Something Wild by Patti Berg Read Free Book Online Page A

calming breath, trying to think about his question, trying to structure an answer that didn’t start with “Please don’t stop what you’re doing.”
    Finally she said, “I’ve been in three big shows this year.”
    “Dancers move from show to show that often?”
    “Only when they’re let go.”
    His fingers inched their way up under her pant leg and he made those same slow, deep, massaging circles on her calf. She wasn’t about to tell him that it was her ankle that was hurt or that his hands were on the wrong part of her anatomy. He’d have to work his way much, much higher up her leg before she’d make him back off.
    “Wanna tell me why you were let go?”
    She decided not to wait for the pitter-patter of her heart to slow before she answered, since that could take forever.
    “I got fired from the last show because the choreographer’s wife shot him.” Three weeks and too many days of unemployment later, she was still miffed. “I held Josh’s bloody head till the paramedics came. I took flowers to the hospital and still he had the audacity to tell me I was trouble. The jerk didn’t press charges against his wife. Oh, no, they reconciled. But he canned me.”
    Mike laughed at the ridiculous incident. She couldn’t blame him, when it seemed too implausible for words.
    “What about the other two shows?” Mike grinned. “Did you get fired from those as well?”
    “I lost the job before that because I had a slight disagreement with the director over my costume,” she admitted far too freely, baring her soul while Mike stroked the sensitive spot behind her knee.
    His brow rose. “What, you didn’t like the color? The style?”
    “I changed my hair color to get that job and let me tell you”—she grabbed the end of her pony-tail and stared at it—“going from nearly black to sun-kissed brown because the director said he already had too many raven-haired girls in the cast, was annoying as hell, but I’d do just about anything for a good part.”
    “All that and you still got fired?”
    “All that. I made one concession after another. I didn’t even mind when the director changed me from a watermelon to a strawberry—after all, the costume was more compact and easier to dance in. But when he decided to make me a half-peeled banana, well, that was just too much.”
    The good pastor’s fingers stilled. His brows pulled together as his eyes darted to her breasts and lingered there for a second—a hot, hot, feverish hot second—then drifted back to her eyes. “Half peeled?”
    “Topless,” she confessed, even though she knew that Mike had understood completely. “He felt my skin tone was perfect, just the right creamy color for a peeled banana. I told him I hadn’t seen any bananas with breasts and told him I’d prefer continuing on as a strawberry. He said that was fine with him, as long as I was a half-eaten strawberry because he firmly intended to have me go on stage with my breasts exposed.”
    Heat crept into her cheeks. Good heavens! What was she doing divulging all this information to a holy man?
    “I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t embarrass you. I mean, I’m sure the last thing ministers think about are naked women.”
    A grin touched his face. His dimple deepened. “I can’t speak for all ministers, only me, but I’ve been known to think about naked women a time or two.”
    “Isn’t that a sin?”
    “Not in the Bible I’m familiar with.”
    Well, it was a sin in her father’s Bible. Dear old dad thought a good time was Bible study on Friday nights, not high school dances. His idea of after-school activities was serving food to the homeless, not coed volleyball or basketball. Chaplain Mattingly equated the word naked with a woman wearing anything that exposed her knees and elbows and all points in between.
    Maybe she’d been naive in her thinking that all ministers were the same. That they had no vices. That their thoughts were 100 percent pure.
    Mike Flynn thought about