Hot in Hellcat Canyon by Julie Anne Long Read Free Book Online

years ago, right before she arrived in Hellcat Canyon, she’d finally turned it into something she could live with. Something beautiful.
    She would be damned if that old part of her life would touch her here.
    “Sorry. I thought so. I just . . . I just didn’t feel free to make that decision for you. I didn’t tell her anything about you. Was it okay to tell you about this?” Her sister was clearly suffering a little over this.
    “Yeah, of course. I know you had to ask me. Don’t worry about it.”
    Her sister smiled, relieved. “I wish you would come home.”
    “Lainie, I am home.” They did this every call.
    Laine smiled as if she knew better.
    Sheez. Big sisters.
    “Come visit me, Laine. Bring Will. He’d love it. It’s all wild and foresty and he can pretend he’s Robin Hood or a grizzly bear. You’ll think it’s quaint. Mitch can go fishing or whatever.”
    Mitch was Laine’s husband. They lived in a modest but roomy ranch house in suburban Torrance, which was Laine’s idea of heaven. Being surrounded by woods full of things like cat-snatching coyotes was not.
    “When we can get away I promise we will. Hey, any men on the horizon since the . . . what was he, a cop?”
    “The sheriff.”
    “Oooooh, the sheriff . ”
    “I only went out with him that one time. It felt less like a date than an interrogation. ‘What’s your favorite vegetable?’ ‘Where did you grow up?’ Like he’d Googled how to date before he showed up. He’s hot enough but he’s a little broody.”
    “Yeah, not your type.”
    “Nope.” She didn’t say he’d probably started interrogating her because Britt hadn’t really been holding up her end of the conversation. She’d kind of forgotten how to date, too.
    “Don’t worry. You’ll get back up on that horse. There are bound to be other guys!”
    Laine was an optimist.
    A few other guys had asked Britt out, Truck Donegal included, but even Laine wouldn’t have faulted her for turning them down. And most of them were no match for her invisible force field.
    “The longer you wait though, the harder it’ll be to get up on that horse.” It wouldn’t be Laine if she didn’t feel compelled to throw in some unwanted advice.
    This wasn’t something Britt didn’t already know.
    “It’s not Noah’s Ark around here, Laine. We don’t all have to go around two by two, you know.”
    “Of course not,” Laine humored. “You’ll probably be perfectly happy never having sex again.”
    “If I never wanted to have sex again, I could just get married again and live in the burbs.”
    “Oh, BURN!” Lainie was delighted.
    Which made Britt laugh.
    “So what do you do for fun, Bippy? You used to be so good at that. Remember when we sneaked into the football stadium over the back fence, and you totally tore your new pants, and Mom threw a fit?”
    “I was just thinking about that! I was grounded for a month and I had to give up all my allowance for weeks to pay for them. Worth it, though.”
    Funny to think that she used to look at fences and the tops of cheerleading pyramids and hot guys and think, I can’t wait to conquer that! As if there had never been any question. But then, she supposed it was down to naïveté. It was easy to be fearless until you learned what real fear and real pain felt like.
    “You ever socialize with anyone out there besides Mrs. Morrison and your cat, Bip?”
    “Kinda busy. You know, with my twenty-ish jobs.”
    The real reason was that she’d feel like a liar if she dodged questions about herself, and someone was bound to ask if she got close to them. Everyone in Hellcat Canyon kind of seemed to take her, and like her, at face value. She didn’t think anyone had even noticed she might be a bit guarded.
    But sometimes feeling ashamed felt like an additional job she had to do, and took up emotional real estate she would otherwise have given over to having or being a friend. She didn’t know how to articulate this to Laine, who would