Spring Secrets: Pine Point, Book 3 Read Online Free

sat up. “What time is it?”
    “Almost eight thirty.”
    She yawned. “Oh.” She reached for the half-empty cup of tea on the coffee table. “Did you have a good day at work?”
    She always asked him the same thing, and he always answered the same way. “I did, yes. How was your day?”
    “Busy.” She turned off the television. “Martha came over for lunch.” She gestured around the room. “I’m thinking about repainting in here. Maybe blue. It’s been green for too long.”
    Mike dug a beer out of the fridge and joined her on the couch. “I think blue sounds nice. I can do it next weekend if you want. I’ll ask Mac or Damian to come over and help.”
    “You don’t have to. Martha’s twin nephews are looking for some extra money. I told her I’d hire them.”
    Mike leaned his head against the couch and closed his eyes. Good ol’ Ma. “That’s nice of you.”
    “Nice, schmice,” she said. “It’s what you do for other people.”
    He patted her leg and let the cool beer slide down his throat. “You’ll never believe who came into the gym tonight.”
    “No? Who?”
    He sat up and opened his eyes. “Sienna Cruz.”
    She paused, not long enough to make him worry, but long enough to make him wonder. “Oh?”
    He hadn’t bothered to tell his mother he’d gone out with Sienna before. He didn’t now. “She’s filling in over at the school. Teaching Lucy Foster’s class.”
    “Well, good for her. She was a smart girl.” Loretta looked into the darkness. “I always wondered what happened to her after she left Pine Point.”
    “You remember when she lived here as a kid? And her mother?”
    “Of course.” Loretta finished her tea and set the cup aside. “Elenita and I worked together that summer cleaning houses.” She stood and reached for his empty bottle. “Terrible, terrible thing when she passed. No child should lose a mother that young.”
    The tone of her voice struck Mike as odd, but before he could ask her about it, she walked into the kitchen. “Think I’ll go to bed and read for a bit,” she said over her shoulder.
    Mike followed her to the small bedroom at the back of the tidy house. The only other bedroom, long since turned into her sewing room, still had pencil marks on one wall measuring his height, scratched there each September from first to twelfth grade. He’d had to make the marks himself when he’d outgrown her at fourteen.
    He turned on the bedside light and illuminated a large crucifix on the wall above her bed. A Bible lay on the table next to her reading glasses. “Need anything?”
    “No.” She pressed a kiss to his cheek and patted his arm as if he were still a boy. “You be nice to Sienna. She’s had a hard life.”
    And he hadn’t? “Of course, Ma. I’m nice to everyone.”
    “Get some sleep tonight,” she added. “You work hard. All the time. Too hard.”
    “I don’t. But, yes, I’ll get some sleep. And I’ll see you in the morning.” Although he had no idea how he might find sleep easily tonight, with the smell of Sienna still in his mind and the feel of her skin still on his hands. He climbed the back stairs to his apartment over the garage and wondered what she’d think if she knew he still lived at home. Of course, lots of people did in Pine Point, for various reasons. He hadn’t thought twice about moving back in after returning from California. He’d needed a place to stay, his mother had needed a helping hand, and it had worked out well all the way around
    Mike turned on the light over his small kitchen table and went to the bathroom to run a hot shower. Be nice to Sienna? He wondered what his mother would say if he told her he’d kissed Sienna. If he told her he’d spent the rest of tonight trying not to think about her and failing. He dropped his clothes to the floor. One tattoo above his right elbow stood out in stark contrast to the others, with a single date and the words Never Again inked above it.
    He stared at the letters