Read Online Operation Saving Daniel (Entangled Covet) by Nina Croft - Free Book Online Page B

hand through her short hair, pressing her scalp. “This whole thing, this whole plot, the makeover… It’s about me, not Daniel, isn’t it?”
    “Of course, it’s about Daniel. You’ve seen him. He needs help.”
    Some of her tension eased away. “That’s true.”
    “But so do you.”
    Lissa forced down her panic. Taking a huge gulp of her wine, she sat back and, one by one, relaxed her tense muscles.
    “So does your brother Jason have as many hang-ups as you?” Julia asked.
    Thank God—a change of subject. “More,” she said. “Why are you asking?”
    “Because I fancy him, of course.” Julia studied her for a minute. “On you that coloring—the black hair and the golden eyes—is sort of cool. But on Jason, it’s totally hot.”
    She shrugged. “I didn’t notice.”
    “Well, he is your brother and your mind is on other things.”
    True. And not only her mind. All through the long day, she’d had flashbacks to those minutes with Daniel before Julia’s timely interruption. She shivered as she remembered the sensation of his strong arms around her, his lips on hers.
    Pushing the image aside, she considered what she could tell Julia about Jason. She was embarrassed she knew so little. “I don’t really know him,” she said at last.
    “How can you not know him? He’s your brother.”
    “We never had much to do with each other when we were kids—he was two years older and that’s a big difference.”
    “No it’s not.”
    Julia was obviously not going to make this easy. “We weren’t a close family to begin with, and once I got the scholarship we drifted even farther apart.” That wasn’t really a true representation of what had happened. She remembered coming home for one holiday and Jason calling her a stuck-up little bitch, and maybe he’d been right. And that wasn’t a nice thing to have to face about yourself, so she’d avoided him when she could, which was most of the time.
    “I was always scared he would turn up at the school and embarrass me.”
    “How could he do that?”
    She shook her head. “You have no idea. He was wild, always in trouble.”
    “He would have given you street cred.”
    “The last thing I needed was street cred—believe me I had street cred in spades, I just learned to hide it.”
    Julia studied her for a minute. “You were ashamed of your family.”
    “Yes.”
    She glanced around her at the subdued elegance of her surroundings. It seemed so incongruous to think of her childhood in these surroundings.
    “My mother was a drug dealer. My father was a male stripper.”
    Julia stared. Hey, she’d made mouthy Julia speechless. That had to be a first.
    “You are kidding me?”
    “I wish I was. My mother went to prison when I was fifteen.”
    “Shit, I remember. You told us there was a bit of trouble at home and your mum had left your dad.”
    “Well, it wasn’t voluntarily. She got four years for dealing.” She smiled. “Would that have given me street cred?”
    “Okay, maybe I see your point. So what happened?”
    Her father had loved her mother almost desperately. The feeling hadn’t been mutual. From an early age, the one overriding emotion Lissa remembered from her mother had been scorn for her father and her brother.
    “I’m sorry,” Julia said.
    “What for?”
    “Your face—you look so tragic. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
    “No, it’s a good thing, really. I’ve always done my best not to think about them. But my mother hated men.”
    “Where is she now? Do you see her?”
    “No, I don’t.” She grinned. “She got out in two years on good behavior, but she never went back to my father. She moved in with a biker chick she met in prison.”
    “What?”
    “My mother is a lesbian.” Saying it was like coming out.
    “Right…” Julia murmured. “A lesbian. So back to Jason…”
    Julia was incorrigible. “I don’t know,” Lissa said. “But I mean to find out on Sunday. You can help me cook lunch.”
    “You can