Sleeping Alone by Barbara Bretton Read Free Book Online Page B

matching chair that had been past its prime when I Love Lucy was cutting-edge television, a dark pine coffee table, two standing lamps with built-in mosaic tile ashtrays, and an oak bedroom suite that she’d actually grown quite fond of. The kitchen boasted a double sink, a window that overlooked the backyard, and everything she could possibly need in the way of chipped dishes and well-worn pots and pans.
    And it was all hers. Every rusty nail, warped floorboard, leaky ceiling. If John Gallagher didn’t show up, then she’d claim the old pajama-clad man asleep in front of her television, too.
    Outside the wind picked up and rattled the windows in their frames. The sound was eerie, like keening almost. In her old life, she’d been insulated—both from the weather and from sounds like rattling windows and creaking floors. She didn’t want to be insulated any longer. She wanted to feel the rain on her face, taste the tang of sea air on her tongue, fall asleep to the sound of the ocean crashing against the marina.
    A draft ruffled the back-door curtains and made the flame under the teakettle waver, as if it were deciding whether or not to give up the ghost.
    “Don’t you dare,” she warned the burner, shielding it from the breeze with her body. The poor man was half frozen out there. She’d covered him with a granny square afghan and a crazy quilt she’d found in the attic crawl space, but he needed to be warmed up from the inside out.
    Besides, Eddie Gallagher was her first guest, and that alone was cause for celebration.
    * * *
    It was getting so John could do it in his sleep. He yanked on his jeans and sweatshirt, then stumbled out of the house with Bailey hard on his heels. She was young and energetic, and sometimes her enthusiasm made him feel a hundred years old. A bitter blast of wind knocked him back, but it only invigorated Bailey. She let out a series of three quick barks, then pawed at the door of his truck, leaving muddy paw prints everywhere she touched.
    The old-timers called this good sleeping weather, the kind of weather that made you burrow deeper under the covers and snuggle closer to the one you loved. It figured they’d like it; most of them still had someone to sleep with. Lately the only one willing to sleep with John was Bailey.
    He wondered who Alex Curry spent her nights with. He’d noticed the white mark where a wedding ring used to be. Dee was convinced she was a divorcee on the run. “Prima facie evidence,” she’d said about the missing ring. When John suggested she might have left her ring on the kitchen counter, Dee had told him that her cat Newt had a better romantic imagination than John had, and Newt had been fixed three years ago.
    She was right. He had no romantic imagination. If he had he would be wondering about the sad look in Alex Curry’s eyes or the way she carried herself like a queen without a country. And he sure as hell would be wondering how it would be to wake up with a woman like that in his arms.
    But Dee knew what she was talking about. His romantic imagination had died three years ago with Libby and the boys.
    He turned the key in the ignition, but nothing happened. He tried again and was rewarded with an ominous grinding sound. “God damn it,” he muttered. He thought about his brother Brian with the weekday Saab and weekend Porsche. The SOB probably hired someone to start them on winter mornings.
    “Don’t count on me to be there,” Brian had said the last time they talked about Eddie. “I can’t be running down the Shore every time he’s got a problem. I’ve got a life, baby brother. You might want to try it sometime.”
    Tried it, John thought as the engine finally turned over. Tried it and ruined three lives.
    * * *
    Eddie woke up to find a strange woman standing over him. She wore a floor-length white gown with lacy trim at the neck and sleeves, and her hair flowed over her shoulders and down her back like Rita Hayworth’s did in Gilda. Okay, so