Jake Read Online Free

in a hurry?”
                  “I have to be at work at seven.”
                  “What do you do?”
                  “I’m a respiratory therapist,” she told him. “I have a lot of patients relying on me.”
                  He nodded. “So I’ll have you there by seven,” he promised. “It’ll be slow-going, though. Towing your car means fifty miles per hour and we’ll have to hook up with the Fifteen Freeway at the next interchange—all this bumping and grinding won’t be good for our connection.”
                  “Do you always talk in double-entendres?”
                  “You started it,” he reminded her. He lay down on the pavement and got to work under
    her car, securing the grappling-type hooks to the frame.  When he surfaced she was standing over him.
    “Thank you, for the tow and the ride. But isn’t San Diego a little out of your way?”
                  “I live in San Diego.”
                  “But you were headed east,” she pointed out.
                  He shrugged. “A detour.” And remarkably more appealing than four days in Vegas.
                  “It’s a little more than that.”
                  “I wasn’t looking forward to Vegas,” he admitted. He stood and didn’t mind at all that he was in her personal space. This close, his skin flushed with heat. His heartbeat kicked into staccato. He watched her lips part a little breathlessly before she spoke.
                  “Why not?” Her voice was heavy with skepticism. “Isn’t that every soldier’s hot spot?”
                  “There you go again,” he said. “Talking like that.”
                  He laughed when her cheeks filled with color.
                  “I just meant in terms of destination.”
    She tried to look down her nose at him, but he was a good six inches taller than her.
                  “Exactly.” But he let her off the hook. “My ‘hot spot’ is the complete opposite of Vegas and other similar places. I don’t take a lot of time off, but when I do I prefer to spend it away from civilization.”
                  “So why Vegas?”
                  “It was an order,” he admitted reluctantly. He stepped back, leaned against the roof of her car, and watched her face adjust to that news. Surprise made her wide lips open and pause on the edge of laughter.
                  “You were ordered to go to Vegas?”
                  “Exactly. Four days of R and R.”
                  The laughter came then, full and throaty and Jake felt that ache build again, pull along his shaft. God, she played him and she wasn’t even aware of it.
                  “You say that like it’s a prison sentence. Four days of show girls and all-you-can-eat—isn’t that a soldier’s dream come true?”
                  “Not this soldier,” he assured her.
                  “So you’re looking for an excuse to turn around?”
                  “I was told not to help little old ladies.” The General had said nothing about young, gorgeous, sin in every line of her body woman.
                  “I’m not old.”
                  “Exactly,” he agreed. “I think I might squeak through.”
                  “You’re disobeying a direct order,” Ivy said.
                  “It’s complicated.” He felt and heard the tightness in his voice. His throat ached every time he thought about Arturo, the one he lost. His first. God willing, his last.
                  “You can’t go back,” the General had reminded him. “You can’t change the outcome for
    one. You remember you made the world better for many. You remember that sometimes there are sacrifices.