Read Fool's Gold (A sexy funny mystery/romance, Cottonmouth Book 2) for Free Online

about it for long moments before
answering. “You’ll have to ask Carl about that.” She bit down on
the inside of her cheek. “But I wouldn’t have an affair with a
friend’s husband.” She pursed her lips. “Not that I’d have an
affair with anyone’s husband. But especially not a friend’s.” She
heaved a sigh. “What I mean is—”
    Her flustered explanation made him feel like
shit. He held up a hand. “I think I get it. Thanks. Gotta run.”
    After enjoying her enchanting banter, then
insulting her nine ways to Sunday, he couldn’t get out of there
fast enough. Guilty conscience, pure and simple. He turned on his
heel, crossed to his truck, and left her standing alone in The
Stockyard parking lot.
    His problem, however, still remained. He’d
asked. She’d denied. But could he believe her?
     
    * * * * *
     
    “Strange guy,” Simone muttered as she watched
Brax pull out onto the highway and head for Goldstone.
    She could have told him the email was a
fantasy Carl had wanted her to write for Maggie. Something to
rekindle the fire they’d lost. She never should have mentioned the
email in front of Brax. A person didn’t tell another’s secrets, not
even in defense of their own character.
    She groaned aloud. Okay, so she’d voraciously
listened to Maggie reveal all Brax’s secrets, right down to the
fact that his marriage had gone bust because he’d worked too many
long, hard hours, and that he hadn’t dated much since the divorce.
There was also that little thing about the wife having gotten
hitched to him on the rebound from a love affair gone bad. She really shouldn’t have listened quite so carefully to that
part. But listening to secrets wasn’t the same as revealing them.
Was it?
    She tabled that thought for later in favor of
musing on the man himself.
    You could judge the mettle of a man by who he
identified with in The Wizard of Oz . It was a rule. “The tin
man without a heart,” she whispered. Hmm. It didn’t fit. She was
sure concern for Maggie had forced Brax to ask that silly question
about Carl. Which definitely indicated the existence of a heart. He
also phoned his mother once a week.
    It was probably a good thing he hadn’t taken
her up on watching the movie together. She was starting to like
Brax a little too much.
     
     

Chapter Three
     
     
    Half an hour later, Brax was still asking
himself the same question. Did he believe Simone when she said she
wasn’t having an affair with Carl?
    The bulk of Brax’s job was asking questions,
probing the intimate details of people’s lives to ferret out the
truth, badgering them until they revealed what he wanted to
know.
    Simone wasn’t the usual suspect. She’d
committed no crime, staged no robbery, executed no property damage.
She hadn’t even run a stop sign or driven over the speed limit. He
felt like a puppy kicker. She was a jet engine gone mad, and she’d
sucked him in completely. And that was a compliment, in every
way.
    But did he believe her? Dammit, he wanted to.
He wanted to be sucked in. So to speak. Which was the problem. He’d
never let lust override intellect or suspicion. But this time, mere
lust wasn’t the only thing attracting him like the proverbial moth
to the flame.
    She was different. She was dazzling. Damn, he
could imagine her in the middle of a heated argument, shaking her
finger at him and muttering at him between clenched teeth, Don’t
make me bring out the flying monkeys. Jesus, wasn’t that the
most frightening fantasy any self-respecting man could ever have?
She definitely made him hot—really hot—thinking of how he’d take
control of that finger pointed smack-dab at his chest, nibble it a
little, lick it, follow the finger bone connected to the hand bone
and the hand bone connected to the... Dammit.
    He had to be vigilant around Simone Chandler.
The woman muddied his brain and made him think with his
tallywhacker. She made him put aside morose thoughts and actually
laugh. She made him