Read Online Best Kept Secrets by Sandra Brown - Free Book Online Page B

that I was the only kid in my grade who didn't have one."
    "Lots of kids don't live with their mothers."
    "But they know they've got one." This was a subject she found difficult to discuss with even her closest friends and associates. She didn't feel inclined to discuss it with Junior Minton at all, no matter how sympathetic his smile.
    She touched the bouquet he'd brought and rubbed the petal of a red rose between her cold fingertips. In comparison, the flower felt like warm velvet, but it was the color of blood.
    "Do you bring flowers to my mother's grave often, Mr.
    Minton?"
    He didn't answer until she was looking at him again. "I was at the hospital the day you were born. I saw you before they had washed you up." His grin was open, warm, disarming.
    "Don't you think that should put us on a first-name basis?"
    It was impossible to erect barriers against his smile. It would have melted iron. "Then, call me Alex," she said, smiling back.
    His eyes moved from the crown of her head to the toes of her shoes. "Alex. I like that."
    "Do you?"
    "What, like your name?"
    "No, bring flowers here often."
    "Oh, that. Only on holidays. Angus and I usually bring something out on her birthday, Christmas, Easter. Reede, too. We split the cost of having the grave tended."
    "Any particular reason why?"
    He gave her an odd look, then answered simply, "We all loved Celina."

    "I believe one of you killed her," she said softly.
    "You believe wrong, Alex. I didn't kill her."
    "What about your father? Do you think he did?"
    He shook his head. "He treated Celina like a daughter.
    Thought of her that way, too."
    "And Reede Lambert?"
    He shrugged as though no elaboration was necessary.
    "Reede, well ..."
    "What?"
    "Reede could never have killed her."

    Alex settled deeper into her fur coat. The sun had set, and it was getting colder by the moment. When she spoke, her breath fogged the air in front of her face. "I spent some time in the public library this afternoon, reading back issues of the local newspaper."
    "Anything about me?"
    "Oh, yes, all about your Purcell Panther football days."
    As he laughed, the wind lifted his fair hair. His was a much lighter blond than Reede's, and it was finer, better controlled. "That must have made for some fascinating reading."
    "It did. You and Reede were cocaptains of the team."
    "Hell, yeah." He crooked his arm as though showing off muscled biceps. "We thought we were invincible, real hot snot."
    "Her junior year, my mother was the homecoming queen.
    There was a picture of Reede kissing her during halftime."
    Studying that photograph had made Alex feel very strange.
    She'd never seen it before. For some reason her grandmother had chosen not to keep it among her many others, perhaps because Reede Lambert's kiss had been audacious, full-fledged, and proprietary.
    Undaunted by the cheering crowd in the stadium, his arm had been curved possessively around Celina's waist. The pressure of the kiss had angled her head back. He looked like a conqueror, especially in the muddy football uniform, holding his battle-scarred helmet in his other hand.

    After staring at the photograph for several minutes, she began to feel that kiss herself.
    Coming back to the present, she said, "You didn't become friends with my mother and Reede until later on, isn't that right?"
    Junior pulled up a blade of grass and began to shred it between his fingers. "Ninth grade. Until then, I attended a boarding school in Dallas."
    "By choice?"
    "By my mother's choice. She didn't want me picking up what she considered to be undesirable habits from the kids of oil-field workers and cowhands, so I was packed off to Dallas every fall.
    "My schooling was a bone of contention between Mother and Dad for years. Finally, when I was about to go into high school, he put his foot down and said it was time I learned there were other kinds of people besides the 'pale little bastards'--and that's a quote--at prep school. He enrolled me in Purcell High School that