Bad Girls Don't by Cathie Linz Read Free Book Online

Not that I can see a match there. I mean, I love my daughter dearly, but even I know that she reacts adversely to any kind of authority figure. She has to do things her way.”
    “Are you talking to the llamas again?” Tyler asked as he joined her near the fence. As always, he was wearing jeans, and his long gray hair was in a single braid. Since it was August, he’d traded his customary flannel shirt for an extremely faded T-shirt.
    Tyler was the man in her life. The man she’d discovered in Serenity Falls, of all places. A Rollerblading misfit who worked as a handyman but didn’t really fit within the tidy confines of a town like Serenity Falls, recently named one of the Top Ten Best Small Towns in America. Angel considered herself lucky to have found him.
    “Did you get tired of waiting in the car for me?”
    “Yeah.” He hugged her. “I missed you.”
    “Thanks for coming with me today.”
    He just smiled down at her, keeping his arms loosely looped around her waist.
    She looked at the surrounding rustic landscape. Twin silos rose from beside the barn like a pair of proud parents. In the distance, fields of grain swayed in the gentle summer breeze. The gently rolling hills gave Angel a sense of being safely nestled in Mother Earth’s embrace. “It’s beautiful out here in the country, isn’t it?”
    “Serenity Falls isn’t exactly the big city.”
    “No, but it’s not the same as living on a farm like this, where the air is fresh and clean.”
    Tyler inhaled deeply. “Ah, the smell of fresh manure. There’s nothing quite like it. Guaranteed to clear your sinuses.”
    Angel absently rubbed a spot behind Lucy’s ear. “I think the Amish have it right.”
    “So you think you might like living on a farm around here?”
    Angel nodded. “How about you?” Her attention shifted to Tyler. “Do you miss Chicago?”
    The sun went behind a cloud, shadowing Tyler’s face as he shook his head. Since she’d first met him, Tyler had always been a man of few words.
    He still didn’t talk about his past. He’d told her as little as he could. And she could understand that. At first. But they were closer now. Or at least she was closer to him. She’d fallen in love with him. Head over heels.
    He’d told her loved her. Once. Which was a big deal for a quiet guy like him.
    But she still had a hard time reading him. And she shouldn’t. They were soul mates. She should be able to know what he was thinking without him having to tell her.
    Maybe her hot flashes were blocking her usual empathy. She was also having some memory issues. Not that she’d ever had a photographic memory. She’d always thought in clusters. Or in loops, like crocheting. One thought led to another and another, until in the end she had no idea what she’d started out thinking.
    “Did you ever call Adam back?”
    Tyler’s question about Julia’s biological father caught Angel totally off guard. “Not yet.”
    “Don’t you want to know why he called you?”
    “Not particularly.”
    “Why not? You had a child with him.”
    “That he didn’t know about until a few months ago.”
    “Yeah, but he knows now.”
    “So?”
    “So . . . nothing.” Tyler’s expression closed up before he abruptly added, “He’s left his wife.”
    “What?”
    “Adam. I read in the paper that he’s left his wife. Filed for divorce. Maybe that’s why he’s calling you. Because he wants you back.”
    “I don’t care what he wants.”
    “No?”
    “No.” Angel turned to face him fully. “Where is all this coming from? Don’t you believe that I love you?”
    Instead of answering, Tyler leaned down and kissed her. It was only later that Angel realized he’d never answered her question.
     
     
    “Okay, ladies, are you ready to shake your stuff?”
    The cinder-block walls of the Rock Creek community center ricocheted the sound of belly-dancing music for Skye’s Wednesday class.
    “Wait,” Fanny Abernathy demanded. At eighty-two, she was the