The Good Sister Read Online Free

through when his very pregnant assistant slammed down his reception phone and grimaced as she muttered, “Asswipe.”
    He raised his eyebrows and tilted his head, waiting for Jessie to explain. She was often swearing at any customer who pissed her off, only so long as it was just the two of them and no one else could hear her. She was unfailingly polite otherwise.
    “My brother-in-law. He is such a scum bag. I don’t know how Lindsey can stand him.”
    “Lindsey is a kind, gentle, well spoken woman who manages to stand him by not calling him things like ‘ asswipe.’”
    She made a face and stuck out her tongue at him. He smiled in return. She knew he didn’t actually want her to be soft-spoken and gentle. “I know, I know. She’s all sugar and spice and everything nice.”
    “No, she just has different tastes in men than you. But what did the esteemed asswipe do this time?”
    “He won’t allow Lindsey to come stay with me.”
    He raised his eyebrows. “You know that for sure?”
    Jessie glared and pursed her lips before she finally shrugged. “No, not yet. But he will say no. Just because she has to ask him. He treats her like a five-year-old who needs his permission to do anything. I’ll bet she has to raise her hand and ask before she can take a piss.”
    “Jessie…”
    She sighed. “I know, no foul language at the office. But he just infuriates me.”
    “Do you think Lindsey notices? She never says anything, does she?”
    “No, but Lindsey wouldn’t. She never says anything about anyone or anything. She… well, she’s always been the indisputable queen of denial. My father trained her well at holding in secrets, and denying what is literally right before her nose. It’s her coping mechanism. It’s something that so tore us apart when we were younger. And now? Now, I fear, she uses it to rationalize what her controlling, dominating husband does to her.”
    Noah frowned and pushed his glasses up his nose. “Does to her? What do you think he ‘does’ to her?”
    Jessie fiddled with the appointment book in front of her. “I guess, nothing. I just could never warm up to him, or him to me. I know he disapproves of me. Then again, so do a lot of other people. But he seems to disapprove of Will, too. I mean, who could disapprove of Will? No one. Ever. But Elliot does. He masks it behind his cool, calm, too nice, and too generic mask. I see the annoyance and anger bubbling behind his eyes. But Lindsey probably doesn’t. She spent so many years being so good, and blindly obedient to my father, that I fear she has traded one domineering asshole in for another.”
    “Thus, your persistence in getting her to come here?”
    “Yes, I’d like to see her. I’d like to gauge for myself how she really is. I can’t tell over the phone. But the photos I see online of them making the D.C. social rounds, always make her look like she might blow away. She’s always been thin, but now she looks as if she’d fall over. That strikes me as… worrisome.”
    He nodded in sympathy. “You’re a good sister.”
    Jessie raised her eyebrows and paused, before she shook her head and laughed strangely. “No one’s ever accused me of that before.”
    Noah met her gaze and a slow smile spread over his face. No, probably no one had ever accused Jessie of that. Since he met Jessie, he considered her a nice, lovely, quiet, young girl who lived in an apartment over a barn, belonging to one of his clients. They ran a ranch a few miles out of Ellensburg and Noah saw to their horses and other livestock veterinary needs. They once asked him to take on Jessie as an intern. She had no training, but quickly took to the animals; and had a rare and genuine abandon that couldn’t be learned. He gladly gave her a part-time job, and even harbored feelings of a sort for her at first. But after he met her husband, Will, and learned of their history that was mind-blowing in its extent of tragedy and conflict, his feelings changed. He