Wicked Secrets by Anne Marsh Read Free Book Online Page A

for a toothbrush right now. Whatever he was asking, though, was lost when one of his neighbors—an elderly one from the quavering sound of the voice—bellowed out his window at them in a voice that was probably audible back on the beach.
    “Is she your girlfriend? Hot damn!”
    Wow. Tag got around. She leaned against him harder. “Girlfriend?”
    Tag blushed, dark color staining his cheeks. Holy moly. She didn’t know the man had it in him. “Mr. Bradley may be under a mistaken impression.”
    Uh-huh. She’d just bet.
    “That’s Mr.
Bentley
to you. Check my mailbox next time you forget my name.”
    “Either you have a girlfriend or you don’t.” She might have been out of the dating pool for a few years, but even she knew that much. Tag muttered something, taking the high road, and shoved the doors open. Whatever. She’d be the first to admit her social skills were rusty. She waved in Mr. Bentley’s general direction and followed Tag inside. He wasn’t much on furniture—he had a couch and a coffee table and nothing else—but a fifty-pound bag of dog food dwarfed the kitchen counter. The bag of cat food next to it wasn’t much smaller, completely overshadowing a couple of browning bananas. Maybe he had monkeys, too, because the man clearly had hidden depths.
    “You have pets,” she said, stating the obvious as a white boxer wearing a happy grin loped toward them, followed by a Chihuahua suffering from some kind of eye infection. A geriatric cat and a rabbit brought up the rear of the parade. Honest to God, the man had his own Easter bunny, even if he’d apparently passed on the monkeys.
    She hazarded a random guess because it had been a day full of surprises. “You’ve become a vet because rescue swimming is so boring.”
    “No.” He greeted the dogs and the cat, picking up the rabbit and tucking it beneath his arm. Tag’s place was definitely small. He had a teeny living room and a galley kitchen too miniscule to hold the two of them. “Meet Ben Franklin, Buckeye, Beauregard, and Cadbury. Cadbury’s the one with the floppy ears, in case you’re wondering, but they’re all boys, and no one comes when called. The bathroom’s through there,” he said, waving a hand toward the hall.
    “Are you moonlighting as Doctor Doolittle?” Snarking distracted her from the residual queasiness in her stomach—and the awkwardness of being here, alone with him, when she had memories of him naked. “Why all the animals?”
    He shrugged, a powerful roll of his shoulders. “They needed a place.”
    She settled for escaping into the bathroom while he fed his menagerie. The man even had a bonus toothbrush, which after her palm-tree encounter, she was pathetically grateful for. Mint had never tasted so good—and was all she wanted to taste right now. Not a big, too-charming, badass Navy man who thought she needed rescuing. No way, no how.
    * * *
    T AG   HAD   RENTED   the apartment furnished from Mr. Bentley, and taking things month-to-month had seemed wise. Now with his plans to leave Discovery Island firmed up, the decision was even more fortunate. It wasn’t like he owned any furniture anyhow. He’d always traveled light, and his non-ops stuff fit in a pair of duffel bags. So he shouldn’t have this strange, warm
feeling
of satisfaction, getting Mia on his turf. The first time—the
last
time, he reminded himself—they’d gone at it in her hotel room. The place had been perfectly comfortable, and they’d really only been interested in the bed. The wall. He grinned slyly. And the floor...
    The boxer bumped his leg, making himself known. “Lucky dog.”
    Ben Franklin panted happily up at him, everything right in his doggie world.
    Tag’s own life wasn’t quite as simple, and Mia was just the latest symptom. He was a sucker for four-legged and lonely. He’d have to figure something out, though, before he headed back to San Diego in six weeks. Base housing wouldn’t allow animals, and, although he