Come Morning by Pat Warren Read Free Book Online

interfering with his work.
    He supposed he deserved her mistrust, Slade thought as he picked up his glass. After all, she had run across him passed out at midday. “This is straight orange juice. I stopped drinking.”
    She raised a questioning brow. “Really? Just like that?”
    Shuffling his bare feet, Slade ran a hand along the back of his neck, unused to having to explain himself. Damned if he knew why he was bothering now. “Yeah. I started just like that and now I quit just like that.”
    Skeptical, she looked away without commenting.
    She didn’t believe him, he could tell. Why in hell was he trying to make her see, to understand? Was it the alcohol still lingering in his system? And how could he explain something he didn’t fully understand himself? “Look, I wasn’t just drinking yesterday to be drinking.”
    Briana had gone back to her scraping, wielding the hand tool quite well for a novice. She turned back, waiting.
    Again, he was reminded of her uncanny resemblance to Rachel, the way she held her head, the unspoken question in her brown eyes. He rubbed the back of his neck, inexplicably wanting her to see—wanting just one person—to know what drove him. “Maybe you don’t know what it’s like to want more than anything in the world to forget something for just a little while.”
    Briana’s face changed, closing down. “Yes, I do.” Did he think he was the only one who needed to forget something hurtful in his past? “But I don’t happen to think alcohol’s the answer to pain.”
    Slade’s mouth became a thin, angry line. “Well, bully for you. And exactly who appointed you judge and jury for the rest of us imperfect souls?” Tossing the melted cubes and juice on the ground, he marched to his porch and disappeared inside.
    Lowering her head, Briana let out a long breath along with her misplaced anger. He was right. She had no business judging him. He wasn’t the one she was angry with, either.
    It was the fates. Or maybe God himself for taking her child and leaving her so very empty.
    Knowing she could get no more done today, Briana left the ladder where it was and went inside.

Chapter Three
    I t took Slade a full two minutes of steadily staring inside his refrigerator at the cans of beer to realize he didn’t want one. Like Pavlov’s trained dog, he’d stormed inside and yanked open the door, intending to show that sanctimonious broad next door that she was right as rain. Yes, sir, she’d called it. He’d get roaring drunk and march over there and pass out on her lawn for good measure. If you had the name, you might as well have the game.
    Instead, he slowly closed the refrigerator door, disgusted with himself and his juvenile overreaction. What the hell was happening to him lately?
    He’d been acting out of character ever since he’d stepped off the plane in Nantucket, defensive and moody, drinking to forget his problems, something he’d never done before. He’d been made uneasy by Jeremy’s neighbors, their looks of curiosity and interest as he’d walked through town and shopped in the market annoying him. Who’s this newcomer who claimed to be the son of the
late
, great Jeremy C. Slade? they seemed to ask. A private man, he felt he owed them no explanation. Nor did he have one to give.
    In direct contrast, he’d heard the awed respect in their voices at the funeral home when they’d filed past his father’s closed casket. What had Jeremy done to earn such esteem? Had the looks they’d given him, the ones that seemed to say loud and clear that the son would have a long way to go to measure up to the father, been only in his imagination?
    Thrusting his hands into the pockets of his shorts, Slade walked into the large living room with its wall of windows that looked out on the sea opposite the floor-to-ceiling fieldstone fireplace. He strolled over to the raised brick hearth and stared up at a painting he’d never seen until the day he’d arrived on the island.
    A