Free Sweet but Sexy Boxed Set by Jan Scarbrough, Maddie James, Magdalena Scott, Amie Denman, Jennifer Anderson, Constance Phillips, Jennifer Johnson

left the room.
    Alone, Jackie relaxed against the back of the couch and rested her head. She closed her eyes and took several deep steadying breaths. Glad to have a minute alone, but she also missed the warmth of Mitchell ’s leg against hers.
    “ Jackie?”
    A quiet woman ’s voice. She took a second to place it. Marybess. Jimmy had introduced her a little while ago. Marybess looked like a neater version of Key West style than Jimmy. Long black hair and dark olive skin. Tiny and so petite Jackie suspected her Hermanos t-shirt was actually a child’s size from their gift shop.
    Marybess stood next to Jackie with a questioning look.
    “I brought you some band aids for your knee and elbow,” she said.
    Jackie sat up a little straighter. “Thanks.”
    “ I’ll do your elbow, you can do your knee.”
    “ Sounds good. Do you have to do this a lot? I mean, I’m not the first person to crash during the test, am I?
    Marybess smiled. “There have been some minor scrapes, but yours took the cake.”
    “ I was afraid of that.”
    “ I thought Mitchell was going to have a heart attack. I saw his face when you crashed into the wall.”
    “ I almost hit him.”
    “ Yep, but it wasn’t that. I think he was afraid he’d lost you.”
    Jackie laughed nervously. “Well, he hardly even has me. We just met last night.”
    “ Seriously?”
    Jackie nodded.
    “If you say so, but I’ll tell you, I’ve known him for several years now, and this is the only time I’ve actually thought he looked happy to be alive.”
    “ Really,” said Jackie. Interesting. A glimpse into the mind of Mitchell Ames.
    “ Jimmy says he looks almost like he used to look, before—
    “ Feeling better?” Mitchell asked. He filled the door frame. Jackie wondered how long he had stood there before he spoke up. She tried to decide if he did look happy to be alive. He sure seemed quite alive last night. And happy? She’d have to know him better to know.
    “ Much better,” she said.
    “ I called for a rental car,” he said. “We have about a half hour before it gets here.”
    “ You should come see the animals while you wait,” Marybess suggested.
    “ Animals?”
    “ We run a rescue shelter in each of the moped rental stores. This one is full right now.”
    Jackie looked at Mitchell to gauge his reaction to the idea of a shelter tour. He shrugged.
    “If you want to,” he said.
    “ Sure.”
    ****
    Jimmy glowed with delight and enthusiasm for his animal rescue operation. He led them into the fourth part of the building. Sparkling clean kennels and cages lined the walls. Behind the building there were larger fenced in areas and grassy places for dogs to play.
    “ Right now we have a couple of chickens, some real oddball animals that we don’t know what to do with, about 40 cats, and six dogs. Not counting Roscoe, he’s ours.”
    “ How did you acquire Roscoe?” Jackie asked.
    “ Mitchell brought him in. It was a couple of years ago when he spent all his weekends down here trying to get an attitude transplant.”
    “ Thanks a lot, Jimmy,” Mitchell said.
    “ Just sayin’ you needed to relax like everybody else does. And there’s no place better for some serious chill time than the Keys. Anyway, Mitch found Roscoe along highway A1A. Made a hell of a mess in his Jaguar.”
    “ I always hated that car anyway,” Mitchell said. “I was generous enough to give the beast to my brother as a sign of my family affection.”
    “ The dog or the jaguar?” Jackie asked.
    “ Dog.”
    “ Very noble,” Jackie said with a grin and then turned back to Jimmy. “What do you do with them all?”
    “ Hope we find them a home and take care of them until we do. Sometimes it takes a while.”
    Jimmy approached a row of cages set farther away from the others. Jackie followed him and then took a step back.
    “These are some of our resident oddballs. One parrot, an iguana, one tragically ugly snake, and two ferrets,” Jimmy explained. “We had a