A Silken Thread Read Online Free PDF Page B

now.”
    Before he could turn toward the door, Erica moved quickly across the room to her father and kissed him on his cheek. “’Bye, Dad. Thanks for caring enough to come by to check on me. I love you.”
    “Sweetheart, I’ll always care and I love you, too.” He then looked at Brian and unspoken communication passed between them. It was a message that Brian deciphered immediately. I’m depending on you to make her happy. Please don’t let either of us down.
    It hit Brian just then what the magnitude of the man’s thoughts meant. In a roundabout way, Wilson was bestowing his blessing on them. Brian nodded and then said, “I’ll walk you to the door, Mr. Sanders.”
    He was grateful Erica hung back, allowing him time alone with her father. Before opening the door, he said, “I love Erica, Mr. Sanders, and I intend to spend the rest of my life making her happy.”
    Wilson nodded and then smiled. “And that’s all the father of a future bride can ask for. Good night, Brian.”

Chapter Three
    A pril glanced down at the pooch that was walking beside her on the leash and decided this was one of the primary reasons she didn’t own a pet. They required too much attention, which was why she was out here at eleven o’clock walking the dog instead of back inside her grandmother’s house curled up in bed.
    In a way, she couldn’t get mad at Fluffy, the white Yorkie terrier she’d purchased for her grandmother as company when she’d landed her first modeling job. A few years later, after her career had soared to unprecedented heights and she’d married Mark, she’d purchased her grandmother a house in one of the most exclusive neighborhoods in Hattersville, along with furnishings and a live-in housekeeper.
    Now both Fluffy and Melba were family to her grandmother, which meant a lot to April when she had to fly all over the world for work.
    Fluffy stopped walking and April paused right along with her. Evidently this area was one of the dog’s favorites to do his business. April loosened her hold on the leash and glanced around, thinking if anyone had told her she would be returning to her birthplace as often as she was now, she would not have believed them. She’d barely been able to wait until she’d finished high school to blow this town. But her grandmother, the one person she adored and loved in this life, hadn’t wanted to move away with her.
    Nana said Hattersville was her home. She had been born here and she wanted to die here. April hadn’t known just how much her grandmother had meant those words until her senior year in college when her constant badgering to get Nana to move out west with her had led to Nana’s heart attack.
    While her grandmother was in the hospital April had tearfully promised not to broach the subject again.
    Even if that meant the burden of travel would fall on April, since her grandmother refused to fly.
    The one thing she’d been able to convince her grandmother to do years later was to move out of her shabby house in the Fifth Ward, and live in the house April had purchased for her on, of all places, Wellington Road. April recalled how Nana had made a living as the housekeeper and nanny for some of the homeowners on this very street. Now Nana had her own grand place with a live-in housekeeper of her own, and April didn’t know of anyone more deserving.
    Her grandmother had always been there for her. After giving birth to her at sixteen, her mother had left the state a few days later, leaving April with her grandmother to raise. No one knew the identity of her father; it was a secret her mother had taken to the grave with her. The year April turned ten, Latonia North had come home from living a wild life in Miami, just long enough to spend a few months with her mother and daughter before dying of lung cancer. April hadn’t known the woman who had shown up, nothing but skin and bones, at her and Nana’s house near the tracks. But now a part of April regretted not having known