Yours to Keep by Serena Bell Read Free Book Online Page A

breath.
    On the plus side, she’d won him over. Gotten his attention.
    On the minus side, Ethan Hansen would be home at any moment, and more or less the first thing she’d have to say to him was that she’d pretended to be his son’s stepmother. She hoped he wouldn’t think she was angling for the job.

Chapter 5
    Ethan climbed the stairs from the garage to the kitchen and discovered Ana and Theo at the table, their dark heads bent together over a textbook.
    They looked up. “Hi,” Ana said. She smiled at him.
    Man, she was beautiful. She had a wide mouth, soft lips, and white teeth that made a sharp contrast with her caramel-colored skin. Today she wore a pink V-necked blouse, and he had to make an effort not to let his gaze drop to where the shirt dipped. Because he’d already enumerated to himself all the reasons they weren’t going there. Still, his southerly blood flow had apparently not gotten the message.
    Theo scowled, the expression he usually greeted his father with these days.
    “Don’t let me interrupt.” Ethan set a stack of medical charts on the counter and pushed his fingers through his hair. He’d rushed out after his last patient and driven probably faster than he should have to make sure he’d be home to pay Ana. Yeah, that was it , he thought ruefully. He was all selflessness.
    “We’re almost done.” Ana looked up at the clock on the microwave. It was a few minutes before six.
    “Carry on.” He crossed to the sink and washed his hands then reached down to retrieve a large pot, which he filled with water and set on the stove to boil. He didn’t cook much, but he could handle spaghetti sauce.
    She was quizzing Theo on something, their voices taking turns, a comforting counterpoint as he got out the cutting board and his onion goggles and the sharp knife.
    “You have a good ear,” Ana told Theo. “Just trust yourself. If your grammar isn’t perfect, no one cares.”
    “Except my Spanish teacher,” Theo said.
    “Except your Spanish teacher.”
    She burst out laughing. Ethan sneaked a look at her and found that she was laughing at him.
    He’d forgotten how ridiculous the red onion goggles looked. He’d have whipped themoff, but he figured he’d look even less manly with tears streaming down his face. “Onion goggles,” he explained.
    “Seriously?”
    She was gorgeous when her smile made it all the way to her eyes. He had to smile back. “They really help. They seal out the chemical that makes your eyes tear.”
    She surveyed him critically. “You look like some kind of weird superhero. I thought maybe you were a superhero when you rescued me the other day. Now I know for sure.”
    He tried not to be as thrilled as a thirteen-year-old girl. “Onion Man!” he said, throwing out his arms in flight, eight-inch chef’s knife still in one hand.
    “I got them for him for his birthday,” Theo said. “He cries when he cuts onions.”
    Great. Ethan lowered his arms and set the knife on the cutting board.
    “My sister cries when she cuts onions, too,” Ana said. “Buckets. My eyes are tearing over here.” She turned to Theo. “I think we’re done, right?”
    Theo started to get up from the table, but Ana touched his arm. The boy froze, and Ethan couldn’t make sense of the expression on his face for a moment. Fear?
    “Ethan, Theo has something to tell you.”
    Theo dropped back in his seat, shooting Ana a glare that could have burned through a brick wall.
    Oh, hell, now what? Ethan stepped around the island to get closer to where they sat, resting the flat of his hand on the countertop. He waited, aware that his heart had begun to race.
    “The-police-picked-me-up-for-riding-my-skateboard-on-a-wall-and-not-wearing-a-helmet,” Theo said to the table.
    In the otherwise silent kitchen, Ethan became aware of the whir of the range-top fan and another sound, the water beginning to boil on the stove. The bits and pieces of Theo’s run-together words penetrated. Police. “Say