The Make by Jessie Keane Read Free Book Online Page B

that as the reason she had strayed. Gracie had been numb at first, and then coldly enraged at her mother. Of all the trampy, despic able things to do. Dad had worked hard to give them a comfortable home, a decent life, and this was how she repaid him.
    Gracie remembered the pain of it all, even now, and how judgemental she had been, as only a teenage girl with her hormones in turmoil could be. Her relationship with her mother had never been an easy one. Gracie was cool, and Suze was a bundle of out-of-control emotions. She made no secret of the fact that she preferred ‘her boys’, and found logical, strong-willed Gracie hard to manage or understand – but after the affair thing blew up in all their faces, Gracie had detested her.
    So when Dad decided to go and work in Manchester, Gracie had winged the last school term and abandoned her exams. She knew she wanted to work in the casino business, so what was the point of more school? She’d been blessed with a prodigious natural talent for maths, so she could weigh up odds in an instant, and add up a row of figures at lightning speed. She knew exactly what she wanted in life; she didn’t need any careers adviser to tell her. Coldly, dis passionately, she had announced to her mother that she intended to go with him.
    George and Harry had of course sided with Mum, and had been angry, hurt and resentful that Dad and Gracie were choosing to leave them. And although Dad tried to keep in touch with his boys, asked if he could visit them, Suze had said a flat, spiteful no. Gracie knew that he’d sent them presents and cards and letters, but he never heard a thing back from them, not a word. She knew how much it had hurt Dad. She knew too that he could have tried for proper controlled access through the courts, but the split had been so devastating that he had quickly lost heart.
    So, time passed.
    Contact was lost.
    Ancient messes – ones she preferred not to think about now.
    But the phone call from the girl – what was her name, Sandy? – had brought it all back, unnerved her, made her go on the defensive. She’d shut down on her emotions, snapped at Brynn. She felt bad that she had lashed out at the one person who had always been solidly supportive of her, helping her through the hideous time after Dad’s death. Brynn had always schooled her in the business, never running out of patience when she was slow to pick up anything. She promised herself that she would apologize to him as soon as she got in to work.
    Gracie showered and dressed and ate breakfast in the bright, well-fitted kitchen with its view out over the Manchester ship canal. Yet even the view failed to charm her today. Her flat was in a converted corn mill, its old antecedents clearly visible in its bare, minimalistic brick walls and high ceilings. She’d bought it with a huge mortgage, and had loved it from day one.
    Yesterday’s post mocked her from the kitchen table, where she’d left the letters in the small hours of this morning. Divorce papers. So, finally, it had come down to this. Lorcan wanted rid of her, wanted to make it all legal and above board.
    Probably – and she felt another little stab of unease, a little niggle of something suspiciously like genuine pain – probably he had found someone else. After all, he was a good-looking man. And there he was, in her mind. Lorcan Connolly. Black, close-cropped hair, bright blue eyes that skewered you where you stood, a mouth like a gin trap. Six feet four inches of Alpha male who looked like he could get physical – in the bedroom or out of it – without any trouble at all.
    Stop it , she told herself. You made your choice. You walked away.
    Ancient messes.
    She wasn’t going to think about them now. She pushed them to the back of her mind and took the lift down to the secure underground car park.
    Gracie loved her car. It was a smooth, powerful beast, the silver Mercedes SLK-Class roadster, and she steered it effortlessly through the traffic,