Impervious (City of Eldrich Book 1) by Laura Kirwan Read Free Book Online Page B

her gut, that moment of heat. She liked to believe that love was a conscious choice, something she could control.
    Except when she couldn’t.
    Jamie’s father—she didn’t even know his name—Jamie’s father was a fixer-upper, exactly what she’d sworn off of for years. A sad, broken man in desperate need of rescue. Signs of a drinking problem normally short circuited any spark of attraction she might feel for a man. Yet here she was with honey on her fingers and butterflies in her belly.
    “I’m not freaking St. Meaghan,” she muttered as she screwed the lid back on the honey jar. She remembered the spilled coffee on the table, sighed, and grabbed a wad of paper towels to clean it up. There’s no such thing as love at first sight, she scolded herself as she mopped up the coffee. Just sexual instinct and people recognizing each other’s dysfunctions. He was a drunk. Her father was a drunk. She’d been ambushed by lingering codependent daddy issues masquerading as attraction. Nothing more.
    Besides, Meaghan had good reasons for being cautious. All she had to do was look in the mirror at the faint scar above her right eyebrow to be reminded. Her one, and only, experience with domestic violence. A boyfriend from long ago with a drinking problem and, as it turned out, a heavy fist. She’d moved in with him too fast and it didn’t take long for him to throw that first punch.
    Meaghan returned from the hospital with a black eye and five stitches where he’d caught her with his college class ring. Greg wept and begged for forgiveness, swearing it would never happen again. He made a brief show of AA. She took him back. It was only a matter of weeks before the heavy fist made a return appearance after a session of hard partying with his college buddies. Before his swing had a chance to make contact, Meaghan ducked under his arm, elbowed him in the throat, and drove a knee into his groin.
    He wept and begged again, clutching an ice pack to his crotch, while Meaghan packed her bags. He made a few halfhearted attempts to win her back, and then tried threats. He called one evening to say he was on his way over to hurt her like she’d hurt him.
    Meaghan borrowed a pump shotgun from a neighbor. She loaded it with birdshot, turned off the porch light, and waited in the dark. Greg, drunk, stormed onto the porch. Meaghan, a calm voice from the shadows, explained her rights under Arizona law to use deadly force to protect herself, told him to leave, and then racked the shotgun. At the sound, her would-be attacker whimpered, wet himself, and ran like hell.
    Meaghan never saw him again. But she never forgot the lesson she’d learned. At the first sign of an inclination for violence or a drinking problem in a man, she was out the door. No explanations, no pleas for forgiveness, no acts of atonement were sufficient to overcome her determination to protect herself.
    She mopped up the last of the coffee with a sigh and poured herself another cup. She took one sip and realized she didn’t want it anymore. Meaghan hadn’t expected something like this to ever happen to her again. She’d thought that particular part of herself was dead, that the nerve endings required to fall for a man had been fried beyond repair. There had been men on and off over the years, but she always found a reason to stop things before they got too serious. And there hadn’t been anybody since Michael, ten years earlier. A few dates here and there, but nothing more. No sex. No love. No attraction. Not even a hint of it.
    Michael had been different, or so she thought at the time. Meaghan believed then that she was in love with Michael, but she’d finally had to admit to herself that what she’d loved was not him, but what he could give her.
    She had wanted a child. Desperately. With Michael, she’d thought she’d managed to pull it off, to have it all. She thought she’d found a husband and had time to squeeze out a baby, maybe even two, before her