Fancy Dancer Read Online Free PDF Page A

He’d been so taken with the house, he hadn’t seen it at first. Okay, Mom, I’m here. I’m going to try to make it right.
    Jake rang the doorbell. Five musical notes could be heard. A welcome to visitors.
    The door opened, and Jake stared at a mirror image of his father. His jaw dropped. The young man standing in the open doorway, his tie askew, his shirtsleeves rolled up, stared at Jake as though he knew him.
    “I’m . . .”
    “I know who you are. Jake St. Cloud.”
    Damn, the guy even sounds like the old man. “Yeah, that’s me. Look, I’m not sure what the protocol is here. I just found out about you forty-five minutes ago. I came straight here.”
    “Why?”
    “Because years and years ago, on her deathbed, my mother asked me to find you. I tried. She herself had tried for years, too, before she passed. All we had was what we thought was your mother’s name—Sophia. My mother wanted me to know she thought I had a brother or a sister. She didn’t want me to be alone after she was gone.”
    Alex Rosario slouched against the door frame as he eyed his half brother. “You weren’t exactly alone now, were you? You had a father, which is more than I had, but I do have the best mother in the whole world.”
    “Back then, I would have fought you till one of us went down for saying that. I had the best mother in the whole world, too. I’m willing to concede the point, though. That father you might have anguished over not having? Give it up. He wasn’t a father, he was just a sperm donor. Now, are you going to invite me in or not? It’s got to be a hundred and ten degrees out here.”
    “Well, it’s a hundred degrees in this house. Our A/C went out. That’s why I’m here. I’m waiting for the technician. Come on in.”
    “You don’t look like the sperm donor,” Alex observed, leading the way into the cheeriest, homiest kitchen Jake had ever seen. “Do you look like your mother? Iced tea?”
    “Whoa. Switch that up. You do look like him. I do take after my mother’s side of the family. Which I think puts me one up on you. I was blessed, and you got cursed. I was born first, if that makes a difference. Yes on the iced tea.”
    The brothers sat down across from each other and eyed one another.
    “Why are you here? What do you want? How did you find us?”
    “I told you, I made a deal with the devil. Well, maybe I didn’t exactly say that, but that’s what I did. Meaning the devil is our mutual sperm donor. Until today, I hadn’t spoken to Jonah St. Cloud since the day of my mother’s funeral. He found me. Today is my birthday. I turned thirty-five, and I had some stuff I had to do with my mom’s lawyers, and after that, I went to the cemetery to... to... to own up to my mom that I had failed to keep every damn promise I made to her on her deathbed, mainly the one about finding you and your mother.
    “Just as I was leaving, the sperm donor showed up. Guess he kept track of things. He asked for my help. He told me to name my price. You were my price, and he gave it up. And here I am. Well, before I left, I knocked him on his ass. Then I came here.”
    Alex leaned across the table, his expression intense. “How did it feel?”
    Jake grinned. “Liberating. I put everything I had into that punch. I wanted to keep beating him till he was a bloody pulp, but I didn’t. I pulled into a gas station to calm down and felt ashamed for all of ten seconds.”
    “He just took it? He let you punch him out and didn’t fight back? What kind of man is that?” Alex asked, his eyes wide in shock at what he was hearing.
    “Think sperm donor, bro. Oh, he did ask when we would get together for the help he wanted from me. I told him I lied. All I wanted was your name. Just so you don’t think I’m a complete shit, I will get in touch with him. My mother taught me better than that.”
    The doorbell rang. Alex excused himself and went to answer it. He was back in minutes. “A/C guy. Thank God! More