Just Kiss Me Read Online Free PDF Page A

some dust as he returned to the stove. One of the last times he’d laid eyes on Vivien in person, she’d been snooping through his chest of drawers. He couldn’t remember her age, but it was the summer before he’d entered Princeton. At the time, she’d still been a chunky kid with a smart mouth and sticky fingers. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see her counting his condoms, but he actually
had
been surprised to catch her in the act. He’d been so pissed off, he’d tried to scare and intimidate her so that she’d think twice about entering his room ever again. She’d been anything but scared or intimidated. Her green gaze had held his and she’d had the balls to throw Tracy Lynn Fortner’s name in his face. No one had even known about Tracy Lynn, but Vivien had found out. He could guess how the little snoop learned of his old girlfriend and the secret that neither of them wanted anyone to discover. Not her family and certainly not his mother. The Whitley-Shulers already had a closet stuffed with scandals and the last thing he wanted was to add one of his making. Teen Mom might be popular on MTV, but teen pregnancy wasn’t done in families like the Fortners or Whitley-Shulers. While the rest of the world may have relaxed views on children born outside of marriage, the rules in his world had not changed. It was just as scandalous and disgraceful in his generation as it had been in his mother’s. Like his mother, he and Tracy Lynn had had two choices, but unlike Nonnie, they’d made a different decision.
    No one but he and Tracy Lynn knew what had happened that summer. No one but he and Tracy Lynn—and Vivien. He’d never known how much Vivien had discovered, but she’d known Tracy Lynn’s name, so he’d assumed she knew everything. He’d spent the first two years at Princeton living in fear of her dropping the bomb on him. She’d obviously never told anyone, and he’d always wondered why she’d never used her knowledge against him. Shocking really, given her penchant for snooping and bad manners, and her disagreeable character in general.
    He glanced up as Vivien walked into the kitchen with her dark hair messed up as if towel dried. She held a brush in one hand and her cell phone in the other. She’d changed out of her muddy dress and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt that matched her deep green eyes.
    “Are you warmed up, Ms. Vivien?”
    “No. I’m freezing and wish I’d packed a sweater or a jacket.” She looked a lot like her momma. A contrast of dark hair and white skin and eyes like shamrocks on the Hill of Tara. Vivien’s lips were more lush than her mother’s, though. Redder and fuller, like she’d been kissed all night. “I looked for a blanket, but didn’t find one,” she said as she walked across the kitchen toward the window overlooking the courtyard. Light from the converted chandelier slipped through the tangled length of her damp hair. The T-shirt fit loose across her small breasts, but not loose enough to hide her hard nipples raking the soft cotton. “Not even on Momma’s bed.”
    Henry glanced at his watch and then grabbed the lid off the pot. She hadn’t been kidding. She was freezing. “I have a jacket in my truck. I can run and get it for you.” She didn’t politely insist that he not trouble himself on her account, like any good Southern woman would do, and he was forced to run back out into the pelting rain and grab his hunting jacket from the truck box in the back of his Chevy. The ribbed cuffs were frayed and the quilted lining worn thin in places. A three-corner tear split the camo weeds on the left elbow, and there was probably a few twelve-gage loads in one of the pockets. It had definitely seen better days, but he never hunted without his lucky Carhartt. When he returned, he found Vivien sitting at the small kitchen table. She held her face in her hands in grief, and he felt a little bad for thinking she had a disagreeable character. Maybe that had