Read Online Paradise for a Sinner by Lynn Shurr - Free Book Online Page A

before escorting him to the gates to wait for his bus. From social worker to Nell, all agreed for the time being he would be better off with his regular routine and an aide at the public school who knew him.
    Winnie warned him in the afternoon, she would meet him with his crutches and expect him to walk at least half way back to the house using them. Noting his worried expression, she brushed the fine, blond hair out of his eyes and gave him some reassurance.
    “Never fear. No one is going to kick you out. You have a home here as long as you need it.”
    She watched him safely board the bus and turned to go back to the house. Joe’s farm truck, the one he had reclaimed in Mexico five years ago, pulled up beside her. Adam leaned out from the open window. “You ready to help me find some lava rocks?”
    “Sure, if Nell doesn’t need me.”
    “She’s taking that Stacy over to the day school for admission testing. The girl had a private tutor, if you can believe that. They don’t know exactly what she learned—except whining, complaining, and lording it over everyone else. In Samoa, I was grateful to sleep on my auntie’s screened porch in Pago Pago in order to go to school in the city, me and Sammy Tau and four other boys, too.”
    Winnie climbed into the high cab of the once silver truck. The finish had worn down to gray, but Knox Polk kept it in good running order and used it for the dirty work around the ranch. She knew the harrowing story of its recovery and always had the urge to look for bullet holes in the chassis. The iron gates of Lorena Ranch opened and closed behind them.
    “Sounds like a rough way to get an education.”
    “Not so bad. Only the smartest and most athletic boys got the chance to leave the village. If we did well, we got scholarships to the mainland colleges, guys like me to big universities with football teams, the others to church-run colleges maybe, to become ministers, doctors, teachers, the kind of people who get a lot of respect back home.”
    “And football players?”
    “Not as much as you’d think. Now a nurse, she has some prestige.”
    “Really? All I’ve heard for years is that I should have been a doctor.”
    “What stopped you?”
    “My ex, he had to get his training first.” Winnie vowed not to mention Doug again in any way if she could help it. Just what a guy wanted to hear, stories about her ex.
    “If it weren’t for mine, I’d be in Pago right now.”
    “You have an ex, too?”
    “Ex-fiancée. She wanted another man. Now I don’t feel like going home so much.”
    “Hard to believe she’d want anyone else but you.”
    “You think?” A grin wiped the momentary seriousness from his face.
    They entered the small town of Chapelle and immediately left it, making a beeline for the highway and the sprawling Home Depot that sat at the intersection with the country road. Adam drove carelessly, one hand on the wheel, a heavy foot on the gas pedal pushing the old truck ten miles over the limit.
    “Um, Adam. You’re speeding.”
    “You see a cop?”
    “No, but…”
    “Then, no worries, lovely Winnie.”
    Taking no risks, she always drove slightly under the speed limit. Despite her fears, they did get to Home Depot alive. Adam parked near several chicken wire pens of rocks and started looking them over. “Louisiana has lots of great stuff, but it doesn’t have good rocks,” he remarked as he held up a specimen. “Imagine having to import rocks. We need a bunch of lava stones the size of a coconut for the umu oven.”
    Despite having dressed in white slacks and an emerald top she thought made her eyes look greener, Winnie joined in the search for the perfect rocks until they created a small volcano-shaped mound. Adam paid for the stones and heaved them one by one into the truck. She didn’t mind watching him one bit as his muscles bunched and his buttocks strained tight in a pair of jeans. Back in the truck, they stopped at the light preventing people from