Read Online Secondhand Sinners by Genevieve Lynne - Free Book Online Page A

However, if he wanted her to show him a little mercy, he’d damn sure better extend some to her. “You did what you had to do.”
    “I guess.” She lay back onto the grass and took a deep breath.
    Good. Looked like she was going to relax a little.
    “Is that a storm cloud?”
    Or maybe not. “No.”
    “It sure seems dark.”
    “Weather called for a few showers today, no storms.”
    “Are you sure? ‘Cause it—”
    “Tell me something, Jack,” Miller said, casting the newly loaded hook out into the water. “Does your mom talk this much all the time?”
    “Yep. All the time.”
    “I do not. I’m worried it’s going to rain.”
    Miller looked down at her out of the corner of one eye. “That’s not going to stop the fish from biting.”
    “I know that.”
    “So you’re afraid to get wet?”
    She rolled over to her side, propping herself up on her bent elbow and facing him. The V in her t-shirt sagged a little and gave Miller a clear view of cleavage and…oh God she had on a lace bra. He looked away and tried to focus on helping Jack bring in the line.
    “I’m not afraid to get wet. I don’t know what Jack will do if we’re caught in a storm.”
    “What do you think, Jack?” he asked with two more clicks of the reel. “Should we give up and go back to the house?”
    “No way.” Jack shook his head. “I have to catch fish for dinner.”
    “I think your mom’s afraid to get wet, Jack.”
    “No I’m not.” Emily sat up. “Remember that time we came out here and it started raining, and so we…we…” She glanced at each of the kids and then at Miller. “Got really wet?”
     
    She was recalling the same memory he had been replaying in his mind ever since she laid down on the blanket next to him. So yeah, he remembered. They had come out to this very pond to be together when it started to rain. She stripped down to her underwear and ran out into the water like she didn’t have a care in the world. He liked seeing her in nothing but her bra and panties. After he followed suit and chased her out into the deep, he loved the way her bare skin felt on his. Mostly he loved that being with him made her feel wild and free. He was her refuge and that made him feel more like a man than any amount of sex they’d ever had. He missed that feeling almost as much as he missed her.
     
    “I do remember that,” he said, trying hard to concentrate on Jack’s rod and reel. “I remember it all the time. This place is a minefield of memories.”
    Damn. Things were starting to lighten up between the two of them, and he had to go throw a wet blanket of awkward over the whole encounter.
    “I shouldn’t have said that.”
    “It’s okay. I understand.”
    A few seconds and a few clicks of the reel later, the line came up with nothing but a dead soggy worm still skewered on the hook. He sort of envied that worm. He was about to cast the line back out until he noticed Emily taking off her little white tennis shoes. “What are you doing?”
    “I’m showing you that I’m not afraid to get wet.”
    Emily walked barefooted to the edge of the water, briefly glancing back in his direction and throwing him a look he recognized so well it startled him. She was daring him, inviting him, begging him to follow her. Or that was just what he was hoping to see. She took off running into the water, and he sat there like a fool watching her.
    Abby snatched the rod from him and whispered, “Go!”
    “Huh?”
    “Go, Daddy. Follow her.”
    “I don’t think—”
    “You’re not supposed to think. Go. Now’s your chance to spend your weekend doing something fun.”
    “I have fun.”
    “Reading the same Tom Clancy books over and over is not fun. Go, Daddy. I’m begging you. She wants you to go with her.”
    Abby had him pegged. Here he sat, frozen with fear that he would say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing and Emily expected him to be following her. She was expecting him, wasn’t she?
    Emily was in the water up