Read Online Nolan by Kathi S. Barton - Free Book Online

knows that. He got
hurt. It happens. But he’s not dead. Dead is very hard to fix.”
    No one said anything, but Reggie knew they
were all dealing with their own form of grief. All of them at some point had
lost someone they loved. And losing Micah, her son, had been hard on Katie and his
mate, Gracie.
    The pacing began again, and Reggie wondered
what sort of things were going on in Rylee’s head. When Chris touched her mind,
she smiled at the other woman, knowing that she had heard her mind asking.
    She’s afraid for Shane. And for Nolan. She
has it in her head that he’s going to hear something that he’s not going to
like and throw them to the wolves, so to speak. Reggie asked her if
she loved Nolan yet. No. They’re not at that part of their bonding, as you
know, and she’s not going to be that easy to convince, I think. Army life has
taught her to mistrust a great deal more than you and I take as the truth. Shane,
she feels, might be better off without her.
    That’s ridiculous. Chris told her it
was no more so than her being able to read others’ minds . But you can do
that. It’s not the same at all.
    But it isn’t to her. Reggie could see her
point in that. But there was no way that that kid down the hall was any better
off without her. We have to do something.
    We are. We’re here for her. They both turned to
Rylee when she stopped moving. Reggie was almost afraid to ask Chris what she
was thinking now. But Rylee spoke first.
    “Nolan is at my old place. He just asked me
what I needed from there. Is that normal?” Gracie told her that he’d want her
to have things that were hers to make her feel better. “Yeah, I got that part,
but he’s speaking to me from my apartment. Not here in the room with me, but
from…I think I need a drink.”
    Miss May came in a few seconds later with more
than just the tea trolley loaded with an assortment of cookies, scones, and tea.
She also had a large bottle of Kentucky’s finest. Reggie thought for sure that
Rylee was going to just drink from the bottle, but she poured it into the glass
that Miss May handed her from her pocket.
    When she poured enough in the glass to fill
it up, Reggie laughed. It was going to be fun watching this woman tame Nolan.
Because as much as she loved the mild mannered Nolan, this woman was going to
shake him to his very core.
    ~~~
    Joey looked around the large spacious room
he’d been set in. There were things in this house that he was sure might have
been here longer than his family had been around. He looked at the painting
over the mantel and had to smile. The man there was a notorious rake and had
been wonderfully flamboyant at it. He knew a great deal about the Cole family
now.
    “He’s my great so-many-times-I-lost-count
grandfather. Terrible husband, but the women loved him. Almost as much as men
hated him for it.” Joey turned to look at the grand dame Mrs. Cole. “I don’t
usually entertain men I don’t know, but I talk to your grandmother all the time
and thought I should meet with you. What can I possibly do for a man such as
yourself, Joseph?”
    Joey felt his face heat up. He wasn’t one to
be embarrassed easily, but she’d done it with a few words and a sexy wink. He
knew that she was in her late eighties, but he would bet anything few knew that
fact.
    “I’m here on behalf of your…I would guess
your great-grandson, Shane Michael Cole.” She asked him to sit when she did.
The butler came in with a silver tea service with a C on the front of it. When
he’d finished serving them, he left them alone.
    “I don’t have any grandsons. My…whatever
David is to me in a long line of disappointments, he only has daughters. And
they’re not worth the sweat it took him to plant them in that equally
disappointing wife of his.” Joey sipped his tea and asked her about Shelby
Cole. “Shelby? I’ve not…that girl was also a sad disappointment. That boy, it’s
not his, he said. Had her sign off on something or another