She Sins at Midnight by Whitney Dineen Read Free Book Online Page A

her real parents. They were kissing her and hugging her and feeding her grilled cheese sandwiches. The more she thought about it, the more she wanted to cry.
    Lila tried and failed to stand up several times before crawling back to the car on her hands and knees. She made the decision to retrieve her cell phone and interrupt the aliens that were posing as her parents. They would come get her, help pull her rental free, take her home where she could shower, eat and start this crazy visit over. As she reached to grab hold of the car door, Lila felt something wiggling around her feet. As a little girl she had always been told that snakes nested in the swamp but she never paid close attention as she never had any intention of jumping in. In a boa constrictor induced panic, she slipped again and fell back, hitting her head on the running board of the Ford Explorer; moments before she burst into hysterical tears. That’s when she heard a car pull up.

Chapter 5
    O n the way to his mother’s house from the airport, Creighton Ashwood was struck by how long it had actually been since he’d been home. It had been seven months since his mother’s funeral. By not going back to Bentley sooner, he hoped he could somehow keep her alive longer. Creigh knew the moment he stepped through the front door without her presence, he would be hit with a fresh tidal wave of grief. So he tried to keep the deluge of emotion at bay for as long as possible by simply staying away.
    Creigh was just starting to deal with the fact that he was a forty-year-old orphan when he received a call from Stan Harper. Stan was a good friend from childhood as well as the premier realtor in Bentley. Creigh asked him to keep an eye on his mom’s house and be the go-to man with the gardeners, repairmen and all others who might need access to the property. All had been going smoothly until the week before when Stan called to say that he had been receiving inquiries from potential buyers hoping to purchase the estate. His friend said that he hadn’t bothered Creigh with offers earlier, but he felt it was time for him to get serious about selling if that was his ultimate intent. It was a seller’s market after all.
    Creigh knew that his friend was right and he also knew that sorting through his family’s memories wasn’t going to get any easier. So he made the decision to take a few weeks off work and go home to face the chore that awaited him.
    Closing his eyes he remembered his beautiful mother smiling and laughing and chasing him around the yard when he was a little boy. She used to say, “If you can get to the willow tree before I catch you, you can stay up an extra hour tonight.” Creigh felt a tug at his heart when he realized that she never caught him in time and always pretended that he got one over on her.
    His mind continued to wander when he remembered the gorgeous woman at the airport in Los Angeles. She looked soft and curvy like she just stepped out of a movie from the 1950’s. Beauties like that were one of the reasons he missed the Midwest. As a rule, Creigh loved women of all shapes and sizes. As a successful entertainment lawyer he dated frequently and never lacked for female companionship. But lately he seemed to be dating gals who worked out more than he did. And while there was certainly nothing wrong with being toned and in shape, he was a little thrown off balance when the last one offered to lift him over her head, all two-hundred-and-ten pounds of him.
    Creigh didn’t know what kind of partner he would ultimately wind up with but for a moment he imagined that she was the god-given curvy goddess from the airport. Of course she was most likely already married with 2.5 kids, a dog named Skippy and a Volvo SUV. Prizes like her got snatched up pretty quickly. Plus, he amended, the woman that he would marry, would be willing to put down her trashy novel long enough to have a conversation with him. “ She Sins at Midnight ?” What kind of name