Cry Uncle Read Free

she’d consider marrying you, not what her last name
was.”
    “ Okay. Brick? Give me ten,”
he called to his assistant once he’d poured a hefty dose of wine
into the goblet.
    Brick grunted.
    Joe managed a smile of thanks for Kitty,
although he was feeling uncharacteristically nervous. It wasn’t
like him to get twisted in knots over a woman—or over anything, for
that matter. Crises came and went, and when they were truly awful,
he indulged in some intense moping. But then he got over it.
Rolling with the punches was his preferred modus operandi.
    But this was different. This was
wife-hunting. Joe had never proposed to a woman before, and here he
was, about to propose to a total stranger.
    Not really propose, he reassured himself,
sauntering around the end of the bar and working his way through
the throng, barely pausing to acknowledge the greetings the
regulars hurled at him. What he was offering the woman was less a
proposal than a proposition.
    Scratch that. If she was a white-wine sipper
in a white dress—already dressed for her wedding, apparently—she
wasn’t the sort to be propositioned. He had to approach her in a
classy way.
    And he didn’t even know her last name, damn
it.
    “ Hey, Joey!” a burly voice
reached him from behind. He smiled and waved vaguely, but his gaze
was riveted toward the screened front door that opened onto
Southard Street. Standing next to it, looking incredibly out of
place, was a woman in a white dress.
    Not bad, he thought, one set of apprehensions
fading and another set kicking in. The white dress she had on
resembled a tank shirt that fell to mid-calf, the hem notched a few
inches on the side seams. The way the cotton cloth draped her body
indicated that she was somewhat lacking in the curves department.
Her arms were slim, her shoulders bony. Her feet were strapped into
flat leather sandals. Her long, graceful neck was framed in
ash-blond hair that fell to her shoulders with barely a ripple.
Gold button earrings glinted through the silky locks. A matching
gold bangle circled one slender wrist.
    Her face was as angular as the rest of her,
her nose and chin narrow, her cheeks hollow. Her eyes were a pale
silver gray. In fact, all of her had a pale, silver-gray quality.
Obviously she was a recent arrival on the island. No one who’d been
on Key West for any length of time could stay that pale.
    A little washed-out, but definitely an
interesting face. Not quite pretty, but intriguing. It was the sort
of face a man could look at for a long time without growing tired
of it.
    Her expression was cautious. Maybe a touch
skeptical. Haunted. Those eyes, so large and pale, seemed
troubled.
    The notion of marriage troubled him more than
a little, too. But the alternative—losing Lizard—was far worse.
    He took a step closer to her, and another
step. In her search of the room, she stared at him, past him, and
then at him again. Noticing the wine glass in his hand, she
straightened up and eyed him warily. She bit her lip. Her teeth
were as white as her dress.
    “ Hi,” he said, sounding a
hell of a lot more confident than he felt. “You must be Pamela. I’m
the guy who wants to marry you.”
    ***
    OH, GOD. He looked like a bum.
    The door-frame dug into her spine as she
backed away from him. Okay, she consoled herself, things could be
worse. She hadn’t agreed to anything yet. She’d made no
commitments, no promises. And honestly, any danger this man posed
couldn’t be as bad as what she’d left behind when she’d escaped to
Key West.
    As bums went, she had to admit, the guy
extending the glass of wine toward her was actually kind of
handsome. Unfortunately, he was also scruffy and grungy, with a
stubble of beard and hair that clearly hadn’t had a close encounter
with a scissors in some time, and a shapeless shirt, and jeans
faded to a powdery blue, the fabric split like a fraying grin
across one knee. And that earring...oh, God. An earring.
    She ordered herself to remain