Saving Simon (Tarnished Saints Series Book 5) by Elizabeth Rose Read Free Book Online Page B

happen.
    “Go ahead,” Levi told his brother, Nate. “I’ll give you the honors.”
    “Thanks, I appreciate it, Levi.” Nate stuck his head out the door and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Pig Pile!”
    “Pig what?” asked Simon just before he heard the thundering of lots of little footsteps running over the cabin floor. “Oh crap!” he swore, seeing his brothers backing out of the way, and the stampede of kids that were headed right toward him.
    “Uncle Simon!” they yelled and before he knew it, nearly a dozen kids had jumped up on the bed and flung their bodies at him.
    He put out his arms to block his face, but the smallest of his nephews, Eli, jumped atop him, kneeing him in the groin in the process. Simon let out a whoosh of air from his lungs and bit back the curses threatening to spill from his lips, not wanting to swear in front of all his nephews and nieces.
    “Welcome home, Uncle Simon!” said Thomas’s eldest son, Daniel who’d turned seventeen a few months ago.
    “Are you happy to be home?” asked a little girl he didn’t even recognize but who looked a lot like Levi.
    Drenched in ice water, kneed in the groin, and covered in kids never felt so good. It reminded Simon of growing up with his eleven brothers and all the good times as well as the trouble they’d gotten into. He’d been gone for about five years, only stopping home once a year at Christmas while he was in the Navy and now on the cruise ship. When first his father died, then his brothers all moved away, and next his mother passed-on as well, he’d thought there was no reason to return to Sweet Water anymore.
    Now he knew he’d been wrong, because as miserable as he was at this moment about everything in his life, he knew that his family was always there for him. He felt ashamed that he hadn’t been there for them in return.
    “It feels great to be home,” said Simon reaching out and tickling all the kids, their giggles making him feel more alive than he had in years. “It feels better than you all could ever imagine!”
     
    * * *
     
    Piper pulled her metallic-sea-blue BMW Z4 convertible into a rinky-dink little gas station, intending on asking for directions to Beatrice Glover’s marina. The GPS on her car seemed to have given her some odd, as-the-crow-flies directions, and she finally got tired of hearing the automated voice telling her to turn around and reroute, so she’d just ended up shutting it off altogether.
    She’d driven over two hours from Chicago by request of her father, coming to Sweet Water to visit the Thunder Lake Marina. She didn’t want to come do her father’s dirty work, but this is usually how it went. She had the business degree and his success was made from others’ misfortunes. If he so much as saw a weak link, he’d jump on the chance to screw someone out of their lifelong savings and business and buy it out from under them for a small amount of what it was really worth. He hadn’t always been this way, but lately she felt as if she didn’t even know him.
    She pulled up to the gas pump and was about to get out to ask directions when a short, balding man in overalls with a dirty white t-shirt sauntered out to meet her.
    “Excuse me, but I need directions,” she said, deciding to stay in the car after all. She didn’t like the look of the place, though the building did seem freshly painted. The man looked like a backwoods type and she wasn’t at all sure he wasn’t going to pull out a gun and start shooting at her next. Glad the top was up on the convertible, she only wished now she had rolled up the windows part way before she shut off the motor.
    “I’ll fill her up for ya, ma’am, don’t bother gettin’ outta the car. We give real good service here at Kramer’s Garage.”
    “I don’t want gas, I want directions,” she said, already feeling irritated with him since he obviously hadn’t heard her the first time she asked.
    “Geez, she’s a beaut,” said the man with a