Wild Thing (The Magic Jukebox Book 3) Read Free Page B

battery acid
before laying down the track. The simple lyrics emerged in a harsh growl: “Wild
thing…you make my heart sing…” The singer went on to growl that some woman made
everything groovy.
    Groovy?
Ty started to laugh—and then he stopped. The woman in the booth, the one with
the black hair and the teary eyes and the solicitous friend, was staring at
him. Staring hard.
    And
damn, if he couldn’t keep from staring right back at her.
     
     

Chapter Two
     
    Who
was he?
    Monica
knew pretty much everyone who was anyone in Brogan’s Point. She might have attended
a big-city university, lived in Boston, learned how to navigate Beantown’s mass
transit system, and mastered the art of marching down a busy street looking
straight ahead, avoiding eye contact, aloof to the hubbub around her. But in
her chest beat the heart of a small-town girl. A girl who, until yesterday
evening, had dated the guy who’d been her escort to the high school junior
prom. A girl who was being groomed to take over the family business—a landmark
inn in town. A girl who behaved herself, who did what was expected of her, who
was respected and admired. Who was predictable.
    A
girl who could not, by any stretch of the imagination, be described as a wild
thing.
    The
man staring at her from his perch on a bar stool across the pub definitely
looked like a wild thing. He was tall, his knit Henley shirt snug enough to
hint at his broad shoulders and muscular torso. His hair was a long, windblown
mess of dark blond streaked with the sort of glittering platinum highlights
only the sun could create. His stubble of beard was a shade darker than his
hair. His blue jeans were faded nearly to white and were torn across one knee.
His eyes were almost as pale as his jeans.
    He
was the sexiest man she had ever seen.
    One
minute she was whimpering and sniffling over Jimmy, and the next she was
thinking she wanted to jump a total stranger’s bones. Which was completely not
like her.
    But
for some reason, as she gazed at that tall, blond stranger at the bar, the
drone of voices and clink of glasses and shuffle of footsteps faded to nothing.
Emma could have been a million miles away. Everything in the room blurred into
shadow except for the man at the bar and the song blaring from the jukebox.
“You mooooove me…” the singer howled.
    Monica
felt wild.
    She
flinched, trying to shake off the song the way a dog might shake water off its
fur. She didn’t really believe that nonsense about the jukebox’s magic. She
knew about it, she laughed about it, she humored Emma, who swore the jukebox
had brought her and Max together and made them fall in love. But Monica didn’t
actually think an old Wurlitzer could cast a spell on people. Certainly not
with an insipid song like this one.
    Monica
was sensible. Not susceptible to magic spells.
    Just
to be safe, though, she slid out of the booth and bolted for the door.
    She’d
barely caught her breath when Emma joined her on the sidewalk outside the
tavern. “Monica, what’s wrong?”
    “Nothing.”
Monica was too embarrassed to admit that a silly old rock song had spooked her.
    “We
can’t just leave. We didn’t pay for our wine.”
    “That’s
all right. Gus knows me. She knows I’m good for it.”
    “No—I
mean, I can pay for the drinks,” Emma assured Monica. “But I don’t want to go
back inside without you. You’re freaking me out.”
    “I’m
fine,” Monica lied. “Just…you know. The whole Jimmy thing. I’m a little weirded
out.”
    “Five
minutes ago, you were sobbing about that son of a bitch,” Emma reminded her. “I
don’t want to leave you alone.”
    “No.
It’s okay. I’m okay.” Monica let out a long, steadying breath. The song had
probably finished playing; she could go back inside. Except that if she did,
she would see that guy at the bar again, tall and ripped, with his mesmerizing
eyes and his bemused smile. He’d stared at her. He’d witnessed her becoming transfixed
by