Behind the Pines (The Gass County Series Book 3) Read Online Free PDF Page A

and to the ground. “Men.”
     
     
     
    Chapter Five
    Not since childhood had Sunshine spent more than a few weeks in one place. The trailer, as shabby and old as it was, had been more of a home these last few months than any of her previous places had ever been. Sunshine’s mother, who’d practiced green living by moving Sunshine around the country in their old, well-used Volkswagen bus, had met her father at a festival the last year of the seventies and shared her abundance of love with not only him but another man in the back of the vehicle. Sunshine was born nine months later in a birth center in Vermont. She never knew her father and when asked who he was, her mother would take her out into the forest and show her the abundance of love surrounding them in nature and say that nature made man, thus Sunshine’s father was the earth. Sunshine had swallowed it then, shaken her head at her mother’s irrational explanation, but found no reason to pursue the issue. She’d never cared to follow the trail further and instead found her own way of dealing with the absence of a father. The commune had been a great consumption of time, and she’d craved the attention of others, as her mother spent most of the time meditating outside at different places around the country while Sunshine waited in the bus or collected rocks and pinecones for imaginary friends, making sure not to disturb her mother’s peace.
    “Brutus, car. Let’s go into town.” Sunshine’s car rolled down the lonely highway, passed the main house of Gert’s farm estate on the right, and continued a few miles down the hill, seeing the brown brick side of the town’s middle school rising above the rolling hills. Something caught her eye and she let off the gas pedal and looked at the quiet forest swishing by outside the window. She stopped the car and placed it in park, knowing there wouldn’t be any traffic to consider. For a few long moments she sat there, hands on the steering wheel, eyes out the window. The forest cradled yet another field of crops, this one smaller, but remained still. The cool breeze hit her face as she rolled down the window. It smelled of nature: damp and earthy. She took a deep breath and continued her way into town, found a parking spot on the street next to Hayley’s salon and took Brutus out of the car.
    A few minutes later she exited the salon’s double glass door, her lungs filled with perfume and hair spray. She turned at the sound of a low rumbling voice at the end of the block and decided to follow.
    “Next time, don’t park in front of a fire hydrant, no matter how quick you decided to do your business in the store. A law is a law and it’s supposed to be followed.”
    She watched Officer Smarty-pants tip his hat at the agitated driver seated in a blue pickup truck screeching out of a red zone in front of the post office. The driver then gave him the finger as he hightailed down the highway.
    “Someone else thinking you’re a jackass?”
    Brody turned slightly and pulled off his glasses, then clipped them onto the top of his shirt. “Thanks for sharing your true feelings, Sunny.” Brody folded his ticket slip and, through the rolled down window, placed it in the passenger seat of the cruiser. “Did you want something, or just did you just feel this was a perfect time for telling me I’m an ass?” he asked, taking off his hat to run his large hand through his short dark hair.
    “Every time I see you, that hand is going through your hair. You better watch it, or you’ll be bald before you’re forty.”
    “Already there.”
    “Oh, you’re middle age? Must be tough.”
    He gave her a glare and placed his hands on his hips, making his wide chest and his strong arms even more noticeable. His hands strong, long fingers. Hands she guessed would feel good on her skin. Suddenly something stirred between her thighs and made everything warm. Her eyes caressed his entire body until she realized he was watching her