Nash Read Free

heard Nash snort as I tried to sneak by so they wouldn’t notice me or my tears. I had never cried so
    much over any other person and it made me hate him a little—or a lot—as he kept talking.
    “I mean I’m not picky, I would take her to bed. I just might need to put a bag over her head first or
    something.”
    That sent the rest of the guys rolling in laughter as the ground beneath me fell away and a sob caught in
    my throat. How could I have been so incredibly wrong about someone? Any hope, any thought that he was
    different—that any pretty boy could be different—was annihilated with those hateful, harsh words. Words
    that forever changed the way I looked at the opposite sex.
    Nash Donovan was a beautiful, wicked, and hot flame that burned me when I got too close. He was just
    the first stop in a journey dotted by disappointment, but somewhere along the way I found my footing. My
    purpose. I just didn’t know that as soon as I did, Nash would manage to turn my world upside down all
    over again, and only a fool gets burned twice by the same fire.
    CHAPTER 1
    Nash
    Thanksgiving … Eight years later
    My fully restored Dodge Charger was eating up the highway as I raced through the cold Colorado night.
    The massive engine was growling angrily in time with my thundering heart and light flurries of snow
    dotting the windshield, so I could blame the rapid blinking of my eyes on trying to see through the nasty
    road conditions and not the emotion threatening to overtake me. None of it registered, neither did the fact
    that I had to be pushing 120 and that terrified holiday traffic was undoubtedly scrambling to get out of my
    way. I was in such a fog, such a state of disbelief, that I felt numb and barely aware of what was going on
    around me. I had just found my uncle Phil, the one and only parental figure I had in my life, unconscious
    on the floor of his hunting cabin. He was cold and still. He looked like a skeleton, skin stretched over bones
    that appeared far too fragile. I was racing the “Flight for Life” the park rangers had called in to airlift him to
    the emergency room in Denver.
    Just to add to the danger of the speeds I was traveling and the way my mind was on anything but the
    road in front of me, I put in a panicked call to Cora Lewis, my coworker and close friend. She was all kinds
    of take care of business and would rally the troops and get everyone else that mattered the information they
    needed without me having to worry about it. She would help take care of me, she always did.
    I made it to the hospital in record time and surged into the emergency room on a tidal wave of anxiety
    and fear. I was more familiar with these institutional and sterile walls than I wanted to be—one of my
    closest friends, my surrogate big brother Rome Archer, had tangled with a bunch of bikers and a bunch of
    bullets not too long ago and I had spent hours upon hours nervously pacing these very halls waiting to see
    if he was going to pull through. But right now this visit felt like it might define the rest of my life. The
    security guard gave me a concerned look. I was used to it. When you had yellow, orange, and red fire
    tattooed along each side of your scalp and had ink from your collar to your wrist on each arm, people
    tended to think you weren’t really a very nice guy. Funny thing was that I was typically a lot nicer than most
    of the guys I loved like brothers, but not right now, and if the nurse who sat behind the desk didn’t tell me
    where my uncle was in the next second I was going to straight up lose my shit.
    I was just about to breathe fire way hotter than the kind inked all over me when I saw her walking
    toward me. She looked like an angel, even though her name was Saint. It fit her, Saint Ford, healer of the
    sick and hater of anything and everything having to do with Nash Donovan. She was beautiful,
    breathtaking, absolutely despised me, and made no secret about it. I had run into her more than once