Resurrection River: Men of Mercy, Book 2 by Lindsay Cross Read Free Book Online Page A

must really love that person.”
    Love? Sure, like the devil loved church.
    “I gotta go.” Mavis and her weekly calls of guilt to remind Amy that she’d stolen her only boy too early. Now she could add lusting after his best friend her list.
    “What? Wait a minute. Who was that? What’s wrong?” Amy wanted to tell him it was Mavis. But no. That was her own cross to bear.
    “Listen. I know you want to stay and help out. But you can’t. Not tonight. Please, I promise to call Bo over if there is trouble.”
    “Tell me what is going on.”
    “I can’t. Listen, I’ll call you. Tomorrow afternoon. Okay?” Amy backed up a step. Then another.
    Ranger’s look of confusion and hurt and anger filling up her vision.
    Her cell buzzed again, indicating a voice message from Mavis Carter. The mother-in-law to make Ursula the Sea Witch look like a guppy. Eighty percent of the reason Amy could never have a life or relationship past Shane Carter.
    “Amy stop. Talk to me.”
    Amy backed up one more step. “I’m sorry.”
    Then she did what she did best. She ran. All the way to the house. She left a too perfect sculpted set of abs in her dust and high-tailed it to her back door. He’d said he didn’t want her just one night. He wanted her forever. Wanted her enough to fight for her.
    Amy went into the kitchen, slammed the door behind her and grabbed the back of her kitchen chair. Her heart hit so hard and fast it might as well have been the plane propeller whacking her chest.
    Ranger. She closed her eyes. Want wandered down her body. His confusion was worse than his outrage. Damn Mavis and her call. Amy wouldn’t be surprised if the woman hadn’t set up cameras to spy on her. She had made it plain she never trusted Amy. And that she blamed Amy for Shane joining the military and therefore his death. That her mission in life was to make Amy miserable.
    She never missed a photo op for the press. Mavis had cried on more news stations than Oprah. And then she’d dragged Amy to the cemetery every month to stare at Shane’s grave. And to remember the guilt.
    But Shane had been the one to walk away. Not Amy.
    And now she had a flesh and blood God-given second chance all but beating down her door and threatening to drag her by her hair to his cave to be his little woman.
    And she wanted that so bad.
    Her body felt on fire. Maybe she was having heat stroke. Amy went to the cabinet, grabbed a glass and filled it with ice water, downing half the contents in one long gulp. She needed to cool off.
    Needed the shock to remember who she was. She was Shane Carter’s widow. She was loyal. She wasn’t attracted to her dead husband’s best friend.
    Not attracted. Not attracted. Not attracted.
    She didn’t want him every second. She finished the water. Maybe if she told herself enough she would start to believe.
    She’d done everything she could to warn Ranger away, and he kept coming. And thank God he did, otherwise she and Pedro would have been alone with Santos. Amy knew the man could have done anything to her, and no one would have been able to stop him.
    Except Ranger.
    She went to the living room, stopping in front of the fireplace mantle. Shane’s military picture sat right there, in a black frame. His straight lips and serious eyes glared at her. Cold. Hard. Distant.
    Remember, Amy, remember.

7
    Chapter 7
    R anger slammed into the newly finished log house he shared with his brother and new sister-in-law, barely keeping his rage in check.
    No matter how much he wanted to turn and put his fist through the wall, this wasn’t his house to destroy.
    But if his commander kept him stateside, he’d build his own house. Then he could put a hole in any goddamn wall he wanted.
    Amy blew so freaking hot one minute he thought he was in the Mohave Desert and so cold the next he might as well be in An-freaking-artica. He didn’t know whether she’d given him heat stroke or frostbite, but either way his brain was fried.
    Damn woman. No one