More Than Fiends by Maureen Child Read Free Book Online Page A

seem a little harsh? Sure, I hadn’t told her the truth, but I’d given her a hero father, hadn’t I? Hadn’t made up something ugly, like he’d had too much Wild Turkey one night, stumbled into a gutter and drowned.
    Points for creativity, anyway.
    â€œWe can talk about this later, okay?” Welcome to my world. Never talk about now what you can put off until later.
    â€œI don’t know if I’ll be speaking to you later,” Thea said, and poor thing actually thought that was a threat. But I knew better. She might have her dad’s eyes, but she got her gift of gab straight from me. There was simply no way she’d be able to stop talking to me. It’d kill her.
    Besides, how could she torture me if she didn’t speak?
    â€œI’ll risk it,” I said and picked up the grocery bag. The chill from the frozen pizza seeped into me as I headed for the front porch, but in all honesty, that chill could have been the direct result of the ice forming on Logan’s face.
    I tried to stall, slowing my steps down, but doing that only made me notice that the yard needed mowing and more of my flowers had died during the night. What can I say? Just call me the Grim Reaper of the nursery world. Every time I walk through the garden department at Wal-Mart, I actually hear the little flowers shrieking, Not me, not me! Don’t sell me to her!
    â€œGood to see you, Cassie,” Logan said through gritted teeth, which took all the charm out of that statement.
    â€œRight.” I waved a hand at the pistol at his waist. “That’s why you came armed?”
    He sighed and flicked the edge of his coat over the weapon. “I’m a cop.”
    Thought so.
    â€œUsed to work for LAPD,” he said. “Now I work for La Sombra.”
    â€œSo, you’re not just passing through?” I asked, feeling my last little bit of hope slide away.
    â€œI told you on the phone I’d moved back.”
    â€œRight.” I juggled the grocery bag in my arms and spoke up again, cutting through all the crap to get to the ooey gooey center: “Why are you here, Logan? Just stop by to ruin my day?”
    He pushed away from the porch post and glared down at me. “Ruin your day? You know, I think I’m being pretty reasonable about this.”
    Actually, he was. Hated to admit it, but if someone had kept Thea from me for sixteen years, I’d have been completely freaked.
    â€œGreat,” I said, stepping past him to get into the house, where I could stick my head under a pillow and pretend everything was fabulous. Better living through oblivion. “Think you could be reasonable tomorrow? I’m just not up for this right now, Logan.”
    I didn’t need to see it to know Thea was rolling her eyes.
    â€œNot a chance, Cassie,” Logan said, and his voice was so tight it sounded as if it were scraping the air. “We need to talk about this now.”
    I kept walking. They were both right behind me, so I didn’t even slow down…. Would it be childish to head right out the back door and keep going? Probably.
    Sugar leaped to her feet at the crinkle of a grocery bag. I didn’t fool myself. It wasn’t mommy love she was looking for. It was Snausages.
    â€œMake yourself useful,” I muttered. “Attack.”
    She didn’t, of course. Instead, she greeted Logan in the traditional manner of dogs everywhere and stuck her cold, wet nose into his crotch with so much eagerness it would have brought a lesser man to his knees.
    â€œOoof! What is this?” he demanded, shoving her big, hairy head to one side in a belated attempt to protect his favorite body part. “A pony?”
    I set the grocery bag down, glanced at a crestfallen Sugar, whose affection had been rebuffed, then shifted my gaze back to the current thorn in my figurative paw. My darling daughter stood just behind the thorn, and the resemblance between them was