Miah (Lane Brothers #2) Read Online Free Page B

about my presence, he can take it up with his mom.
    And I can enjoy his presence a bit without having to feel like a clingy idiot who wants to actually be there.
     
     
     

Chapter Four
    Miah
    I know she’s here before I turn the corner and enter the dining room. I can’t say why or how I know, I just do. She’s like a physical presence within me. I feel her like an ache without so much as smelling her.
    And there she is. Ma went and seated her right beside me at the dinner table.
    “Oh, Jeremiah, honey, I didn’t know you’d be home tonight.”
    Yeah, Ma, whatever you say , I think, smiling sardonically at her poor acting skills and the innocent batting of lashes when she looks over at Clara.
    The woman is a damn menace, and from the eye roll I see from my girl, she’s thinking the same thing.
    “Stop standing around as if you’ll grow taller and sit down, kid,” Pop says, his lips twitching in what I see is a smirk trying to break free.
    That’s when I know that I’m outgunned. I’m also tired of fighting something I’ve tried to deny for a year now.
    After the shitty day I’ve had, coming home to see her sweet, shy face at the dinner table feels so right that I can’t deny this anymore. I want her. My only problem now, as I sit down beside her and she scoots away minimally, is getting her.
                  “Evening, Clari.”
    She tenses at my use of her nickname and peeks at me from beneath her lashes, her eyes rounded in shock and…is that dismay?
    “Jeremiah.”
    Conversation starts flowing around us but I can only focus on her and her every breath. Jesus, she smells good tonight, like a field of flowers and some sort of musky undertone that goes straight to my groin and starts a strong throb below my belt.
    She’s wearing skinny jeans and an off-the-shoulder peach top that shows off her golden skin and the smooth expanse of her back.
    The sight of so much skin when I’ve never seen her in anything revealing is a temptation I can’t resist, and I want nothing more than to lean over and press my lips to her and lick, just to see if she tastes as good as she looks.
    “I ran a check on you today.”
    Clari stiffens and turns my way, but instead of seeing the recrimination and anger I expect, she looks at me with a horrified gaze. She seems embarrassed.
                  I want to know what made her give up a relationship that lasted almost six years from the time she met that dickwad Nick Grimes in high school.              I see the need for stability in her eyes—something her ex is more than capable of giving her, if my background check on the guy was right. He’s also raking in six figures a year.
    What would make her leave? There’s a story there, and being the nosy bastard that I am, I want to know what, how, why, and when.
                  I meet her eyes squarely and wait for her response.
    “You ran a check?”
    “Yeah, and you know what I found out, Clari?”
    Her eyes heat every time I use her nickname, and I wonder what she’ll look like when I call her “baby” or “sweetheart.”
    Slow and steady wins the race .
    “I’m a white-trash princess from the wrong side of Philly’s tracks?”
    “Nope. I found out that you got out of poverty and worked your way through college despite a mother who knew a bottle better than she knows her own child. That must have been hard, working your way through school and keeping your boyfriend happy.”
    I’m not too impressed knowing that she put what little time she had into another man, but I’m not a lunatic, and I can’t go nuts because the woman loved another man.
    No matter how much the thought bugs me.
    “It was.”
    So she’s not a Chatty Cathy. For some reason, I like that about her, as much as I liked reading about her volunteering at soup kitchens and churches even after Ellie left town.
    “Why did you leave him?”
    Her face heats this time and she goes ramrod straight before