With Extreme Pleasure Read Free Page A

in a rent-controlled building, get paid way more than I do, or are sleeping with Donald Trump.”
    He’d looked at real estate while he was here. He didn’t know why. Maybe the temptation of having Simon and Micky living just down the road instead of thousands of miles away had been too much to resist.
    He’d resisted once he’d realized he could run a small fleet of shrimp boats for the price of two thousand square feet ten flights up.
    He checked his mirrors again, changed lanes, watched a car behind him crunch bumpers with the delivery van, and found himself grinning ear to ear. A grin that faded when he remembered Cady. “You said you got out what you could before your roommates came home. Does that mean you left a lot of stuff behind?”
    “Not a lot, no. My bed and dresser, which I’m sure they’ll give away when they realize I’m gone. Same with the clothes I didn’t have room for.”
    “You’ve got room now,” he said, gesturing with a tilt of his head toward the Hummer’s backseat and wondering when he’d become a good Samaritan.
    She looked over her shoulder in the same direction, then turned to stare straight ahead once again. “The furniture’s secondhand and not worth worrying about. There are some outfits I’d like to get, but I can live without them. Vintage stuff I found in resale shops.
    “Oh, and my shoes,” she hurried to add as if suddenly realizing her good fortune. “I’ve got a lot of shoes. Mostly, though, I could use more clothes than I had time to grab. I was in a hurry this morning, and not thinking too clearly after the emergency room.”
    King’s stomach tightened around the drill bit churning there. “Who sent you to the emergency room? One of the girls? These wonderful roommates?”
    “I never said they were wonderful,” she reminded him, then stopped talking, making King wonder if that was all or if she was going to say more.
    Finally, she moved her backpack to the floor and pulled a knee up into her seat, turning to face him. “Does the offer of your backseat come with a list of conditions?”
    He supposed it should, but…“No.”
    “So I don’t have to tell you what happened?”
    To her face? Or to her spirit? Because this girl…? She was not the same Cady Kowalski who’d had her hands all over his hair, whose breasts he’d mentally felt up when she’d leaned over him to spritz and spray.
    Yeah, he wanted to know what happened. And the Kingdom Trahan who’d spent his first four adult years at the farm in Angola, Louisiana’s State Penitentiary, would’ve said, “Damn straight.”
    But those days were long gone, and he was no longer that man. Hell, he was a different man today than he’d been just last year when his cousin had walked back onto Le Hasard after half of their lifetimes apart.
    And so what he said was, “You only have to tell me what you want me to know. And how to get to your place. I don’t know which way is up around here.”
    She gave him directions as he drove, taking him into a part of the city he hadn’t yet seen during his trip. He wasn’t sure where he was, upper or lower or east or west, but he did know that whatever Cady’s split of the rent—
    It was too much. The place was a dump.
    “I’m on the fourth floor,” she told him as he pulled up in front of the building sandwiched in the middle of a block of similar ones. “I know it looks like crap, but the apartment itself is nice.”
    “I won’t be taking your word for that,” he said, shoving open his door and circling the front of the vehicle to her side. When it became clear she was making no move to follow, he opened her door and offered her a hand. “I don’t know vintage from Velcro. You have to come in.”

Four
    C ady didn’t seem the least bit interested in coming in, a situation that would’ve been more hassle than King was willing to deal with had she not decided instead to talk.
    “It wasn’t one of the girls,” she told him. “Not all of it