Kate Sherwood - Dark Horse 03 - Of Dark and Bright by Kate Sherwood Read Free Book Online

But otherwise, you’re either going somewhere with the guards or the cops, or you’re inside, right?” She tilted her head and gave a warning look. “We’re getting a sweet deal, here. If you start pushing, it will absolutely fall apart. You understand that?”
    Krista rolled her eyes, and Dan had a quick, vivid memory of her doing the same thing to their mother. “I understand,” she said with a dramatic sigh. “I’ll be good. I’m too fat to get anywhere, anyhow.”
    Susan didn’t look totally satisfied, but she eventually nodded and turned to Dan. “Okay. If anything comes up, if you have any questions—give me a call. Otherwise, I’ll be in touch in a few days to check in, okay?” And then she surprised Dan by leaning forward and pressing a quick kiss to Krista’s cheek. “Be good,” she urged, and she turned and left, her high heels clicking on the hardwood floor.
Dan kept his smile steady. “So, coffee? Or there’s herbal tea, or milk, or juice.”
    “No sugar added in the juice, I hope. Who knows what problems that might cause.” Krista’s voice was bitingly sarcastic. She sank heavily into a chair at the kitchen table. “Coffee’s fine, I guess.” She frowned, then said, “Thank you.”
Dan was already moving toward the coffeemaker. “No problem.”
    “I didn’t just mean the coffee. I probably don’t mean the coffee at all, if it tastes as crappy as most decaf. I meant… you know. Everything. The lawyer, and the house, and the guards. I get that your boyfriend is paying for it all, but thanks anyway.”
    “I’m paying for the lawyer,” Dan said, and he immediately felt petty. Susan’s fees were significant, but compared to the house and the twenty-four-hour guards, she was definitely a small expense. And Krista was Dan’s sister—Dan’s problem. “But, yeah, Evan’s really generous.”
“Have you guys been going out for long?”
    “A couple years.” Dan tried not to get distracted, tried not to think about Evan saying that if they’d been a straight couple, they’d have been married by now. It was too much, too big, and he had more immediate concerns. He set the mug of coffee in front of Krista. “Milk or sugar?”
“Both.”
    He found the fixings and they sat at the kitchen table and stared at their mugs. It shouldn’t have been so hard to talk to his own flesh and blood. But it was. Dan thought about switching his social persona back on, but he decided against it. Krista was going to be in the guest house for two months, and, he assumed, in his life for a long time after that. He wanted their relationship to be truthful. And the truth was that he wasn’t much good at small talk. Or talk in general, really.
She was the one who broke the silence. “Do you want to know about Dad?”
    Interesting question, and he took a moment to think about it. “I don’t know. He took off when we were kids, then he came back and turned his daughter into a bank robber. Is there anything you could tell me that would make up for that?”
    Krista’s eyes were calm and level as she took another sip of her coffee. Then she said, “What if I told you that I was the one who got him into robbing banks?”
“Is that true?”
    Krista nodded. “Me and Scott—that’s my husband—we’d been breaking into houses, mostly, but we hit a couple stores too. And then we started looking at a bank, and we needed a third. Dad was always short of cash, so he wasn’t hard to convince.”
“And where is he now? And Scott—where’s he?”
    “I have no idea.” It was hard to hear an emotion in Krista’s voice, but Dan tried anyway. Was she disappointed? Had she been abandoned? Or was she fine with the whole thing—had she left the men behind willingly? Or was she even telling the truth? Maybe she knew exactly where they were, but didn’t trust her brother enough to share the information.
Dan didn’t want to get into any of that. “Do they know about the baby? Your husband—does he know