Read Online A Week From Sunday by Dorothy Garlock - Free Book Online Page B

was reluctant to part with. An eruption of fury raged in Richard’s chest, and he raised his hand to strike her another blow, this one sure to be harder than the first. But before he could let it loose, the dam of her silence broke and she blurted out, “Her mother’s sister lives in Mississippi, I think.”
    “Where in Mississippi?” he demanded, the hand still raised as a threat.
    “I don’t know what town.”
    “Do you know her aunt’s name? Well, never mind. I can find out.”
    Suddenly, everything became clear to him—what she had done, how she had done it, and most important, where she had gone. It was as if a lightning bolt had blazed through his head, illuminating all that had been hidden. Shoving the housekeeper aside, he went out the rear entrance of the house and across the short lawn to the garage that sat at the rear of the property. Yanking open the twin doors, he found just what he had expected.
    Charles Moore’s automobile was gone, taken by his wayward daughter.
How dare she take the car.
It was “his” car. It had been left to him in Charles’s will. He had already put the title in his name.
    She has stolen
my
car.
    As he stood in the cool night, the light wind pushing the wisps of his thinning hair in a bizarre dance, Richard Pope’s mind raced. As a lawyer he had been making decisions affecting life and death for years, and he knew what he had to do. If she had gone to Mississippi—and he had no reason to think anything else at this point—it would be easy to locate her with his resources.
Won’t she be surprised when she arrives and finds me waiting there for her.
He immediately began to feel better.
    “Oh, my sweet Adrianna,” he said as he rubbed himself with her panties again. The anger that had filled his chest upon entering the house was slowly dissipating. As he calmed, he began to even look forward to the chase—wherever it might lead—and the challenges that lay ahead. “I’ll play your silly game for a while, you little hussy.” He chuckled. This time when he found her he would no longer be the gentleman she had known. He would show her, in no uncertain terms, that he was the master and she belonged to him.
     

 

    Chapter 7

    Q UINN HURRIED DOWN the steps, through the squeaky wrought-iron gate, and out into the gloomy night. As he walked toward the Whipsaw, his hands thrust deeply into his pockets, a light breeze stirred the leaves of the treetops, bringing with it the fresh smell of impending rain. Even though this day’s storm had passed, another would surely be close behind. Springtime in Lee’s Point was nothing if not wet! On the far horizon, the sun had nearly set. Deep crimson and purple streaks colored the tops of the billowy clouds.
    Quinn’s father had named the tavern the Whipsaw, thinking it appropriate for the logging community. A whipsaw was a narrow, seven-foot, two-person, crosscut saw with hooked teeth, used to cut logs into planks.
    Operating the Whipsaw was not a labor of love for Quinn; that honor had belonged to his father. As he had built the home in which Quinn now lived, John Henry Baxter had constructed the tavern with his own two hands, tending and caring for it as if he were a farmer trying to raise fields of crops. At first, the new business struggled to make ends meet but, through years of hard work and dedication, it had managed to find its legs and thrive. People had come from miles around to find a place to forget their worries for a while. It was assumed that the Whipsaw would always be a fixture in Lee’s Point.
    That assumption had held true until the day John Henry Baxter died.
    While Quinn had respected his father, he had never admired John Henry, and he’d certainly never wanted to follow in his footsteps. John Henry had been a pious man who rarely imbibed in the stock that he traded; he truly believed that you could achieve anything you wanted . . . providing you were willing to sacrifice for it. To that end, he had worked day