Untouched by Maisey Yates Read Free Book Online Page A

can’t think of what it might be.”
    “Do I seem nice to you?”
    “No.”
    “Humble?”
    “Not in the least.”
    “How’s my attitude?”
    She swallowed. “Bad.”
    “Then I think you know the answer.”
    “Sick. Men are sick,” she said.
    “You said it, honey, not me. I don’t have very much in the way of honor, but I’ll defend what I’ve got.”
    “Well, congratulations on your penis.”
    He laughed, and not that kind of superior chuckle, but a real laugh. “Thank you kindly, ma’am. I expect I ought to let you get back home now.”
    “Yeah. I expect. Look, we’ll be able to do this as long as I don’t have to deal with you very much. I do like what you’re doing here, but I don’t like you. I can’t. I suppose you understand that.”
    He nodded once. “Sure. See you tomorrow.”
    “Right. Well.” She waved and turned away from him.
    Quinn shoved his hands in his pockets and watched Lark walk back to her car. The conviction in her voice when she’d been talking about Cade had been a surprise. It made him wonder if everything about the injury was true. If it really had been that bad.
    But he had to find out for himself. Cade had been so willing to chuck Quinn under the wagon that it made him suspicious. Blame like that was only useful when you were trying to cover your own ass.
    Otherwise, why point the finger so vehemently? He would find out for sure and go from there. He knew one thing. He knew that no matter his physical state, he was going to make Cade clear his name.
    And if he wouldn’t, Quinn wasn’t above making the other man’s life a little more hellish.
    Sure, it was petty. Sure, Cade had already lost a lot. But he’d stripped everything from Quinn, for no reason at all. He’d left him with nothing. Because the rodeo had truly been his whole life.
    And a man with nothing but time on his hands was a very dangerous thing.
    Cade Mitchell would discover that soon enough.
    Lark put her car in drive and pulled away from the property, skidding on the gravel, in a hurry to put him behind her.
    She had a smart mouth on her. When Cade had talked about his little sister in the circuit, he hadn’t mentioned that. He’d made her sound like a girl. Sweet and vulnerable. But she was a woman who packed a punch. A woman with some pretty intense loyalty.
    If it came to it, loyalty like that could always be turned. Twisted.
    And at the moment, he wasn’t feeling like that was too far beneath him.
    Hell, very few people seemed to think anything was beneath him. Might as well prove them all right.
    ***
    “How was work?”
    Lark jumped while closing the front door and ended up slamming it a lot harder than necessary. Cole was standing there looking fatherly. So annoying.
    “Good,” she said. She would leave out the part about Quinn Parker being her boss. It was a big part, but it was the one that made her look stupid and a little like a turncoat, so she was keeping that on the down low. “I set up an entire computer lab. I’ll be working on getting all the right things installed on all the computers over the next week. It’s a ranch for troubled youth, so I need to get a lot of safeguards on the computers, and I’m just going to assume the little punks are computer hackers. It will make my life more interesting, and it will keep there from being any breaches in security once things get going.”
    “No porn on the premises?”
    “That’s the idea. And no unauthorized contact via computer. Which seems archaic, but these kids have been removed from bad influences by their parents, by and large, so contact through email, text, whatever, that’s not happening.”
    “Smart. Are you sure you’re going to be safe over there with a bunch of hooligan-type kids?”
    “Hooligans? Really?”
    “Riffraff.”
    She rolled her eyes. “If anyone offers me a cigarette, I’ll say no.”
    “I am kind of serious, though. I want to make sure you’re safe.”
    “I’ll be safe. Actually, I met most of