Carnal Christmas-epub by Robin L. Rotham Read Free Book Online

uncomfortable meals over the course of his mother’s many marriages. Tension practically crystallized the air around them, making every move, every breath, seem hazardous.
    These were the four people he usually felt most comfortable with, the ones he could say anything to. Now they all seemed to be watching each other, waiting for someone else to shatter the fragile silence and start the conversation no one wanted to have but everyone knew had to take place.
    Well, everyone except Joe—he just kept his head down, eating as if he were alone at the table and liked it that way. As far as Brent knew, he hadn’t said a word since Hake made his game-changing announcement in the living room a couple of hours earlier. He’d just gotten up from the couch and left the room, and a few minute later, Brent could hear the clink of weights being swung in the basement. At least he hadn’t left the house. Yet.
    When they were alone, he’d had a long conversation with Hake and they’d agreed Joe was the variable that could either bring this whole situation together or blow it completely apart. They’d also agreed he was likely to run because he knew it all hinged on him and he wouldn’t want that responsibility. He’d feel compelled to ride off into the sunset so that Brent and AJ could get married and raise the baby like a normal couple if they wanted to. Even if the baby was his. Maybe especially if the baby was his. Travis’s death had seriously compromised Joe’s faith in a lot of things, including his own parenting skills.
    Brent frowned as he dipped his cornbread in his soup and took a bite. If one of them was going to be deficient in the parenting skills department, it was him. Joe, at least, had been raised by a decent father—a county sheriff, of all things—and by Joe’s own admission, Travis had been a great kid. That didn’t happen without great parenting. Meanwhile, Brent and his three brothers had had four different fathers they’d hardly ever seen. The only reason they were all named Andersen was because their mother had reverted to her maiden name after every divorce and changed any new child’s name right along with hers just to cut down on confusion.
    How she and Hake’s mother could have been identical twins was beyond him. Aunt Cora had been a salt-of-the-earth farmer’s wife who baked her own bread, hung the wash out on the line even though she had a new dryer, and made Hake and his dad spiff up and go to church with her every week without fail. Brent’s mother Carleen, on the other hand, had been dying to shake the dust of their parents’ farm off her shoes and married the first guy who came along—and the second, and the third, and the fourth, and who knew how many more. It had been enough to sour Brent on the whole idea of marriage and children.
    Until he met Ariel and Joe.
    “Anybody else want more?” Hake asked as he stood up from his chair, bowl in hand. It was interesting how they’d all settled into the seating arrangement they usually used at the Stivers’ table—the implications of giving up his customary place at the head of the table hadn’t even crossed Brent’s mind when he sat beside Mandy.
    He shook his head. “I think this’ll do it for me.”
    “Everything is delicious, Ariel,” Mandy said as Hake went into the kitchen, smiling valiantly even though she was still pale and a little puffy around the eyes. The sight squeezed Brent’s heart like a vise, one-eighty that it was from the glowing excitement she’d worn when they arrived. He wanted to put his arm around her shoulders in sympathy, but Ariel was across the table by Joe, looking every bit as strained, and he didn’t want to comfort one if he couldn’t comfort both.
    Ariel’s return smile was genuine but subdued. “Thank you. They’re my mother’s recipes.”
    “She must have been an excellent cook.”
    “She was.”
    And that was the end of that conversational gambit.
    Brent fought back a frustrated sigh.