Her Sister (Search For Love series) Read Online Free PDF Page A

music had stopped, she pointed
a finger at Brad.  "I could have you arrested for rape.  You're eighteen. 
She's sixteen.  Do you have any idea what you're doing?"
    "She
wanted it," he snapped defensively.
    "Statutory
rape," Clare declared, her voice rising.  "My father's a lawyer.  Do
you think I don't know the law?"
    Brad
slid off the bed and reached for his jeans that were heaped on the floor.  He
didn't seem at all embarrassed and that made Clare even angrier.  "This
isn't the first time," he declared to Clare, looking her straight in the
eye.  "And it's up to Shara whether it's going to be the last."
    Clare
had felt powerless before.  Having a stranger sneak into her house and steal
her sister had taught her what violation felt like...what lack of control felt
like...what uncertainty felt like.  She'd tried so hard to make Shara feel
secure, safe and protected.  Staring at her daughter now, however, she knew
Shara didn't want to be protected by her.  And that hurt.
    "Get
out.  I'll be calling your parents."
    He
shrugged into his shirt.  "I only have a dad.  He lets me do what I want. 
What else can he do?  I'm over eighteen."  After he slipped on his boots,
he looked at Shara.  "My condolences, kid.  Call me when you get out of
jail."
    When he
exited the room, the smell of testosterone was strong.  The silence that
permeated the bedroom held everything in the world that Clare had ever said to
Shara, everything in the future she might say.  She knew if she didn't do this
right she could lose her daughter.  She didn't want the degrees of separation
that she felt between her and her mother come between her and Shara, though she
was afraid they'd already started piling up.
    While
she peered out the window and took a calming breath, she heard the vroom of Brad's
bike start up.  Why hadn't God sent a manual with every child born?
    "So
I'm grounded, I guess?" Shara asked with a look that was a tad too
guileless, a tad too light.
    "Will
grounding do any good, Shara?  Will handcuffing you to your desk, locking the
door, barring the windows teach you anything about what you should be doing as
a sixteen-year-old?"
    "Mom..." 
Frustrated teenage impatience was evident in Shara's voice.
    Well,
Clare was just as frustrated.  "You didn't just stay out past your
curfew.  You didn't just go to a movie that I thought you were too immature to
see.  You didn't just forget to hand in an assignment.  You were having sex —an
act that's supposed to happen between a man and a woman when they care about
each other, when they're committed to each other, when they love each other and
want to spend their life together."
    "I
guess that's what you believed when you had sex before you had me?"
    The
barb cut.  "I was stupid, Shara.  I was trying to get attention from a
boy.  And not just attention, but love, because I didn't feel my father loved
me.  Is that what you want to hear?  If I thought telling you all about my
mistakes would keep you from making them, I'd lay it all out.  But you don't
listen to me.  And if you do listen, you don't hear what I say."
    Shara's
eyes had widened and she looked speechless for a moment.
    Clare
waved at the kitchen door.  "That boy doesn't care about you.  Oh, he
might want to have sex with you again because it felt good.  But three minutes
after he's done, he couldn't care less about you."
    "You're
wrong."
    "No,
I'm not.  But as I said, you're not going to hear what I'm saying.  That's a
sign of you not being adult enough to do what you were just doing.  So, yes,
you're grounded, until I can figure out how to make you grow up a little bit. 
You belong in school, learning what you need to learn so you'll have a future. 
Do you want me to call the school every hour to check if you're still there? 
Do you want me to take you to school and pick you up?  Do you want me to come
and sit in your classes beside you to make sure you pay attention, you learn
and you study?  Push