Stranger in the Moonlight by Jude Deveraux Read Free Book Online Page A

liked her cousin Colin’s new wife, Gemma, so maybe she would have told her. And she would have had to tell Tris, as he was Mrs. Wingate’s friend.
    “Maybe,” Kim said in a way that made Travis smile.
    “If this is your cousin’s house and Mom lived next door, it must have been difficult for her to hide from you.”
    “She managed it,” Kim said but didn’t elaborate on the many times Lucy Cooper had escaped her view. Jecca had lived in Mrs. Wingate’s house for a while, and every time Kim visited, Lucy would magically disappear. Now Kim wondered if the poor woman had slipped into a broom closet. Whatever she did, Kim knew one thing for sure: Her mother had told Lucy not to let Kim see her.
    Kim wanted to get the focus off her. “Is your mother here because of your father?”
    “Yes,” Travis said as he leaned back against the bench. He was silent for a moment, then turned to smile at her. “I’m keeping you from your friends—and your relatives. Mom said everyone in Edilean is related to one another.”
    “It’s not that bad, but close,” Kim said.
    “Is that dress one of those . . . bride things?” He waved his hand.
    “I was the maid of honor.”
    “Oh,” he said. “Doesn’t ‘maid’ mean that you’re not married?”
    “I’m not. What about you?”
    “Never married. I work for my father,” Travis said. “The deal is that if I work for him he won’t pursue Mom.” He was telling her things that he never told unless necessary, but the words seemed to pour from him.
    “That doesn’t sound pleasant,” Kim said and again wanted to reach for his hand, but she didn’t. She couldn’t imagine being in such a situation, but she thought how . . . well, how noble, heroic even, it was of him to sacrifice himself for his mother. Who did that today?
    “It seems that now my mother wants to get married, but she’s still legally married to my father.”
    Kim didn’t understand the problem. “She can get a divorce, can’t she?”
    “Yes, but if she files that will let my father know where she is and he’ll do what he can to make her life unpleasant.”
    “There are laws—”
    “I know,” Travis said. “I’m not worried about the divorce. It’s the aftermath that I fear.”
    “I don’t understand,” Kim said. The band was playing their last set, and she could hear people laughing. She wondered if Travis had ever learned to dance.
    Travis turned to her. “Can I trust you? I mean, really trust you? I’m not used to confiding in people.” Every word he said was from his heart. This was Kim, the grown-up version of the little girl who’d changed his life.
    “Yes,” she said and meant it with great sincerity.
    “My father is . . .”
    “Abusive,” Kim said, her jaw set.
    “He is to anyone who is weaker than he is, and my mother is a delicate woman.”
    “Jecca adores her.”
    “Mom mentioned her. She’s the young woman who lived in the apartment next door.”
    “And she’s the bride. I guess you know that Jecca and your mother became great friends. They worked out together, sewed together. There was a point when I was becoming downright jealous.”
    Travis was looking at Kim in shock. He talked to his mother once a week—even if he was out of the country—but he’d heard nothing of this. He’d seen the article that said she’d made clothes for some woman, but he’d thought that meant his mother stayed in her rooms and sewed.
    “Jecca is Joe Layton’s daughter,” Kim said when Travis was silent.
    “Joe Layton?”
    “I assume that’s the man she wants to marry, isn’t it? Tonight the two of them were dancing together as though they were about to tear each other’s clothes off. Jecca said Lucy was very flexible, but I had no idea she could do a back bend like that . I hope that when I’m her age I can—” She broke off at Travis’s look. “Oh. Right. She’s your mother. I feel pretty certain that the man she wants to marry is Joe Layton.”
    “What’s he