Born Wild Read Free

fine, upstanding citizen had been kind enough to upload to YouTube—along with the Wizard of Oz , Mrs.-Gulch-on-her-Bicycle music playing in the background. So far, the video had fifty thousand hits. And that was…pretty perfect. Par for the course, really, considering how her life had been going since she was about, oh, say eighteen or so.
    But even as humiliating as the YouTube video was, the fact remained that it wasn’t nearly as awful as the picture that’d run in the paper last month after she barely managed to escape the fire that engulfed her apartment. In that particular shot, she’d sported a crazy, wide-eyed look, made even more delightful by the smudge of soot under her nose in the exact shape of Hitler’s mustache. The caption had read: Heil Heiress and Her Amazing Death Defying Fire Act!
    Geez Louise. Maybe whoever was out to do her in wasn’t actually trying to kill her with bullets, fire, or cut brake lines but was, in fact, attempting to embarrass her to death.
    â€œYou want to explain to us exactly what’s been going on?” Mac pressed, and she looked up to find his expression gently encouraging. But when she glanced over at Billy?
    Nada . No encouragement there. Just a squint-eyed look of contemplation and was that…? Yep. That looked infuriatingly close to disbelief.
    Oh, no he di-int! She did a mental headshake, frowning fiercely as she vehemently declared, “I’m not making any of this up, Billy.”
    One of his dark brows quirked, and it was like a lit match touching the fuel of her temper. She was instantly on the defensive—which really wasn’t anything new. He tended to have that effect on her most days because he blamed her for…well, everything . But that didn’t change the fact that she’d been nervous enough about coming here without having to deal with his enmity and snarky, high-handed attitude. “I’m not, dangit!” She slammed a palm down on the table, fighting not to wince at the resounding crack that echoed around the large space. “Where’s Becky? She’ll believe me!”
    Or at least Eve thought Becky would believe her. Because, truth be told, there was a teensy, tiny, ever-so-miniscule seed of doubt planted back in the far reaches of her brain. The explanations the police gave seemed logical…
    But, no. No. She wasn’t crazy, and she wasn’t paranoid. Someone wanted her dead. Period. End of story. Alert the gosh-darned presses!
    â€œYou haven’t said anything for me to believe or not believe, Eve,” Billy explained evenly, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms over his chest. His biceps bulged, stretching the thin fabric of his gray T-shirt with its Black Knights Inc. Custom Motorcycles logo, emphasizing the hard planes of his pectoral muscles.
    â€œOh.” She shook her head, quickly looking away from the masculine temptation that was Billy Reichert lest her cheeks turn the color of vintage Cabernet. “Yep. I guess that’s true, huh?”
    Curses. Billy had always managed to muddle her thinking. And it’d only gotten worse since they’d been reunited fourteen months ago after more than a decade apart. He’d blasted back into her life when he’d, you know, done her the itsy-bitsy favor of saving her from a band of bloodthirsty Somali pirates. She’d been doing research for her doctoral thesis out on the Indian Ocean when she and Becky found themselves the captives of a band of gun-toting, sea-faring desperados. It was then she’d been allowed in on the little secret of Black Knights Inc. Then when she’d been made to understand that Billy, and all the men who worked with him, were a whole heck of a lot more than simple motorcycle mechanics.
    And since that day, she and Billy had done their best to avoid each other.
    Ha! Understatement of the century! Because people avoided dog poop on the sidewalk. They avoided standing