Jake's Biggest Risk (Those Hollister Boys) Read Online Free PDF Page B

hadn’t taught her caution, she needed to be careful because of Danny.
    “That’s a nice thing to say. What’s up?” she asked briskly.
    “It’s short notice, but would you like to go out tonight? We haven’t been able to see much of each other lately.”
    “Oh, I’m sorry, I have plans,” Hannah said regretfully. It had been several weeks since they’d gotten together and she would have enjoyed talking to a sane adult male. “Barbi Paulson is coming over.”
    “Barbi Paulson?” Brendan repeated with obvious surprise. “The pizza-delivery woman?”
    “She’s a friend. We’re going to...uh, watch a movie or something.” Hannah couldn’t explain that she was tutoring Barbi for her GED exam—Barbi might prefer to keep that information private.
    “Maybe we can go another day. What’s on tonight’s menu? You’re such a wonderful cook, I’m envious.”
    “No call for envy. I’ll probably do macaroni and cheese. It’s easy, Danny likes it and Barbi isn’t coming until after dinner.”
    After they said goodbye, Hannah sat at the breakfast table with a cup of coffee. The sun was fully up now and she gazed out, loving the changing view. Honestly, she didn’t think there was anything more beautiful than the Cascade Mountains.
    Finally she opened one of the adult-study manuals she’d gotten from the school district office. She taught elementary-age children, and it had been years since she’d looked at the high school curriculum. It wouldn’t bolster Barbi’s confidence about taking the GED test if her tutor wasn’t familiar with the material.
    * * *
    B RENDAN WENT BACK to work at his desk, disappointed that his great plan to sweep Hannah off for the evening had failed. He would have thought that in a quiet place like Mahalaton Lake, with only a few thousand people and her parents available for babysitting, they wouldn’t have trouble getting together, but she was so busy it was a challenge.
    Yet as he dealt with his email, he formulated a plan—if Hannah didn’t have enough time to go to dinner, he would take dinner to her. He’d surprise her by bringing something from Luigi’s, and leave when Barbi arrived.
    Hmm
.
    He frowned thoughtfully.
    Barbi Paulson and Hannah?
    The two women couldn’t be more different. Luigi’s was the only restaurant in town that delivered, and he ordered regularly from them on weekends. While Barbi didn’t mouth off when she brought his pizza, she wore garish, low-cut outfits that were always a little too tight and a little too short. She even managed to be eye-popping in the winter when she wore things like hot pink ski pants and equally colorful parkas.
    With a shake of his head, Brendan reviewed his appointment schedule. It was far less full than when he’d practiced law in Seattle. Relocating to Mahalaton Lake the previous year might be the only impulsive decision he’d made in his entire life, but it had seemed right at the time.
    Yet even as he thought about it, he felt a pang of sorrow, remembering the woman he’d once hoped to marry.
    Maria had been an associate in his high-pressure Seattle law firm, but she’d died suddenly of a brain aneurism. The other partners hadn’t appeared troubled by the loss; they’d simply divvied up Maria’s client list between them. Yet Brendan had been devastated. For the first time he’d questioned the sanity of working more than a hundred hours a week. Maria had been having headaches and dizzy spells, but she wouldn’t even take time off to see a doctor—success came before marriage, before kids, before
everything
.
    What sort of life was that? Hell, it
wasn’t
a life. She was gone at thirty-one.
    At first he’d tried to cut back his hours—much to the displeasure of the head of the firm, who’d “suggested” resuming his original schedule or finding other options for practicing law. About the same time Maria’s father had told him he was trying to sell his law firm in Mahalaton Lake. Brendan had visited the