A Family Kind of Guy Read Online Free PDF Page A

and kid are there, too.”
    Wonderful, she thought grimly. “Doesn’t matter.”
    His eyes narrowed a fraction. “Just thought you’d want to know.”
    â€œWhy?”
    â€œWell, you and he—”
    â€œThat was a long time ago, remember? He got married.”
    â€œAnd divorced.”
    She’d expected as much. Mason wasn’t the kind of man who could commit to one woman for very long. She’d found that out. The hard way. “I couldn’t care less,” she lied, and cringed inside.
    â€œGood. You’ll have enough to deal with.”
    â€œIf I come.”
    â€œI’m countin’ on it, Blissie,” her father said with an encouraging smile. “It’s time for me to start over and I can’t do it without you.”
    A huge lump filled her throat. Half sisters.
    She’d have to meet them sometime, she decided without much enthusiasm, but that didn’t mean that she had to like them.

CHAPTER TWO
    â€œBliss Cawthorne’s coming back to town.”
    Mason froze, his pen in his hand as he sat at his desk. “What?”
    â€œYou heard me.” Jarrod Smith snagged his hat from the hall tree as he walked to the door of Mason’s office. “Just thought you’d like to know.”
    â€œYou’re full of good news, aren’t you?” Mason said, leaning back in his desk chair until the old springs creaked in protest. His stupid pulse had jumped at the mention of Bliss’s name, but he calmed himself. So she was returning to Bittersweet. So what? He didn’t doubt that she cursed the day she’d ever set eyes on him. He didn’t blame her.
    She was, as she always had been, forbidden.
    Jarrod grinned like a Cheshire cat. “Supposedly it’ll be a short visit, just coming back for her old man’s wedding.”
    â€œTo your mother.” Mason had already heard the news that had swept like wildfire through dry grass along the streets of Bittersweet. In the taverns, churches and coffee shops, the topic of John Cawthorne’s marriage had been hashed and rehashed. Not that Mason cared so much about what Cawthorne did these days, except when it came to the ranch, the damned ranch. Behind the old man’s back he’d made a deal with Brynnie to buy out part of it. His conscience twinged a bit; he had a ten-year-old deal with the old man, too. One he no longer intended to honor.
    â€œYep.” Jarrod squared his hat on his head and paused at the door. “This is a small town.”
    â€œToo small.” Nervously, Mason clicked the pen.
    â€œBut you couldn’t stay away.”
    Mason grimaced and glanced at the picture propped on the edge of his desk. In the snapshot a pixie of a girl with dark hair and amber eyes smiled up at him. Freckles dusted her nose; teeth too large for her mouth were a little crooked in a smile as big as the world. Dee Dee. Well, really, Deanna Renée, but he’d always called her by her nickname. “I’ve got my reasons for coming back,” he admitted.
    â€œDon’t we all?”
    â€œI suppose,” Mason allowed. He and Jarrod had been friends for years, ever since high school. Jarrod had been everything from a log-truck driver to a detective with a police department in Arizona somewhere, but he’d been back in Bittersweet for a couple of years running his own private-investigation business. Mason had hired him to track down his younger sister, Patty. So far, no luck; just a few leads that always seemed to peter out.
    Jarrod’s smile was slow as it stretched across his jaw. “So what’re you gonna do about Bliss?”
    Bliss Cawthorne. “Not much.” His stomach tensed as he remembered her eyes, as blue as a mountain lake, and lips that could curve into a smile that was innocent and sexy as hell all at once. She’d nearly died. Because of him. Because he’d been weak.
    Jarrod pretended interest in his