Read Online Secrets by Leanne Davis - Free Book Online

off the table into her lap. No more fidgeting, no more organizing. She sat up straight, her back barely resting on the booth. “You don’t believe me, but I work a lot. I know the women of town because that’s who I deal with eight hours a day, six days a week, selling them clothes and knick-knacks. I don’t see a lot of men. It really isn’t anything personal, you know.”
    “And you live in a box too?”
    “Yes, kind of. I live above the shop and I don’t have a lot of spare time to go out.”
    “What about all your friends from high school? You had half a school following your every whim and word.”
    She shook her head with a small smile. “That was ten years ago, Scott. Most anyone I knew left for college and never looked back. That was high school. People move on, grow up, and hopefully are not who they were in high school. Which I’ve spent the last three years making sure I wasn’t.”
    “Why?”
    “Because of my very public break up with John Tyler. I realized I didn’t like me very much. Why would anyone else? I’ve changed, and grown up. Leaving me with not a lot of friends. I’m sorry if I didn’t know who you were. So you’ll have to fill me in. What is it you do?”
    Why was he so reluctant to tell her what he did? Like it mattered in the least. Finally, he answered shortly, “I work on boats.”
    “What does that mean? You fish? Where? For what?”
    “No, I don’t fish. I work at Stillers Boat Works.”
    “Stillers? Of course, everyone’s heard of that place, even me. What do you do there?”
    “I work back in Service.” His tone was borderline rude. It’s not like he was in a hurry to explain he wasn’t management or sales, but the physical labor of the operation. Each time she saw him he was coming from Stillers, his clothes reeking with the oil and fumes of the work he did.
    He glanced up when she didn’t answer. Her head was tilted as she studied him. “What?” he grunted.
    “Why are you so reluctant to talk about it with me?” She shook her head and answered herself. “Oh, I get it. You think I’ll judge you for it or something, right? That I, being the former prom queen you once knew of, must have an issue with what people do for a living.”
    “Don’t you?”
    “I must, you decided I do.”
    “Well, you’re like an expensive bottle of wine and I’m a can of cheap beer. We don’t mix.”
    She let out a breath and shook her head back and forth. The ends of her hair brushed over her shoulders. “Wow. You really have a complex. You do realize I had some idea what you did.”
    “Yeah, my clothes.”
    “Yes, your clothes. Why is it you think I’d find it so distasteful? You judge me on my clothes, don’t you?”
    “I don’t give a shit about your clothes.”
    “No, but you judge me on them. You give a shit in that you think they’re expensive and that I only care about them. That’s all you do is look me up one side and down the other with complete disdain over what you think of as my shallow, waste-of-time profession and wardrobe. You’re the judgmental one, not me.”
    He did look her up and down. But it wasn’t for her clothing. They only registered to him in some vague idea if she was wearing pants or a skirt, and some notion of what color. Other than that he couldn’t care less what a woman wore. Style and name brands were like telling him what soap operas were on TV. He hated to know, and looked even less. But her body in those clothes, yeah, he noticed that.
    “I’m probably a lot of things, but I’m not a snob.”
    He was saved from confirming or denying when the waitress came with their drinks and food. He was starving and dug into the hamburger. She picked at her rabbit plate. And only after several bites did he realize she was watching him, no, not him, staring at his food. It wasn’t disdain on her face at his food, but longing. Why the hell didn’t she order some dinner? Shyness? Somehow, Sarah as shy was a stretch of the imagination.
    He