The Good Daughter by Jane Porter Read Free Book Online

and pedicures and watch sappy old movies.”
    “Not sure about the sappy movies, but I can give a good pedicure.”
    It created an uncomfortable picture in her head, Michael bent over a woman’s foot, painting toenails. “Seriously?”
    “I had a girlfriend that injured her hand and so I’d paint her nails for her. Made her feel better while she healed.”
    “That’s amazing. My ex-boyfriend would rather have cut off his arm than do that.”
    “Guys get hung up on gender and job descriptions.”
    She didn’t want to like him, but he was intriguing. “They can, can’t they?”
    “So when do you come back?”
    “Monday night.”
    “Monday?”
    “It’s a three-day weekend. Martin Luther King holiday.”
    “That’s right. So what about the following Saturday? Or is that already booked, too?”
    Kit hesitated. She didn’t know him, wasn’t entirely comfortable with him, had little interest in dating him, or anyone. And yet, what if he was a good guy? What if he was the right guy? Adoption agencies didn’t love single woman, much less women in theirforties. Was she really in a position to shut him down? “I think I’m free.”
    “You think?” he repeated.
    She heard the slightly belligerent note in his voice and wondered if she’d heard him wrong. “Let me check my calendar.” She checked the iCalendar app on her phone, and as she expected, her schedule was wide open for the following weekend. “I am open,” she said, wondering why she couldn’t, wouldn’t, just tell him no. She’d gotten off Love.com for a reason. She’d gotten burned, and burned out, dating. She didn’t have to go to dinner with him just because he asked. But Kit had never found it easy to say no. From birth she’d been the soft one. The one determined to please. “I’m free.”
    “Great. Will you save Saturday night for me?”
    “I’d love to,” she said.
    “Great. I’m looking forward to Saturday.”
    “Me, too,” she fibbed, and hated herself the next second for being not just a liar, but a pushover.
    “Have fun this weekend,” he said.
    “I will.”
    “But not too much fun.”
    She laughed. He laughed with her. They hung up.
    Kit lay back on the couch and stared up at the ceiling, filled with self-loathing.
    This was the reason she’d stopped dating.
    This was why she’d pulled her profile from Love.com.
    And this was exactly why that guy in December took advantage of her. Because she let him.
    Just like she let Richard take advantage of her for ten miserable years.
    Kit chewed on the inside of her lip. Thank God Brianna wasn’t here. Brianna would have a fit. Brianna never got taken advantage of because Brianna was the one who did the exploiting.
    You’ve got to learn to set boundaries,
Kit told herself.
Have to learn how to tell people no. Back off. Leave me alone.
    But she couldn’t. She didn’t know why. For whatever reason, she felt as if she owed everyone something.
    Horrible, Kit thought, and rather alarming. Especially as she was an adult now. A forty-year-old woman.

Four
    F riday noon and Kit was counting the minutes until freedom. There were 184 of them. Essentially three hours. Three hours until school was over and she’d be on the road to Capitola with Polly.
    Three hours until Kit could spend three blissful days at the Brennan family beach house in Capitola. Three days without bells, taking attendance, collecting assignments, or yard duty. Three days to sleep in, stay up late, and curl up with a good book. A book she wasn’t required to teach.
    Heaven,
she sang to herself, stabbing yet another leaf of her wilted Caesar salad with her plastic fork. But first she had to survive her lunch hour, which had never been an hour at Memorial High but forty-two minutes in which she usually graded papers while choking down a soggy salad or sandwich. Today lunch was more frustrating than usual because Bob Osborne, the computer science teacher, had decided to join the half-dozen teachers sittingat the