C's Comeuppance: A Bone Cold--Alive novel Read Online Free

ask.” He folded his hands in front of himself and waited until Harrison was back at the table. “I went to DamSite.”
    “Did you see Grandpa?”
    “What would Grandpa be doing in DamSite?”
    C humphed. Here he was all ready to elicit much needed info and the kid was usurping him as usual.
    “No, I didn’t see the old man.”
    “I bet you saw plenty of others and, Harrison, what would Grandpa be doing there?”
    Harrison looked down at his plate and C suspected the boy’d been caught in his exuberant outcry. “Sometimes he goes to play poker.”
    “Oh.” Lyla pursed her lips.
    Harrison scanned her face and started pleading. “Mom, you can’t tell Grandma because Grandpa said if she ever found out she’d make him wish he were dead!”
    “She’s quite capable of that!” T chuckled from the other side of the table.
    C found the whole relationship perplexing if not downright abnormal. Dub and Red, Lyla’s first set of in-laws, had reluctantly accepted T into the family fold after loudly and publicly decrying his every move and motive for months. But with the announcement of the arrival of a new grandchild, they’d forgiven all and taken on the tendencies of smothering relations. C involuntarily shivered. That was one of his first things to check before becoming even semi-serious in a relationship: the fewer family members around, the better.
    “So why go to DamSite?”
    “T told me that if I was so fond of this area, I should just get my own place.”
    “How considerate of him.”
    C smiled over at his brother and then quickly looked at Lyla. She’d narrowed her gaze. Obviously, California was about as close as she wanted him to be.
    “Well, DamSite wasn’t really very helpful.” He watched her look lighten. “I think they were raising the prices even as we spoke. And I did break up a poker game.”
    She smiled weakly. “So what else do you need to know about DamSite?”
    “Nothing. I went to the other one first.”
    “Lake Country?”
    “That’s my Sunday school teacher’s place,” Harrison added.
    “What?” C choked on the word. Didn’t it just figure, he thought. Only a Sunday school teacher could be so—so—! He shot Lyla a wide-eyed look.
    “Did that answer your question?” She had the nerve to smile pleasantly at him.
    “Harrison, I’d like some more tea.” T held out his empty glass and the boy sighed as he reached for it.
    As they heard the refrigerator door open, C could hold it in no more. “That frigid bitch is teaching your child in church?”
    “Hold your voice down! What happened?”
    The three adults waited in silence as Harrison set T’s glass down noisily, slopping a piece of ice over the rim. “Mom, can I go play with Shep? I’m tired of waiting on y’all.”
    “Yes, sweetie. Go on. Uncle C and Sam will clean up.”
    They watched him as he slid through the doorway, and only after hearing the tap of his feet down the log steps, did they start back.
    “She’s a bitch! A frigid bitch and I can’t believe you’d let her near him!”
    “And I repeat—what happened?”
    “Hold it!” T raised his hands and they both stared at him. “Jemma? We’re all talking about Jemma Lovelace?”
    “Yes,” C and Lyla answered in unison.
    “What did you do to set her off?” T asked. “Be your usual charming self?” He scooted back from the table and made an obscene hand gesture. “Want a little something extra with the house description?”
“Sam!”
    “Lyla, let’s face it, Jemma’s hardly C’s type!”
    “Well, you didn’t have to send him on the great house hunt!”
    “I had to get rid of him somehow.”
    “Much as I’m enjoying this blow-by-blow of how to dispose of me, I’d like to get some answers.” Lyla and T turned to him. “Good.” C squared himself in his chair. “Just exactly what is that woman’s problem?”
“I wasn’t aware she had any.”
“T, now you can do better than that.” He turned to his brother. “Surely you’re not so