Page 4 of Well Aware

One day, I’d slide a knife between his ribs and smile as I watched the life bleed out of him.

ONE

Libraries were a good start, but we need more places where people can’t talk.

—Magnolia’s secret thoughts

MAGNOLIA

“How do you go about getting away with murder?”

“I think you should probably refrain from that,” a sexy, amused voice said from behind me.

I turned slowly, a little bit wobbly on my feet due to the workout I’d just punished myself with, and said, “And how would you know?”

The man, tall and burly, crossed his arms over his chest.

I admired the way his biceps flexed inside his red and white flannel shirt.

This guy was big, sure. But not too big. Tall, around six-foot-three in height, he had golden-brown hair, somewhere in between dirty blonde and brown. He had a reddish-brown beard covering the lower half of his face, and it looked like it needed to be trimmed weeks ago.

He also had really hairy forearms, which I found incredibly attractive.

I didn’t know what it was about hairy men that did it for me, but this man? He was my dream man.

He was the type of man I always wanted authors to describe their lead heroes as in my favorite romance novels.

They were always too well-kempt.

Just a little too “pretty” in my opinion.

Give me a big, hairy guy any day.

“Because I’m good friends with a couple of cops.” He jerked his chin toward two men who were, indeed, dressed in sheriff’s department uniforms.

They were also riding motorcycles and drinking beer.

Was that even allowed?

Speaking of motorcycles, the man who’d been talking to me for the last thirty seconds picked up a leather vest from his own motorcycle and threw it over his shoulders, threading those sexy arms into the holes.

My eyes settled on the vest—or cut, I guess you could call it thanks to watching seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy—and glazed over. He really knew how to fill out leather.

The name on the man’s “cut” read “Beau.”

I wondered if Beau was short for anything, or if it was just that simple.

Probably that simple.

This man looked like a Beau.

“Are you sure?” I asked as I kicked a tire. “Because, and I’m being really nice here, this man just put these tires on. I drove like half a mile down the road, and now my car is fucked up.”

Thank God I’d left Iris with my best friend while I’d come to meet with a prospective new team owner who would pay me enough money for the season to buy a new place far, far away from Tennessee.

Merrill, my best friend, had decided to come with me.

She’d, thankfully, decided to stay home with Iris while I ran into town and got my tires rotated.