Jinxed by Inez Kelley Read Free Book Online

hell no. I am not marrying you.” Frannie spun in a huff and pounded down the stairs.
    Jinx followed close on her heels. “You just said yes. I have a dozen witnesses out there.”
    She made it back to the living room before whirling on him. “That was when I thought you were a suicidal maniac. Now you’re just a regular old maniac. It makes the verbal contract null and void.”
    With dancing eyes and cheeks flushed from the wintry air, he seemed so very alive, so full of zest and energy. How could he have fooled her into believing he would have jumped? She felt like a fool.
    “You are such a spitfire.” He chuckled, moving as if to kiss her. Quickly, she picked up Hocus and held the cat in front of her like a shield. Growling with a fierceness much too large for his small body, Hocus glared at Jinx with shining yellow eyes.
    “Touch me and I’ll sic my killer cat on you.”
    “Okay, okay.” He held his hands up. “No kisses in front of the pussy.”
    “Jinx, look.” Frannie put down the squirming cat with a resigned sigh and pulled the dark-haired man down to sit beside her on the couch. “I think it’s very sweet you’re kind of obsessed with me right now. But honestly, you need to stop. We are not destined for each other, we are not getting married and you do not love me. We barely know each other. Love at first sight is something that only happens in books and movies, not to real people.”
    “Why not?” He reached for her hand.
    “It just doesn’t.” Exasperation made her antsy. She hopped up and paced the room. Spying her romance book, she grabbed it and held it up to him. The brawny, bare-chested man on the cover had longer blond hair than the half-naked woman in his embrace.
    Jinx glanced at it, arched his brow and looked at her with a bemused twinkle in his eye.
    “See? This is fantasy. It’s a wonderful story of all-consuming magical love that doesn’t really exist. It’s a story, a fairytale for adult women with a semi-pornographic cover. There are no Prince Charmings and Cinderellas outside of Disney.” Disgusted, she tossed the book back onto the coffee table. “The characters in those books are all beautiful and confident and disgustingly romantic. Real people aren’t like that.”
    “But why not? Someone wrote that book, the idea appealed to someone.” He picked up the discarded book and held Fabio and his bimbo in front of her face. “How do you know this doesn’t exist? Because you’ve never experienced it? Well, me either, but I’m experiencing it now. This is real. I want to marry you.”
    Frannie dragged her hands through her short hair with a low growl, staring at the totally delicious and totally frustrating man before her. He could have walked directly out of the pages of many of those romance books. Except for the fact he was clearly clinically insane.
    “Stop saying that! It’s not real, you nut. Those books are fiction. As in false. As in made up. Just like this love-at-first-sight thing you keep talking about. It isn’t real. They’re just words strung together. You can’t believe everything you read. It’s just dreams and fantasies and a bunch of things that never happen to real people.”
    “Then why do you read them?”
    Groaning, Frannie flopped on the couch beside him. How could she answer that? She read them because her heart dreamed. Dreamed of things her mind knew were never going to happen. Deep inside her down-to-earth personality lurked a princess aching for a prince. But real life was never as good as the Happily Ever After in print. She knew they were lies, knew firsthand how fake they were. Her ex-husband had shown her that plain enough.
    “Damn it, Frannie, I married you, didn’t I? You act like now I should bow down and kiss your ass every day. It’s not like she meant anything. It was just some harmless fun for a few weeks. Get off my back.”
    Reverently, Jinx took her hand and brought it to his lips, tearing her from her memory. His mouth