A Hope Undaunted Read Online Free PDF Page B

kinked at the not-so-gentle reminder that she’d been too distracted to eat. At least, not since last night when Father had unveiled his diabolical plan to ruin her life. She flipped the oven door closed and turned, giving her family a wry smile. “Or is he out on parole?”
    A chuckle parted from the lips of her older sister, Charity, whose twinkle in her blue eyes matched the glint of gold in her finger-waved bob. She awarded Katie with a cheeky grin that made her look more like ten years old than twenty-nine. “Ooooo . . . good one, Katie Rose. You never did like that little rascal, did you?”
    Katie’s lips squirmed to the right. “Nope. And ‘little’ is certainly the operative word. Little brat . . . big pest. Dear Lord, I hope he’s changed.”
    “Hey, you two, go easy on the poor guy.” Twenty-four-year-old Lizzie turned at the stove to focus on her sisters, her attention momentarily diverted. Pretty hairpins kept her short, chestnut curls off of her face as she mashed the potatoes. A fine sheen of steam misted her cheeks with a rosy glow. She bit her lip, as if warding off a grin, and then smoothed one hand over her pregnant stomach. “I’ll have you know that not only is that ‘little brat’ now a lawyer, but he’s anything but ‘little’ anymore.”
    Katie parked a hand on her hip, and the action puckered the low waist of her pale green shift. “A lawyer, huh? Well, good for him. Now he’s legal and obnoxious.”
    “Goodness, what do you have against the poor kid anyway?” her oldest sister Faith asked. “Like Lizzie said, he’s all grown up now, and from what I hear, you won’t even recognize him.” Bending to retrieve a bottle of milk from the icebox, she proceeded to pour six glasses, then pushed a loose strand of her short, auburn bob away from her green eyes. The youthful glow in her cheeks belied her true age of thirty-one. “Mother, are the kids eating out on the porch?”
    Marcy O’Connor glanced over her shoulder while draining bacon grease from a skillet into a stone crock. Her new, stylish blond bob, coaxed by her daughters, was streaked with shimmers of silver that only heightened the blue of her eyes. “Yes, outside picnic-style, please. Might as well take advantage of the warm weather and spare my new cherrywood floor.”
    “Not to mention your back,” Charity said with a quick squeeze to her mother’s shoulders.
    “Oh, amen to that,” Lizzie muttered, arching with a groan and a stretch. Her hands pressed tightly to the small of her back. “Tell me, please. Does this backache ever go away?”
    Charity grinned and began massaging her sister’s neck. “Sure it does, honey. Mine left when the twins turned six.”
    “Oh, great,” Lizzie moaned.
    “Ignore her,” Faith said with a crooked smile in Charity’s direction. “My aches and pains left when each of my three girls were born.” She reached for the dishrag to wipe up a dribble of spilled milk. “You should already know that after having Teddy. Once those babies are born, all the pain goes away.”
    Charity hefted a stack of dishes on the table and scrunched her honeyed brows. “Yeah, but what about that awful pain in your lower back? Remember, the one that gave you so many problems?”
    Faith blinked. “What pain in my lower back?”
    Charity dropped a piece of fried chicken onto each of six plates and licked her fingers with a lazy smile. “Oh, never mind. I forgot. That pain was much further south as I recall . . . and I think he’s in the next room playing chess with my husband.”
    Faith grinned and threw the dishrag at her sister before hefting the pot of mashed potatoes from Lizzie’s grasp. She returned to the kitchen table to plop steaming mounds on each of the plates. “Hey, Collin’s not that bad. And I suppose Mitch isn’t a pain in the posterior at times?”
    Charity bobbled the dishrag in her hand while a wicked grin surfaced on her lips. “He’s stubborn, he’s Irish, and he’s a