Take a Chance on Me by Susan May Warren Read Free Book Online Page B

Grandpop held out hope that she might stop by after her gig. He had that uncanny way of knowing when she needed to come home and tuck herself into the familiar smells of the Gibson homestead.
    She kicked off her shoes in the linoleum entryway. The kitchen light burned and she smelled the faint scent of grease. Please, don’t let Grandpop have left something burning.
    But the cast-iron pan was cold, a layer of grease hardened, the remnants of a venison burger still in the pan. She picked up a plate left on the round farm table, put it in the sink, then went into the family room.
    Grandpop Gibs lay in his recliner, emitting a shallow snore. Claire spread one of her grandmother’s knit afghans over him, then considered him a long moment in the pool of light from the standing lamp. He wore his Vietnam years in the lines on his face, his white hair nearly gone now, his skin doughy. His worn, giant hands rested on the arms of the chair, his barrel chest rising and falling.
    If she lost him, she’d have no one.
    Okay, that wasn’t fair. Her parents were still alive, but they had only really shown up in the past ten years in the form of letters, e-mail, and more recently, Skype. They had about as much knowledge of her life as Jensen, next door.
    She wondered if he was home.
    Turning off the lamp and then the porch light so she wouldn’t eat a mouthful of moths, she grabbed another afghan from the sofa and stepped outside. The lake lapped the beach, dark and mysterious, and she walked down the path, letting her bare feet sink into the sand.
    She cast a gaze over to Jensen’s place, the palatial estate of hisfather’s sprawling log vacation home. The moon slid off the green roof, across the manicured lawn, towering white pine and balsam trees, and a trio of birches. Beyond the massive deck that ran the length of the house, the windows remained dark. Sometimes, however, when she came out here, or even canoed on the lake, she could feel Jensen watching her.
    Or maybe she just imagined that he did, with those blue eyes, his lopsided playboy smile suggesting he could have anything he wanted.
    No matter what the cost.
    Claire sank into an Adirondack chair, wrapping the afghan around herself, shivering as the wind found her hair and untangled it from her ponytail. She leaned her head back to stare at the stars, listening to memories, laughter, tears.
    Trying not to hear the accusations.
    Most of all, she refused to be upset that Felicity had abandoned them all to figure out how to live without her.

“IF YOU’RE TRYING to impress me, it’s working.”
    The county attorney had cracked open Ivy’s office door after a quick knock and stuck his head in. “Second day and you’re already burning the midnight oil.”
    DJ Teague looked and dressed like a man who should be living in a high-rise in Minneapolis and dating some supermodel, with his cocoa skin, soft brown eyes, crisp blue dress shirt, tie and jacket, after a day of meeting with county departments, preparing major cases, and defending the county from lawsuits.
    Ivy leaned back in her chair and gestured to the pile of manila folders stacked on her desk. “Oh, I’ll be here long past midnight, familiarizing myself with these. I have forty hearings in two days,” she said, raising an eyebrow. “How did this happen?”
    On the floor, two cardboard boxes held more files, and on a bookshelf along the wall, all manner of legal reference books filled the shelves. First thing she did yesterday morning, after meeting her secretary, Nancy, and her paralegal, Jodi, was start to dig through the piles stacked on her empty desk.
    DJ came in and sat in one of the chairs. “We share a judge with the next county, so we have to pack in as many cases as we can during our two days. Ask Jodi to help you catch up and prepare because on Monday, you’ll have a new stack of cases to look at.”
    The afternoon had long since slunk into the horizon, leaving behind pools of light from her lamp. She