Batteries Not Required Read Online Free Page A

familiar click of pool balls.
    Ghosts? The only people who would have haunted the Bronco were Mom and I, and we weren’t dead.
    I stepped inside, hesitantly, my heart hammering. I wasn’t scared, exactly, but something out of the ordinary was definitely going on. My curiosity won out over good sense, and I followed the sounds, swimming through a swell of memories as I passed through the little apartment. Mom at the stove, stirring a canned supper and humming a Dolly Parton song. Me, curled up on the ancient sofa, studying.
    The door between the apartment and the bar stood open.
    The music brought tears to my eyes. Tristan and I used to dance under the stars to the song that was playing. For a moment, I was transported back to our favorite spot, high on a ridge overlooking his family’s ranch, with that old, sentimental tune pouring out of the CD player in Tristan’s truck. I felt his arms around me. I remembered how he’d lay me down so gently in the tall, sweet-scented grass, and make love to me until I lost myself.
    I took another step, even though everything inside me screamed, Run!
    There was a portable boombox on the dusty bar, and Tristan stood next to the pool table, leaning on his cue stick. He was wearing the same dusty clothes he’d had on before, and his hat rested on one of the bar stools.
    â€œI knew you’d show up,” he said.
    My throat felt tight and raw. I couldn’t think of anything to say, and couldn’t have gotten the words out even if I had.
    He hung the cue stick on the wall rack and walked toward me.
    I was frozen in place, temporarily speechless, just the way I’d been on the road outside of town an hour or so earlier.
    Tristan pushed a button on the boombox, and our song began to play. “Dance with me,” he said, and pulled me into his arms.
    I stumbled along with him. He used the pad of one thumb to brush away my tears.
    I finally found my voice. “I didn’t see your horse outside,” I said.
    He laughed. For all that he’d been herding cattle, he smelled of laundry detergent and that green grass we used to lie down in, together. “Gramps took him back to the ranch,” he said. “I walked over here from the office. Left my truck there.”
    â€œHow did you know I’d come here?”
    â€œEasy,” he said. “This was home. I knew you couldn’t stay away.” He kissed me, a light, nibbling, tasting kiss.
    I should have resisted, but the best I could do was ask, “What do you want?”
    â€œWe have some unfinished business, you and I,” he said, and caught my right earlobe lightly between his teeth.
    A thrill of need went through me. “We don’t,” I argued, but weakly.
    I felt the edge of the pool table pressing against my rear end. That was nothing compared to what was pressing against my front. “You cheated on me,” I murmured.
    He kissed me again, deeply this time, with tongue. The floor of the tavern seemed to pitch to one side, like the deck of a ship too small for the waves it was riding.
    â€œYou cheated on me ,” he countered.
    We’d had that argument just before I left Parable, ten years before, but the circumstances had changed. There had been a lot of yelling then, and I’d thrown things.
    Tristan slid a hand up under my tank top, and I didn’t stop him. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. I groaned inside.
    He pushed my bra up, cupped my breast, chafing the nipple with the side of his thumb, and kissed me once more.
    I am not a loose woman, but you’d never have known it by the way I responded to Tristan’s kisses and the way he caressed my breast. I was wet between the legs, and I could already feel myself opening to take him inside, even though I had no intention of letting him get into my jeans.
    He unsnapped them, pushed the zipper down, then tugged my tank top down to bare my breast. When he took my nipple into his