Money Shot Read Online Free Page B

Lila pushed through the swinging door from the kitchen. Goose yanked free of his touch like he was on fire.
    “Rush? Before you go?”
    Right. Lila had wanted to talk to him about something. Which was why he was here in the first place.
    “Sure.” He turned to Goose. “Mishkwa Island Outfitters is right next door,” he said. “Ben Barnes is the owner. Tell him I said you needed gearing out. I’ll be over in a few.”
    “It was lovely meeting you, Lila,” Goose said with a bright smile. “And you, Yarrow.”
    “You, too, dear,” Lila said, returning the smile with a beatific one of her own. Yarrow grunted. Then Goose shot out the door with a haste that bordered on insulting, all expensive fabric and exotic perfume. Lila turned speculative eyes on Rush. “So . . . she seems nice.”
    “For a woman who thinks I may be gearing up to assassinate the governor.”
    Lila gave this an airy pass. “You walk around all day armed to the teeth,” she said. “What did you expect?”
    Rush didn’t really feel like getting into the Radical Agrarian thing, so he just said, “You needed something?”
    Lila sighed. “Oh, it’s nothing, but I thought you should hear it from me. It seems my dear neighbor Mr. Barnes has his shorts in a knot over the compost again.”
    Rush glanced automatically toward Ben’s place next door. Midsixties with the build and endurance of a guy thirty years younger, Ben ran an outfitter in the summers and built birch-bark canoes by hand in the winters. A pretty straightforward guy for the most part, but not overly patient with Lila’s kookier endeavors. Probably didn’t help neighborly relations at all that Lila had the kooky market pretty well cornered.
    “Ben doesn’t like your compost?”
    “Evidently not.”
    “He thinks it’s attracting Sir Humpalot,” Yarrow said from the register.
    “Sir Humpalot?”
    She arched the brow without the ring. “Sure. Seven, maybe eight feet tall? Long brown beard, big rack?” She put her free hand to her head, thumb against her scalp, fingers fanned out, miming antlers. “Unsuccessfully humping the Dumpsters since September?”
    Rush blinked at her. The kid had nicknamed a rogue bull moose with sexual identity issues Sir Humpalot.
    He frowned down at Lila. “This kid needs to go back to normal school.”
    “Normal school. Pah.” Lila fluttered her fingers in the air. “She joined your little ski team, didn’t she? That’s plenty of interaction with her peers.”
    “More than,” Yarrow muttered. Rush felt for her. Yarrow, like Rush, had fallen prey to Lila’s belief that good health required regular human interaction. The end result was poor Yarrow sweating it out with the high school cross-country ski team that Rush—Jesus help him—was now coaching.
    “If you want to talk about people who ought to reengage with their peer group, however—” Lila began.
    “I don’t.”
    “Hey, that’s true.” Yarrow sat up, her eyes dancing with wicked glee. “Sir Humpalot gets more action than you.”
    Rush experienced a pang of nostalgia for the good old days when nobody dared screw with him. “I don’t date Dumpsters.”
    “You don’t date anybody,” Lila said.
    “Nobody to date. It’s December, in case you hadn’t noticed. Single women aren’t exactly thick on the ground this time of year.” He held up a hand before Lila could mention Goose. “Single women who aren’t trying to arrest me, anyway.”
    “You didn’t date when it was July and the pretty hikers were all faking sunstroke and sprained ankles to get your attention,” Yarrow pointed out helpfully.
    “You didn’t get here till September, cuz,” Rush said.
    “Doesn’t mean I don’t hear things.” Yarrow lifted her thin shoulders. “People talk.”
    “About stuff that’s none of their damn business.” Rush turned to Lila, who was peering at him with a disconcerting intensity in those bird-bright eyes. He snapped his mouth shut. His misanthropy was showing, damn