Between the Sheets Read Online Free PDF Page A

And should she be so brave, she could look right into his lovely, kind brown eyes and say, I’d like to do those things with you. Now, what do you say?
    But instead, she said, “Thank you, Joe.”
    He nodded, his lips pursed in that way that said, It sucks, but I’m on your side insofar as your side does not require any more from me than this .
    And then he was gone. She waited a few more moments in case he decided to come back and further grind her second day back after the break into dust, but the doorway stayed empty.
    In the heavy, dark silence he left behind, she stacked and put away those small desires to be someone else, to want more than she had, and she got back to the business of being Shelby Monroe, Art Teacher. It was enough. And if sometimes she wanted to scream, or cry, or find some stranger to prove to her that she wasn’t totally dead inside or invisible to the world, it was an urge she could easily overcome.
    She had overcome worse.
    Shelby stretched her legs out, crossing them at the ankle, and spread out the student assignments until they covered the whole table again.
    Scott had drawn himself with wings, flying over what looked like the school. Interesting.
    One picture, without a name, probably John’s … she tilted the page, trying to make sense of the dark charcoal line drawing. It was very detailed. Very creepy. It looked like it was from inside a fence … but the fence posts were far apart and vertical, not horizontal, and on the other side of the fence there were a man and a woman with terrifying round eyes and their mouths were open, revealing sharp teeth.
    That wasn’t John’s usual thing.
    At the bottom of the drawing, clutching one of the metal rungs of the vertical fence, were hands. And at the top of the drawing there was hair and …  oh dear God . She sat up. That wasn’t a fence.
    It was a cage.

Chapter 3
    Ty put his cell phone back in his pocket and climbed down off the ladder. He was installing a retractable awning over what—if the permits ever came in—was going to be the front patio area of Sean Baxter’s bar and barbecue joint, The Pour House. And Ty had installed the unit into the brick building, but the thing wasn’t working. The tracks guided by carriers kept jamming and the awning wouldn’t unroll out of the metal box.
    Ty was pretty sure he could fix it once he took the mechanism apart, but he had to go.
    God, it was just past noon. He’d had this job for less than a month and already he had to bail early. It was a good thing Brody Baxter, despite his serious badass vibe, was a cool guy.
    “Hey, boss,” Ty approached Brody where he was measuring the paved area for a fence. The sun hit the asphalt so hard the two of them had taken off their coats, working in long-sleeved tee shirts and old leather gloves. Brody’s shirt said USMC, which wasn’t a shocker. The guy seemed pretty Marine Corps to Ty.
    “Didn’t I tell you not to call me that?”
    “You did.” Ty smiled and Brody shook his head.
    “How is it going on the awning?”
    “It’s up, but the mechanism isn’t working. I know we’ve got to be back at Cora’s the rest of this week to work on the patio, so I figured I could come back this weekend.”
    “You don’t have to work on the weekends,” Brodysaid. “You’re already working overtime during the week.”
    “I like to work.”
    “And I like that attitude. But still, a day off won’t kill you.”
    “Hey!” It was Sean coming out of the bar. Ty liked Brody a lot. They worked well together. Brody didn’t ask questions, he paid on time, and the work was steady. Sean, on the other hand, was a nosy pain in the butt and rubbed Ty the wrong way in every way. “How is the awning coming?”
    “The mechanism doesn’t work,” Brody said.
    “Bummer.” And the guy said “bummer” without any irony. He meant it. That the awning wasn’t done simply bummed Sean out.
    Ty never asked, but obviously one of the brothers had been adopted.