Falling for the Single Dad Read Online Free

innocence broke it.
    â€œWho’s that, Mimi?” His eyes were so like Lindi’s. “She looks like the other sister in the picture above the fireplace. The one you told me not to mention around Granddad.”
    Caroline flinched.
    Seth’s blue-green eyes, the color of Amelia’s, too, flashed. “Don’t worry about learning her name. She probably won’t be around long enough for you to get used to using it.”
    Caroline and Honey had inherited their mother’s dark brown eyes. Caroline frowned at the thought of her mother and pushed yet another memory out of her mind.
    Amelia shifted the baby to a more comfortable position. “First, let’s see why she’s here.”
    â€œPlease...” Caroline whispered.
    Her father snorted. Then the tough, old codger scrubbed his face with a hand hard with calluses. “Come to rub our noses in her highfalutin jet-set lifestyle.”
    She lifted her chin. “You don’t know anything about my life.”
    â€œWhose fault is that, girl?”
    He’d yet to say her name, Caroline couldn’t help noticing. As if he wanted no part of her. Her insides quivered. She wrapped her hand around the cuff of her left sleeve.
    Seth crossed his arms over his plaid shirt. “There’s two kinds of people born on the Shore, Max, my boy. Best you learn now how to identify them both.”
    Caroline gritted her teeth.
    â€œThose who don’t ever want to leave...”
    She knew if she didn’t get out of here in the next few minutes, she was going to implode into a million, trillion pieces.
    â€œAnd those, like my runaway daughter.” Seth speared her with a look. “Who can’t wait to leave and who never return.”
    â€œUntil now, Dad. Caroline’s come home.” Always the peacemaker, her sister Honey. Far more than Caroline deserved from the baby sister she’d abandoned.
    Caroline examined the set expressions on her family’s faces. What had she expected? What else did she deserve?
    â€œShe never returned after her mother died,” Seth growled. “Not for her sister’s funeral. Not during Max’s chemo. Not after the storm almost leveled our home.” He clenched his fist against his jeans. “Not for a wedding. Or a birthday. Not even a postcard, much less a phone call.”
    And Caroline suddenly understood that nothing she could ever say would erase the damage she’d inflicted. Nor wash away the hurt of the past. This... This illadvised, ludicrous attempt at reconciliation was for naught. She spun on her heel.
    â€œDon’t go,” Honey called.
    â€œLet ’er go,” Seth grunted. “Let ’er run away like before. It’s what she does best.”
    â€œDaddy... Stop it,” barked Amelia.
    Caroline wrested the car door open and flung herself into the driver’s seat. Whereas she’d found mercy and forgiveness in God, with her family there’d be none of either. She jerked the gear into Drive.
    In a blur, she fishtailed onto Seaside Road. She pointed the car south and drove until the shaking of her hands wouldn’t allow her to drive any farther. She pulled over on the other side of the Quinby bridge and parked.
    Her shoulders ached with tension. Spots swam before her eyes. She leaned her head on the headrest, and struggled to draw a breath as her throat closed.
    This had been a mistake. A terrible, perhaps unredeemable, mistake. She felt the waves of the darkness she’d spent years clawing her way out of encroaching. Like an inexorable tide, ever closer. A headache throbbed at her temples.
    Her breathing came in short, rapid bursts. Hand on her chest, she laid her forehead across the steering wheel. Willing the anxiety to subside and the blackness to erode.
    But the waves mounted and towered like a tsunami. Cresting, waiting to consume her whole. To drag her under for good this time into the riptide of blackness.
    God. Oh,