Hold On (Delos Series Book 5) Read Online Free PDF Page A

was happy to see that Callie was finally relaxing, at least in stages. He’d put this stage at a three out of ten.
    “About the closest I got to a horse was riding the Thorns’ mule,” he now confided. “All of us boys would walk half a mile up to the crest of the mountain where they lived and beg Mr. Thorn for a mule ride. Then the three of us would pile onto the mule’s back for a spin around the property. We felt pretty special, and I always enjoyed those rides.”
    “That was really nice of him to do that for you,” Callie said. She picked up her mug of beer and took a sip.
    “Hill people stick together,” he pointed out. “There’s a bunch of families who live up on Black Mountain, and we all support one another. I know a lot of folks call us ‘hillbillies’ and look down on us, but we’re there for each other whenever we’re needed.”
    Shaking her head, Callie muttered, “I hate it when people show their prejudices like that.”
    “In Dunmore, a pretty large town south of us,” Beau went on, “my ma always ran into that kind of thing. She didn’t wear the latest fashions, so people would shun her, ignore her, or pretend she wasn’t standing in line to get waited on.”
    He saw flashes of anger and, yes, regret in Callie’s eyes. Wow! His little redheaded spitfire could sure get pissed off in a hell of a hurry! Beau withheld a grin over that discovery.
    “That’s just plain wrong,” Cassie sputtered. “I’m sure it hurt her feelings.”
    “The hill people living on Black Mountain didn’t often go down to the lowlanders’ towns,” he said. “We were pretty self-sufficient. We raised our own meat, we hunted, we had big gardens, and we helped one another. Mr. Thorn, for example, would take his mule and ride him over to other parts of the mountain and plow up the ground for other folks so they could put in their gardens every spring. My pa would help him when he could. He and Floyd would go hunting and kill enough deer for everyone. After they skinned and quartered them, they’d take the meat to the elderly folks on the mountain who couldn’t hunt any longer.”
    “I like that about your folks,” Callie confided as she finished her pizza slice. She pushed the last wedge toward Beau. “Finish this off, Beau? I’m stuffed!”
    “You sure?” he asked. “You could take it back with you for a midnight snack.”
    “I’m very sure. And I’m glad to see that you know how to share.”
    He chuckled and picked up the last wedge. “What? You have some guy in your past who’d steal pizza out of your hands so he could gobble it down himself?”
    His heart somersaulted as she smiled—really smiled at him—for the first time. Beau thought he’d died and gone to heaven in that moment. Callie was always beautiful, but when she smiled, her green eyes shone with a radiance that went straight into his heart and lit him up inside. He decided he liked making her smile.
    “I’ve had that experience, yes. Not often, but when it happened, I never saw him again. That kind of attitude tells me a lot. Specifically, I realized that he was selfish and put himself first instead of thinking about others’ needs. I don’t keep people like that in my life. Ever.”
    He munched thoughtfully on the cheesy, salty pizza. “Kinda thought that. You strike me as a gal who doesn’t suffer fools—at all.”
    “No, I don’t.” Callie scowled and wrapped her slender hands around the cold mug of beer in front of her. “And I haven’t made up my mind about you yet, Beau, but I am drawn to you. I just can’t figure out why . . .”
    His brows rose. “Maybe because I’m a good-lookin’ brute?” he teased, watching her cheeks flood with color. He knew he wasn’t hard to look at, but he also wasn’t one of those handsome hunks on the covers of the romance novels that his ma loved to read, either. Beau considered himself ordinary-looking, and that was fine with him.
    Sitting back, Callie absorbed the