Blue Skies Read Online Free PDF Page A

out? He’d been shit-faced more times than he cared to count, but he’d never lost consciousness. Only what other explanation was there?
    Shit . A virgin. He hadn’t tried to be gentle—hadn’t realized there was a need. He twisted to sit on the seat and saw more dried blood on the fly of his boxers. With shaking hands, he zipped his jeans. Then he propped his elbows on his knees and cupped his face in his hands. What, in God’s name, had he done? He couldn’t remember the lady’s last name and had no idea how to find her.
    After staring blearily at the closed nightclub for several minutes, Hank concluded that sitting there and feeling rotten would serve no useful purpose. What did he expect, her last name to suddenly appear in large block letters on the side of the building?
    Miserable, with a splitting headache, he crawled over the front seat to drive home. The sight that greeted him as he slid under the steering wheel made him mutter a curse. Foil packets littered the floorboard. He always wore protection. It was a hard-and-fast rule. What had he been thinking? That was the whole problem, he concluded. He’d been stupid drunk and not thinking, period.
     
    When Hank parked his truck near the house a half hour later, his older brother Jake waved to him from the stable, a huge, rectangular metal building of forest green. Hank was in no mood for another lecture about his social life. He’d broken all the rules last night, just as Jake had warned him he eventually would. Hank wasn’t about to give him an opportunity to gloat and say, “I told you so.”
    Hank kicked at a condom package under the brake pedal. One slip in thirty-one years wasn’t such a bad average, he assured himself. Then a mocking voice at the back of his mind whispered, Right, bucko. One slip is all it takes.
    He swung from the truck, waved to Jake, and loped toward the front steps of the two-story log house. Jake probably needed help with one of the horses and would be pissed that Hank had ignored him, but this was Hank’s morning off. He needed some pills for his headache, followed by some peace and quiet. No lectures, no arguments, no judgmental scowls. Those could wait until he’d slept off this hangover.
    Kid stuff littered the glossy hardwood floor of the entry hall. Hank toed a Mattel driving toy out of the way, accidentally touching the button that activated the voice mechanism. “Beep! Beep! Coming through!” blared behind him as he strode to the kitchen. Jake’s wife, Molly, stood at the stove with Hank’s nephew Garrett perched on her hip. Sunlight from the flank of windows behind her glanced off her copper hair, which lay in a cap of silky curls around her head. She had a pencil thrust behind one ear, cluing Hank in to the fact that she’d been working in the downstairs’ office, juggling her duties as a wife and mother with her demanding career as high-end stockbroker and investment consultant. Jake had hired a full-time housekeeper, but Molly insisted on caring for their child herself.
    She turned and flashed a bright smile. “Well, well, look what the cat dragged in.”
    Hank winced at the sound of her voice. He walked in what he hoped was a reasonably straight line to the cupboard, popped the childproof cap from a bottle, and shook three ibuprofen onto his palm.
    “You look like death warmed over,” Molly observed softly.
    Hank filled a glass with tap water. “G’morning to you, too.”
    “Your eyes are so bloodshot, I think you need a transfusion.”
    “Don’t start.”
    Hank swallowed the pills and set the glass on the counter with a little more force than he intended. The sharp report made the baby jump. Garrett twisted in his mama’s arms to fix big, suddenly wary blue eyes on his uncle. The next instant, his little chin started to tremble. A shriek soon followed. Hank’s head felt as if it might blow off.
    “Now just look!” Molly cuddled her son close and shot Hank an accusing glare. “You’ve