Just Kiss Me Read Online Free Page A

little bratty, and a lot nosey, but she’d never been intentionally mean and hurtful.
    Barefoot, she stepped outside and into the courtyard. Patches of sand and dead azaleas covered the brick, and she walked past a concrete angel partially covered in ivy. She moved to the bed of impatiens and knelt down beside the brick border. Her mother had loved impatiens, and Vivien picked one of the little red flowers.
    The clouds above her head boomed and she felt the vibration in the air and beneath her knees. She brought the little flower to her nose as the skies opened and showered her with big fat drops.
    Tears filled her eyes as she picked flowers and made a delicate posy like her momma had taught her. She set it by her knee then bent forward and parted plants. She searched the ground beneath the thick leaves. With each drop of rain, each tear that rolled down her cheek, her search got more frantic. The champagne cork from her mother’s party had been so insignificant. She’d ignored it at the time and forgotten it until now. Now it took on an importance beyond a mere stopper. It was a tangible trace, a link to that special day filled with pink champagne and her mother’s bubbly laughter. The rain soaked her hair and dress. Her hands got muddy and sand dug into her knees. She didn’t care. She leaned farther into the bed of wet flowers, her deep sobs rushing from her lips and pulling at her chest. As if she was just inches away from discovering a lost horde of gold, her search got more frantic.
    “What are you doing out here?” a man’s voice boomed over the thunder.
    A startled gasp escaped her dry mouth and her heart stopped.
    “Besides digging in the mud.”
    She looked over her shoulder, and through the rain and tears blurring her vision, she stared at a pair of dark jeans and work boots. A single raindrop fell from her lashes as her gaze moved up his long legs, over the bulge of his button fly to the gray Henley splattered with rain. She looked up past his tan jaw and lips and into his dark eyes. Dark eyes that had once threatened to hunt her down like a coonhound and choke her to death.
    “Hello, Ms. Vivien,” Henry Whitley-Shuler drawled, pulling the vowels like warm taffy. “It’s been a long time.”

Chapter 3
    THE WHISTLE OF a chicken-shaped kettle pierced the musty air and drowned out the sound of raindrops splattering old glass windows and the ornate cupola. Inside the historic row house on East Bay Street, Henry Whitley-Shuler removed the kettle from a back burner on the gas stove. Clouds of steam rose from a chipped celadon pot as he poured scalding water over the stainless strainer he’d packed with loose tea. The irony of pouring tea for the girl who’d snooped in his drawers while pretending to clean was not lost on him.
    He’d been just five years old when Macy Jane and Vivien had moved into the carriage house. His memory of that day was like an old jigsaw puzzle in the bottom of an equally old trunk. The picture was faded and half the pieces were missing, but he did remember standing beside his mother on the back porch shaded by the old magnolia tree, and the scent of sweet lemon heavy in the air. He remembered looking up at his mother’s blank face and at Spence balanced on her hip. The recollection of a dark-haired woman had faded to a gossamer outline in his memory, but he knew the woman was Macy Jane.
    His memory of Vivien in subsequent years was much clearer. He remembered her and her mother dusting furniture and mopping floors. He could recall a Christmas or two when he’d walked into the kitchen and seen her standing on a stool next to her mother, polishing
his
mother’s silver. God knew his mother had a lot of silver, and he could clearly recall the flash of temper in her green eyes and the rebellion pursing her lips whenever his mother had corrected her grammar or suggested that she not eat an entire bag of Oreos.
    He might have felt bad for Vivien’s situation in life if she hadn’t