June by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore Read Free Book Online

wouldn’t she just agree? “Cassie, please consider how many resources Tate is willing to devote to this cause.” He leaned forward as if offering a helpful tip. “Ask yourself if you’re financially prepared if and when she goes after you.”
    “Goes after me?” Cassie was seeing red.
    Nick scrabbled together his things and stood, knee jolting the snack tray and nearly sending the remaining nibbles flying. He swallowed, as if he didn’t want to say the words he was about to. “This is a nice house. I’d be sad to see you lose it.”
    “Okay.” A great, roaring power from within pushed Cassie to her feet. “It’s time for you to leave.” As though she’d asked for this, or had any interest in fighting with rich ladies over some stranger’s money. She pointed toward the front door with a shaking hand, imagining what the anger looked like as it licked off of her. “Get out.”
    Nick was already in the foyer, chandelier chattering with the reverberations of his footsteps.
    The heavy door protested as he pulled it open. The front porch groaned under his step. She cursed her earlier daydream of it trapping him out there forever; what she wanted, more than anything, was for this stranger to just be gone.
    “If my DNA is so goddamn important to Tate Montgomery, then tell her to come get it herself,” she growled. And she slammed the front door in his face, noticing, in the split second before she shut him out, that Nick looked both relieved and appreciative, not at all what she was expecting.



The vibrant scent of Ivory filled the room. It was the first day of June; finally, June! Lindie had planned to get to Center Square before breakfast and sniff out the movie shoot. Today she’d finally see if
Erie Canal
was really coming to town. But even for Lindie, it was early; the light filling the room was rosy and low. Already June was primping. Lindie burrowed back into the creamy pillowcase, warming to the idea that June had changed her mind and would, in fact, be coming along to the extras casting. The prospect of putting on that horrible strawberry dress was much more pleasant if June would be by Lindie’s side. Together, they’d comb the rats out of her hair, and June would invite Lindie down for breakfast in the grand Two Oaks dining room. The doughy promise of Apatha’s biscuits filled the air.
    Lindie dozed again, and in that drowse of morning, the big house loved her. It had always loved this little girl who, in turn, loved its creator, Lemon Gray Neely. Before June and her mother moved in, Lindie had spent countless childhood hours helping Apatha wash Uncle Lem’s hands with a knit cloth, or skating across the ballroom floor with soft rags tied to her feet. It loved the tangy stain of brass polish on her father’s fingertips almost as much as she did.
    Lindie was a child who needed Two Oaks; that made her easy to love too. Her mother, Lorraine, had left Lindie and Lindie’s father, Eben (and St. Jude entirely), two years after Eben returned from the war, when Lindie was seven. In the ensuing years, Apatha—who kept Two Oaks shipshape, no small feat—had become Lindie’s new mother, especially indispensable on those days when Eben needed to balance the books for Uncle Lem’s vast business holdings. So sweet were the memories of the little girl gathered onto Apatha’s lap in the yeasty kitchen, that though she had grown, and the roost was now ruled by June’s mother, Cheryl Ann, Two Oaks still considered Lindie to be its own.
    It was in business school in Columbus that Eben had met Lorraine. Eldest son of the original caretakers of Two Oaks—Mr. and Mrs. Loftus Shaw—scrawny little Eben had had a shrewdness with numbers that impressed Uncle Lem. The great man admired the way the boy divided ten cookies evenly among sixteen children, how he estimated the number of apples in a bushel just by looking at the top of the crate. When it came time for a high school graduation gift, Loftus and Ellen were