Read Online Sing Me Back Home by Eve Gaddy - Free Book Online

girls went off to Gina’s room. “We can’t stay long,” Maya called after them. “Tomorrow’s a school day.”
    She and Jack sat on his couch and talked for a little while longer. “Carmen and I should be going,” Maya said, reluctantly.
    “Okay.” He kissed her.
    “Soon,” Maya murmured and kissed him.
    “Okay,” he repeated, and kissed her again.
    “I really, really have to go,” she said against his lips.
    “Mom,” Carmen said in disapproving tones, “you said we had to go soon.”
    “Busted,” Jack murmured, lifting his head and smiled at Maya.
    “By both of them,” she said, looking over at the two girls, who exhibited identical censorious expressions.
    *
    The following evening, Jack was reading a medical journal when Gina came into his study. He smiled at his daughter and asked, “Are you going to bed already?”
    She rolled her eyes. “Dad, it’s only nine o’clock. I’m not a baby.”
    He hid another smile. “You’re right about that. I didn’t realize what time it was.” He’d been having a hard time concentrating, mainly because he couldn’t stop thinking about Maya. She and Carmen had plans with Maya’s parents, who were in town for the night, so Jack knew he wouldn’t see her until the weekend.
    Gina wandered around the study restlessly, looking at the bookshelves, picking out books and putting them back, and sighing a lot.
    A sure-fire sign that she had something on her mind. He knew a cowardly urge to hope the problem wasn’t about boys. He sucked at that sort of thing. Gina didn’t want to hear that Jack didn’t trust one single teenage boy with his little girl. She’d say he was being overprotective, and he was. But Jack had been a teenage boy, and he knew how their minds worked.
    “Did you want to talk about something, honey?” he asked her.
    She shot him a glance and shrugged. “You won’t want to talk about it. You never do.”
    Boys, damn it. “Gina, you know you can talk about anything with me. Out with it. What’s wrong?”
    “It’s about Mom. You don’t like to talk about her.”
    Jack felt a pang of guilt. Gina was exaggerating, but she did have a point. He didn’t avoid conversations about Brianna, at least not with Gina, but he rarely initiated them. It always saddened him to think that Brianna was missing so much with their daughter and with him. “What about your mother?”
    Gina sat in the comfortably shabby overstuffed chair where Jack often sat to read—anything except medical journals. He read those at his desk. Curling her legs up under her, Gina began plucking at the fabric of the chair. Another sign of troubled thoughts.
    “I miss her,” she said, her tone so sad it broke his heart.
    “I know you do. I miss her too.”
    “Do you . . . do you still love Mom?”
    Now he knew what was going on. He should have realized from the first. “I’ll always love your mother. You know that.”
    Gina still looked troubled. She looked up and met his eyes. “You kissed Ms. Parrish.”
    “Yes,” he agreed cautiously. “I like her.”
    “You’re dating her.”
    “Yes,” he said again. And he meant to continue. Where it was going, he didn’t know but in the meantime he wanted to be with Maya.
    “You really like her, I can tell.”
    Was it that obvious? Even to his daughter, who, like a typical teenager, didn’t usually notice much beyond her circle of friends? Or was it just the kiss she witnessed that gave him away? Gina had seen him kiss women before. Hadn’t she? He thought about that. Maybe she hadn’t. “Does it bother you that I’m dating someone?”
    “I don’t know. I like Ms. Parrish. Carmen and I are friends and her mom is cool. But—” she hesitated, then said, “I feel like we’re just forgetting Mom.”
    Tears welled in her eyes. The eyes that looked so much like her mother’s. Jack’s heart turned over. “Come here,” he said huskily.
    Gina got up and crawled into Jack’s lap, as she had as a little girl. She