Fatal Wild Child Read Free

and wood store. A gangly Irish red setter was bouncing around at the approach of the truck, its tongue lolling out of the side of its mouth.
    "You don't have to read them," she said. "They'll pay you anyway."
    "I already have a job and they pay me more than enough to live on." He halted the truck with a sharp jab on the brakes, throwing her forward against the seatbelt. It should have been warning enough, she knew. She opened the door, unlatched the belt and climbed down and discovered her mistake. She stepped into snow and almost immediately felt the cold bite into her socked feet.
    Seth rounded the truck. "Goddam, couldn't you wait?"
    "You don't have to look so pleased about it," she shot back. "They're your socks."
    He scooped her up and threw her over his shoulder like a bag of potatoes and she drew in a breath, shocked beyond words. The recent emergency aside, people didn't touch her. Not without negotiation and permission. It wasn't done. It tended to make security people unhappy, media people far too happy and speculative and rumors rife. She had put a general ban on people touching her even casually years ago. She had learned all the signals and motions that squashed even the most touch-happy people's tendencies to reach out.
    She clutched at Seth's back, staring at the Irish setter trotting happily after him, as Seth marched up the steps to the cabin, and wondered if Seth was just one of those people who completely lacked any sensitivity and rode roughshod over other's feelings.
    The inside of the cabin was warm and comfortable, surprisingly neat and tidy, and not nearly as rustic as she had been expecting for a cabin on the edges of the national park. She struggled to get down, but he was still moving.
    "Hey, I've been using my own feet since I was three," she protested, pummeling her fist into his back.
    He dumped her onto a bed and she landed with an 'oomph!' and brushed her hair out of her eyes, after sliding the oversized sleeve of the coat down her arm. She looked around. The bedroom was probably his, she reasoned. There was a door to the right that revealed an en suite.
    Seth O'Connor stood at the side of the bed, his arms crossed over the thick chest. A furrow dug between his brows. "Take a shower, get warm," he said, his voice rumbling in his chest. "While you're there, think about who you want to contact first. I have a land line here, so you don't have to use a cell phone. There's towels in the cabinet next to the shower. And I'll find fresh clothes you can put on while you're in there. Something closer to your size."
    He turned to go.
    "Seth."
    He looked over his shoulder, the single blue eye all she could see of his face.
    She took a deep breath. "I'm sorry. I've spent three years trying to off-load some of the crap I landed myself in over the years. This...felt like I was in it all over again. I prejudged you and I was wrong."
    "You did, and you were," he said evenly. "Not everyone wants to use you, Gabrielle. Some people are actually human beings."
    "I'll only believe that when I see them bleed," she shot back. "Some of the people I deal with don't even have a pulse."
    Seth turned to the door, gripped the handle. He didn't look at her when he said softly, "I've bled plenty." He shut it quietly.

Chapter Two
     
    Seth let her make the call she was dreading in complete privacy. Perhaps he sensed the fear building in her. He stepped outside to take care of something in the outbuildings, he said.
    She was dressed in a pair of jeans that were only three sizes too large and had to be rolled up at the hems by four inches and belted in at the waist by six. She wore a well-washed and faded tee-shirt and fleece shirt over that, also rolled at the sleeves. She felt like a six year-old in her daddy's clothes, except she had never once dressed up in Cameron Mackenzie Sherborne III's Italian designer handmade suits. He'd have flayed her alive if she had dared.
    Gabrielle dialed her father's cabin's direct line,