Jed's Sweet Revenge Read Online Free Page A

a capable and calm man have trouble speaking. Shy? Was this man shy? Thena peered at him closely, and his discomfort seemed to grow. It touched her, and for a moment she could let herself soften towards him.
    “It’s not all your fault,” she said gently. “Cyrano was a … stubborn little fellow. He knew the danger.” She tilted her head to one side and absorbed the troubled look he gave her. “You seem to be a man who doesn’t know how to let his feelings show. Saying that you’re sorry is a very great gift for you to give, then. Thank you.”
    The grateful expression that gentled his rugged face made her glad she’d gone easy on him. “You said the dog belonged to your mother. You got a pa, or is he gone too?”
    Thena nodded. “They were both killed in a car accident two years ago.”
    Jed felt compelled to keep talking, even though he suddenly realized that he hadn’t said this much to one person at one time in years. “My folks are bothdead too. Mother died when I was five, my pa when I was twenty. But he wasn’t around all the time when I was growin’ up. I lived with my pa’s sister a lot.”
    “Your pa’s sister,” Thena repeated. Why in the world was this stranger telling her all this personal information as if he’d been holding it in store for her? He had such an odd way of talking, this mainlander. Nobody along the Georgia coast talked this way. “Is she still alive?”
    “No.” He shook his head. “Died a few years back.” He paused. “See, what I’m tryin’ to say is that I know how you feel about your dog. I’ve had a lot of animals I cared about, but not many folks. My mother and my aunt Lucy were the only people I ever really mourned for.”
    “That’s too bad.” When he looked at her quizzically, tears veiled her eyes. “That means you haven’t had enough people to love.”
    Shaken, Jed stared down at her tears and imagined for a second that a woman he’d just met was crying on his behalf. “Reckon not.”
    Thena
was
crying on his behalf. Abruptly, her shoulders straightened. She didn’t understand why this lonesome-looking stranger provoked such a response in her, but she didn’t want to feel sorry for him after what he’d done. “Good-bye. I’m going back to the forest.” She turned around and stalked toward it. The mare appeared at the edge and waited.
    “Are you gonna be all right?” he called. She made a small, impatient gesture with one hand, answering a silent yes. “Don’t you want to know why I’m here?”
    “No,” she called back over her shoulder. “Good-bye. I don’t care why you’re here. Leave before I get back or I’ll shoot you—which is what I should have done before.”
    Amazed, Jed kept his eyes glued to her as she went to the mare and swung gracefully onto her back. They disappeared into the forest without a backwardglance at him. Then he realized he’d never told anyone before that Aunt Lucy and his mother were the only people he’d ever mourned. Jed realized something else—he hadn’t even introduced himself first.
    She hadn’t cared enough to even ask for an introduction. Jed slapped an angry hand against his dusty jeans’ leg.
    “Damn!”
    He’d been bewitched, just as Farlo Briggs had warned.

Two

    Thena stayed on the beach until after dark, walking, thinking, grieving. Of course the disturbing mainlander wouldn’t go away for good. That was too much to hope for. Her right knee ached a little from the violent encounter earlier in the day, and she sat down to rub the scar that circled her kneecap.
    This pain came from a mainlander, too, she thought bitterly—a well-heeled visitor from Atlanta who’d had too much to drink on a warm spring night two years ago. He’d climbed into his Cadillac and gone tearing down the wrong side of U.S. 17, straight into her parents’ van.
    Thena tried again to remember that night, but as always, her life ended with the recollection of a whimsical haiku verse Nate Gallagher had been