Son of the Enemy by Ana Barrons Read Free Book Online Page A

center and gym for the school. I guess that does make him a hero around here.”
    “Yeah, well, Hannah thinks he’s a hero or she wouldn’t be—” He looked away. “Whatever.”
    “Does it bother you?”
    “What? That Hannah’s screwing around with my dad?”
    “Any of it. Your father’s relationship with your principal, his involvement in the school…” He trailed off, giving Ty an opening.
    “As long as my friends didn’t know about it, I mean, the thing with Hannah, it wasn’t so bad. But their picture was in the friggin’ Washington Post and now everybody knows.” He picked at his jeans. “But I don’t get them. She doesn’t, like, come to the house or anything. And I know for a fact that my dad fools around.”
    Bradshaw had been with Hannah and still wanted other women? The man had to be a moron. “Maybe they just enjoy each other’s company but they’re not serious about each other.”
    Ty didn’t say anything, just kept picking at a nonexistent hole in his jeans. John didn’t push it. The fact that he had gotten the boy talking at all felt like a small victory.
    “Hannah makes my dad look good,” Ty said.
    “In what way?”
    “Like he’s a normal person.”
    “Normal how? Like he didn’t have his picture in The Washington Post from time to time? Or that he wasn’t so rich?”
    Ty lifted his foot onto his other knee and stabbed at the sole of his shoe with a paper clip. “Yeah, I guess.” He paused. “Or like he didn’t hang out with guys like fucking Tony Soprano.”
     
     
    John stood in the doorway and watched Hannah gaze unsmiling out the window, her body turned mostly away from him, twisting that big opal ring she wore all the time around and around her finger. The sun caught the highlights in her hair, turning the loose strands at her temples golden. Had his father stood like this, unseen, watching Sharon, noticing the play of sunlight in her hair, on her eyelashes, so caught up in her beauty that everything else dropped away? Had making love to Sharon Duncan been so all-consuming that Sam Daly had been willing to give up a wife and son who adored him just to have her?
    Hannah must have sensed him behind her, because she turned slowly and gazed at him for a moment before she spoke. “Hi.”
    “Hi. Busy?”
    She shook her head and walked toward him. She was wearing a short black skirt with black stockings that hugged long, shapely legs, and a soft-looking gray turtleneck with the sleeves pushed up. Silver bangles adorned one wrist. The effect was one of simple elegance. Just like the woman herself.
    “I’m sorry about the other night,” she said. “I often do stupid things when I drink, which is why I normally only do it when I’m alone.” She looked up and smiled. “I’ve heard that’s a bad sign.”
    He smiled back, wishing fervently he had the right to walk up to her, pull her into his arms and kiss her. So he lusted after her, who wouldn’t? He had survived the FBI academy—surely he could survive being around Hannah Duncan and not touching her.
    And surely pigs would fly in heaven.
    “You have nothing to apologize for,” he said. “Me, I’m a sad drunk. Not a pretty sight.”
    “Sad, huh? I see you more as a belligerent drunk.”
    He had to laugh at that. “Me? Belligerent?”
    She walked around to her desk chair, and John took the wooden chair facing her. That was when he noticed the vase of red roses on the credenza behind the desk. From Bradshaw? Or from whoever had given her the yellow roses he’d spotted in her wastebasket and the mystery roses she’d been so worried about?
    “Did Ty go down to see you?” she asked. “Speaking of belligerent.”
    Ty Bradshaw, who lived each day wondering when his father was going to prison. How intimately John knew that particular hell, how intensely he wished he could spare the boy that pain.
    “Yeah, he did. I enjoy his company. And he’s badly in need of a supportive adult in his life. I don’t think