The Trick To Getting A Mom. Amy Frazier

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ Like her cowboy boots. It was Alex’s favorite color. The color of the travel lines she and Dad drew on their maps.

      A big raindrop fell on Alex’s head.

      Her father put his hand on her shoulder. “Let’s get moving, scout.”

      More raindrops fell. Alex glanced at all the stuff spilling over the front yard, then at Kit. Her eyes had a squinched-up look. Like she was trying hard not to cry. Or scream. Alex would scream, too, if her things were about to get ruined.

      The rain began to hammer on the porch roof.

      “Dad, we gotta help put away!”

      She wasn’t sure he would. Though he’d do anything for his family and friends, he was real stand-offish with strangers. But Kit wasn’t a stranger. Dad had said they’d gone to school together.

      “Please, Dad!”

      “Not necessary!” Kit cried out as she kicked off her boots and dashed out into the yard barefoot. She looked mad as she hauled a nearby box full of shiny pillows out of the rain and onto the porch. Like maybe she hated all this stuff. Or the rain. Or Dad.

      No way! Everybody liked Dad.

      Alex pulled on his hand. “Puh-leeeese!” She suddenly needed Kit to like her dad, too.

      “Okay,” he said, his voice real rough and funny sounding. “I owe Kit one.”

      Now, what did that mean? Sometimes Alex did not understand grown-ups.

      Reluctantly, Sean followed Kit into the rain.

      Kit Darling.

      The last person he expected to find his daughter hanging with. Damn. Alex had enough wild ideas of her own without picking up pointers from Kit.

      Still, he’d heard the rumors. This yard sale had to hurt her pride. Big time.

      And…he did owe her one.

      He picked up a card table loaded with half-burned candles and headed for the porch, passing behind Kit who wrestled unsuccessfully with a stationary bicycle. Putting the table down, he went to help her.

      “Go away!” she snarled, rounding on him like a cornered alley cat. A stray with attitude.

      So, she didn’t want him here. He opened his mouth to call Alex. Started to turn his back on Kit, whose claws-bared approach to life had always made her more enemies than friends.

      But her makeup did him in.

      The rain sluiced down her face, making the heavy black mask she’d drawn around her eyes run in a muddy mess. She reminded him of Alex the day she’d fallen off their wharf at low tide. Covered by gray muck, his daughter had been mad as all get out. Mad laced with scared and fragile.

      Sean knew for a fact Kit wasn’t fragile, but that childlike, smeared face, those enormous gray eyes got to him just the same.

      Moved, Sean reached into his pocket for a clean handkerchief, then tried to wipe away the black goop streaming down Kit’s face.

      With lightning-quick reflexes, she grabbed his wrist before the handkerchief touched her skin. “Don’t,” she growled, her small white teeth bared. “I’m fine. Just the way I am.”

      And she was. She looked like some ancient warrior princess, done up in battle paint, too young to defend her honor and her turf, but willing to fight to the death in the attempt.

      “I know,” he conceded, pulling his hand away and pocketing the handkerchief. “You always were.”

      Nine years ago he’d found her fascinating. The wild child of a wild child. Buried in responsibilities, he’d watched as Kit cut a swath of anger and anarchy through the school and community.

      In their senior class, she’d been fifteen years old to his eighteen, having skipped twice. That didn’t help make her popular.

      She’d refused to sit for senior portraits, and someone on the yearbook staff had cruelly printed under the blank space that should have been Kit’s photo, “Most likely to self-destruct by age twenty-one.”

      Kit had taken matters into her own hands. She’d ripped up her yearbook and left pages as calling cards wedged in the lumps of manure she’d dumped on and in the cars of the high-school principal, the yearbook adviser, the class president— Sean—the head cheerleader—Jilian, his girl—and a host of others Kit had obviously considered her tormentors.

      He’d admired her guts.

      By the time a school administrator knocked on Babe Darling’s door, Kit had left town. At fifteen. Without waiting to collect her diploma.

      Sean hoisted the stationary bike out of the mud and onto the porch, savoring Kit’s stunned expression.

      Only to meet the equally astonished gaze of his daughter. Alex stood on the porch, her arms wrapped around a bunch of soggy stuffed animals, cheap carnival prizes. The look she gave him saw right through him. She’d seen how he’d lost himself in this woman.

      This would never do. Kit wasn’t any part of his plan to keep his daughter safe.

      “It’s coming down bad, squirt.” Affecting a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he stuck his hand out into the river of rain running off the gutterless porch roof.

      Alex plunked the stuffed animals onto the uneven flooring. “This is just like the time Seafaring Cecil was in Hong Kong and the vegetable seller’s sampan sank. Cecil didn’t leave till he’d helped get all the stuff out of the harbor. Remember, the guy was so grateful he gave Cecil a duck to roast?”

      Sean chuckled.

      Alex whooped and jumped off the top step into the yard. Her boots created splashes that reached her tiny waist as she made a beeline for a lamp molded in the shape of a naked woman.

      “Are you two crazy?” Kit cried, racing up the steps with an ugly painting of an almost-naked Elvis. The velvet background was so wet and whorled, Elvis looked pitifully cowlicked. “Why are you still here?”

      “Because it seems pretty damned important to you to save this stuff.”

      She looked at him as if no one had ever taken into consideration what was important to her.

      At that moment Sean wanted to tell her he was sorry for standing her up nine years ago. It hadn’t been at all the way she must have imagined. But, he couldn’t give in to the attraction he’d always harbored for her. He needed his parenting wits about him, and Kit, he felt sure, had the potential to drive him witless.

      “Hey, look at this!” Alex bounded back up onto the porch, carrying a plastic laundry basket full of Hollywood fan magazines. “It was sticking out of the bottom.” Nearly bursting with excitement, she took out a scrapbook. “It’s full of stuff about Seafaring Cecil.”

      There were clippings about the gonzo travel writer’s adventures, his interactive Web site and the merchandise his adventures, site and books had spawned.

      Alex turned to Kit, her eyes sparkling. СКАЧАТЬ