The Surprise Princess by Patricia McLinn Read Free Book Online Page B

in the garage. Not since you rented it to Ferdy down the street.”
    “Nevertheless, the walk needs to be shoveled.”
    The standoff lasted another fifteen seconds. “Fine. I’ll shovel the walk.” He retrieved his jacket, opened the back door a sliver, then turned to her. “Do not believe a word this woman says, Katie.”
    “Bradford, that is no way to talk about your grandmother. In addition, you are letting all the cold air in. Go.”
    He went.

 
    CHAPTER SIX
     
    A ndy was smiling as she got up for the teapot. She poured, fussed a bit, then sat back down across from Katie.
    “He’s a good boy. He was going to shovel as soon as I asked him, but he has to have something to say. Does it the same with the garden come summer. Stakes the tomatoes, puts the mulch down so there’s not much weeding. I raised a good boy. C.J. Draper coached a good man.”
    Katie blinked. She’d met Brad’s mother and stepfather several times when they came by the office. So why did Brad’s grandmother say
she
had raised a good boy?
    “Brad was an unsteady student in high school, with excellent test scores but erratic grades.”
    “That’s—”
    She debated if her next words should be “none of my business” or the more neutral, yet dampening “interesting.” Andrea Spencer talked right past her hesitation.
    “His basketball performance was the same. He’d play brilliantly in close games or against superior teams. In easy games he was … unpredictable. Still, colleges recruited him, hoping for the brilliance. He had decided to accept an offer from a large state school. I had concerns that such a large program might leave him too much to his own devices. But Brad was determined. Only as a favor to me did he postpone making the commitment.
    “Then Coach Draper came to see me. Do you know about that first group of young men Coach Draper signed to scholarships at Ashton University?”
    She did. It was basketball lore, especially at Ashton. A well-known coach had been hired to guide the team’s move up to Division I. Then a bigger program hired him away. With no coach, no recruits, and a Division I schedule ahead, the school had gambled and hired untested C.J. Draper. He had recruited four unlikely players – three freshmen and a junior college transfer. They became the core of the team that reached the NCAA tournament’s Elite Eight that first season, and even better in later seasons.
    Brad’s grandmother didn’t wait for her response, however.
    “Coach Draper had quite the uphill battle that first season. The top prospects had long signed with other schools. He needed to find players who had been overlooked. A friend of his knew Brad’s high school coach. Coach Draper came to see him play. He talked with Brad, his coaches, his teachers, and then he came to see me. Other coaches who had recruited Brad had heaped praise on him. Coach Draper said Brad was a project he was willing to take on if I would commit to – as he put it – holding his feet to the fire on the home front. I was more than willing.”
    Andrea Spencer smiled, and her quirk of deviltry was so like Brad that Katie smiled back.
    “Brad, however, was not.”
    Katie blinked. “He wasn’t? He didn’t want to go to Ashton?” She couldn’t imagine Ashton without Brad.
    “Not at all. He was set on that large school with a reputation as a party school.”
    “Then how…?”Andrea’s smile was satisfied and wise without losing any of the deviltry. “I preyed on my grandson’s overriding weakness for underdogs.”
    “Weakness for underdogs?”
    “Oh, yes. From the time he was a toddler, he’d stand up for anybody being picked on, even if he didn’t like them. If he brought home a puppy, it was the runt. Why do you think he kept Spencer as his last name? His mother was the underdog after the divorce. She’d returned to her maiden name, so he did, too. When she remarried and Phillip would have adopted Brad, he wouldn’t hear of it, because the