Read Online Touch of Evil by Colleen Thompson - Free Book Online

make my own decisions.”
    Under other circumstances, Ross would be glad she was finally growing up and pulling away from her longtime dependence on him. But there was too much at stake here. And as the only living male in his extended family, Ross had been raised from childhood to feel a keen sense of responsibility. He thought of his mother’s and Aunt Ava’s laundry list of expectations, not only for home repair and leadership of the charitable foundation established in his grandfather’s name, but for help with any needed heavy lifting…
    Your cousin Trudy’s getting a new freezer…I told her, of course, that you’d help her husband move it. What did she think? That’d you’d let her pick up that heavy thing with that back of hers?
    With their daughters’ boyfriends…
    You need to have a talk with this Erik your sister Gwen is seeing. Sure, he cleans up nice and speaks well, but see if you can find out who his people are. And what kind of a job allows him to keep such late hours with my daughter?
    And, first and foremost, with free medical care.
    Think you could stop by and see your cousin Dara? She’s got some sort of fungal situation with her toes.
    Ross didn’t mind helping out upon occasion, but for his own sanity, he had to set strict limits (Dara, for example, was referred with lightning speed to a podiatrist) to prevent his family from completely taking over his life. When he did help, his sisters and his cousins were quick to give him grief atthe slightest hint that he considered himself some kind of paterfamilias. And none of them was as prickly on the subject as his youngest cousin, twenty-two-year-old Laney, who considered herself liberated—except when she wanted his aid or advice.
    “Listen, Laney,” he said. “Three men are dead, and you’ve clearly been threatened. Which makes this ‘you’re not the boss of me’ crap sound pretty silly.”
    She slid back from the table, her short nails digging hard into the edge. “I’m a grown woman now, Ross. I—I was living with Jake. I moved in after, you know, after he was diagnosed. Around the same time you got sick.”
    “So I heard,” he said. “Right before I heard he’d died, along with Hart and Caleb. Your entire band gone, and you never once called me or responded to the messages I left you?”
    He was surprised to find it hurt him. Since he’d moved back from Houston after Anne’s death, Laney had driven him half-crazy, her weekly calls escalating to almost daily conversations. She phoned or dropped by to chat about her every romantic, career, or financial wrinkle and complain about her sisters, mother, and aunt, who she felt certain were conspiring to clip her songbird’s wings.
    It probably said a lot about the state of his social life since his breakup with Justine that he’d actually started to look forward to the interruptions, even the hair-raising drama of her day-to-day existence. He had missed her when her calls stopped so abruptly after he fell ill.
    She looked up at him, her defiance dissolving into tears that trembled on her lashes. “I’m sorry, Ross. I should have. I thought of you a hundred times, but you were so sick. Mama and Aunt Helene said I’d kill you with all my drama.”
    “Laney, you know better. You had to know I’d want to—”
    “I just couldn’t say the words. Couldn’t imagine telling you that Jake was—” Choking back a sob, she clapped a hand over her mouth. “I—I loved him, Ross. I loved all those guys.They were my friends, my life, the one place in this town I knew I fit in. And I’d trade everything I have, my plans, my future, all of it, if I could go back to the last night we all played together.”
    “Oh, Laney.” He shook his head. “I’m so sorry.”
    “I’ve missed you, Ross. Really missed you.” Her tears were flowing freely. “And I was so afraid you’d—”
    Ross rose to embrace her. “It was a viral infection, that’s all. A bit of bad luck, but I’m fine