him another excuse to glance over at her, and he had to wonder if she had the strength to white-knuckle-grip the door and the gear console all the way to Denver. Even at one hundred and twenty miles per hour, it was going to take a while to get there.
    “How . . . how did you know I was married?”
    Breathless, wrung-out, tense, and defensive—it was nice to know he hadn't lost his touch with the fairer sex.
    “Wilson told me you were getting married the day I was at the house. There were dresses everywhere.” Small mountains of baby blue dresses and one big white one with pearl buttons running all the way down the back. He'd never been so tight-jawed in his life as he'd been standing there saying good-bye to Wilson and looking at that dress.
    He'd wanted it, by God, he'd wanted it and the woman who went in it. He'd wanted them for himself. Isn't that what he'd been working his ass off for—so he could have a chance with the granddaughter of a friggin' college professor, a Boulder-bred, pink-pantied virgin who was so clean it made him ache? That summer at the dinosaur camp, he'd watched her on and off as she'd come and gone, and fallen more in love and lust every day. He never had gotten up the nerve to talk with her, but he'd listened when she'd talked to Wilson and his grad students. With every word she'd proved herself to be way out of his league. She'd intimidated the hell out of him, which had only made him want her all that much more.
    He'd been such a cross-eyed romantic sap at sixteen—and at twenty, when he'd been standing there looking at her wedding dress. He'd been so fucking galled by the situation, and it had only gotten worse in the following weeks, a whole helluva lot worse.
    “Yes, well, the dresses. That was . . . uh . . . sort of a high point, the dresses,” she said, a small catch in her voice, her gaze glued to the road.
    “So marriage is a rough go, huh?” Considering who she'd married, he wasn't surprised to hear it. Fate had definitely been fucking with him when it came to Regan McKinney.
    “Rough?” she repeated, and gave a short