Read Online Desperado: Deep in the Heart, Book 2 by Tina Leonard - Free Book Online Page A

to hit ’em, but still, I don’t know that would have continued to be the case if I hadn’t discovered what they were up to.”
    “Damn it! I’ll thrash her myself!” Cody jumped to his feet, his temper soaring to the red line.
    “Hold on, man. Take your seat back.” Sloan stood to shove him back down in his chair, something Cody wouldn’t have tolerated if he wasn’t practically blind in one eye from rage and quite aware that this man had done him and his family a hell of a favor. “You ain’t thrashing no one, because this is between me and those little ladies. To be honest, I believe they were more than sorry once they started puking their guts.” Sloan pointed the wide-edged knife at him for emphasis. “You don’t know sorry until you’ve sat with four wailing little girls whose stomachs won’t stay down. Gawd almighty. If I hadn’t served in the military, I mighta been throwing up with ’em.”
    Cody sat stone-still, though his hands trembled. “You shouldn’t have let her off.”
    “It’s my business, Cody, not yours.”
    “Still. I owe you.”
    Sloan sent him a sardonic look. “Shut the hell up, Cody, and get your ass off that chair. Somebody else needs to bend my ear.”
    He glanced over his shoulder and saw elderly Widow Baker hovering outside. Getting up stiffly, he said, “Mary will pay you back for the harm she has caused you.”
    Sloan stood. “She has. She’s done what I asked. My only reason in telling you is so that you understand what I mean about Stormy Nixon. She couldn’t have stirred up trouble if it wasn’t already a problem. And I have your word that this will be kept between the three of us.” He jerked his head once toward the door. “Be seeing ya.”
    Cody tipped his hat to Widow Baker, but strode to his truck feeling as if he was going to be ill. His little ladybug, punch-drunk and throwing rocks. Crossing highways and running away. When had everything started changing—and why hadn’t he noticed?
    It occurred to him, though he didn’t like it a bit, that maybe it was damn fortunate that Stormy Nixon had blown into town. Otherwise, who knew where Mary might have run to?
     
     
    Zach and Annie gazed at Mary, who looked down at her shoes. They were her parents, but they had no idea what she was going through. She barely had any friends, and to make matters worse, her mom was having a baby. It would be too humiliating for her mother to come pick her up at school holding a baby carrier.
    What if her mother carried the baby like a papoose? Mary cringed inside. Sometimes women used those sack things to carry their babies. She closed her eyes and wished to be anywhere but here. If her mother used one of those awful baby carriers, her friends were going to start up with the Indian jokes again. Mary didn’t think she could bear it.
    “Do you understand how much you frightened us?” Her mother stared at her. Zach rubbed her mom’s back in comforting circles.
    “Yeah.” She did, but she wouldn’t have had to try to run away if they knew what she was going through.
    “I don’t think you do understand!” Annie stood, stalking about the kitchen.
    Mary knew she should be sorry for upsetting her mother; she was a little sorry for that. “I do understand, Mom! But you just treat me like such a baby! I’ve tried and tried to tell you, but you just don’t listen!”
    “Tell us again. We want to work this out.”
    Zach sounded reasonable, but Mary knew whose side he was on. After all, her mother was carrying his child, his very own flesh and blood. Well, she’d been here first. “I need to do things for myself. I want to stay out later with my friends. I don’t want to wear pink ribbons to school. I want to try out for that part in Stormy’s movie!”
    “We’re just not sure, honey.” Annie’s eyes filled with worry. “I was all for you trying out at first, but I didn’t know it was a horror movie—”
    “I know. I know. And you’re afraid there will be