Read Online Dirty Little Secret by Jennifer Echols - Free Book Online Page B

car and navigated the road, but my brain had waited until now to start processing again. Even driving away from Sam hadn’t registered.
    I thought of him bending over to put his guitar behind the seat of his truck, big biceps moving underneath the sleeves of his T-shirt. His father had been nowhere in sight, which must have meant they’d driven to the mall separately. Maybe Sam didn’t even live with his dad anymore. He had more and better friends than I did, potential roommates, and the second he’d graduated from high school, he’d moved out.
    But as I pulled back onto the street and puzzled through Sam, I decided he more likely was stuck with his dad like I was stuck with my family. He relied on his dad for the job like I relied on my granddad. I could tell from his enthusiasm that nothing had ever been more delicious to him than the taste of his own gig tonight. It took a lot for a big guy like him to give the impression of a wide-eyed puppy.
    I felt like that myself—about the gig, and about him. I couldn’t wait for before nine.
    I pulled up to my granddad’s house and walked through the front room, which he’d converted to a workshop and showroom. Most of the time even his living space in the back smelled like sawdust and varnish. At the moment it smelled like steam and spaghetti. He was a pretty good cook for only having learned ten years ago when my grandmom died, and I was hungry. My stomach growled, and my heart leaped. I missed sitting down at the dinner table with my whole family, but I still looked forward to eating with my granddad.
    “Hi,” I called, popping into the kitchen.
    “Hey,” he said, turning around from the pots on the stove with a spatula in his hand, wearing my grandmother’s apron over the denim shirt and jeans he worked in. When we were younger, Julie and I had made fun of him behind his back for cooking us dinner in the frilly apron. My mom had told us sternly that he missed her mother, and not everything in life was fodder for cruel little girls.
    His eyes lingered for only a second on my asymmetrical hair—it seemed that in a year, he’d never quite gotten used to it—before he asked, “How was work?”
    “This was probably the best day all week.” At least, the day sure had looked up after work was over. “I got invited to play another gig tonight.”
    “No,” he said, shaking his head.
    Stunned, I stared at him with his sauce-covered spatula in the air. Technically, I was forbidden by my parents to play any gig at all. But my granddad had gone out and gotten me the first one, so I’d thought he would agree to the second one, too, if I presented it the right way. I’d rehearsed my speech all the way from the gas station, and he’d just cut me off.
    This couldn’t be happening. Not when Sam was involved. I took a deep breath, kept my cool, and started again. “This gig is in the District—”
    “Even worse,” my granddad interrupted. “In a bar? You’re underage. And you’re more likely to attract attention playing in the District. That’s exactly what your parents said to keep you away from. I didn’t see the harm in the mall job, no matter what your parents thought, but even I can see you shouldn’t be playing in the District, like you’re trying to get your own recording contract. Julie’s record company asked us not to talk about you because they don’t want the public to hear she used to play with you. What if the record company found out?”
    I stared at him a moment more, this rangy, white-haired man in a woman’s apron, controlling my life. He was the one who’d gotten me into this mess, in a roundabout way. He’d taught my mother to play guitar. He’d taken her and her brothers to blue-grass festivals. That’s where she’d gotten the idea that a drive for musical fame was fun for the whole family. My granddad still had one toe in the music industry. He might not have caught the bug that badly himself—he’d never seemed to crave the