Iron Angel Read Free Page A

“But his woman is better at the game. She was playing me and is evidently grooming a different man for the Presidency and for her bed. That’s them bouncing around upstairs sealing the deal.” Aimee looked slightly confused. “You can hear them from the alley, especially if you’re right at the foot of the stairs to her apartment.”
     
    “So what are you planning to do now?” she asked.
     
    “Stay alive,” he answered with a laugh. The expression on his face and the hollowness of his laugh indicated that he was not joking.
     
    Then his face brightened as he raised his glass toward Aimee and said, “And try to get in bed with the most gorgeous woman I have ever seen.”
     
    “Still honest?” she asked.
     
    “Damn straight,” he replied. “Now I’m asking. What brings you back to Iron Creek? I can tell you aren’t part of the club, even if your parents were life-long members.”
     
    “Maybe it’s because they weren’t my parents,” she answered. “I always thought they were. I always thought they loved me. Then last week, I heard my father’s will.”
     
    “Yeah,” Maddox replied. “I heard that Jake finally drank himself to death a few months back.”
     
    “Very honest,” she said. Her voice had gone cool and all expression had left her face. “Unlike my mother and father who very carefully wrote in their will, ‘We acknowledge our love for our adopted daughter, Aimee, and declare her to be a full and complete heir and equal to our true child, James, for the purposes of this will.’”
     
    “Ouch!” said Maddox. “And that was the first time you knew that you were adopted?”
     
    “And the first time that I knew that I was equal to their ‘true child’... but only for the purposes of the will.”
     
    “That sucks,” he said.
     
    “Being adopted isn’t the problem,” she continued. “A lot of people are adopted and loved very much by their adoptive families. The problem is that I was lied to... and not just about the adoption. Mom lied to me about her cancer. Dad lied to me about his drinking. James lied to me about everything. Everything that anyone has ever told me my whole life was a lie.”
     
    She took a long, slow sip of her whiskey and coke and then said emphatically, “But no more. From now on, everyone tells me the truth or they’re out of my life.”
     
    “You’re beautiful,” Maddox said softly. Then he added, “Truth.”
     
    ***
     
    They stopped by the motel only long enough to pick up her suitcase. She held it between them as they rode to his apartment on the edge of town. She could come back to the bar for her car later.
     
    Aimee wasn’t sure why she insisted that they pick up her belongings. Maybe it was part of her requirement for honesty. If she was going to give herself totally to Maddox, then that should be totally, not just for a few hours. Total giving would include living together. Anything less wasn’t honest.
     
    Maddox’s apartment was a typical single male’s place. It was somewhat clean and things were more or less picked up from here and there. He hadn’t been expecting to bring anyone home. “Would you rather make love in the living room on the couch or in the bedroom on the bed?” he asked as he carried her suitcase inside.
     
    She looked at him somewhat coldly, and he added, “Just trying to tell the truth.”
     
    “Then tell the truth,” she snapped back. “We aren’t here to make love. We’re here to fuck. Love has nothing to do with it.”
     
    “I wouldn’t be totally sure of that,” he replied.
     
    Her response was to grab him around the chest and pull herself into him. Her lips crashed against his. Their tongues probed each other’s mouths as her hands tugged at his shirt, pulling it free of his jeans so she could reach underneath it and slide her hands up and down his muscular back.
     
    He reached over her back and began lifting her blouse. “Slow down, cowboy,” she said brusquely. “A girl prefers