Loving You Read Online Free Page B

about it. If you were still here, you’d find a way to make him spill his guts inside fifteen minutes.”
    Mimi’d always had a gift for getting people to open up to her. There was always such understanding, suchacceptance, shining from her eyes, a person just knew he could trust her.
    Trust.
    It all came down to trust, didn’t it? Tasha had believed in Mimi, trusted her, despite the fact that she’d learned the hard way to trust
no one
. Then Jonas had come along and the three of them became a family. A unit—indivisible. Or so they’d thought, until a sudden heart attack six months ago had split up the Three Musketeers forever. Mimi had been the heart of them. She’d been their center. The glue that held them all together.
    And without her, Tasha was just as lost as poor Jonas.
    â€œHey!” Jonas shouted from the living room. “There’s somebody at the door!”
    â€œWell, see who it is,” she called back, and shook her head in disgust. What was it about almost-teenagers? He’d used up more energy calling for help than it would have cost him to get off his butt and answer the door himself.
    â€œMy show’s on,” he wailed.
    â€œFine.” His show. Heck, he shouldn’t be watching TV anyway. He should be doing homework. Turning off the water, Tasha grabbed up a dish towel and dried her hands as she walked through the house. As she walked past Jonas, she flicked the end of the towel at his head.
    â€œHey, no fair.”
    â€œGo do your homework,” she said.
    â€œRight after the show, Tasha,” he said, tipping his head back to look up at her. A slow, crooked grin curved his mouth and it had the effect he’d hoped for.
    â€œOkay, ten more minutes.
Then
homework.”
    Someone on the porch knocked again, three solid thumps that sounded more like a battering ram than a set of knuckles, and Tasha hurried on. Grabbing the cold brass knob, she gave it a turn and yanked the door open.
    Tall, dark, and gorgeous looked back at her. In the yellow glow of the porch light the man’s brown eyes gleamed almost like amber. His dark brown hair was wind-ruffled and just the slightest hint of a five o’clock shadow bristled on his lean cheeks. His nose looked like it had been broken at some point in his life, but somehow it added character to his face without making him look menacing.
    Of course, how menacing could any man look while wearing loafers with little tassels on them? A
GQ
hit man, maybe? The stray thought had her half-smiling as she asked, “Can I help you?”
    Okay, Nick thought,
not
what he’d been expecting. If this was Mimi Castle, then foster mothers had been getting a bad rap for way too many years.
    She wasn’t very tall. Probably would hit him in the middle of his chest. Thick, wavy hair the color of dark fire framed her face, and sharp green eyes watched him. A truly incredible mouth curved in a secretive smile that almost distracted him from the rest of her. She might be short, but not an inch of her was wasted. Her long-sleeved T-shirt clung to her breasts, then scraped down along her rib cage and tucked in at a narrow waist. Her jeans were worn and faded and dipped low enough at her waist to display her belly button and about an inch of pale skin. Bare feet and silver toe rings completed the picture of easy sensuality.
    She was almost enough to make him forget why he was there. Almost. But if she was Mimi, then Jonascouldn’t be far away. Better to get this done and over, misunderstandings cleared up. Then maybe he and Mimi could have dinner or something.
    â€œHello?” she said, waving one hand back and forth in front of his face. “Earth to intruder.”
    â€œHuh?” He inhaled sharply. “Oh.” Chuckling, he shook his head and gave her his most endearing smile. That slightly crooked grin that had always smoothed rough paths before him.
    But instead of turning into the puddle of