Tracie Dumas, Bounty Hunter: One Strange Week (ePub)

Johnny's mother is sick and I'm taking care of our bar. It doesn't help that a hot woman is angling to buy me out. Even worse, I think Johnny might like that idea. To make things worse, I'm missing out on a bounty to catch some guy knocking off check cashing places. There is no way I can break loose to bring him in. The hunk who delivers booze is the only real bright spot in my life.

~~~~~ PG Excerpt ~~~~~

Johnny stretched languidly, his naked body moving against mine as we lay in his bed. The morning sun had just begun lighting the room, coming in behind him, silhouetting his wonderful, muscular body. It was warm, we were both naked, and I ran my eyes over his body and had good thoughts.

"How's your work doing?" he asked. "Is the bounty-hunting season in high pitch? It doesn't seem like you've been traveling much lately."

Johnny is not usually subtle, and I wondered where this was going. He didn't really pay much attention to what I did for a living. "Why? You sound like you have something in mind?"

"I do. But it will take several days." 

Okay, Johnny has real stamina, but even he didn't think of playing mattress polo over that long a period. He liked his games as much as I did, but they didn't normally involve advanced planning. As it happened, I wasn't getting any work at all. I was intending to go to the office that morning and see what I could scrounge up. "Several days?"

"Of your time. See, I was hoping I could convince you to take a break from your work and watch the bar for a week. I mean, you are a half owner, so you have a vested interest."

Seeing that the several days clearly wouldn't be spent with him, my interest took a dive. "While you do what?" 

"Go see my mother. You know she's been sick, and now they want to operate and remove a tumor. She called me last night in a panic. The idea of them cutting into her scares the shit out of her. They want to do a biopsy, which isn't bad, but if they find it's malignant they'll want to get it all out right away. She needs me to go hold her hand and be there to help her make decisions."

"What about Alice?"

He grunted. "Still in Paris. And it's your fault." He grinned teasingly. Actually, I had made it possible for Alice to be in Paris. I'd bought out her interest in the family bar downstairs, knowing she wanted the money to move there. "She and her girlfriend just bought a place and they're in the middle of all the paperwork and then they have to move in right away because the lease on the place they've been living is up. Perfect timing and all that."

I touched his hard chest, ran a finger over his chest and sighed. Family problems are a bitch. It's hard being an outsider because even if you know a person you can't really see how they view their responsibilities. In my case it was easy. My responsibility to my parents was to stay the hell away from them. They were staunch conservatives and very religious. That I had squandered my life by becoming a bounty hunter had been an unforgivable sin against my abilities and their sensibilities. That I was a slut was expected. 

Long ago I'd come to understand that we didn't see life as even the same kind of experience. I wanted to live it and they wanted I'm not sure what they wanted other than to make their Bible-pounding friends approve of them. That meant that they did what was written rather than what they wanted.