Ain't She Sweet? Read Online Free PDF Page B

exactly what she and Ryan Galantine had been doing in the backseat of her red Camaro. “No, she didn’t. And I didn’t have the guts to tell my father the truth.”
    Griffin had found out, though, when he’d dug through her mother’s papers a few months after she died, and discovered the letter of confession Sugar Beth had written. “You’ve got to admit, Daddy did all right by you. He practically took out an ad in the paper telling everybody I lied.”
    “Nearly a year had passed by then, hadn’t it? A bit late. I’d already been forced back to England.”
    She started to point out that he’d managed to return to the States—his book jacket said he was now an American citizen—but she’d only sound as though she was trying to defend herself. He uncoiled from the doorway and wandered over to a wall unit that held a wet bar. A wet bar in Diddie Carey’s living room . . .
    “Would you like a drink?” It wasn’t the invitation of a good host but the softly spoken gambit in a cat-and-mouse game.
    “I don’t drink anymore.”
    “Reformed?”
    “Hell, no. I just don’t drink.” She was on a roll, peggin’ the old laugh-meter. She was killing herself here.
    He poured out a few inches of what looked like a very expensive single malt scotch.
    She’d forgotten how large his hands were. She used to tell everybody who’d listen that he was the biggest sissy in town, but even then, those meat-hook hands had made her look like a liar. They still didn’t seem to belong to someone who’d recited sonnets from memory and occasionally tied back his hair with a piece of black velvet ribbon.
    One night a bunch of them had left school late and spotted him on the intramural field with a soccer ball. Soccer hadn’t caught on in Parrish, and they’d never seen anything like it. He’d bounced the ball from one knee to another, off a calf, a thigh, keeping it in the air until they lost count. Then he’d begun dribbling it down the field, running at full speed, the ball right between his feet. After that, the boys’ opinions of him had changed, and it wasn’t long before they’d invited him to join them at the basketball hoop.
    “Three husbands, Sugar Beth?” He curled those workingman’s fingers around a cut-glass tumbler. “Even for you, that seems a bit extreme.”
    “One thing never changes about Parrish. Gossip’s still this town’s favorite pastime.” Cool air brushed her belly as she slipped her hands into the pockets of her black leather jacket and pushed it back. Her cropped candy pink T-shirt had the word Beast written in glitter script over her breasts. It was a little flashy, but it had been marked down to $5.99, and she could make just about anything look trendy. “I’d appreciate it if you’d get that chain off my driveway.”
    “Would you now?” He sank into one of the leather chairs without inviting her to do the same. “You have a wretched track record with husbands.”
    “You think?”
    “Word travels,” he drawled. “I believe I heard that husband number one was someone you met in college.”
    “Darren Tharp, all-American shortstop. He played for the Braves for a while.” She executed a nifty tomahawk chop.
    “Impressive.” He took a sip from his drink, the tumbler nearly swallowed by his palm, and regarded her over the rim of the glass. “I also heard he left you for another woman.
    Pity.”
    “Her name was Samantha. Unlike me, she managed to graduate from college, but it wasn’t her degree that attracted Darren. Turns out, she had a natural-born gift for fellatio.”
    The tumbler came to a stop halfway to his lips.
    She gave him her best Southern belle smile, the one that went from here to there without coming anyplace close to sincerity. With a few adjustments—and if Diddie hadn’t possessed such a hang-up about Atlantic City—that smile could have put something more impressive than a homecoming crown on her head. “I guess brains can only get a girl so far.”
    Byrne