Bound to You Read Online Free PDF

agreed to think about it. She’d held on to some dim hope that Sam would remember what they’d once had. That he would want to be with her again. She didn’t expect him to solve her money problems, but she didn’t want to marry another man, especially a man she detested, if some hope remained with Sam.
    Now she knew there was no hope with Sam and Brandon’s offer was the only way out of the hell she was living. The only way to save her sister’s future. His grandmother had left him some money, enough to buy his fancy car and possibly allow him to help her out of her jam – he had to check with his accountant. But the real money would come from his grandfather – a man who apparently wasn’t expected to live much longer.
    A man who would only leave Brandon tens of millions if he were married, to the right sort of girl. Even with her fall from grace, birthing a bastard child and all, Brandon had said, she would do. Her great-grandfather had been a congressman. Her grandfather a state senator. Her father had been mayor. She came from a good family. Good enough. They wouldn’t even have to live together, just have a big wedding and then make a few appearances to family functions.
    Then, when Brandon received his big inheritance, he would pay off her house in full and leave her with enough to put Brianna through college. They could get a divorce after his grandfather passed away.
    In her frazzled state, it seemed like the only solution. The right thing to do.
    When the deal was done, she’d still have a house for her son, her sister would have a future, and then… well, she couldn’t think beyond that point.
    Ethan pulled at the screen door and she went to let him in.
    Then why, as she lifted her son into her arms, did she feel as if she were selling her soul to the devil?
    Because the deal was dirty.
    The deal was downright disgusting.
    And because Brandon would never be Sam.
    Yet, Sam had rejected her, and with her, his own son.
    “ Plan on Vanderbilt,” Jenna told her sister and hurried from the room.
    ***
    That night Sam drove five miles out of town and parked in front of his brother’s 1920s farmhouse. After making the fastest escape possible from Jenna’s house, he’d gone out to the lake with his friends, but had barely known where he was. He’d spent the time trying to convince his brain his ears hadn’t been playing tricks on him.
    He has your eyes.
    For as long as he lived, he’d never forget those words.
    Shaking his head, he climbed out of his truck. He’d lived with his brother on and off over the years since high school and still kept a room there. Somehow, it felt more like home than his parents’ place.
    Although Jack was the oldest of the five Strickland siblings, and Sam the youngest, there had always been an understanding between them that didn’t exist with the others. A likeness. They saw life in much the same way, and were different from the rest of the family in the same ways. Also, they were the only two left who hadn’t married.
    The house was dark and no one was in the living room when he stepped inside, so he headed through the house, calling a warning.
    “ Out here,” Jack called from the back porch.
    Sam stopped at the refrigerator for a beer before stepping through the screen door. Jack had turned on the intricate landscape lighting that transformed the back yard and pond into a fairyland of sparkling lights.
    Sam took a moment to simply stand and appreciate the sight. He opened his beer and took a long, soothing drink. He noticed his brother sitting on the porch, whittling. “You didn’t come out to the lake,” he commented. “Everybody asked about you.”
    “ I was gonna,” Jack said, lazily stroking the stubble on his jaw, “but I forgot. Then I sat down and got to watching the sunset. And then the moon came out and I got to watching it glitter on the pond. Couldn’t move.”
    Sam turned to look at the water, a three-acre pond stretching out in no particular shape