Hard Irish Read Free

loud and clear.  Instead of coming over and taking Jake and Jason from him as planned, James pitched forward in a dead faint and face-planted the altar.
    From the expression of his family all staring at him, Jared concluded that train wreck was too mild a description for the situation.   Nuclear explosion was a more apt description.
    Jared prayed hard, but for some reason God didn’t instantly beam him up to heaven, instead he left him squirming in hell.  He didn’t need a “hair of the dog” drink this morning.  He needed the whole damn bottle.

C HAPTER T WO
     
     
    “Woof!”
    “Slow down, Pebbles.  You’re shaking the steps.”
    Her tenuous concentration broken by the fact that two hundred pounds of slobbery St. Bernard and the zaniest woman in the South were about to descend on her, Roxanne “Rocky” McKenna quickly stood and stretched her long legs.  She slipped a robe on over her sun-kissed skin and prepared for the onslaught.  Used to be drugging sunshine, fresh air, and yoga after her routine morning swim could clear the cloudiest horizons.  Not anymore.
    Either life’s troubles or her suppressed hormones reared a disturbing head.
    “Thought I’d find you up here.  I brought you Intense Chai this morning.  Next best thing to an orgasm to start your day.”
    Rocky laughed as Desmond “Dessie” Langford and her huge pooch breached the privacy of her rooftop garden. Between the riches of Hilton Head, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia lay a swampy land of everything under the sun from The Golden Bunny burlesque joint to the Lazy Cow Café.
    At fifty-five, Dessie, a Marilyn Monroe look-a-like, was still the queen of the Golden Bunny.  Moves Like Jagger had nothing on her.  In Dessie’s world, liposuction and silicon fixed what the Good Lord taketh away with age and when the gray hair moved south, she went Brazilian—a waxing luxury that Rocky herself, upon coercion, found she enjoyed.
    Wearing a hard hat on the job all day made her enjoy the sleek, cultured feel of being smooth and sexy all over.  Maybe more than she should.
    The best two moves of her life had been her divorce and moving in next door to Dessie and Pebbles.  Well, Pebbles was still kind of up in the air.  The monster dog was delusional.  Thought she was a lap dog and did her best to crawl one paw into any available lap.  Rocky did a lot of standing when Pebbles was afoot.  Reaching down, she nabbed one of Pebbles balls left from her last visit and tossed it down the stairs.  Pebbles took off in a house-shaking rush after the ball that would likely bounce down all three flights and take her a good five minutes to find.
    With Pebbles out of the way, Rocky took the mug of hot tea Dessie held out and inhaled the cinnamon and spice before sipping.  “The best.”
    “Nope only second best.  Orgasm is the best.  So when are you going to ditch your ivory tower and let your hair down, girl.  All this Zen meditating in the nude and Fung Shu-”
    “Feng Shui,” Rocky said.
    “Whatever all this is,” Dessie waved at the rooftop garden.  “It don’t make up for having a man while you’re young enough to enjoy him.  As I see it, you’ve let your ex steal three years of great sex from you.  Maybe even more than that since it must not have been all that great with him or you’d be itching for a good fix by now.”
    “It’s not like there hasn’t been anything else going on.”
    “Sorry, luv.  I’m not discounting your father’s illness, but you were in this state before his stroke.  It’s been a month now and who knows how long it will be before he recovers.”
    If he recovers .  Rocky mentally said what she knew Dessie was too kind to say.  After skipping a beat Dessie continued.  “You need to get out and meet people.  You need a man.”    
    A large splash from below alerted them both that Pebbles had found the pool and would return soaking wet.   
    Rocky rolled her eyes and drank more tea.