Fatal Affair: 1 (Courthouse Connections) Read Online Free PDF Page A

up
in a rotting shack next to a strawberry field. Or got raised, if you can call
it that, by a daddy who pickled himself in too many bottles of rotgut vodka
after her mother dumped her on him.”
    JD nodded. “You don’t have to go through
the basics about your childhood, sweetheart. It’s on the senator’s website for
all to see. You grew up poor, married Winstead when you were just twenty years
old, and the senator helped you to finish college and law school. You can try
to scare me off all you want but it’s not going to work. I care about who you
are now, how you make me feel alive again.”
    “Most everything on that website is a pack
of lies and half-truths. To my shame, I went along with the charade for eight
years, figuring it was a reasonable price for me to pay for my schooling and a
quick escape from squalor and poverty.” Lanie paused, considering what else she
had to say. “If that were all of it, I wouldn’t be sitting here now, dreading
the way I’m sure you’ll feel when you know the whole, unvarnished story about
Lanie Trudell Winstead.”
    “Don’t make assumptions about how I’ll
feel. For God’s sake, Lanie, give me a little credit. I’m not going to condemn
you for doing things you had to because of circumstances you couldn’t help.”
    “Where do you want me to start, then? Don’t
you dare try to say you won’t think less of me because of the choices I’ve
made. I can’t believe that.”
    “How about starting at the beginning?” If
it weren’t for his supportive smile and the serious look in his eyes, she’d
have thought he was mocking her.
    She breathed deeply, trying to ignore her
surroundings, the throbbing pulse in her neck, even the tempting man now
touching her hand, lending her the necessary strength to make the troubling
journey into her past.
    “I was a nobody as a kid—a ragged little
girl who didn’t belong, not to the other white kids who had decent parents and
nice homes and not even to the migrant workers’ children, most of whom at least
had their parents’ love. Damn it, though, I was determined I wouldn’t always be
the object of pity and derision.
    “I studied hard, worked picking berries and
tomatoes and sometimes lima beans in the fields close to home. While other kids
went off to college in Gainesville and places even farther out of reach for me,
like Boston College and Princeton, I got a scholarship to Hillsborough
Community College. When I was about to finish my associate’s degree, I realized
that the only way I saw I could make enough money to go on to college and law
school was by working at this club near my house—a place called Pussycat
Paradise. It was a strip club on I-4 where truckers used to go for beer and to
watch the shows.”
    JD frowned. “I’m sorry you had to do that,
sweetheart, but there’s no reason to be ashamed. You did what you had to do.
What does this have to do with the senator, though?”
    “I’ll have to start from the beginning.
This won’t be a neat summation like I’d try to prepare for a jury, so please
forgive me for rambling.” Lanie got up from the table and looked out the
kitchen window at the wintry sand dunes and freeze-burned sea grape bushes.
    “I couldn’t wait to escape my childhood.
Somehow, some way I was determined to get away from it all—the tumbledown
shack, my drunken old man and his no-account pals. I’d come so damn far, just
days now from getting that associate of science diploma and escaping the cruel
teasing I’d been enduring from classmates for as long as I could remember. I’d
never have to listen to them laugh at my thrift store clothes or make fun of
the rusty old bicycle that I was so careful to lock up as though anybody might
want to steal it.
    “Everybody thought I was nothing but white
trash and that I was crazy to think I could escape my destiny of following in my
parents’ footsteps. I’d show them, though. I was different. I got a bad start
in life but by God I