Second Chance at the Sugar Shack Read Online Free Page B

question, Kate. Sure as spit the old biddy would tell her ten ways to Sunday why.
    The old woman leaned closer. Yep, still smelled like moth balls and Listerine.
    “You left your dear sweet mama high and dry, what, twenty years ago?”
    Ten.
    “It’s your fault she’s where she is.”
    “ My fault?” The accusation snagged a corner of Kate’s heart and pulled hard. “What do you mean?”
    “Like you don’t know.”
    She had no clue. But that didn’t stop her mother’s oldest friend from piling up the charges.
    “Broke her heart is what you did. You couldn’t get up the nerve to come back when she was breathin’. Oh, no. You had to wait until—”
    Kate’s patience snapped. “Mrs. Price . . . you can blame or chastise me all you want. But not today. Today, I am allowed to grieve like anyone else who’s lost a parent. Got it?”
    “Oh, I got it.” Her pruney lips curled into a snarl. “But I also got opinions and I aim to speak them.”
    “Not today you won’t.” Kate lifted her sunglasses to the top of her head and gave Mrs. Price her best glare. “Today you will respect my father, my brother, and my sister. Or I will haul you out of this cemetery by your fake pearl necklace. Do I make myself clear?”
    The old woman snorted then swiveled on her orthopedic shoes and hobbled away. Kate didn’t mind taking a little heat. She was, at least, guilty of running and never looking back. But today belonged to her family and she’d be goddamned if she’d let anybody drag her past into the present and make things worse.
    Great. And now she’d cursed on sacred ground.
    Maybe just thinking the word didn’t count. She already had enough strikes against her.
    It’s your fault. . .
    Exactly what had Edna meant? How could her mother’s death be any fault of hers when she’d been hundreds of miles away?
    Kate glanced across the carpet of grass toward the flower-strewn mound of dirt. Beneath the choking scent of carnations and roses, beneath the rich dark soil, lay her mother.
    Too late for good-byes.
    Too late for apologies.
    Things just couldn’t get worse.
    Unable to bear the sight of her mother’s grave, Kate turned her head. She startled at the sudden appearance of the man in the khaki-colored deputy uniform who stood before her. She looked up—way up—beyond the midnight hair and into the ice blue eyes of Matt Ryan.
    The boy she’d left behind.

C HAPTER T HREE
    S he was back.
    Ten years of anticipation tumbled through Matt’s chest and left him breathless. When her mother passed, Matt knew she’d be back for the funeral. He’d been prepared. Still, seeing her across the casket and beside her father had been a shock. The sweat in his palms left no question.
    Seeing her again brought him back to the day she’d left.
    Without a note.
    Without a good-bye.
    Without so much as a kiss-my-ass.
    It had been ten years since they’d parked at Lookout Point in his barely operable Chevy half ton and explored each others bodies long into the night. Ten years since they’d snuggled up in the bed of that old truck beneath a tattered plaid blanket where he’d planned to ask her the most important question of his life. Ten years since she’d snuck out of town and disappeared, taking his and her parents’ hearts with her.
    She wasn’t a girl anymore.
    Katie Silverthorne had developed into . . . well, she’d definitely developed. At fourteen she’d had freckles and a small chip in her front tooth from walking into an open school locker. At twenty she’d been a long-legged girl with fewer curves than a stretch of desert road. Now, the freckles and chip in her tooth were gone and she had curves in all the right places. The woman who stood in front of him with her ginger hair streaked blond, tawny gold skin, smoky green eyes, and lips so suggestive a man would be foolish not to kiss them, was anything but juvenile.
    Too bad she was so cold-hearted.
    If the situation were different, if they weren’t