Read Online Behind the Shadows by Patricia; Potter - Free Book Online Page A

she would like to think she was irresistible, she was a realist. She wasn’t. For some reason, she’d sparked his curiosity.
    She didn’t usually have self-esteem issues. She was passable enough in a girl-next-door way, but she’d never attracted the football hero or basketball star or the most popular boy in the class. She’d always been more interested in books than most of the guys who asked her out. None had made her heart race, and none of her relationships had developed beyond the friendship stage. Sex, she had thought on her few attempts, was highly overrated.
    Now someone had made her heart race, even if it had been for only a few moments, and he was the worst possible person for more reasons than she could count at the moment.
    Maybe that racing was due to the circumstances, of nearly being caught red-handedly stealing DNA. And maybe she needed to know why he was curious.
    Or so she told herself, even as she admitted the obvious. Max was one of the hottest-looking men she’d met. He certainly had the greenest eyes. Not to mention a definite presence. Meeting him, even for an early dinner, would be the same as walking through a land mine field. As the family attorney, it was his responsibility to represent Leigh Howard. He might even be in love with her. He would not take kindly to Kira withholding information that could rock the Westerfield empire.
    She could tell him everything. But she owed it to Leigh to tell her first. She knew her own reaction to the news. Utter devastation. It was Leigh’s right, just as it had been her own, to decide who should know. At least for the moment.
    That was it, then. She would tell him she couldn’t make it.
    Didn’t really matter, anyway. She was not his type, and he wasn’t hers. And, she reminded herself again, she was, above all, a realist.

9
    Kira drove home before going to the hospital. She was going to get comfortable for her hospital visit, and she changed into an old T-shirt and jeans.
    The clothes fortified her decision to avoid attorney Maxwell Payton.
    She ignored the ringing of her telephone. The coward’s way out, and she hated to be a coward. Yet she wouldn’t be tempted.
    She picked up a book on the way out. If her mother was sleeping, she would read. If not, she could read to her. Her mother loved books but even holding a book seemed too much an effort for her now.
    A smile spread across her mother’s face when Kira entered, but she looked wan and tired. Dark circles shadowed her eyes, and she coughed, a bad sign. She’d been warned that pneumonia was a distinct possibility at this stage of kidney failure.
    Kira swooped down to kiss her. “Hi, the doctor been in today?”
    â€œUh-huh. Said I was doing good.”
    Liar . Either her mother or the doctor. Her mother seemed to shrink in the bed day by day.
    She sat in the only chair in the room. “Have you been watching television?”
    â€œFor a little while. It’s … all so depressing these days.” She looked at the book in Kira’s hand. “Good?”
    â€œYep. I thought I would read to you for a little while if you’re up to it.”
    â€œYou and your Linus-like need for books,” her mother said with a smile that was only a shadow of the familiar one. “Your security has always been books. Never … happy unless you had a pile nearby.”
    â€œI’m still not.”
    Kira read aloud until her mother’s eyes closed. She put the book down, then closed her own eyes. She’d had little or no sleep during the past week, particularly since she received the result from the final DNA test. So many decisions to be made, none of them good.
    She woke to a knock on the door.
    The nurse had already been in. She turned around, blinked a couple of times, and focused on a tall man in the doorway.
    Max Payton was even more attractive than she remembered.
    â€œHi,” he said quietly as his gaze went to