Carolina Man Read Online Free Page A

she might have made at friendship. No play dates. No sleepovers. No sharing secrets. Kate had carried that reserve into adulthood.
Fear of intimacy
, her therapist said.
    But she’d genuinely liked Dawn, her sunny smile, her upbeat optimism, her devotion to her daughter. It was like having a friend at a slight, professional remove or a family from a safe, vicarious distance.
    I love her more than anything
, Dawn had written in her letter to her child’s father.
I hope you can, too.
    There was a lump in Kate’s throat. She swallowed, brushing the dead leaf into her wastebasket.
    He’d sat right there, she remembered, on the other side of this desk. Staff Sergeant Luke Fletcher, stiff and unsmiling as a soldier on a war monument, his blue eyes alive and focused on Kate with breath-stealing intensity. He made her uncomfortable, with his broad shoulders and lean, almost gaunt face, crowding her safe, neutral office, his large, spit-shined shoes touching the legs of her desk. Totally in command of his space. Her space.
    Not her type, she told herself firmly, ignoring the stupid flutter of her pulse. She went for men who were more . . . cerebral. Not men who rode in tanks or sprayed villages with automatic-weapon fire or flew for thirty hours on a plane when any normal man would have simply picked up the phone. That whole “see the hill, take the hill” Marine thing he had going on made her prickle like a cat confronted by a large dog. But despite her distrust of his gung ho approach to Dawn’s letter, there was something pretty great about his willingness to take responsibility for Dawn’s child. His daughter.
    Maybe an unmarried staff sergeant wasn’t the best person in the world to raise a ten-year-old girl. The Simpsons—Dawn’s parents—certainly hadn’t thought so.
He doesn’t know her
, Jolene Simpson had wept.
He can’t love her like we do.
    And maybe he didn’t, yet. Kate hadn’t observed any evidence of an instant father-daughter bond during their brief meeting in her office. The little girl had been sullen and mistrustful, the man awkward and clearly frustrated.
    But at least he was trying.
    Kate booted up her computer.
    Anyway, a judge had awarded the Fletchers temporary custody while Staff Sergeant Fletcher was in Afghanistan. Taylor was their responsibility now.
    Kate scrolled through her in-box. Time to concentrate on the mothers she could help, the children she could save.
    The subject line leaped out at her.
Taylor Simpson
.
    Frowning, she clicked the e-mail to open it.
    Her stomach dropped as she read. She should have seen this coming.
    It’s not fair
, Jolene Simpson had cried in the courtroom.
Taylor’s all we have left of our little girl
.
    Your little girl didn’t want you to raise her kid
, thought
Kate, staring at her computer.
    Her thoughts beat like moths against the back-door screen.
    Dawn had never explained
why
she would entrust her only daughter to a man she hadn’t seen in ten years rather than her own mother and father. But Kate’s imagination—and experience—could supply plenty of reasons, all of them bad. Maybe Dawn and her parents were simply estranged. Maybe Dawn had been motivated by guilt at keeping Taylor’s existence a secret from Luke all these years. And maybe . . .
    Kate read the e-mail again, resolve balling in her stomach. She was
not
reacting emotionally, she told herself. Taylor had told the judge at the temporary hearing that she wanted to stay with the Fletchers.
    Kate reached for the phone to call them.
     • • • 
     
    H OMEMADE BANNERS FLUTTERED for miles on the chain link fence along Highway 24, dazzling against the bright green grass and tall dark pines.
    Through the windows of the charter bus carrying Luke’s squad to Camp Lejeune, he could read the hand-painted signs.
    WELCOME HOME.
    MY H USBAND. MY HERO.
    WE DA DDY. I MISSED YOU.
     

    Ortega gripped the seat in front of him. “Man, I can’t wait to see Kendra.” His girlfriend.
    “I