Sleeping Alone by Barbara Bretton Read Free Book Online Page A

“Honey, talk to me again this time next year. I was thinking more like Monday.”
    “Monday?” Alex couldn’t hide her disappointment.
    “It’s Thanksgiving week,” Dee said. “We’ll be closed Thursday, and things are usually pretty light over the holiday weekend.”
    Monday. Alex suppressed a sigh. “What time?”
    “We open at seven, but I try to get there by six or six-fifteen.”
    “I’ll be there at six.”
    “Why is it I have the feeling you’ve never waited tables before?”
    Alex’s heart dropped to her feet. “Is that a rhetorical question?”
    “No,” Dee said after a moment. “Actually I wouldn’t mind an answer.”
    “I’ve never waited tables before.”
    “I was afraid of that.”
    “I wouldn’t blame you if you change your mind about hiring me.”
    “I wouldn’t blame me either,” Dee said, “but I have the feeling you need us as much as we need you.”
    “So I still have the job?”
    “You still have the job.”
    “You won’t regret this,” Alex promised as she danced around the room. “I’ll be the best waitress you ever saw.”
    “Just show up on time,” Dee said. “I’ll take it from there.”
    * * *
    The phone blasted John awake at 4:14 on Thanksgiving morning. The green numbers glared at him from his digital clock as he fumbled around on the nightstand for the receiver. Not even dawn yet, and already the day sucked for air.
    “Is this John Gallagher?” A woman’s voice. That got his attention. Even his sleep-fogged brain recognized it as a damn fine woman’s voice. Vaguely familiar. Definitely not a hometown voice.
    “Who is this?”
    “I’m looking for John Gallagher,” she repeated. “If this isn’t his number, I—”
    “This is John Gallagher.”
    “Your father is here with me.”
    “Who the hell is this?”
    “Alex,” she said. “Alex Curry.”
    The goddess. He woke up the rest of the way. The goddess was calling him? “He can’t be there. My old man’s sound asleep.”
    “Yes, he is,” she agreed. “In my living room.”
    He groaned and dragged a hand through his tangled hair. Twice in two days. What the hell was going on?
    “I found him on my front porch in his pajamas,” she went on. “I think he was sleepwalking and stopped here.”
    “You’re the Winslow house, right?”
    Her laugh was soft, infinitely enticing. “I’d rather think of it as the Curry house now.”
    “Whatever you do, don’t let him leave,” he said, reaching for the jeans he’d left draped over the closet door. “I’ll be there in five minutes.”
    * * *
    Five minutes? Alex’s stomach did a back flip. She’d found John Gallagher unsettling enough at the diner. The thought of him in her living room almost made her wish she’d left Eddie out there on the front porch. She wasn’t afraid of John Gallagher—he was just so overwhelmingly male that he made her aware of herself as a woman in a way she hadn’t been for a long time.
    “Idiot,” she murmured as she hung up the phone. He hadn’t even come close to flirting with her the other day. All he’d done was tell her that her roof leaked. Still, that brief exchange had been enough to remind her how it was between men and women, that unspoken acknowledgment that yes, the sexes were different, and thank God for it.
    She filled the teakettle with tap water, then set it on the stove. The burner clicked twice but refused to light. She waved her hand briskly to dissipate the smell of gas, then lit a fat kitchen match and held it near the jet. The flame was unenthusiastic but viable, and she congratulated herself on another domestic victory.
    She’d bought the house in “as is” condition, with all of the furniture and household goods included. Some of the appliances had seen better days, but they still worked, and that was all that was important. She was also the proud owner of a Formica kitchen table with four chairs, each of which was covered in a different shade of Day-Glo vinyl fabric, a sofa and