Deathblow by Dana Marton Read Free Book Online Page B

lunch?”
    “PBJ!” he squealed. He wasn’t the type who had to be talked into eating. “I do it!”
    God, it was good to hear that little voice. He’d come to talking late, worrying Wendy. But once he’d started, he picked up speed and vocabulary pretty fast.
    “Okay. Let’s wash hands first.” She switched him to her hip and carried him out into the kitchen.
    Sophie’s kitchen was larger than the one at the apartment, comfortable and homey with the kind of country chic décor that fit the rest of the house perfectly. Sliding glass doors led to a deck in the back, where squirrels liked to race along the top of the fence to Justin’s delight.
    She helped him wash his chubby little hands in the sink, then collected the jars of grape jelly and peanut butter and a plastic knife so he could try spreading. “Can you hold this? You are such a big boy. Thank you for helping.”
    In the yard on the other side of the fence, four kids between the ages of five and ten poured out the back door, screaming as they ran for the swing set. She wondered if they were Terry’s.
    Was Sophie losing rental income because Wendy and Justin were here? That didn’t seem fair. Keith’s voice popped into her head, taunting her. “ Your friends pity you, for heaven’s sake.”  
    She needed to straighten things out with him. They couldn’t hide from him forever. She needed to find a solution to her problems with him, and needed to do it in a hurry. The end of April was four days away. If she could straighten out her life by then, Terry’s parents could start renting the house from the first of May.
    She got out the bread.
    “I can do it. I can do it!”
    She let Justin put two slices of bread into the toaster, then push the button down. Toast wouldn’t fall apart so easily when he went at it with the plastic knife. He always got a kick out of the bread popping up, plus Sophie had the kind of toaster that printed cartoon characters on the side.
    When the two slices sprang up, she took them over to the kitchen table and put them on Justin’s plastic plate. She was settling her son onto the chair when the doorbell rang.
    “Sounds like Aunt Sophie forgot something. Don’t make a mess.” She smacked a loud kiss on the top of her son’s head before she walked away.
    But when she opened the door, she found herself looking into Joe Kessler’s turbulent gaze.
    When she’d first met him, he’d been all boyish charm mixed with pure masculine charisma, as close to physical perfection as any of the models she’d worked with. In his crisp uniform, he’d looked more like a stripper cop heading to a bachelorette party than a real police officer. Then that second time at that charity ball, in a sharp tux….
    Now his dark hair fell in disheveled locks across his forehead, several inches past regulation length. He wore faded blue jeans and a white T-shirt, both wrinkled, as if they’d spent some time sitting in his dryer. The sexy smile was gone from his chiseled lips. An angry, red wound stretched across his left cheek, the stitches still in.
    His entire energy and aura were completely different. He had a hard edge to him today that made him look a couple of years older.
    If it weren’t for the eyes, she might not have recognized him so fast. He had eyes the color of strong, black English tea. Those eyes had gotten her in trouble in the first place, and the way he’d smiled at her when he’d offered her that ride home from the fund-raiser at the Ritz. When he smiled, a cocky glint would come into his dark eyes that could make a girl’s breath hitch.
    He wasn’t smiling now. Annoyance glinted in his eyes, everything about him somber.
    She was so stunned by the change in him that she stepped back to let him in without arguing the need for his presence. She stared at his scar. “What happened?”
    “Captain said you need help.” He strode in, carrying a dark blue gym bag.
    She had a bad feeling about that. “It’s really nothing.