Sweet Sunshine Read Online Free Page A

shit was uncomfortable as hell, but with the department dealing with budget cuts, we had to take what we could get. At least I had a chair.
    “What do you want, Layla?” I said by way of greeting.
    I could hear her indignant huff through the line, not that I gave two shits what upset her or not. I stopped having to give a damn once the ink on the divorce papers was dry, a process that I never wanted to go through again. Getting married once was the biggest mistake of my life. Staying married for eight miserable years was the second worst. At least I got Eliza out of it. That made all the bullshit I had to stomach for damned near a decade worth it. She was the only thing I had in my life that mattered for anything.
    If the last several years of hell had taught me anything it was that I was never, ever taking those goddamned vows again. Marriage just meant a woman got to sink her claws into you and tear your ass apart. No, thank you. Once bitten, twice shy. It might be for some, like Noah, the sorry son of a bitch, but I was bowing out.
    “Wow, nice way to greet your wife, asshole.”
    “ Ex -wife,” I reminded, clenching my teeth at the fact I had to remind her of that fact over a year after the fact. “And the fact you’ve got some old, rich dick paying your way should be reminder enough of that.”
    “God,” she cried through the phone. “Why the hell did I ever marry you?”
    “Ask myself that same question every goddamned day,” I grunted. “Now, you call for a reason, or did you just want to help me start my day with your own personal brand of bitch?”
    “You’re a pig,” she seethed, and I’ll admit, I got a little bit of pleasure out of ruffling her feathers, after all, she’d only called to screw with me, might as well get some shots in for myself, right?
    “You’ve got two seconds to tell me what you want or I’m hanging up. One—”
    “I need you to take Eliza for the rest of the week and through the weekend,” she talked over my counting. “Harold surprised me with tickets to Barbados. We’re flying out tomorrow.”
    I clenched my eyes closed over the red haze that was building behind my vision. How I was ever stupid enough to stick my dick in this woman was beyond me, let alone enough times to knock her up. But the fact that she was the definition of world’s worst mother had that stupidity leaving a sour taste in my mouth. She didn’t deserve to call herself a mother, especially not to a kid as sweet-natured as Eliza. I was convinced the woman had snake venom running through her veins.
    “Are you fucking kidding me?” I gritted out. “It’s not enough you couldn’t bother to pick her up from school yesterday, or come get her last night, but now you don’t even want her to come home? Jesus fuckin’ Christ, Layla! Doesn’t this Harold douchebag realize you’ve got a kid? You can’t just go flying off to the goddamned Bahamas or some shit whenever the hell you want! You have responsibilities!”
    “It’s Barbados!” she snapped. “And I don’t have to sit here and listen to you talk to me like that! We’re not married anymore, remember ? If I’d have known watching your own daughter was such an inconvenience to you, I would have asked my sister to do it!”
    “Don’t you dare,” I warned in a low voice, not caring that I’d drawn the attention of the entire department. It wasn’t the first yelling match they’d witnessed when it came to Layla, and it probably wouldn’t be the last. “The only woman on this planet more toxic than you is that sister of yours. You are not asking Lilith to watch my kid while you go gallivanting off with your sugar daddy, you hear me?”
    “Why do you insist on making my life so difficult, Derrick? Jesus Christ! It’s like you never wanted me to be happy! First, you made me suffer through that marriage, now you’re killing whatever chance I have at happiness with Harold!”
    She was so full of shit. And the sad thing was, she