Saving Allegheny Green by Lori Wilde Read Free Book Online Page A

skipped a beat. Was he going to ask me out? Would I say yes if he did?
    “Allegheny…”
    “Please, call me Ally.”
    “Ally.” He smiled.
    “Yes?” I held my breath. Waited.
    “You’ve got cheese on your chin.”
    “I HATE THAT MAN .”
    “You like him. A lot.”
    “I do not,” I denied hotly a few hours later as I sat hunched over the computer signing out my charting. I was still smarting over the mozzarella on my chin incident.
    The graveyard shift nurses had arrived, and they were inthe process of assessing our lone patient. Rhonda and I manned the phones and waited for eleven o’clock.
    “You’re obsessing, Ally.” Rhonda blew on her freshly painted fingernails. Pretty in Puce, was the name on the bottle, as if it were physically possible to be pretty in puce. Rhonda was polishing her nails in anticipation of a midnight date, and I was still second-guessing Sheriff Sam Conahegg.
    “What? Because I can’t figure out what he’s up to?” I said. I felt sheepish that for a few minutes I’d actually believed that Conahegg had come to the hospital simply to see me.
    “He’s pretty cute.”
    “He’s okay.” I shrugged.
    Cute didn’t begin to cover it. I thought of his flint eyes, those muscular thighs, that powerful voice.
    Don’t forget the arrogant attitude, I reminded myself. The cocky way he looked at me made me want to bop him over the head and pop him into my bed all at the same time. Rhonda, however, did not need to know about the last part.
    Rhonda heaved an exaggerated sigh. “I swear, Ally, sometimes I think you’re dead from the waist down. The guy’s a major hunk.”
    “Define major hunk. ”
    “You’re hopeless,” she muttered. “Absolutely hopeless. If that man doesn’t melt your butter, it’d take a million years of global warming to thaw you out.”
    “Oh, all right. He’s good-looking, I’ll grant him that.”
    “And?”
    “And nothing.”
    I didn’t like liking Conahegg so much. Especially when I didn’t know if he liked me or not. What was it about him that caused me to behave in the manner of a fifteen-year-old with a crush on the most popular guy in high school? Although asI recall, in high school all the girls had had a crush on him, me included.
    “Getting you to talk about men is like pulling snakes’ teeth.”
    “Snakes don’t have teeth.”
    “That’s why it’s so hard.” Rhonda grinned. “Spill the beans. Is there chemistry between the two of you? You know, sparks.”
    “There’s sparks.” I glowered. “But not the kind you mean. He’s opinionated and domineering and he embarrassed me.”
    And he flushed the marijuana down the toilet instead of arresting Sissy like he could have.
    Okay, so he wasn’t all bad.
    “Come on, your last boyfriend was when…? College? Dang, Ally that was ten years ago!”
    I was well aware of that fact. I was boyfriendless by choice, not happenstance. Guys clutter your life. Overall they weren’t worth the headache. They either died on you like my daddy, or used you as a crutch like my old boyfriends, or disappeared on you like Rhonda’s ex-husband, or cheated on you like Rocky did Sissy.
    Yeah, okay, so maybe I had trust issues when it came to men.
    “You’re an attractive woman. You’ve got a great body and flawless skin,” Rhonda went on relentlessly. “If you’d only wear a little more makeup and get a new hairstyle. That page boy might be functional but it’s not sexy. Oh, and you might consider some blond highlights.”
    “I’m not going to bend over backward to attract some man.”
    “No? But you’ll jump through hoops for your family.”
    “Rhonda, I don’t have any choice. You know my mother. If I didn’t manage her finances, she and Tessa would be in the poorhouse within a week.”
    “How do you know?” Rhonda busily applied a second coat of browny-purple-puke color to her nails. “Ever let ’em sink or swim?”
    I stared at her appalled. “Of course not. That’d be like letting a